Alaska Airlines must face religious bias claims by workers who opposed LGBTQ bill

The short version is the company came out supporting the LGBTQ+ workers and community. The two fired workers went on the company intranet and made a point to question it and declare how they felt about the LGBTQ+ people. Lets just say they were not fans. So the company investigated and decided they would create a hostile work place. The first court agreed, but the appeals court said the employee lawsuit could go forward because the airline did not make an effort to accommodate the fired workers religious rights. So the fact that you are a Christian means you can treat LGBTQ+ co-workers like shit and disregard their very existence based on a mistaken understanding of what their god wants. Christian belief tRump’s an LGBTQ+ person’s right to exist equally with out discrimination. Hugs

By Daniel Wiessner

June 25, 20261:30 PM EDTUpdated 18 hours ago

An Alaska Airlines commercial airliner takes-off from Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles, California, U.S., November 6, 2025. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights

Flight attendants fired over intranet posts

Lower court said comments were not overtly religious, and dismissed case

But there was enough to let a jury decide, appeals court panel says

June 26 (Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court has revived a lawsuit claiming Alaska Airlines (ALKAIR.UL) engaged in religious discrimination by firing two flight attendants who criticized the company’s support for expanding legal protections for LGBTQ people.

A three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said, opens new tab on Wednesday that there was ‌enough proof that the airline was motivated by the workers’ Christian beliefs when it fired them to let a jury decide whether it broke the law.

The flight attendants in 2021 made separate posts on Alaska Airlines’ employee intranet critical of the company’s backing of the Equality Act, a bill in Congress to prohibit discrimination against gay and transgender people in employment, housing, public accommodations and other areas.

The posts were not overtly religious, leading a judge to dismiss the case last year. But Circuit Judge Daniel Bress, who was appointed by Republican President Donald Trump, as were the other judges on the panel, wrote for the 9th Circuit that the workers’ comments and the airline’s response ⁠to the posts were enough to show it may have been motivated by their religious beliefs.

“It did not matter whether [one of the plaintiffs] could support her post with chapter and verse from an authoritative religious text,” Bress wrote.

The plaintiffs also claim their union, the Association of Flight Attendants, discriminated against them and breached its legal duty to represent them by not fighting their termination.

The 9th Circuit on Wednesday revived those claims, and joined two other appeals courts in ruling that federal labor law does not preempt such claims against unions brought under state laws.

Alaska Airlines and the union did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday.

The plaintiffs are represented by the First Liberty Institute, which says it is the largest legal organization in the country dedicated exclusively to defending religious liberty. Stephanie Taub, the group’s senior counsel, said the 9th Circuit ruling reinforces legal protections from religious discrimination.

“You cannot be fired because your employer does not like your religious beliefs,” she said.

According to court filings, after Alaska Airlines posted online about its support for the Equality Act, plaintiff Lacey Smith wrote in response: “As a ‌company, do ⁠you think it’s possible to regulate morality?”

Another flight attendant, Marli Brown, made a separate, longer post claiming the Equality Act would infringe on women’s rights, enable sexual predators, and was “endangering the Church [and] encouraging suppression of religious freedom.”

Alaska Airlines deleted the posts and issued a statement in response, saying the company supported protecting LGBTQ people against discrimination and that “we also expect our employees to live by these same values.” Smith and Brown were then fired after an investigation for violating the airline’s anti-discrimination and harassment policy, court filings showed.

The women sued in 2022, accusing Alaska Airlines and the union of discriminating against them ⁠because of their Christian beliefs.

U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein in Seattle had dismissed the case, saying the firings were not discriminatory because the flight attendants’ posts were not religious in nature. She also said the federal Railway Labor Act, which regulates the rail and airline industries, preempted the plaintiffs’ claims that the union violated Washington and Oregon law.

The 9th Circuit reversed Rothstein’s order. Brown’s post specifically mentioned “the Church,” ⁠Bress wrote for the court, and the airline investigated her and Smith together. Both women also cited their religious beliefs in the course of the airline’s investigation, he said.

Bress was joined by Circuit Judge Kenneth Lee in his opinion. Circuit Judge Morgan Christen mostly agreed, but in a partial dissent said she would not have revived Smith’s discrimination claim.

