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NBC News
2 hours ago
- Politics
- NBC News
Louisiana's Ten Commandments law in public schools blocked by federal appeals court
A federal appeals court on Friday ruled, in a unanimous decision, in favor of a coalition of Louisiana parents who sued to block a state law that requires public schools and colleges to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms. The appellate court's decision upholds a lower court's ruling in November declaring Louisiana's law as "facially unconstitutional." 'Parents and students challenge a statute requiring public schools to permanently display the Ten Commandments in every classroom in Louisiana. The district court found the statute facially unconstitutional and preliminarily enjoined its enforcement. We affirm,' the court said in its ruling. Now, the case moves closer to potentially going before the U.S. Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority. 'We are grateful for this decision, which honors the religious diversity and religious-freedom rights of public school families across Louisiana,' said the Rev. Darcy Roake, who is a plaintiff in the case. Louisiana's law went into effect this year at public K-12 schools and state-funded universities. State officials issued guidance on how posters of the Ten Commandments could be designed and hung up in classrooms for educational purposes. While the law applies to the majority of school districts throughout the state, the five school districts that have parents who are plaintiffs in the original lawsuit are exempt while the litigation plays out. It's unclear how many, if any, school districts have begun to comply, and questions remain about what might happen to educators who ultimately don't cooperate. During the federal appeals court hearing in January, Louisiana Solicitor General Benjamin Aguiñaga argued that the plaintiffs' lawsuit was filed too early — before any posters have been displayed. "The plaintiffs seek to challenge hypothetical displays that do not exist and that they have never seen," Aguiñaga said. "The plaintiffs jumped the gun here and filed an unripe case," he said. But Jonathan Youngwood, a lawyer for the coalition of parents representing Jewish, Christian, Unitarian Universalist and nonreligious backgrounds said the purpose of the law is tied to religion and violates a separation of church and state. "What makes this so significant is the requirement that it be in every single (classroom) throughout your 13 years in public school, 177 days a year," Youngwood said. "It can't be avoided. It can't be averted." The American Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Freedom from Religion Foundation, and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP are supporting the plaintiffs. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill has said no public funds would be required to be spent on printing the posters and they can be supplied through private donations. The law dictates the posters must be at least 11 by 14 inches and include a "context statement" that provides historical context for the commandments, which the state believes makes its law constitutional. In a Facebook post in January, Murrill said the state contends that federal courts "have no jurisdiction to decide this case." "The Constitution does not bar our Legislature's attempt to teach our students what the Supreme Court has repeatedly said: The Ten Commandments have historical significance as a foundation of our legal system," Murrill said. But U.S. District Judge John deGravelles of the Middle District of Louisiana disagreed with the state in his ruling in November, in which he wrote that there is no "constitutional way to display the Ten Commandments in accordance with the minimum requirements of the Act." The Supreme Court has also taken up the issue previously, when the justices ruled 5-4 in 1980 that Kentucky's posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools was unconstitutional. Still, President Donald Trump endorsed Louisiana's law during his campaign. Louisiana and other Republican-led states have pushed for new bills and policies that are testing the bounds of religion in public schools. That has included Oklahoma ordering public schools grades five through 12 to incorporate the Bible into lesson plans and Texas allowing public school districts to opt in to a new elementary school curriculum featuring Bible-based lessons. In April, the Supreme Court heard a bid by Oklahoma officials to approve the nation's first publicly funded religious charter school. Meanwhile, Republican leaders in other states, such as Alabama and Texas, are supporting legislation similar to Louisiana's that would allow for the Ten Commandments in public schools. In April, Arkansas legislation requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in all public schools' classrooms and libraries became law just days after the GOP-controlled Legislature passed it.
