Supreme Court: Yes to Gays, Clean Water and Sanctuary Cities, No to Trump/Pence

Today was a wonderful day for LGBT Americans as the U.S. Supreme Court in Bostock v. Clayton County ruled that existing civil rights non-discrimination laws regarding sex applied to LGBT citizens, thereby effectively making employment discrimination and other forms of anti-LGBT discrimination illegal nationwide. It was also a good day for California which saw the Court reject the Trump/Pence regime attack on so-called sanctuary cities   It was also a good day for environmental activists as the Court left the Clean Water Act intact.  The big loser was the Trump/Pence regime which was on the opposite side of the issue in all three cases.  The other big losers were white evangelical Christofascists who sought to have their bigotry and hatred placed above the law so that they could discriminate against LGBT citizens at will.  Indeed, some of the usually suspect in the Christofascist world are shrieking as if the world was ending - and also attacking Trump for his Court appointee, Neil Gorsuch, who wrote the majority opinion.   As a gay man, it is hard to describe my feelings.  Had this decision been handed down almost 20 years earlier, I might have been spared a financial nightmare when I was forced from a law firm for being gay.  At the time, I had zero employment non-discrimination protections.  I am SO happy that in the future LGBT individuals may be spared the experience that befell me. A piece at SCOTUS Blog explains the importance and impact of this ruling:

In affirming that Title VII’s broad scope prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, the Supreme Court immediately ended a form of stigmatic injury suffered by millions of citizens who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or whose gender identity differs from their sex assigned at birth. The question whether the phrase “because of … sex” means what it says in the context of employer actions prohibited by Title VII has been definitively answered—it does. That is, because sexual orientation and gender identity cannot be explained as traits that someone has without making reference to the sex of the person, discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity is also because of an individual’s sex. The Supreme Court also once again concluded that it makes no difference under the text of Title VII whether an employer intended also to discriminate based on an additional reason, like motherhood or the identity of one’s spouse, if sex is a basis for the decision.

With that legal uncertainty removed, gone too is the practical uncertainty faced by real individuals weighing questions of whether to make career moves, geographic moves or moves to reveal aspects of their personal lives by openly sharing their authentic selves at work.

The opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County fulfills the best promises of textualism. The Supreme Court’s confirmation that all people have the right to be given the full measure of protection afforded to them by laws having meaning anchored in the written word is a powerful statement about the enduring power of people-led movements.

Maryland, along with 20 other states and the District of Columbia, expressly prohibits employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity through statute or regulation. Title VII now definitively joins these statutes in prohibiting all forms of discrimination based on sex, including discrimination based on traits like sexual orientation and gender identity that cannot be separated from an individual’s sex. The Bostock decision affirms that citizens may rely on the achievement of broad legislative protections against discrimination to provide long-lasting victory.

Importantly, the confirmation of Title VII’s sweep immediately cements protections for federal government workers, no matter their state of residency, and for individuals who work in states that have not yet specifically prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. In those states, LGBT workers facing discrimination may now bring complaints under Title VII to directly improve their own working conditions.

Other benefits will accrue over time. As Maryland and the 20 states and District of Columbia set forth in their amicus brief, discrimination is expensive. Reducing salary disparities, health care instability and increased health care costs due to the mental health effects of stigmatic discrimination will immediately benefit individuals and the states that care for them. There is also a body of evidence demonstrating that private industry benefits from reducing discrimination because of the increased creativity and productivity LGBT people bring to the workplace when they are included and when they are freed from the health effects of stigmatization. LGBT individuals and their families benefit from better working conditions, and so do states, which experience decreased use of their public benefits system and increased tax revenue as a result of increased innovation and productivity.

Indeed, everyone benefits except religious extremists - think Trump's evangelical base - motivated by hatred and a sick need to have others to denigrate so that they can feel a sense superiority.  

But, as noted, LBGT Americans were not the only winners today.  In its opinion in County of Maui v. Hawaiʻi Wildlife Fund the Court (including Justice Kavanaugh) sided with clean water advocates that point source discharges to navigable waters through groundwater are regulated under the Clean Water Act.   The Supreme Court also rejected the Trump administration’s effort to blow a big hole in the Clean Water Act’s protections for rivers, lakes, and oceans. As explained here these were defeats for the Trump/Pence regime:

In other words, the Clean Water Act prohibits unpermitted discharge of pollution “into navigable waters, or when the discharge reaches the same result through roughly similar means.” In doing so, the Court rejected the Trump administration’s polluter-friendly position in the clearest of terms: “We do not see how Congress could have intended to create such a large and obvious loophole in one of the key regulatory innovations of the Clean Water Act.”