“Alaska would have ⁠had to be clairvoyant to know that Smith considered the statement she posted on the company’s internal website to be an expression of her faith,” wrote Christen.

The case is Brown v. Alaska Airlines, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 24-3789.

For the plaintiffs: Stephanie Taub and others from First Liberty Institute; Andrew Gould of Holtzman Vogel Baran Torchinsky & Josefiak

For Alaska Airlines: Lauren Watts and others from Seyfarth Shaw

For the union: Benjamin Berger and others from Barnard Iglitzin & Lavitt

Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York

Trump’s Miami Library Monstrosity Is A Total Scam

tRump couldn’thelp himself but he had to attack Obama making claims of how bad Obama’s library is. Then Sam describes tRump’s grift / scam on his library, using tax free dollars to build a hotel that he will make money from. Then Sam talks about the citizenship birthright case. Hugs

Former FBI informant pleads guilty to lying about fake bribery scheme involving the Bidens

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/former-fbi-informant-to-plead-guilty-to-lying-about-fake-bribery-scheme-involving-the-bidens

By —

Alanna Durkin Richer, Associated Press

Updated on Dec 16, 2024 1:23 PM EST — Published on Dec 16, 2024 10:21 AM EST

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A former FBI informant pleaded guilty on Monday to lying about a phony bribery scheme involving President Joe Biden and his son Hunter that became central to the Republican impeachment inquiry in Congress.

Alexander Smirnov entered his plea to a felony charge in connection with the bogus story, along with a tax evasion charge stemming from a separate indictment accusing him of concealing millions of dollars of income.

An attorney for Smirnov, 44, declined to comment after the hearing in Los Angeles federal court.

Prosecutors and the defense have agreed to recommend a sentence of between four and six years in prison when he’s sentenced next month.

READ MORE: Ex-FBI informant charged with fabricating Biden family bribery scheme to remain in custody before trial

Smirnov will get credit for the time he has served since his February arrest on charges that he told his FBI handler that executives from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma had paid President Biden and Hunter Biden $5 million each around 2015.

Smirnov had been an informant for more than a decade when he made the explosive allegations about the Bidens in June 2020, after “expressing bias” about Joe Biden as a presidential candidate, prosecutors said.

But Smirnov had only routine business dealings with Burisma starting in 2017, according to court documents. An FBI field office investigated the allegations and recommended the case be closed in August 2020, according to charging documents.

No evidence has emerged that Joe Biden acted corruptly or accepted bribes as president or in his previous office as vice president.

While Smirnov’s identity wasn’t publicly known before the indictment, his claims played a major part in the Republican effort in Congress to investigate the president and his family, and helped spark a House impeachment inquiry into Biden. Before Smirnov’s arrest, Republicans had demanded the FBI release the unredacted form documenting the unverified allegations, though they acknowledged they couldn’t confirm if they were true.

During a September 2023 conversation with investigators, Smirnov also claimed the Russians probably had recordings of Hunter Biden because a hotel in Ukraine’s capital where he had stayed was “wired” and under their control — information he said was passed along to him by four high-level Russian officials.

READ MORE: FBI informant charged for making up allegations about Joe and Hunter Biden’s ties to Ukrainian energy company

But Hunter Biden had never traveled to Ukraine, according to Smirnov’s indictment.

Smirnov claimed to have contacts with Russian intelligence-affiliated officials, and told authorities after his arrest this year that “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story” about Hunter Biden.

The case against Smirnov was brought by special counsel David Weiss, who also prosecuted Hunter Biden on gun and tax charges. Hunter Biden was supposed to be sentenced this month after being convicted at a trial in the gun case and pleading guilty to federal charges in the tax case. But he was pardoned this month by his father, who said he believed “raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.”

Seeking admission: How a federal appeals court in Texas decision supercharged ICE

This is why anyone detained by ICE is shipped to Texas as soon as possible. The conservative appeals court ruled all detainees in the country can be treated like they were detained at the border. That is not the law, but the court is racist. So once in Texas the kidnapped people lose the right to challenge their being held where in the rest of the country they can. ICE is so desperate to deny people their constitutional rights in an effort to make the US a white ethnostate and cement white majority rule for as long as possible. Hugs.