Los Angeles Times
13 hours ago
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Unsanitary, overcrowded and inhumane: Surge of new detainees at Adelanto brings dire conditions, critics say
ADELANTO, Calif. — As federal immigration agents conduct mass raids across Southern California, the Adelanto ICE Processing Center is filling so rapidly it is reigniting longtime concerns about safety conditions inside the facility. In less than two months, the number of detainees in the sprawling complex about 85 miles northeast of Los Angeles has surged from around 300 near the end of April to more than 1,200 as of Wednesday, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. The largest detention center in California, Adelanto has for years been the focus of complaints from detainees, attorneys and state and federal inspectors about inadequate medical care, overly restrictive segregation and lax mental health services. But now, critics — including some staff who work inside — warn that conditions inside have become increasingly unsafe and unsanitary. The facility, they say, is woefully unprepared to handle a massive increase in the number of detainees. 'It's dangerous,' a longtime Adelanto detention center staff member told The Times, speaking on condition of anonymity because they did not want to lose their job. 'We have no staffing for this and not enough experienced staff. They're just cutting way too many corners, and it affects the safety of everybody in there.' On Tuesday, U.S. Rep Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park), toured Adelanto with four other Democratic members of Congress from California amid growing concern over the rapidly increasing number of detainees and deteriorating conditions inside the facility. The facility's manager 'has to clearly improve its treatment of these detainees,' Chu said at a news conference after inspecting the facility for nearly two hours. Some detainees told lawmakers they were held inside Adelanto for 10 days without a change of clothes, underwear or towels, Chu said. Others said they had been denied access to a telephone to speak to loved ones and lawyers, even after repeatedly filling out forms. 'I was just really shocked to hear that they couldn't get a change of underwear, they couldn't get socks for 10 days,' Chu told The Times. 'They can't get the PIN number for a telephone call. What about their legal rights? What about the ability to be in contact with their families? That is inhumane.' Immigration Customs and Enforcement and GEO Group, the Florida-based private prison corporation that manages the Adelanto detention center, did not answer The Times' questions about staffing or conditions inside the facility. The Times also sent questions to Homeland Security assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin, but they were not answered. Over the last two weeks, new detainees have been forced to sleep on the floors of common areas without blankets and pillows and have spent days in the facility before they were provided with clean clothes and underwear, according to interviews with current detention center staff, immigration attorneys, and members of Congress who toured the facility. Some detainees have complained about lack of access to medication, lack of access to drinking water for four hours, and being served dinner as late as 10 p.m. One detainee was not allowed his high blood pressure pills when family tried to bring it in, said Jennifer Norris, a staff attorney at Immigrant Defenders Law Center. In some cases, she said, lax medical care has led to emergencies: a Vietnamese man passed out last week because staff didn't provide him with his necessary medication. 'It's clear that with the ramp up enforcement, Adelanto just does not have the staff to keep pace with the aggressive enforcement that's happening now,' Norris said. 'It is bizarre. We spend millions of dollars on ICE detention and they're not even able to provide basic necessities for the new arrivals.' Long before Trump administration officials announced in May they were setting a new national goal of arresting 3,000 unauthorized immigrants a day, Adelanto workers worried about understaffing and unsafe conditions as the center processed new detainees. At the end of last year, the facility held only three people. As of Wednesday, the number had swelled to 1,218, according to the ACLU of Southern California. The climb is only partly due to the ICE agents' recent escalation of immigrant raids. The 1,940-bed Adelanto facility has been operating at a dramatically reduced capacity since 2020 when civil rights groups filed a class-action lawsuit demanding a drastic reduction in the number of people detained at Adelanto on the basis that they faced severe risk of contracting COVID-19. A federal judge forced the detention center to release detainees and prohibit new intakes and transfers. But a series of federal court orders this year — the most recent in early June — has allowed the facility to fully reopen just as federal immigration agents fan out into neighborhoods and workplaces. 'As soon as the judge lifted the order, they just started slamming people in there,' an Adelanto staffer told The Times. Eva Bitrán, director of immigrant rights at the ACLU of Southern California, said 'almost everybody' held in the Adelanto facility had no criminal record before they arrived in the detention center. 'But even if they had a criminal record, even if they had served their time in criminal custody and then been brought to the ICE facility, nobody deserves 10 days in the same underwear,' Bitrán said. 