New top story from Time: In Win For LGBTQ Rights, Supreme Court Declines to Hear Appeal Challenging Landmark Trans Rights Ruling

https://ift.tt/3x4RZ10

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal on Monday to a circuit court ruling that required a Virginia school to let a transgender student use the bathroom corresponding with his gender identity. The decision delivers a major win for Grimm as well as LGBTQ advocates that have decried bathroom bans and other anti-trans policies that have sprung up across the U.S. this year, many of which target trans youth.

The case began in 2015 when Gavin Grimm, a then-16-year-old transgender teen, sued his public high school over a policy that prevented him from using the boys restroom, instead directing him to use a unisex one. With the backing of the ACLU, Grimm’s suit alleged the policy violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in schools.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

The Obama-era Justice Department supported Grimm’s position, and in 2016 the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in his favor. The school board appealed, and the Supreme Court agreed to take up the case in 2017. But later that year the Trump Administration revoked an Obama-era directive to schools to not discriminate on the basis of gender identity, so SCOTUS then sent the case back to the 4th Circuit to reevaluate. The 4th Circuit ruled in Grimm’s favor again in 2020, and the school board once again appealed. But to no avail: the Supreme Court declined to hear that appeal, leaving in place the 4th Circuit’s ruling and handing Grimm one last and final win.

While the court did not offer reasoning in its order, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented, signaling they would have taken up the case.

“I am glad that my years-long fight to have my school see me for who I am is over,” said Grimm in a statement. “Being forced to use the nurse’s room, a private bathroom, and the girl’s room was humiliating for me, and having to go to out-of-the-way bathrooms severely interfered with my education. Trans youth deserve to use the bathroom in peace without being humiliated and stigmatized by their own school boards and elected officials.”

I was barred from the bathroom at my highschool 7 years ago, when I was 15. 6 years ago, at 16, myself with the @ACLU/@ACLUVA filed suit in response to that discrimination. Twice since I have enjoyed victories in court, and now it's over. We won.

— Gavin Grimm 🏳️‍⚧️ (@GavinGrimmVA) June 28, 2021

“This is an incredible victory for Gavin and for transgender students around the country,” said Josh Block, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) LGBTQ & HIV Project, in a statement. “Our work is not yet done, and the ACLU is continuing to fight against anti-trans laws targeting trans youth in states around the country.”

Douglas NeJaime, a professor of law at Yale Law School, tells TIME that in some ways the order is not surprising because “the logic follows” from 2020’s Bostock v. Clayton County case, in which the Supreme Court ruled that firing individuals for being gay or transgender violates Title VII’s ban on sex discrimination. “The reasoning in that opinion would apply to a range of federal laws that prohibit sex discrimination, including in education,” he explains.

“Courts across the country will take note of Gavin Grimm’s decision, and decisions in appellate and district courts around the country that have consistently ruled in favor of transgender students,” says Paul Castillo, counsel and students’ rights strategist at Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ legal advocacy organization. (The 4th Circuit’s ruling will apply to school policy in states in the mid-Atlantic, including Maryland and Virginia, but the issue remains unsettled nationwide.)

The order also comes weeks after the Biden Administration reversed a Trump-era policy on June 16, issuing a letter announcing the Department of Education interprets federal protections against sex discrimination to include protections of LGBTQ students.

“The Supreme Court has upheld the right for LGBTQ+ people to live and work without fear of harassment, exclusion, and discrimination – and our LGBTQ+ students have the same rights and deserve the same protections,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, in a statement that same day, adding that the “Department makes clear that all students—including LGBTQ+ students—deserve the opportunity to learn and thrive in schools that are free from discrimination.”