TN Advances Bills To Legalize Anti-LGBTQ Discrimination

TN Advances Bills To Legalize Anti-LGBTQ Discrimination

February 13, 2026

Nashville’s NPR affiliate reports:

Tennessee lawmakers have advanced a host of anti-LGBTQ bills that would run counter to U.S. Supreme Court precedent. Two measures, both proposed by Rep. Gino Bulso, R-Franklin, would challenge landmark cases that legalized same-sex marriage and established protections for discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Rep. Gloria Johnson, D-Knoxville, questioned the legality to going against Bostock v. Clayton County, which established that LGBTQ people are protected from discrimination under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Tom Lee, member of the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Pride Chamber, spoke against the bill, arguing that it could allow discrimination against LGBTQ couples.

“Imagine if under this bill a private employer said, ‘Well, you can’t take family leave because I, as a private citizen, don’t recognize — using the language of the bill — your purported marriage,’” Lee said. “Or a bank says, ‘You’ll pay the higher rate (for unmarried couples). We’re not bound by the 14th Amendment. You’re not married in our eyes.’”

From my January 2025 report:

The Banning Bostock Act would codify that laws prohibiting sex discrimination would not prohibit discrimination against a person for being homosexual or transgender, nor would it prohibit discrimination because of sexual orientation, sexual behavior, gender identity, or gender non-conforming behavior.

Meanwhile, the next bill would allow private citizens, businesses, and organizations to refuse to recognize same-sex marriage, and protect attorneys from being punished for refusing to celebrate or perform a same sex marriage.

Bulso first appeared here in February 2024 for his ultimately failed bid to ban Pride flags, which he is now attempting again. In April 2024, we heard from Bulso when he objected to a ban on marriages between first cousins because gays can’t make babies. Last year Bulso launched a failed bid to fill the US House seat left open by the abrupt resignation of Rep. Mark Green.

https://x.com/WPLN/status/2021732630090191231?s=20

Clips from MS Now mostly about tRump raining elections offices.

Six People Are Rewriting the Constitution to Ensure Republicans Never Lose Power Regardless of Votes

The thanks for the link to this story goes to https://personnelente.wordpress.com/2026/01/02/enshrining-minority-rule/

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/1/1/2360958/-Six-People-Are-Rewriting-the-Constitution-to-Ensure-Republicans-Never-Lose-Power-Regardless-of-Votes?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

by Christopher Armitage

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday, January 01, 2026 at 12:36:07p EST

(Kenneth Fowler/CNN)

This article is going to explain what we’re actually facing, lay out its four preconditions, and show you that America meets every single one. It will then explain why knowing this is important, and what we can do once equipped with that knowledge.

There’s a name for what’s happening: electoral autocracy. Elections happen. Multiple parties compete. But the system is rigged to favor one faction through gerrymandered maps, voter suppression, captured courts, and media control. When the wrong side wins anyway, those captured courts block them from governing. Hungary operates this way. So do we.

Start with gerrymandered maps. The Brennan Center’s September 2024 analysis found Republicans hold approximately 16 extra House seats due to favorable district lines.¹ Republicans drew 191 congressional districts while Democrats drew 75.¹ Only 69 of 435 House seats are rated competitive.² The Senate is worse. California’s 39 million residents have the same representation as Wyoming’s 579,000, a ratio of 68 to 1.³ The 50 Republican senators who confirmed Trump’s Supreme Court justices represented 43.5 percent of the American population. Their 50 Democratic colleagues represented 56.5 percent.⁴ The last time Republican senators represented a majority of voters was 1996.⁵

Rigged maps only work if the right people show up to vote. That’s where voter suppression comes in. The evidence includes confessions. During floor debate on Montana’s HB 176 in 2021, a Republican state representative explained he wanted to end Election Day registration because young voters are “not on our side of the aisle.”⁶ The bill passed. In oral arguments before the Supreme Court that same year, Arizona Republican Party attorney Michael Carvin was asked what interest his party had in maintaining voting restrictions. His answer: eliminating them “puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats.”⁷ When the Fourth Circuit struck down North Carolina’s HB 589, the court found the legislature had requested data on voting practices broken down by race, then restricted exactly those practices disproportionately used by Black voters. The law, the court wrote, “targeted African Americans with almost surgical precision.”⁸ North Carolina enacted that law less than two months after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder. Between 2021 and 2024, states passed 79 restrictive voting laws, nearly three times the number passed between 2017 and 2020.⁹