'Nobody deserves dirty showers, nobody deserves moldy food.' Mario Romero, an Indigenous worker from Mexico who was detained June 6 at the Ambiance Apparel warehouse in downtown L.A., was one of dozens who ended up in Adelanto. His daughter, Yurien Contreras, said she and her family were traumatized after her father was 'chained by the hands, feet and waist,' taken to the Metropolitan Detention Center downtown and then 'held hostage' in a van from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. with no access to water, food or a restroom. 'Little did we know,' she said, 'it was only the beginning of the inhumane treatment our families would endure.' At Adelanto, she said, officials try to force her father to sign documents without due process or legal representation. The medical care was 'less than minimal,' she said, the food was unsustainable and the water tasted like Clorox. Lucero Garcia told The Times she was concerned about her 61-year-old uncle, Candido, who was detained June 9 as he worked at his job at Magnolia Car Wash in Fountain Valley. But when she visited him Saturday, 'he didn't want to share much,' she said. 'He's worried more about us.' This is not the first time the Adelanto detention center has faced scrutiny. In 2018, federal inspectors issued a report finding 'serious violations' at the facility, including overly restrictive detainee segregation and guards failing to stop detainees from hanging braided bed sheet 'nooses.' Five years later, current and former Adelanto detainees filed a class-action lawsuit against GEO Group, alleging the company 'systematically poisoned' inmates by improperly using toxic chemicals to clean the detention center. GEO Group has denied the claims in the class-action suit. In April, the California Department of Justice released a report that found all of the state's six privately operated immigration detention facilities, including Adelanto, fell short in providing mental health care for detainees, medical record keeping, suicide prevention strategies, and use of force against detainees with mental health conditions. But two staffers who spoke to The Times said they had never experienced such unsafe conditions at Adelanto. As the prison population has increased over the last few months, they said, staff are working long hours without breaks, some even falling asleep driving home after their shifts and having car accidents. Shift duty officers with no security experience were being asked to make decisions in the middle of the night about whether to put detainees who felt threatened in protective custody. Officers, including people from food service, were being sent to the hospital to check on detainees with tuberculosis and hepatitis. 'Everyone's just overwhelmed,' a staffer said. Officers working over their allotted schedules were often tired when they were on duty, another staffer said. In May, a detainee went into anaphylactic shock and ended up intubated in the hospital, the staffer said, because an officer wasn't paying attention or was new and gave the detainee, who's allergic to seafood, a tray that contained tuna. At a May meeting, the warden told all executive staff that they needed to come to work dressed down on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the staffer said, because they would have to start doing janitorial work. On June 2, a detainee at the Annex facility made his way from a medical holding area, through four locked doors, all the way back to his dorm unescorted, the staffer said — a major security breach. 'If he would've wanted to escape he would've been gone,' the staffer said. 'All he did is push the buttons to access the doors and they were open for him, no questions. Apparently, whoever was in central control was too tired to check or too inexperienced.' The detention center was becoming unsanitary, the staffer said, with trash bins not promptly emptied, bathrooms not cleaned and floors not mopped as they should be. As new waves of detainees flooded into the facility over the last two weeks, the staffer said, the facility was chaotic and lacking basic supplies. 'We didn't have enough to provide right away,' they said, 'so we're scrambling to get clothes and mattresses.' Mark Ferretiz, who worked as a cook supervisor at Adelanto for 14 years until April, said former colleagues told him officers were working 16- to 20-hour shifts multiple days in a row without breaks, officers were slow to respond to physical fights between detainees, and food was limited for detainees. 'They had five years to prepare,' Ferretiz, who had served as a union steward, said of his former supervisors. 'I don't know the reason why they weren't prepared.' While the supply shortages appeared to ease some in recent days — a shipment of clothes and mattresses had arrived by Tuesday, when members of Congress toured — the detention center was still understaffed, the current staffer said. Detainees were being served food on paper clam-shell to-go boxes, rather than regular trays, a staffer said, because the facility lacked employees to wash up at the end of mealtimes. 'Trash pickup's not coming fast enough, ' a staffer said, noting that piles of trash sat outside, bagged up, beside the dumpsters. In a statement last week, GEO Group Executive Chairman George C. Zoley said fully opening the Adelanto facility would allow his company to generate about $31 million in additional annualized revenues. 'We are proud of our approximately 350 employees at the Adelanto Center, whose dedication and professionalism have allowed GEO to establish a long-standing record of providing high-quality support services on behalf of ICE in the state of California,' Zoley said. But after touring the facility, members of Congress said officials did not provide answers to basic questions. When Chu asked officials about whether California immigrants were being taken to other states, she said, they said, 'We don't know.'
