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New Hampshire courts hear 2 cases on transgender girls playing girls sports
Headline Legal News |
2024/11/23 15:50
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Two New Hampshire fathers who were barred from school district events for wearing pink wristbands marked “XX” to represent female chromosomes insisted at a federal court hearing Thursday that they didn’t set out to harass or otherwise target a transgender soccer player at the game they attended.
But a judge hearing the case suggested the message the parents sent may matter more than their intentions.
Kyle Fellers and Anthony Foote sued the Bow school district after being banned from school grounds for wearing the wristbands at their daughters’ soccer game in September. The no-trespass orders have since expired, but a judge is deciding whether the plaintiffs should be allowed to wear the wristbands and carry signs at upcoming school events, including basketball games, swim meets and a music concert, while the case proceeds.
Testifying at Thursday’s hearing, both men said that they did not view the wristbands as a protest against Parker Tirrell, a transgender girl on the opposing team, but rather as a show of support for their daughters and their teammates. U.S. District Court Judge Steven McAuliffe questioned whether there is a meaningful distinction and whether their intentions matter.
“Sometimes the message you think you’re sending might not be the message that is being sent,” he said.
McAuliffe asked Foote whether it occurred to him that a transgender person might interpret the pink XX wristbands as an attempt to invalidate their existence.
“If he’s a trans female, pink might be a color he likes,” Foote said.
McAuliffe also noted that while both plaintiffs said they had no problem with transgender people outside the issue of sports, they repeatedly referred to the athlete in question as a boy.
“You seem to go out of your way to suggest there’s no such thing as a trans girl,” McAuliffe said. Foote disagreed, saying it was “like learning a new language” to refer to transgender people.
In a separate courtroom earlier Thursday, another judge held a hearing on a lawsuit brought by Parker Tirrell and another student challenging the state law that bans transgender athletes in grades 5 to 12 from teams that align with their gender identity. It requires schools to designate all teams as either girls, boys or coed, with eligibility determined based on students’ birth certificates “or other evidence.”
U.S. District Court Chief Judge Landya McCafferty ruled earlier this year that the teens can try out for and play on girls school sports teams. The order only applies to those two individuals for now as they seek to overturn the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act on behalf of all transgender girl students in New Hampshire.
Lawyers for the teens said in court Thursday they hoped the matter could go to trial and be resolved before the start of the next school year in September. They said the teens’ school districts and others in the state have asked for guidance regarding the statute. Lawyers for the state said they needed more time to prepare.
Judge Talesha Saint-Marc suggested the timing of the trial was ambitious and asked that both sides talk further about scheduling. Gov. Chris Sununu, who signed the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act into law in July, has said it “ensures fairness and safety in women’s sports by maintaining integrity and competitive balance in athletic competitions.” About half of states have adopted similar measures.
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ICC issues arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Hamas officials
Headline Legal News |
2024/11/20 15:50
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The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants on Thursday for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his former defense minister and Hamas officials, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity over their 13-month war in Gaza and the October 2023 attack on Israel respectively.
Netanyahu condemned the arrest warrant against him, saying Israel “rejects with disgust the absurd and false actions.” In a statement released by his office, he said: “There is nothing more just than the war that Israel has been waging in Gaza.”
The decision turns Netanyahu and the others into internationally wanted suspects and is likely to further isolate them and complicate efforts to negotiate a cease-fire to end the fighting. But its practical implications could be limited since Israel and its major ally, the United States, are not members of the court and two of the Hamas officials were killed in the conflict.
Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have condemned ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan’s request for warrants as disgraceful and antisemitic. U.S. President Joe Biden blasted the prosecutor and expressed support for Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas. Hamas also slammed the request.
The three-judge panel issued a unanimous decision to issue warrants for Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant.
“The Chamber considered that there are reasonable grounds to believe that both individuals intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, water, and medicine and medical supplies, as well as fuel and electricity,” the decision said.
The court also issued a warrant for Mohammed Deif, one of the leaders of Hamas, over the October 2023 attacks that triggered Israel’s offensive in Gaza. The ICC chief prosecutor withdrew his request for warrants for two other senior Hamas figures, Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh, after they were both killed in the conflict.
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North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein is elected as the state’s governor
Headline Legal News |
2024/11/11 10:21
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North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein was elected governor on Tuesday, defeating Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson and maintaining Democratic leadership of the chief executive’s office in a state where Republicans have recently controlled the legislature and appeals courts.
Stein, a Harvard-trained lawyer, former state senator and the state’s chief law enforcement officer since 2017, will succeed fellow Democrat Roy Cooper, who was term-limited from seeking reelection. He will be the state’s first Jewish governor. Robinson’s campaign was greatly hampered by a damning report in September that he had posted messages on an online pornography website, including that he was a “black NAZI.”
Democrats have held the governor’s mansion for all but four years since 1993, even as the GOP has held legislative majorities since 2011.
As with Cooper’s time in office, a key task for Stein likely will be to use his veto stamp to block what he considers extreme right-leaning policies. Cooper had mixed success on that front during his eight years as governor.
Otherwise, Stein’s campaign platform largely followed Cooper’s policy goals, including those to increase public school funding, promote clean energy and stop further abortion restrictions by Republicans.
Stein’s campaign dramatically outraised and outspent Robinson, who was seeking to become the state’s first Black governor.
For months Stein and his allies used television ads and social media to remind voters of previous inflammatory comments that Robinson had made about abortion, women and LGBTQ+ people that they said made him too extreme to lead a swing state.
