Wednesday April 27, 2022

More of This The teen activists leading the fight against “Don’t Say Gay”

As anti-LGBTQ+ legislation has proliferated across the state of Florida over the past several years, the fight for queer and trans rights has been taken up by those who perhaps have the most to lose: kids.

Queer student activists in the sunshine state are balancing rallies, walkouts, and senate testimonies on top of algebra homework and play rehearsals, determined to ensure that the legislators taking away their rights have to look them in the eye while they do it.

Across the country, conservative lawmakers have spent the past few years spearheading a historic slate of anti-LGBTQ+ laws. LGBTQ+ topics in education have become a flashpoint this year, and while legislation seeking to limit LGBTQ+ and racial discussions in class has been introduced in states like Tennessee and West Virginia, Florida has become a conservative proving ground thanks to HB 1557, otherwise known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. HB 1557 prohibits classroom education on topics related to sexual orientation and gender identity from grades K-3, or in any “manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate.” The bill, which has been criticized for being overly vague, also allows parents to sue school districts that violate the policy.

Since being signed into law by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on March 28, “Don’t Say Gay” has drawn worldwide attention, including billboard campaigns and celebrity outcry at the Oscars. But LGBTQ+ student activists in Florida are at the forefront of the fight, speaking out against the law by leading voter registration drives and organizing demonstrations everywhere from their high school lunch breaks to the state Capitol in Tallahassee.

Read the Story on Them

Less of This Right wing judges are hijacking our personal freedom

Last week, Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle handed down a sweeping 59-page opinion in which she struck down the Biden administration’s requirement that passengers wear masks on airplanes, trains, and similar methods of transportation. Mizelle reasoned, among other things, that the word “sanitation” in the Public Health Service Act, a sprawling 1944 lawthat grants the federal government powers to respond to public health emergencies, precluded the government from halting the spread of disease unless something specific was being cleaned. Lawrence O. Gostin, university professor and director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, joined Amicus to discuss Mizelle’s reading of the statute, as well as some other broad claims she made about the scope of personal liberty. Our conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

Listen to the Podcast on Slate

Speaking Of… Racist juror sends Black man to death row. SCOTUS doesn’t care.

On Monday, the Supreme Court turned away an appeal from a Black man named Kristopher Love, whose death sentence was tainted by a juror’s racism. By a 6–3 vote, the conservative majority refused to enforce precedents protecting capital defendants from racial bias, saving itself the trouble of formally overruling them. Once again, the Supreme Court exercised its power to change the law by doing nothing, furthering its quest to subvert the normal operation of law and speed up executions in America.

Racism pervades every aspect of the death penalty, but it’s not often as obvious as it was at Love’s 2018 trial. Love’s attorneys asked prospective jurors whether they believe that some races “tend to be more violent than others” in an attempt to smoke out illicit bias. One juror, Zachary Niesman—who is white—answered “yes,” elaborating: “Statistics show more violent crimes are committed by certain races. I believe in statistics.”

Read the Story on Slate

Perspective It’s time to call out the Supreme Court’s undemocratic tendencies 

How do you solve a problem like Virginia Thomas? The wife of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, according to a slate of recent (and not-so-recent) reporting, has spent years enmeshed in right-wing networks directly connected to both her husband and the high court on which he sits. On top of that, evidence collected for the investigation into the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol has revealed that Ms Thomas sent text messages urging Donald Trump’s chief of staff to overturn the election results. (Mr Thomas went on to become the only dissenter in a case where Trump sought to block the inquiry from obtaining sensitive records.)

So what is Democrats’ answer to the “Ginni” question? Milquetoast calls for new ethics rules for the high court. While it is absurd that the Supreme Court lacks such rules — unlike other federal judges, the high court’s justices are not subject to an ethical code of conduct — this narrow focus on ethical indiscretions misses the mark.

As Peter Shamshiri, a lawyer and cohost of the 5-4 podcast, writes in Balls and Strikes, a progressive legal news blog:

"The exposure of Thomas’s corruption presents an opportunity. . . . It is time that the Court’s claim to legitimacy be publicly questioned. . . . If you are even nominally on the left, you should have no interest in maintaining the legitimacy of reactionary institutions. Reform is only possible if the Court’s public standing is undermined.”

Read the story on Jacobin

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Oasis Legal Services hiring Executive Director

The position is within the Border Butterflies project and will provide direct legal support to LGBTQ asylum seekers living in the United States.

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Transgender Law Center hiring legal fellow

The position is within the Border Butterflies project and will provide direct legal support to LGBTQ asylum seekers living in the United States.

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California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice hiring legal fellow

We seek to hire a full time immigration legal fellow to increase representation of detained immigrants before the Immigration Court, Board of Immigration Appeals, and before federal district courts.

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