Los Angeles Times
2 days ago
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Huntington Beach mayor again makes disparaging remark on hot microphone
Huntington Beach Mayor Pat Burns made a disparaging remark on a hot microphone Tuesday night, at the same meeting where the City Council said it would not repeat public comment restrictions that the American Civil Liberties Union alleged violated the Brown Act and speakers' 1st Amendment rights. Burns' remark was made after Wendy Rincon and her daughter Sydney made public comments. After groaning and calling for the next speaker following Sydney Rincon, the microphone picked up Burns muttering what sounded like 'Another f—ing cow' under his breath, although the last word could have been 'coward.' Burns did not respond to Daily Pilot requests for comment. About a year ago, he called then-minority council members Natalie Moser, Dan Kalmick and Rhonda Bolton 'pieces of s**t' after they walked off the dais in protest of an item that Burns had brought forward seeking to affirm the council's commitment to the U.S. Constitution, specifically the 1st and 2nd Amendments. Burns' comment Tuesday was not immediately heard by meeting attendees in the theater at the Central Library where the meeting was taking place, but it could be heard by people who were watching the livestream of the meeting online. 'You can hear it on the city's recording,' said Wendy Rincon, who was standing behind her daughter during her comments. 'He can't run from it ... Whether he's saying it about my daughter or the lady who spoke after her, it's kind of subjective. No matter what, he shouldn't be saying it, period. But considering that my cease and desist letter was on the agenda, I don't think it's a stretch to assume he was talking about my daughter and me by default.' The cease-and-desist letter referenced came from Jonathan Markovitz, a free expression and access to government staff attorney for the ACLU, on behalf of Rincon. It claimed that Burns violated the Brown Act, the U.S. Constitution and the state Constitution with his actions during the council's May 6 meeting. In the letter, Markovitz argued that the mayor should not be warning members of the public that they can't make crude gestures or use foul language when providing public comment. Additionally, he should not stop public speakers from addressing individual council members by name. Burns did both at the May 6 meeting, prompting clarification from Huntington Beach City Atty. Mike Vigliotta. '[Speakers] should just address the council, but to the extent they need to mention names, they can,' Vigliotta told Burns. Huntington Beach's code of ethics, adopted in 2016, states that all city elected or appointed officials should treat their fellow city officials, staff, commission members and the public 'with patience, courtesy, civility and respect, even when we disagree on what is best for the community and its citizens.' Sydney Rincon, 22, said she has also spoken at council meetings before. Her comments included noting that the 1st Amendment and 2nd Amendment give rights, including freedom of speech and freedom of press. She also commented on Burns wearing an American flag shirt to the meeting, stating that it violated the United States code regarding respect for the flag. 'It does not surprise me that he would respond so maliciously,' said Sydney Rincon, a recent graduate of San Francisco State with bachelor's degrees in cinema and political science, in an interview on Wednesday. 'I think what's important to recognize is that nowhere within my speech that I gave on Tuesday night did I address a personal opinion or a grievance of the council. I merely acknowledged the Constitution and our standing flag code. Even in that commentary, he spoke maliciously of me as a constituent and as a voter in this city.' The council voted unanimously 6-0-1, with Councilman Andrew Gruel absent, that while it was not admitting that Brown Act violations occurred, it would cease, desist from and not repeat the challenged past action. There was no discussion of the agenda item. Burns, Mayor Pro Tem Casey McKeon, Gracey Van Der Mark and now-state Senator Tony Strickland were voted into office in 2022. After Butch Twining, Don Kennedy and Chad Williams were elected last fall, they formed a self-proclaimed all-MAGA council. Wendy Rincon has long been critical of them. She gave the council the middle finger during her public comments at the March 4 meeting and said 'F— you,' critical of Burns limiting the time for public speakers to a single minute. 'After two years of being called a groomer, a pedophile, an indoctrinator, I had reached my limit,' she said following Tuesday night's meeting. 'You know how contentious the library [debate] has been ... and I lost my temper. I stand by it. It's not something that I would normally do, but I think that they kept ratcheting up the hate and the anger. It's like, what do they expect?' She said Wednesday she was considering filing a lawsuit against the city, and had sent an email to Markowitz seeking feedback. 'In this day and age, men just don't get to say that sort of thing,' she said of Burns' remark. 'I don't think that Pat has received that memo yet.'
NBC News
2 days ago
- Politics
- NBC News
Supreme Court ruling on transgender youth medical care leaves key legal questions unresolved