Gerrymandering and voter suppression tilt the playing field. Media control ensures tens of millions of Americans never realize the game is rigged. Sinclair Broadcast Group owns or operates 178 television stations reaching approximately 40 percent of American households.¹⁰ The company requires stations to air “must run” segments including commentary from Boris Epshteyn, a former Trump White House official, nine times per week.¹⁰ In March 2018, Deadspin compiled footage of nearly 200 Sinclair anchors reading identical scripts warning about “fake news” at other outlets.¹¹ You can watch the video. Sinclair executive chairman David Smith reportedly told Trump in 2016: “We are here to deliver your message.”¹² When your local news is owned by a conservative media conglomerate pushing partisan content through trusted local faces, voters cannot punish leaders for policy failures they never learn about.

None of this would hold without the final piece: captured courts that enforce the rigged system and block any attempt to change it.

The Biden administration asked the Supreme Court to decide whether federal district judges have the power to issue nationwide injunctions blocking presidential policies. The Court declined to hear the case.¹³ The Trump administration asked the same question. The Court took it, ruled in Trump’s favor, 6-3.¹⁴

Same legal question. Same Court. Different answer depending on who asked.

The judiciary abandoned neutrality decades ago. Bush v. Gore stopped votes from being counted. Shelby County gutted voting rights. Citizens United flooded elections with dark money. What we’re watching now is the endgame.

The Niskanen Center analyzed the Court’s treatment of lower court injunctions and found that within the first six months of Trump’s second term, the Supreme Court lifted approximately 77 percent of injunctions blocking administration actions. For the Biden administration over four years, the Court lifted 10 percent.¹⁵ Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck documented that in the first 20 weeks of Trump’s second term, the administration sought emergency action from the Supreme Court 19 times. That equals the total number of requests the Biden administration made over four years.¹⁶ The Court sided with Trump nearly every time.

In July 2024, the Court ruled 6-3 that presidents enjoy absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts within their core constitutional authority, and presumptive immunity for all other official acts.¹⁷ The Court held that Trump’s discussions with the Acting Attorney General about overturning the 2020 election fell within his exclusive constitutional authority and were therefore absolutely immune.¹⁷ Courts cannot inquire into a president’s motives. An action does not become unofficial merely because it violates the law.¹⁷ Justice Sotomayor wrote in dissent that the decision makes the president “a king above the law.”¹⁷

A president can now direct the Justice Department to prosecute political enemies. He can order federal law enforcement to investigate, harass, and charge anyone he designates as a threat. He can pardon co-conspirators before, during, or after any scheme. He can fire any official who refuses to comply. If these actions fall within his official duties, he faces no criminal liability. The Court manufactured this immunity from whole cloth. No statute authorized it. No constitutional text required it. No precedent compelled it. Six justices simply declared that presidents need this protection to act “boldly.”

The Court is simultaneously dismantling the independence of federal agencies. In Trump v. Slaughter, currently before the Court, the administration argues that the president can fire Federal Trade Commission commissioners at will, eliminating the for-cause removal protections that have governed independent agencies since 1935.¹⁸ The D.C. Circuit has already ruled that Trump’s firings of Merit Systems Protection Board and National Labor Relations Board members were lawful.¹⁸ If Humphrey’s Executor falls, the Federal Reserve, the FTC, the SEC, the NLRB, and every other independent agency comes under direct presidential control. A president could fire the Fed chair for refusing to cut interest rates before an election. He could purge every agency of anyone who might resist.

Criminal immunity for official acts. Direct control of every federal agency. And now, with the nationwide injunction ruling, illegal orders take effect everywhere except in the specific jurisdictions where individual plaintiffs have standing to sue. The Court has built a legal architecture in which a Republican president operates with essentially no constraint.