Comments

New top story from Time: Little Recognition and Less Pay: These Female Healthcare Workers Are Rural India’s First Defense Against COVID-19

https://ift.tt/3mrDgrm Archana Ghugare’s ringtone, a Hindu devotional song, has been the background score of her life since March. By 7 a.m. on a mid-October day, the 41-year-old has already received two calls about suspected COVID-19 cases in Pavnar, her village in the Indian state of Maharashtra. As she gets ready and rushes out the door an hour later, she receives at least four more. “My family jokes that not even Prime Minister Modi gets as many calls as I do,” she says. Ghugare, and nearly a million other Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) assigned to rural villages and small towns across India, are on the front lines of the country’s fight against the coronavirus . Every day, Ghugare goes door to door in search of potential COVID-19 cases, working to get patients tested or to help them find treatment. With 8 million confirmed COVID-19 cases, India has the second-highest tally in the world after the United States and its health infrastructure struggled to co

Sushant Singh Rajput Death Case LIVE Updates: Rhea Chakraborty to undergo CBI interrogation again today https://ift.tt/2ErYXaz

Rhea Chakraborty summoned again by CBI in connection with actor Sushant Singh Rajput's death The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) moved one step ahead with the investigation when on Friday, it interrogated Sushant Singh Rajput's girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty, the main accused in the mysterious death of the actor. Rhea reached the DRDO-IAF guest house in the suburbs at 10:30 am along with her brother Showik and was interrogated for 10 long hours. During the interrogation, the actress revealed her side of the story about how she met Sushant and their live-in relationship for the last one year. The actress has been asked to appear again before the CBI. Besides Rhea, her brother Showik, Sushant's flatmate Siddharth Pithani, house manager Samuel Miranda, personal staff Neeraj Singh have also been questioned on Friday.

Just in Time for Bike Month: The Active Communities Plan Interactive Map!

Just in Time for Bike Month: The Active Communities Plan Interactive Map! By Christopher Kidd Image of the new Active Communities Plan (ACP ) interactive map As part of our ongoing public outreach about the Active Communities Plan , the SFMTA has created a new ACP interactive map . The release of the map comes just a couple of weeks after we began collecting feedback through our new survey . The map shows conditions for biking, scooting and rolling across San Francisco, as well as multiple layers of analysis conducted by the Active Communities Plan team. It is meant to help users understand how different factors like comfort, safety and network quality influence whether people decide to use active transportation or not. We want users to have the opportunity to explore and compare data, reflect on how it compares to their experiences with active transportation and provide input about what kinds of solutions work best. The interactive map has six main layers to explore:

New top story from Time: Latest Tests Bring Israel a Step Closer to Commercial Drones

https://ift.tt/3lyZxGe TEL AVIV, Israel — Dozens of drones floated through the skies of Tel Aviv on Monday, ferrying cartons of ice cream and sushi across the city in an experiment that officials hope provided a glimpse of the not-too-distant future. Israel’s National Drone Initiative, a government program, carried out the drill to prepare for a world in which large quantities of commercial deliveries will be made by drones to take pressure off highly congested urban roads. The two-year program aims to apply the capabilities of Israeli drone companies to establish a nationwide network where customers can order goods and have them delivered to pick up spots. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The project, now in the third of eight stages, is still in its infancy and faces many questions about security and logistics. “We had 700 test flights at the start of this year and now we are close to 9,000 flights,” said Daniella Partem, from Israel Innovation Authority, a partner in th

New top story from Time: Japan’s Prime Minister Abe Reportedly Stepping Down Over Health Concerns

https://ift.tt/32yNoGh (TOKYO) — Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has expressed his intention to step down due to his declining health, according to reports Friday by NHK and other Japanese media. The Prime Minister’s Office said the report could not be immediately confirmed, but that Abe was believed to be meeting top ruling officials at the party headquarters. The Liberal Democratic Party spokesman did not answer the phone. Concerns about Abe’s chronic health issues, simmering since earlier this summer, intensified this month when he visited a Tokyo hospital two weeks in a row for unspecified health checkups. Abe, whose term ends in September 2021, is expected to stay on until a new party leader is elected and formally approved by the parliament. He had abruptly resigned from his first stint in office in 2007 due to his health, which was fueling concerns about his recent condition. Abe on Monday became Japan’s longest serving prime minister by consecutive days in of