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruling that upheld a Tennessee law banning certain care for transgender youth left various legal questions open, even as other laws aimed at people based on gender identity, including those involving sports and military-service bans, head toward the justices. That means that even though transgender rights activists face a setback, the ruling does not control how other cases will ultimately turn out. 'This decision casts little if any light on how a majority of justices will analyze or rule on other issues,' said Shannon Minter, a lawyer at the National Center for LGBTQ Rights. Most notably, the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, did not address the key issue of whether such laws should automatically be reviewed by courts with a more skeptical eye, an approach known as "heightened scrutiny." Practically, that would mean laws about transgender people would have to clear a higher legal bar to be upheld. The justices skipped answering that question because the court found that Tennessee's law banning gender transition care for minors did not discriminate against transgender people at all. But other cases are likely to raise that issue more directly, meaning close attention will be paid to what the justices said in the various written opinions, as well as what they did not say. Some cases might not even turn on transgender status. For example, the court could could determine that certain laws — such those banning transgender girls from participating in girls' sports or restrictions on people using restrooms that correspond with their gender identity — are a form of sex discrimination. There are cases all over the country on a variety of trans-related issues that could reach the Supreme Court at some point. 'There are myriad examples of discrimination against transgender people by the government making their way through the lower courts,' said Chase Strangio, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union. President Donald Trump's ban on transgender people in the military, which the court already allowed to go into effect, is one of those potential cases. There are also several appeals currently pending at the Supreme Court involving challenges to state sports bans. One of those cases involves West Virginia's ban on transgender girls participating in girls sports in middle school, high school and college. The court in 2023 prevented the law from being enforced against a then-12-year-old girl. Just this week, a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration cannot prevent transgender and nonbinary Americans from marking "X" as their gender identification on passports. Reading the signals for future cases As soon as the 6-3 ruling was released, experts were reading the tea leaves in Chief Justice John Roberts' majority opinion as well as the three concurring opinions and two dissenting opinions. The bottom line is that only three of the six conservative justices in the majority explicitly said they do not think transgender people are a "suspect class," which would trigger heightened scrutiny of laws targeting them. Those justices are Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Amy Coney Barrett. In a concurring opinion, Barrett indicated the court should not play a major role in reviewing whether lawmakers can pass laws that affect transgender people. She gave restroom access and sports bans as examples. Legislatures, she added "have many valid reasons to make policies in these areas" and laws should be upheld "so long as a statute is a rational means of pursuing a legitimate end." Alito, in his own opinion, said the court should have decided whether transgender-related laws merit heightened scrutiny. "That important question has divided the courts of appeals, and if we do not confront it now, we will almost certainly be required to do so very soon," he wrote. In his view, transgender people are not a suspect class, in part because they "have not been subjected to a history of discrimination" similar to other groups the court has previously recognized merit special protections, including Black people and women. Carrie Severino, a conservative legal activist, said Alito was right to say the court has to decide the issue. That three of the majority tipped their hands was "an encouraging sign that the court understands the risks of throwing the door open to novel protected classes," she added. But neither Roberts and fellow conservatives Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh said anything about their views. Gorsuch's reticence is especially notable, as he authored the court's surprising 2020 ruling that extended discrimination protections to gay and transgender people under the federal Title VII employment law. The court, to the disappointment of some conservatives, did not say that 2020 ruling is limited to the context of employment, although it ruled Wednesday that it did not apply to the specific medical care issue raised in the Tennessee case. With the three liberal justices all saying they believe heightened scrutiny should apply, civil rights lawyers representing transgender plaintiffs still in theory see a path to victory in future cases. "The court left open the possibility that heightened scrutiny could apply," Strangio said.