Now consider what the same Court does when a Democrat holds office. In June 2023, the Court struck down President Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, a $430 billion initiative affecting over 40 million borrowers.¹⁹ Chief Justice Roberts invoked the “major questions doctrine,” holding that agencies cannot make decisions of vast economic significance without explicit congressional authorization.¹⁹ The previous year, the Court used the same doctrine to strike down the Clean Power Plan.²⁰ In June 2024, the Court overturned Chevron deference entirely, eliminating the 40-year principle that courts should defer to agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes.²¹ The six-justice majority handed every conservative federal judge in the country a veto over Democratic governance.

The student loan program and the Clean Power Plan were not radical initiatives. They were exercises of delegated authority that prior courts would have upheld without controversy. This Court invented new doctrines to stop them. As Justice Kagan wrote in dissent, the Court’s approach “overrules Congress’s decisions about when and how to delegate” and makes the Supreme Court itself “the arbiter, indeed, the maker, of national policy.”²²

SCOTUSblog’s analysis calls this the “who-what duality” of the Roberts Court: expanding presidential power over personnel while restricting presidential power over policy.²³ But that framing is too neutral. The personnel expansions let a Republican president fire anyone who might resist. The policy restrictions prevent a Democratic president from using the administrative state to do anything at all. One president gets to destroy. The other gets blocked from building. This is not judicial philosophy. It is collaboration.

None of these tools will transfer. A Democratic president attempting to invoke the immunity ruling, the removal power, or the elimination of nationwide injunctions would discover new limits, new doctrines, new procedural barriers. We know this because we already have the data. Seventy-seven percent versus ten percent. Nineteen emergency requests in twenty weeks versus nineteen in four years. Same questions, different answers, depending entirely on who is asking.

Here is what all of this means in plain terms. One faction wins elections while losing the popular vote, governs without constraint, and installs lifetime judges who validate the structures that enabled minority rule. The other faction needs supermajorities to win, cannot govern when it does, and watches every policy achievement get struck down by courts it cannot reform. The gears turn freely toward authoritarian consolidation. Try to turn them back and the teeth catch.

This is why nothing ever gets better. Two-thirds of Americans support raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour.²⁴ Seventy-three percent believe the healthcare system needs major change or a complete rebuild, including 67 percent of Republicans.²⁵ Exposed to policies without party labels, supermajorities support them. Yet the federal minimum wage has not moved since 2009. Healthcare remains broken. Housing stays unaffordable. Climate action stalls. Not because these policies are unpopular. Because the system is designed to prevent the popular will from becoming law. Gerrymandered legislatures will not pass them. If they pass, captured courts strike them down. If courts uphold them, the next minority-elected president dismantles them.

Every precondition is met. This is not a warning about where we are headed. We are already here.

The federal government will not save us. It has been captured. Any strategy for preserving democratic governance must begin by acknowledging what we are actually facing. What remains is the ground we still hold at the city and state level, and the willingness to use it.

The Introduction to Soft Secession booklet explains exactly what that looks like: public banking, interstate compacts, criminal prosecutions of federal officials under state law, and revenue strategies that reduce dependency on a captured federal government. It’s free at BuyMeACoffee.com/TheER, along with the Educate Activate Recruit Repeat Method for actually getting these policies passed, Being Dangerous: How to Go from Activist to Operative, a printable trifold you can hand out, and Conservatism: America’s Personality Disorder, the full book explaining how we got here. Physical copies and merch at TheExistentialistRepublic.com.

References

Brennan Center for Justice. (2024, September). How gerrymandering tilts the 2024 race for the House. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/how-gerrymandering-tilts-2024-race-house

Unite America. (2024). Research brief: Why are most congressional elections uncompetitive? https://www.uniteamerica.org/articles/research-brief-why-are-most-congressional-elections-uncompetitive

Harvard Gazette. (2022, November). Change the Senate: Vicki C. Jackson. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/11/change-the-senate-vicki-c-jackson/

Brookings Institution. (2022, July 13). The challenge to democracy: Overcoming the small state bias. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-challenge-to-democracy-overcoming-the-small-state-bias/

FiveThirtyEight. (2020, July 29). The Senate has always favored smaller states. It just didn’t help Republicans until now. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-senate-has-always-favored-smaller-states-it-just-didnt-help-republicans-until-now/

Montana Free Press. (2021, March 24). GOP lawmaker says prior voter registration bill that died had “ichthyological” qualities. https://montanafreepress.org/2021/03/24/montana-prior-voter-registration-debate/

Brennan Center for Justice. (2021, March 2). Supreme Court appears skeptical of key Voting Rights Act provision. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/supreme-court-appears-skeptical-key-voting-rights-act-provision

North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP v. McCrory, 831 F.3d 204 (4th Cir. 2016).