Lastly, the Court also ended Trump's war on blue states that include so-call sanctuary cities.  A column in the Los Angeles Times looks at the Court's action (it is noteworthy that both of Trump's appointees ruled against his regime): 

Since his inauguration in 2017, President Trump has waged a mean-spirited, costly and unnecessary war against undocumented immigrants — many of whom have been living in this country for years and have been hard-working, law-abiding members of the their communities. Thankfully, the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed Monday that states and cities can’t be forced to support that pernicious effort.

California has been a regular target of Trump’s anger and frustration, particularly after the state passed a so-called sanctuary law in 2017 that limits how state and local law enforcement agencies cooperate with federal immigration agents. Former Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions sued to overturn the state’s restrictions, complaining that California was trying to secede from federal law.

The Supreme Court brought that lawsuit to a halt Monday when it sided with California and rejected the Trump administration’s challenge. Notably, even Trump’s two appointees on the court — Justice Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh — refused to hear the administration’s appeal.

At least for now, my faith in the Court is somewhat restored.  It would seem that with Trump's decline in the polls, even his appointees to the Court have decided to put the law first and Trump's whims and misogyny last. 

Trump's Improper War on Blue States

Among the many threats that Der Trumpenführer directs at all kinds of targets - typically, those who reject his lies and/or refuse to embrace his racist agenda - is that federal funds will be withheld from blue states that voted against Trump in the presidential election and/or refuse to cooperate in Trump's effort to terrorize undocumented immigrants. The irony, of course, is that blue states contribute far more to the federal government that they receive back and, therefore, indirectly finance red states that are the states equivalents of the welfare queens constantly derided by right wing Republicans.  The ongoing warfare between the White House and blue states such as California (with its voting record of late and Democrat led state government, Virginia could soon find itself a target of Trump's untethered wrath).   In the eye of the storm is the always despicable Jeff Sessions, and man with a long documented history of racism and bigotry, who is acting with no statutory authority.  A piece in the New York Times looks at this disturbing situation.  Here are article excerpts:

In the civil war now being waged in this country, the combatants are not the blue and the gray of old. It’s the White House versus the blue states.

And the weapons aren’t cannon balls but rather the threatened withholding of federal money from “sanctuary” cities and states, the plan for the next census that would have the effect of shrinking liberal states’ representation in Congress, and the cap on tax deductions that will strike at residents of cities and states where high tax rates support decent public services.

While California is most prominently in the administration’s cross hairs . . . . the free state of California is not the only target. Chilling headlines like a recent one in a local newspaper in New Haven — “ICE Lies in Wait at Elm Street Courthouse” — are appearing all over the country as federal agents stalk and capture undocumented immigrants and leave the rest of us to shudder at tactics we used to ascribe to countries we regarded with disdain.

Those old enough to remember the Rehnquist federalism revolution of the 1990s and early 2000s will recall how startling it was when Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist’s long-sought majority began to rein in the federal government’s authority over the states with an enthusiasm and to a degree not seen since the early years of the New Deal.

The federal government can’t “commandeer” the states to carry out its enforcement objectives, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote for the majority in a 1992 case, New York v. United States, invalidating a federal plan to oblige the states to help dispose of radioactive waste. “Congress must accord states the esteem due them as joint partners in a federal system,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in a 1999 case, Alden v. Maine, immunizing the states from suits for violations of federal labor law.

[T]he current reversal of polarity is head-snapping. The Trump administration is not only commandeering local courthouses as convenient places to trap its prey, it also seeks to punish cities and states that resist.

That effort ran into a major roadblock last week in the form of a decision by the federal appeals court in Chicago. The three-judge panel blocked the effort by Attorney General Jeff Sessions to withhold millions of dollars in federal law-enforcement grant money from cities and states that fail to give advance notice to federal authorities when individuals who are “believed to be aliens” are expected to be released from custody or deny federal agents access to jails to meet with them . . . 

[A]ll three judges were Republican appointees, . . . .  Attorney General Sessions, Judge Rovner wrote, “repeatedly characterizes the issue as whether localities can be allowed to thwart federal law enforcement. That is a red herring. First, nothing in this case involves any affirmative interference with federal law enforcement at all, nor is there any interference whatsoever with federal immigration authorities. The only conduct at issue here is the refusal of the local law enforcement to aid in civil immigration enforcement . . . .

The judge added, “The choice as to how to devote law enforcement resources — including whether or not to use such resources to aid in federal immigration efforts — would traditionally be one left to state and local authorities.”

Congress granted the department no such authority, the appeals court concluded, nor can the statute be interpreted as bestowing it inherently. To quote Judge Rovner: “We are faced, then, with conditions on the receipt of critical law enforcement funds that have been imposed by the attorney general without any authority in a manner that usurps the authority of Congress — made more egregious because Congress itself has repeatedly refused to pass bills with such restrictions.”