CNN
2 days ago
- Politics
- CNN
Takeaways from the Supreme Court's historic decision on transgender care
The conservative Supreme Court dealt a significant blow to transgender Americans on Wednesday, issuing a sweeping decision that may have implications beyond the medical care that was at center of one of the court's highest-profile disputes this year. The 6-3 ruling, which landed at a moment when transgender Americans are facing political and cultural setbacks after years of gains, let stand a Tennessee law that banned puberty blockers and hormone therapy for minors seeking to transition to match their gender identity. Transgender advocates framed the ruling as a 'devastating loss,' but also hoped its impact may be limited to cases involving health care. The decision came amid a much broader debate over other laws aimed at transgender people, including the question of whether people can play on sports teams and use bathrooms consistent with their gender identity. Here's what to know about Wednesday's decision: The court had largely dodged the issue of transgender rights for years but handed down a number of important victories to the LGBTQ+ community more broadly. Most notably, of course, was the historic decision a decade ago to legalize same-sex marriage. More on point, the high court in 2020 ruled that a federal law that bars workplace discrimination based on sex also necessarily prohibits that discrimination based on gender identity – a significant win for transgender Americans. But after making those legal gains, transgender Americans have faced a flood of new restrictive laws passed by conservative states. More than 20 states have enacted laws banning similar gender-affirming care for trans minors. Other states have passed laws barring students from playing on sports teams consistent with their gender identity, or changing their sex assigned at birth on their birth certificates. 'We're in a moment in this country where transgender people in this country are under attack in lawless ways,' said Chase Strangio, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who represented transgender teens at the high court. 'We are remaining vigilant and ready to fight back.' President Donald Trump touted a promise to end 'transgender lunacy' during his reelection campaign, and he signed an executive order early in his term barring nonbinary markers on US passports. Though the court's opinion dealt with none of the shifting landscape on the issue – and it carefully kept its language neutral on the broader questions at stake for transgender Americans – it nevertheless has added to that shift. 'This case carries with it the weight of fierce scientific and policy debates about the safety, efficacy, and propriety of medical treatments in an evolving field,' Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. 'The voices in these debates raise sincere concerns; the implications for all are profound.' Nearly three years ago, the court's conservative supermajority overturned the constitutional right to an abortion established in Roe v. Wade, giving state lawmakers the power to determine how much access their residents can have to the procedure. The court on Wednesday similarly zeroed in on states' rights to make policy determinations on a politically divisive issue, especially one where there are differing views on the subject from major medical organizations. 'Our role is not 'to judge the wisdom, fairness, or logic' of the law before us, but only to ensure that it does not violate the equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment,' Roberts wrote. 'Having concluded it does not, we leave questions regarding its policy to the people, their elected representatives, and the democratic process.' The chief justice noted that England's National Health Service decided to pull back on providing gender-affirming care to trans youth. He cited a report published by NHS last year that said there is ''no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress.'' 