SCOTUS Leaves Transgender Student Rights in Place

Yesterday, anti-transgender Christofascists lost a round at the U.S. Supreme Court when the Court refused to hear a challenge from students - no doubt pushed by their parents - who claimed that a school system's bathroom policy allowing transgender students to use restrooms appropriate for the gender identity violated the privacy rights of the anti-trans students.  The rejected challenge is part of a larger Christofascist effort - which is being aided by the Trump/Pence regime - to reverse rights that transgender (and gays) have achieved under the Obama administration. A piece in Bloomberg Law looks at the Court's action.  Here are excerpts:

The U.S. Supreme Court won’t take up the controversy over bathroom use by transgender students. The justices turned away a challenge by four students from Boyertown Area High School in Pennsylvania who claim a school policy of allowing LGBT students to use their preferred bathroom violates their right to privacy.

Controversies have erupted nationwide as school districts decide whether to let LGBT students use bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity rather than their gender at birth.

Some challengers say it’s a violation of federal anti-discrimination laws not to accommodate LGBT students.  The Supreme Court was preparing to hear a similar case at the end of the Obama administration when a policy change by the Trump administration undid much of the lawsuit. The justices nixed the case.

The case is Doe v. Boyertown Area School Dist., U.S., No. 18-658, review denied 5/28/19.

Sadly, the Christofascists continue to believe that their rights override everyone elses and Trump is only too happy to play to this self-centered crowd.

7th Circuit Rules In Favor Of Transgender Student

With the many setbacks that the LGBT community is experiencing under the Trump/Pence regime and the reign of terror of Republican controlled state legislatures, it is nice to find some positive news.   Such welcome news took the form today in a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit which ruled in favor of a transgender student's right to use the restroom that matches his gender identity.  The ruling follows on the positive ruling of the 4th Circuit that never saw fruition since Gavin Grimm graduated from high school and the case became moot.  BuzzFeed looks at today's ruling.  Here are highlights:

A federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled in favor of a transgender student's challenge to a Wisconsin school district's policy limiting his restroom usage — a big win for those seeking to advance transgender rights in the courts.

The decision of a unanimous three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit keeps in place a district court's preliminary injunction halting enforcement of the Kenosha Unified School District's policy against the student, Ash Whitaker.

"The School District has not demonstrated that it will suffer any harm from having to comply with the district court’s preliminary injunction order," the appeals court — which hears cases from Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin — held.

The appeals court upheld the lower court's rulings in favor of Whitaker on both statutory and constitutional grounds, finding that he is likely to succeed on his claim that he is protected from discrimination under the sex discrimination ban in Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 because he is transgender and that the school district's policy violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The broad ruling in favor of transgender rights comes even as the Trump administration pulled back an Obama-era policy that pressed for recognition of transgender rights under existing civil rights laws.

In the Seventh Circuit's decision in Whitaker's case, however, Judge Ann Claire Williams addressed Title IX independent of administration guidance on Tuesday.

"A policy that requires an individual to use a bathroom that does not conform with his or her gender identity punishes that individual for his or her gender non‐conformance, which in turn violates Title IX," she wrote for the panel.

Regarding the constitutional argument, she noted that "the School District argues that since it treats all boys and girls the same, it does not violate the Equal Protection Clause."

"This is untrue," Williams wrote for the court. "Rather, the School District treats transgender students like Ash, who fail to conform to the sex‐based stereotypes associated with their assigned sex at birth, differently."

Because of that, Williams explained the school district would have to show "exceedingly persuasive" reasons justifying the policy.

"This burden has not been met here," she wrote.

Specifically, Williams wrote, "The School District has failed to provide any evidence of how the preliminary injunction will harm it, or any of its students or parents. The harms identified by the School District are all speculative and based upon conjecture, whereas the harms to Ash are well‐documented and supported by the record."

