The US Supreme Court delivered the second blow to Trump this week when it ruled 5-4 on Thursday that Trump’s executive order rescinding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was not valid because the reasoning behind it was ‘arbitrary and capricious’.. This follows the 6-3 ruling on Monday that said that employers who fired employees because they were gay, lesbian, or transgender violated the law.
[Read more…]
Yesterday I wrote about the 6-3 decision by the US Supreme Court that ruled that discrimination against gay, lesbian, and transgender people in employment violated Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that says that it is “unlawful . . . for an employer to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”
This case was a consolidation of three separate cases. Gerald Bostock and Donald Zerda were both fired from their jobs when their employers learned that they were gay, and Aimee Stephens, who had presented as a male when she was hired, was fired from her job when she told her employer six years later that she planned to live and work full-time as a woman. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Bostock’s firing but the Second Circuit in Zarda’s case and the Sixth Circuit in Stephens’ case said that the firings violated Title VII. Sadly, Zarda and Stephens have died since the cases were filed and thus were not able to savor their victory but their heirs who continued the cases can.
[Read more…]
In a major decision, the US Supreme court ruled today 6-3 that LGBT employees are covered by the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act that bars employment discrimination.
The case concerned whether Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars employment discrimination based on race, religion, national origin and sex, also covered LGBTQ+ workers.
“Today, we must decide whether an employer can fire someone simply for being homosexual or transgender. The answer is clear. An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids,” justice Neil Gorsuch wrote.
The three cases the court heard, Altitude Express Inc v Zarda, Bostock vClayton county, and RG & GR Harris Funeral Homes v EEOC concerned whether or not a federal ban on sex discrimination forbids employment discrimination against LGBTQ+ workers.
The Harris Funeral Homes case centered on Aimee Stephens, a trans woman fired after her boss claimed it would violate “God’s commands” if he allowed her “to deny [her] sex while acting as a representative of [the] organization.”.
Stephens’ case was the first trans rights case to come before the supreme court and came at a time when attacks on trans people have spiked and the federal government and conservative states have moved to erode the rights of trans people.
Donald Zarda and Gerald Bostock, both gay men, alleged they were fired from their jobs because of their sexual orientation.
…Before the ruling job discrimination against gay and transgender workers was still legal in much of the nation. Some 29 states currently allow some form of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity in employment, housing and public accommodation.
This is big and very much good news in these troubled times, especially the fact that two very conservative justices like Neil Gorsuch and chief justice John Roberts were part of the majority.
You can read the opinion here.
Jeffrey Epstein, who died in prison while awaiting trial for pedophilia, had earlier received an extraordinarily lenient plea deal for charges related to sex with minors, with one of the federal prosecutors who negotiated that deal, U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, ending up as a cabinet member for Donald Trump. Questions had been raised as to why Epstein off so easily and most answers were that he had used his money to buy favors from influential people.
[Read more…]
This guy who is truly a monster was immediately handcuffed and taken into custody after the guilty verdict. He faces a range of 5 to 25 years in prison to be announced by the judge later after a sentencing hearing. Ed Pilkington lists the charges he was accused of and those on which he was found guilty.
Count 1: Predatory sexual assault which involves sex crimes against at least two victims, in this count relating to former Project Runway production assistant Miriam Haley and former Sopranos actor Annabella Sciorra. The charge carries a maximum sentence life in prison and a minimum sentence of 10 years.
Count 2: Criminal sex act in the first degree for forcing oral sex on Miriam Haley which carries a maximum sentence 25 years and a minimum sentence 5 years.
Count 3: In this count relating to a woman whom the Guardian has decided not to name and Annabella Sciorra. This charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison and a minimum sentence of 10 years.
Count 4: First-degree rape of the victim the Guardian has decided not to name which carries a maximum sentence of 25 years and a minimum sentence of five years.
Count 5: Third-degree rape of the victim the Guardian has decided not to name which carries a maximum sentence of four years in prison and no minimum, though a conviction would require Weinstein to register as a sex offender.
Counts 1 and 3 were more serious and could have led to a life in prison, though given Weinstein’s age (67), a maximum sentence of 25 years would be effectively the same.
Of course his lawyers will appeal both the verdict and whatever sentence he gets, unless it is the minimum one that the judge can give.
Four career prosecutors have resigned from the case following a direct intervention by the attorney general Bill Barr overruling their judgment in the case of Donald Trump’s friend, the shady Roger Stone. It is clear that Barr was obeying the dictates of Trump.
Four lawyers who prosecuted political operative Roger Stone have resigned in protest after their sentencing recommendation was overruled and slashed by Donald Trump’s justice department.
Aaron Zelinsky, Jonathan Kravis, Adam Jed and Michael Marando quit the case while Democrats demanded an independent investigation into what they described as a dangerously politicised and corrupt justice department.
The growing crisis raised fresh questions over the role of William Barr, the attorney general who has been criticised as a partisan Trump loyalist.
[Read more…]
I have written before about how I felt that sex work should be decriminalized. Although there had been concern in feminists circles in days gone by that legalizing sex work would lead to greater exploitation of women’s bodies, I thought that the issue had been settled and that decriminalizing sex work was now a fairly uncontroversial position on the part of people who would consider themselves on the liberal and progressive end of the political spectrum. In fact, just a couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a new survey that gave welcome news that public opinion about sex work had moved in a positive direction.
[Read more…]
You may recall the case of Scott Warren of the humanitarian group No More Deaths who was charged by the federal government because he provided food, water, clothing, and shelter to the undocumented people who crossed the southern border and then undertook a grueling and dangerous trek through the desert. A jury acquitted him of all those charges but in a different case a judge found him guilty on a misdemeanor charge of illegally operating a motor vehicle in a wilderness area in the course of delivering the supplies.
[Read more…]
Despite the fact that the Catholic church keeps promising to increase transparency after each successive scandal about abusive priests who have been shielded by the church, ProPublica reports that some bishops continue to be opaque.
Over the last year and a half, the majority of U.S. dioceses, as well as nearly two dozen religious orders, have released lists of abusers currently or formerly in their ranks. The revelations were no coincidence: They were spurred by a 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report, which named hundreds of priests as part of a statewide clergy abuse investigation. Nationwide, the names of more than 5,800 clergy members have been released so far, representing the most comprehensive step toward transparency yet by a Catholic Church dogged by its long history of denying and burying abuse by priests.
[Read more…]
Sometimes, especially in reactionary times like the one we are living in in the US at this moment when social progress seems to be in retreat under a determined assault from Donald Trump and his Republican party and supporters, it is easy to become discouraged. At such times, I remind myself that major social changes on race and gender and sexuality have been achieved in my own lifetime and these are irreversible because they involve changes in social attitudes.
Natasha Lennard reports on another area in which a major change has been quietly occurring and that is with the move to decriminalize sex work.
[Read more…]