'We cite this report and NHS England's response not for guidance they might provide on the ultimate question of United States law, but to demonstrate the open questions regarding basic factual issues before medical authorities and other regulatory bodies,' Roberts wrote, going on to say that 'such uncertainty' means debates over the way a prohibition like Tennessee's may impact society are better left for state lawmakers. Major US medical associations – including the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry – agree that gender-affirming care is clinically appropriate for children and adults. Arkansas passed the first state ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth in 2021. Today, more than 110,000 transgender teenagers living in states where restrictions on puberty blockers and hormone therapy exist, according to the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. In a scathing dissent penned by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court's senior liberal member said the majority had pulled back from 'meaningful judicial review exactly where it matters most' and instead 'abandons transgender children and their families to political whims.' Underscoring her displeasure with the court's ruling, the appointee of former President Barack Obama spent 15 minutes on Wednesday reading excerpts of her dissent from the bench. She spoke emphatically and with urgency about the potential costs to trans youths and of the majority abandoning the crucial role of judicial review. She repeated a line from her opinion that she was dissenting in 'sadness.' But in the end, Sotomayor and the court's other two liberal members were unable to stymie the monumental shift her colleagues delivered in the legal landscape of transgender rights. Throughout her 31-page dissent, Sotomayor leaned into the practical impact of the medication at issue in the case, at one point invoking the stories of the transgender youth who challenged Tennessee's law. 'Transgender adolescents' access to hormones and puberty blockers (known as gender-affirming care) is not a matter of mere cosmetic preference. To the contrary, access to care can be a question of life or death,' the justice wrote, adding that access to the health care help reduce the rate of suicidal ideation among transgender minors. She went on to say that the majority's ruling 'does irrevocable damage to the Equal Protection Clause and invites legislatures to engage in discrimination by hiding blatant sex classifications in plain sight.' 'It also authorizes, without second thought, untold harm to transgender children and the parents and families who love them,' she wrote. Though the Supreme Court's majority opinion steered clear of discussion about other laws involving transgender issues – such as those banning minors from playing on sports team consistent with their gender identity – the decision will almost certainly raise questions about the legal challenges to those laws. The court hewed closely to the notion that Tennessee's law did not discriminate on the basis of sex. Because of that, the court applied the lowest form of judicial scrutiny – known as 'rational basis' – and upheld the law. The court also importantly held that the law did not discrimination on the basis of transgender status. Karen Loewy, senior counsel at Lambda Legal, framed the decision as specific to Tennessee's law and said it 'left us plenty of tools' to fight other policies. Loewy said she doesn't think the decision Wednesday offers many clues at all about how the court will look at the sports and bathroom cases. The only member of the majority to raise the sports and bathroom laws was Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a member of the court's conservative wing and sometimes swing vote, who signaled that she would oppose granting transgender status the same anti-discriminatory protections that race and sex have under the 14th Amendment. That could make her vote hard to get for LGBTQ+ advocates in appeals over those other polices that will inevitably reach the Supreme Court. 'Beyond the treatment of gender dysphoria, transgender status implicates several other areas of legitimate regulatory policy – ranging from access to restrooms to eligibility for boys' and girls' sports teams,' Barrett wrote. 'If laws that classify based on transgender status necessarily trigger heightened scrutiny, then the courts will inevitably be in the business of 'closely scrutiniz(ing) legislative choices' in all these domains.' Justice Clarence Thomas was the only other justice to sign on to Barrett's opinion. In dissent, Sotomayor suggested that reasoning was an abdication of the court's role. 'Looking carefully at a legislature's proffered reasons for acting, as our equal protection precedents demand, is neither needless 'second guess(ing),' nor judicial encroachment,' Sotomayor wrote. 'After all,' she wrote, closely scrutinizing those choices 'is exactly how courts distinguish 'legitimate regulatory polic(ies)' from discriminatory ones.'