Transgender Sister Of Inaugural Singer Wins Bathroom Ruling

Singer Jackie Evancho performed the national anthem at Der Trumpenführer's inauguration and ended up catching grief from anti-Trump forces and from much of the anti-LGBT Christofascist base of the Republican Party offended by her transgender sister.  The thanks she received from Trump was the withdrawal of transgender protections advanced by the Obama administration.  Now, as BuzzFeed reports, Evancho's sister and two co-plaintiffs have won a federal lawsuit against their public school district for its anti-transgender bathroom policies.  The ruling relied on equal protections guaranteed by the United States Constitution.  Here are highlights from BuzzFeed:

The [Juliet Evancho] transgender sister of a performer who sang at President Trump’s inauguration and two of her schoolmates must be given access to school restrooms that match their gender identity, a federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled on Monday, less than a week after the Trump administration withdrew a policy that said schools must provide that access to transgender students. 

US District Court Judge Mark R. Hornak issued a temporary injunction barring Pine-Richland School District from enforcing a policy that said transgender students could either use single-person bathrooms or facilities matching their birth sex. In issuing his opinion suspending that policy, Hornak ruled that the students would likely prevail on their claims that the rule denied their equal protection rights under the equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. However, the court sidestepped a national debate about whether civil rights laws already ensure transgender students access to restrooms — a question scheduled to go before the Supreme Court in March. In doing so, Hornak did not address the question about whether the students would prevail on a claim the school district policy violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. The court found, instead, that the Constitution’s equal protection guarantee provided relief for the students — and that they are likely to succeed on those claims.

The plaintiffs include three students at Pine-Richland High School, including Juliet Evancho, who is the sister of Jackie Evancho, who sang at Trump’s inauguration. The other plaintiffs are Elissa Ridenour and another student identified only as A.S. Hornak wrote in an order Monday, “The Plaintiffs appear to the Court to be young people seeking to do what young people try to do every day-go to school, obtain an education, and interact as equals with their peers. … [T]he Plaintiffs have shown a reasonable likelihood of success on the merits of their claim that the District’s enforcement of Resolution 2 as to their use of common school restrooms does not afford them equal protection of the law as guaranteed to them by the Fourteenth Amendment.”

Federal Court Rules Against Anti-LGBT Gloucester County School Board

After squandering who knows how much taxpayer money and made their county look like a bigoted backwater to the rest of the nation and the world, the Gloucester County school board went down to final defeat in its war against transgender students.  Today, U.S. District Court judge Robert Doumar - who got a spanking himself by the U. D. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit - ordered the Gloucester County school board to allow transgender boy, Gavin Grimm to use the school system's male restrooms.  Would that the board members who proved spineless when confronted by spittle flecked cranks and Christofascists   had to personally reimburse taxpayers for the wasted funds which might just as well have been placed in a trash can and set afire. BuzzFeed looks at today's much deserved defeat,   Here are highlights:

In the country’s most watched case over transgender student rights, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Doumar ordered a Virginia school district to let a transgender boy use the boys restroom when he returns to high school classes in September.

 “I am elated to hear that I’ll be able to attend my senior year of high school with my full rights restored,” Gavin Grimm told BuzzFeed News in a statement. “After nearly two years of humiliation and intense struggle, equality has finally prevailed. Now hopefully other transgender individuals will not have to face this type of discrimination.”
 Grimm had sued the Gloucester County School Board in 2015, challenging a policy that bans transgender students from using school restrooms that correspond with their gender identity.

Represented by the ACLU, Grimm alleged the rule violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
 Judge Doumar had initially thrown out the Title IX claim, despite the U.S. Education Department’s interpretation of the law — that Title IX’s ban on sex discrimination also applied to transgender discrimination. Overturning Doumar on that point, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals found that the Education Department has the authority to establish that interpretation of Title IX.
 [O]n Thursday, Doumar issued a preliminary injunction in Grimm’s favor, stating, “This Court, pursuant to Title IX, hereby ORDERS that Gloucester County School Board permit the plaintiff, G.G., to use the boys’ restroom at Gloucester High School until further order of this Court.”
 Joshua Block, a staff attorney for the ACLU who is representing Grimm, said of the injunction, “The writing is on the wall how this case will ultimately end in Gavin’s favor.”
 Lawyers for the school board did not immediately answer a question BuzzFeed News about whether they would attempt to appeal the preliminary injunction order.