Brennan Center for Justice. (2024, December). State voting laws roundup: 2024 in review. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-2024-review

Britannica. (2024). Sinclair Broadcast Group. https://www.britannica.com/money/Sinclair-Broadcast-Group

Deadspin. (2018, March 31). How America’s largest local TV owner turned its news anchors into soldiers in Trump’s war on the media. https://deadspin.com/how-americas-largest-local-tv-owner-turned-its-news-anc-1824233490

New York Magazine. (2018, April 3). The conservative mediaeli giant that could rival Fox News. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/04/sinclair-broadcast-group-david-smith-trump-fox-news.html

NPR. (2025, July 10). How SCOTUS ruled to increase executive power and challenge constitutional order. https://www.npr.org/2025/07/10/nx-s1-5463516/how-scotus-ruled-to-increase-executive-power-and-challenge-constitutional-order

PBS NewsHour. (2025, June 28). How the Supreme Court ruling on nationwide injunctions affects presidential powers. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-the-supreme-court-ruling-on-nationwide-injunctions-affects-presidential-powers

Niskanen Center. (2025, October 15). The Supreme Court is enabling Trump’s executive power. https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-supreme-court-is-enabling-trumps-executive-power/

Brennan Center for Justice. (2025). Supreme Court must explain why it keeps ruling in Trump’s favor. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/supreme-court-must-explain-why-it-keeps-ruling-trumps-favor

Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593 (2024).

NPR. (2025, December 8). Supreme Court appears poised to vastly expand presidential powers. https://www.npr.org/2025/12/08/nx-s1-5626876/supreme-court-trump-ftc-unitary-executive

Biden v. Nebraska, 600 U.S. ___ (2023).

West Virginia v. EPA, 597 U.S. 697 (2022).

Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. ___ (2024).

SCOTUSblog. (2023, June 30). Supreme Court strikes down Biden student-loan forgiveness program. https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/06/supreme-court-strikes-down-biden-student-loan-forgiveness-program/

SCOTUSblog. (2025, December). The who’s and what’s of presidential power. https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/12/the-whos-and-whats-of-presidential-power/

Pew Research Center. (2021, April 22). Most Americans support a $15 federal minimum wage. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/04/22/most-americans-support-a-15-federal-minimum-wage/

Community Catalyst. (2024). New polling: Health care affordability is a significant and growing concern for most voters. https://communitycatalyst.org/news/new-polling-health-care-affordability-is-a-significant-and-growing-concern-for-most-voters/

Indian court rules trans women are women and ‘legally entitled to recognition’

https://www.thepinknews.com/2025/06/26/india-trans-women-high-court-decision/

Jun 26

Written by Amelia Hansford

A High Court in India has ruled that trans women are women. (Getty)

A court in India has decreed that trans women are women.

In a landmark ruling for the country, after rejecting claims that womanhood was preserved only for those who can bear children, the High Court of Andhra Pradesh ruled that trans women were “legally entitled” to recognition as women.

Presiding over the case, justice Venkata Jyothirmai Pratapa decided that tying the definition of women to pregnancy was “legally unsustainable” and contradicted India’s constitution, which emphasises equality before the law.

Quoting a Supreme Court decision from 2014, which legally recognised the rights of “third gender” individuals, Pratapa said that prohibiting trans women’s right to identify as women “amounted to discrimination”.

The case was brought to the high court in 2022 after transgender woman Pokala Shabana looked to use a section of the Indian penal code to seek protection from her in-laws, whom, she said, had been abusive towards her.