New top story from Time: The Reopening of Springsteen on Broadway Brought Broadway Out of Hibernation—and One Packed Theater Into a Brighter Future

https://ift.tt/3A6wS0a The city that never sleeps is still a little sleepy, unsure of how to move its joints and muscles as it awakens from its forced hibernation . Although Times Square is now almost as brightly lit as ever, it’s remarkably hard to find a bar that will serve a drink after 11 p.m. On a late-June Saturday night, Eighth Ave. around 42nd Street was vibrating with young people: guys imported from the outer boroughs and beyond in their baggy, rumpled shorts, young women in elastic spangled mini-dresses making their first outing after a year lying in a drawer, men in mardi gras beads and the tiniest of tank tops ready to make the most of the final days of Pride month . Yet it was hard to know exactly what all these people were doing there, other than taking their place in a kind of Brownian-movement minuet under the cheerfully garish lights. Because Times Square cannot be itself while Broadway—meaning not the actual street but the constellation of live shows around

More 20 MPH Streets Coming Soon Near You

More 20 MPH Streets Coming Soon Near You By Christine Osorio Last October when California Assembly Bill 43 (Friedman) was signed into law, we posted a blog about which gave cities new flexibility in setting speed limits—specifically reducing them. “Speed Management,” a reference that is still in development, focused on reducing speed limits in key business activity districts where at least 50% are dining or retail. Since the bill went into effect last month, we’ve already started lowering speed limits by 5 MPH (from 25 MPH to 20 MPH) in the first phase of approved corridors, four of which have been implemented: San Bruno Avenue, from Silver to Paul avenues (Completed January 2022) Polk Street, from Filbert to Sutter streets (Completed January 2022) Haight Street, from Stanyan Street to Central Avenue and from Webster to Steiner streets (Completed February 2022) 24th Street, from Diamond to Chattanooga streets and from Valencia Street to San Bruno Avenue (Completed

New top story from Time: Donald Trump and Trump Biden Square Off for First Debate

https://ift.tt/3kQSmpA President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden are facing off on the debate stage during one of the most turbulent periods in modern American history. A viral pandemic has killed 200,000 Americans and pummeled the economy, racial justice protests continue in towns and cities, and vast fires wreak environmental disaster across the American West . Adding to the national sense of foreboding, Trump has refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power i f he loses the election and is using his bully pulpit to sow distrust in the voting process and spread false allegations that voting by mail —a safe alternative for many during the pandemic—will lead to rampant voter fraud. ( It won’t.) There’s a lot to debate. While the head-to-head is an opportunity for both candidates to convince Americans that they are the right person to lead the country through this tumultuous time, it’s also a moment for voters to see the two men’s styles set

New top story from Time: Pfizer-BioNTech Have Started Testing Their COVID-19 Vaccine in Children Under 12

https://ift.tt/3vWOQjL Alejandra and Marisol Gerardo are nine years old but already making a little bit of history. The twin sisters are among the first young children to get vaccinated with a COVID-19 shot in Pfizer-BioNTech’s study of its vaccine in kids under age 12. Alejandra and Marisol had their blood drawn in the morning on March 24, then got their first dose of the two-dose vaccine later that afternoon. “Their primary concern was, ‘is it going to hurt,’” says their father, Dr. Charles Gerardo, chief of emergency medicine at Duke University School of Medicine. “They’re not too worried about the long term side effects; they’re looking at the moment, not the future.” Testing the vaccine in younger children will answer critical questions about how much immunity the shots can provide, and potentially give parents and education officials more confidence in re-opening schools. While it appears that younger children don’t get as sick with COVID-19 as older teens and adult

FOX NEWS: Top baby names list for 2021 reveals familiar trends For the second year in a row, these two names are the most popular for girls and boys – leading BabyCenter's Top 100 Baby Names list.

Top baby names list for 2021 reveals familiar trends For the second year in a row, these two names are the most popular for girls and boys – leading BabyCenter's Top 100 Baby Names list. via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/2ZZEl3u

My precise view

Search This Blog