No doubt we will hear the usual rants about judicial tyranny by ignorance embracing Christofascists even as they strive to force their beliefs on all of society.   Meanwhile, thinking Virginians are embracing the 21st century as opposed to wanting to live by a 12th century version of "natural law."

The Unending War Against the Transgendered

After the Supreme Court ruling legalizing same sex marriage I predicted in a column in VEER magazine that the likely losers were transgender Americans who would see the wrath of the Christofascists who could no longer deny civil marriage rights to gay and lesbian couples.  The successful anti-transgender campaign in Houston was in part a symptom of this phenomenon.  The simple truth is that the godly folk want those who are transgender (and gays as well) to simply disappear or, if one belongs to groups like those visited by Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, and Bobby Jindal, die.  We are an affront to their fairy tale religious beliefs and, just like members of ISIS, these knuckle draggers want to eliminate anyone who does not subscribe to their ignorance embracing misogyny.  Another piece in the New York Times looks at the far rightrs increased war against transgender Americans and ties their tactics to those of the Jim Crow era.  Here are highlights:

The social conservatives, local pastors and church groups who opposed HERO were not discouraged by the fact that the law never mentions bathrooms, except to guarantee that they have accommodations for people with disabilities. HERO opponents argued that by allowing transgender people to use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity, the ordinance would give men license to dress as women for the purpose of committing sexual assault in women’s restrooms. That transgender women and men have never once attacked anyone in the restroom of their gender identity didn’t matter. That men do commit such attacks without dressing in drag didn’t dissuade them either.

It’s significant that now, as in the Jim Crow South, the battlefield is the public bathroom. Rules around bathroom access have long been used to enforce boundaries of race, physical ability or gender. Bathrooms are a place where discrimination becomes socially acceptable under the guise of public health.

In America, to “pass” for white has meant to move through public spaces, like bathrooms or lunch counters, with the freedoms and privileges that accompany the social markers of whiteness. In gay culture, to “pass” means to fit into the heterosexual world without “detection” of your sexual orientation, and thus to avoid homophobic harassment or abuse.

Telling people which bathroom they’re allowed to enter privileges those transgender people who can pass as cisgender. Short of a medical examination outside each restroom, how can anyone know for sure what someone’s biological sex is? Worse, the campaign against HERO reiterates that all women must match certain socially-constructed standards of appearance.

And by focusing the campaign on children, HERO opponents inculcate kids with the message that they cannot be perceived by their peers (and the broader world) the way they perceive themselves.

For children and teens struggling with gender dysphoria (a disconnect between a person’s sex at birth and their gender identity), high school can be even more hellish than it is for the general public. And the torment and stigma transgender people in America experience can be deadly. More than 40 percent of transgender adults have attempted suicide.

HERO’s opponents were so successful in their faux-feminist campaign that they’re now taking it to other cities, like Dallas. This month, the Dallas City Council unanimously approved an addition to their 2002 equal rights ordinance to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression. Several of the same Republican officials who led the anti-HERO campaign Houston have been quick to pounce on the amendment as a “new sneak-attack LGBT ordinance,” that was not “thoughtfully considered by the public.” A petition to repeal the entire ordinance, and a drive to move the 2016 Texas Republican Party convention out of Dallas, are underway.

As the laws of segregation reinforced the binary of black and white, the anti-HERO warriors are attempting to reinforce a particular definition of gender and sexuality, framing it in terms of women’s need for protection. Perhaps they should be working to stop men from committing rape, or addressing women’s actual health concerns, rather than deciding who is allowed to pee in the next stall.

What we all need is protection from is the bigotry and ignorance of the "godly folk."  They are free to do whatever demented bull shit they want when gathered in the churches (all of which need to lose tax-exempt status), but when they venture out in public, their beliefs and the myths they cling to in order to feel better about themselves, have no place in the public square.  Americans are focused on the danger of Islamic extremism.  They need to be equally concerned with Christian extremism here at home.  They also need to shed the myth that conservative Christians are kind and decent people - they are not.