“The people of North Carolina resoundingly embraced a vision that’s optimistic, forward-looking and welcoming, a vision that’s about creating opportunity for every North Carolinian,” Stein told supporters in his victory speech after Cooper introduced him. “We chose hope over hate, competence over chaos, decency over division. That’s who we are as North Carolinians.”
Robinson’s campaign descended into disarray in September when CNN reported that he made explicit racial and sexual posts on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago. In addition to the “black NAZI” comment, Robinson said he enjoyed transgender pornography and slammed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as “worse than a maggot,” according to the report. Robinson denied writing the messages and sued CNN and an individual for defamation in October.
In the days following the report, most of Robinson’s top campaign staff quit, many fellow GOP elected officials and candidates — including presidential nominee Donald Trump — distanced themselves from his campaign and outside money supporting him on the airwaves dried up. The result: Stein spent millions on ads in the final weeks, while Robinson spent nothing.
Stein had a clear advantage among women, young and older voters, moderates and urban and suburban voters, according to AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of more than 3,600 voters in the state. White voters were about evenly divided between Stein and Robinson, while clear majorities of Black voters and Latino voters supported Stein.
Fifteen percent of those who voted for Trump also backed Stein for governor, while just 2% of those who cast ballots for Democratic presidential nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris backed Robinson.
Patrick Stemple, 33, a shipping coordinator attending a Trump rally last week in Greensboro, said he voted early for Trump but also chose Stein for governor.
Stemple mentioned both Stein’s ads talking about how he has fought illegal drug trafficking and his dislike for Robinson’s rhetoric. Stemple said the graphic language that CNN reported was used in Robinson’s posts reinforced his decision not to back Robinson.
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VA asks US Supreme Court to reinstate removals of 1,600 voter registrations
Headline Legal News |
2024/10/25 09:02
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Virginia on Monday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene to allow the state to remove roughly 1,600 voters from its rolls that it believes are noncitizens.
The request comes after a federal appeals court on Sunday unanimously upheld a federal judge’s order restoring the registrations of those 1,600 voters, whom the judge said were illegally purged under an executive order by the state’s Republican governor.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin says he ordered the daily removals in an effort to keep noncitizens from voting. But U.S. District Judge Patricia Giles ruled late last week that Youngkin’s program was illegal under federal law because it systematically purged voters during a 90-day “quiet period” ahead of the November election.
The Justice Department and a coalition of private groups sued to block Youngkin’s removal program earlier this month. They argued that the quiet period is in place to ensure that legitimate voters aren’t removed from the rolls by bureaucratic errors or last-minute mistakes that can’t be rectified in a timely manner.'
The ruling Sunday from the three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, sided with the judge who ordered the restoration of voters’ registrations.
The appeals court said Virginia is wrong to assert that it is being forced to restore 1,600 noncitizens to the voter rolls. The judges found that Virginia’s process for removing voters established no proof that those purged were actually noncitizens.
Youngkin’s executive order, issued in August, required daily checks of data from the Department of Motor Vehicles against voter rolls to identify noncitizens.
State officials said any voter identified as a noncitizen was notified and given two weeks to dispute their disqualification before being removed. If they returned a form attesting to their citizenship, their registration would not be canceled.
The plaintiffs said that, as a result of the program, a legitimate voter and citizen could have his or her registration canceled simply by checking the wrong box on a DMV form. The plaintiffs presented evidence showing that at least some of those removed were in fact citizens.
A similar lawsuit was filed in Alabama, and a federal judge there last week ordered the state to restore eligibility for more than 3,200 voters who had been deemed ineligible noncitizens. Testimony from state officials in that case showed that roughly 2,000 of the 3,251 voters who were made inactive were actually legally registered citizens.
The appeal filed to the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday by Virginia’s Republican attorney general, Jason Miyares, asks the high court to intervene by Tuesday. Without any intervention, the injunction issued last week by Giles requires Virginia to notify affect voters and local registrars by Wednesday of the restorations she ordered.
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Kenya’s deputy president pleads not guilty in impeachment process
Headline Legal News |
2024/10/22 07:54
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Kenya’s deputy president, who faces impeachment, pleaded not guilty in a senate hearing Wednesday to all allegations including corruption, inciting ethnic divisions and support for anti-government protests that saw demonstrators storm the country’s parliament.
Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, who has called the allegations politically motivated, could be the first sitting deputy president impeached in Kenya.
The case highlights the friction between him and President William Ruto — something that Ruto once vowed to avoid after his past troubled relationship as deputy to Kenya’s previous president, Uhuru Kenyatta.
Gachagua has said he believes the impeachment process has Ruto’s blessing, and has asked legislators to make their decision “without intimidation and coercion.”
The tensions risk introducing more uncertainty for investors and others in East Africa’s commercial hub. Court rulings this week allowed the parliament and senate to proceed with the impeachment debate, despite concerns over irregularities raised by the deputy president’s lawyers.
The impeachment motion was approved in parliament last week and forwarded to the senate. Gachagua’s legal team will have Wednesday and Thursday to cross-examine witnesses, and the senate will vote Thursday evening.
Under the Kenyan Constitution, the removal from office is automatic if approved by both chambers, though Gachagua can challenge the action in court — something he has said he would do.
Kenya’s president has yet to publicly comment on the impeachment process. Early in his presidency, he said he wouldn’t publicly humiliate his deputy.
Ruto, who came to office claiming to represent Kenya’s poorest citizens, has faced widespread criticism for his efforts to raise taxes in an effort to find ways to pay off foreign creditors. But the public opposition led him to shake up his cabinet and back off certain proposals. |
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