The court sided with trans women. (Getty)

Her husband’s parents petitioned the court to deny her use of Section 498A, which protects women from cruelty by a husband or relatives, arguing that it only applied to cisgender women. They claimed that trans women don’t meet the legal definition of women under Indian law because they cannot get pregnant and said Shabana’s allegations of harassment lacked evidence.

However, the judge said that articles 14, 15 and 21 of the constitution, which guarantee a variety of discrimination protections, including the right to life and personal liberty, meant trans women’s rights to be recognised as women superseded the law.

“A trans woman, born male and later transitioning to female, is legally entitled to recognition as a woman,” he wrote in his ruling. “Denying such protection by questioning their womanhood amounts to discrimination.”

Trans activist and artist Kalki Subramaniam told the Washington Blade that she was relieved and delighted to see the court “upholding our basic human right to be identified as what we want.” She went on to say: “For [the] transgender community, especially trans women, this verdict means a lot.”

The Indian government has been under mounting pressure to modernise its laws and policies on LGBTQ+ rights. Same-sex marriage is still illegal, despite growing support for its legalisation.

Prime minister Narendra Modi’s government have previously labelled same-sex marriage an “elitist” viewpoint that “seriously affects the interests of every citizen”.

An affidavit establishing the government’s views on same-sex unions, in 2023, proclaimed that marriage was valid only between “biological males and females [and that] this definition [was] socially, culturally and legally ingrained into the very idea and concept of marriage and ought not to be disturbed or diluted by judicial interpretation”.

Share your thoughts! Let us know in the comments below, and remember to keep the conversation respectful.

She is correct, they don’t want to admit the LGBTQ+ exist and are doing their best to make it so we don’t to their kids. If they can convince their kids early that those people are bad before the kids learn their friends are LGBTQ+ they might turn out to be bigots as the parents want

BREAKING: The three liberal Supreme Court justices release a scathing dissent after the Republican-controlled judges issue an anti-LGBTQ ruling that “ushers in a new reality” that will deny children the “opportunity to practice living in our multicultural society.”

This is only the third time that Sonia Sotomayor has read her dissent from the bench, indicating strong disapproval…

“Exposing students to the ‘message’ that LGBTQ people exist, and that their loved ones may celebrate their marriages and life events, the majority says, is enough to trigger the most demanding form of judicial scrutiny,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, supported by justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The ruling was made in favor of a group of parents who want to opt their children out of elementary school lessons that include LGBTQ storybooks. The case will now go back to a lower court for final decision on whether schools must provide such an opt-out option.

Thanks to the Republican justices, school districts must now inform parents in advance of the books being read in class and allow them to pull their children if they choose. For underfunded schools, this additional burden will be too much to bear. It adds administrative costs and distracts teachers who are already struggling to teach overcrowded classrooms. Taken in tandem with the Trump administration’s efforts to completely eliminate the Department of Education, it’s a grim omen of things to come.

Crucially, the decision is a blatant handout to the religious radicals who helped put Donald Trump in power, which in turn tilted the court even more conservative. Such people want to pretend that LGBTQ people don’t even exist.

“Given the great diversity of religious beliefs in this country, countless interactions that occur every day in public schools might expose children to messages that conflict with a parent’s religious beliefs. If that is sufficient to trigger strict scrutiny, then little is not,” Sotomayor continued.

She predicted that the decision will cause “chaos for this Nation’s public schools.”

“Requiring schools to provide advance notice and the chance to opt out of every lesson plan or story time that might implicate a parent’s religious beliefs will impose impossible administrative burdens on schools,” she continued. “The harm will not be borne by educators alone: Children will suffer too. Classroom disruptions and absences may well inflict long-lasting harm on students’ learning and development.”

“Worse yet, the majority closes its eyes to the inevitable chilling effects of its ruling,” she went on. “Many school districts, and particularly the most resource strapped, cannot afford to engage in costly litigation over opt-out rights or to divert resources to tracking and managing student absences. Schools may instead censor their curricula, stripping material that risks generating religious objections.”

“The Court’s ruling, in effect, thus hands a subset of parents the right to veto curricular choices long left to locally elected school boards,” she added. “Because I cannot countenance the Court’s contortion of our precedent and the untold harms that will follow, I dissent.”