Judge Rovner wrote . . . The founders of our country well understood that the concentration of power threatens individual liberty and established a bulwark against such tyranny by creating a separation of powers among the branches of government. If the executive branch can determine policy, and then use the power of the purse to mandate compliance with that policy by the state and local governments, all without the authorization or even acquiescence of elected legislators, that check against tyranny is forsaken.”

And if that wasn’t strong enough medicine, her opinion includes this observation: “It falls to us, the judiciary, as the remaining branch of the government, to act as a check on such usurpation of power.”

Nor is there middle ground in another front in the new civil war: the Trump administration’s decision, announced on March 26, to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. California, New York, the N.A.A.C.P., and others promptly filed lawsuits.

The legal complaints assert that requiring people to reveal their citizenship status will predictably depress participation, thereby preventing the government from obeying the constitutional command to conduct an “actual enumeration” every 10 years. . . . . In other words, while there is little chance that the citizenship question will produce a more accurate census, there is every chance that it will bring about a shift in the national balance of power.

New York, heading a plaintiff coalition of 16 states and several cities, asserts in its complaint that “a person-by-person citizenship demand that leads to a systematic undercount of minority populations across the United States will impair fair representation of those groups and the states in which they live.”

“A state of war is not a blank check for the president,” Justice O’Connor famously wrote in one of the cases that reached the court during that period. That goes for a civil war, too.

California and President Trump Are Going to War

As is his standard mode operation - and that of many bullies - Donald Trump's approach to anyone and anything that doesn't support his grandiose view of himself and/or his policies is to lash out, attack them/it and/or to claim their positions are false.  Be it polls that show he is the least popular president in modern history, news reporters that run stories on facts that Trump finds inconvenient or diminish to his inflated ego, their are attacked and depicted as liars, false news, or worse. Among Trump's favored targets is the State of California which voted resoundingly for Hillary Clinton, is thriving economically by employing approaches anathema to Trump/GOP failed policies, is on the forefront of environmental protection, and which sends more money to the federal government than it receives in return.  A piece in the Washington Post ooks at Der Fuhrer's vendetta with California.  Here are highlights:

President Trump had harsh words for one of his most fervent opponents during the pre-Super Bowl interview with Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly that aired Sunday. Not President Vladimir Putin, mind you, whose alleged unpleasant habit of murdering journalists met with a shrug from the president. No, Trump lashed out at the nation’s largest state, California.

“I just spent the week in California,” O’Reilly said. “As you know, they are now voting on whether they should become a sanctuary state. So California and the U.S.A. are on a collision course. How do you see it?”

“Well, I think it’s ridiculous,” Trump replied. “Sanctuary cities, as you know I’m very much opposed to sanctuary cities. They breed crime, there’s a lot of problems. We have to well defund, we give tremendous amounts of money to California . . . "

We’ll note first of all that sanctuary cities do not “breed crime.” Analysis of FBI data shows that crime in sanctuary cities is generally lower than in non-sanctuary cities. But that’s beside the point.

More importantly, Trump says two things. First, that California is “out of control.” Second, that he doesn’t want to yank federal funding from the state, but he will if he has to.

California is one of the few states where federal funding isn’t that great a point of leverage. In 2015, California generated $405 billion in tax revenue, more than $100 billion more than the next-closest state. It consumes a lot of federal funding, too, mind you. But data from Pew Research for 2014 compared to 2014 IRS data shows that California gives the federal government more than it takes. . . . . Most states take more than they generate in taxes.

What’s more, data from the Tax Foundation indicates that federal funding makes up far less of California’s total state revenue than most other states’. 

Trump is mad about California because voters there overwhelmingly rejected Trump in November. Trump supporters have repeatedly tried to affix an “except California” asterisk to the popular vote result since, were it not for California, Trump would have prevailed on that metric. Saying “except California” has the tricky flaw of equaling “except for 12 percent of the American population,” 

Last week, Trump’s war with California took the form of attacking its public college system. After violent protests erupted on the campus of U.C. Berkeley, Trump suggested that he would pull funding from the school, which a) punishes the wrong party, since it wasn’t as though the school asked people to riot and b) can’t be done by executive order anyway.

On Monday, The Washington Post reported that the most visible manifestation of the California economy — the tech industry — had broadly united to file a joint amicus brief in opposition to Trump’s executive order on immigration. The tech industry employs a lot of immigrants to the United States, so there’s clearly a business motivation to take such a stand.

So this is the Cold Civil War that’s erupted. Trump threatens California’s funding; California threatens to pack up and go. Neither is likely to happen. But still — if you predicted that a president’s relationship with the Golden State would be rockier than his relationship with Russia, I’d like to ask your help with some lottery numbers.

 Trump is simply unfit for office.  #NotMyPresident.