Supreme Court Requires Schools to Allow Opting Out From L.G.B.T.Q. Stories
The vote was 6 to 3, with the court's liberal members in dissent.
The case extended a winning streak for claims of religious freedom at the court, gains that have often come at the expense of other values, notably gay rights.
The case concerned a new curriculum adopted in 2022 for prekindergarten through the fifth grade by the Montgomery County Public Schools, Maryland's largest school system.
The storybooks included 'Pride Puppy,' an alphabet primer about a family whose puppy gets lost at a Pride parade; 'Love, Violet,' about a girl who develops a crush on her female classmate; 'Born Ready,' about a transgender boy; and 'Uncle Bobby's Wedding,' about a same-sex union.
At first, the school system gave parents notice when the storybooks were to be discussed, along with the opportunity to have their children excused. But school administrators soon eliminated the advanced notice and opt-out policy, saying it was hard to administer, led to absenteeism and risked 'exposing students who believe the storybooks represent them and their families to social stigma and isolation.'
Parents of several faiths sued, saying the books violated the First Amendment's protection of the free exercise of religion. The books, their complaint said, 'promote one-sided transgender ideology, encourage gender transitioning and focus excessively on romantic infatuation.'
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Los Angeles Times
33 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Why Texas could face greater legal hurdles than California in redistricting fight
California is in a standoff with Texas over redistricting that could decide the balance of power in Congress for the end of Donald Trump's presidency — a high-stakes gambit with risks for both sides. But if the courts have their say, Texas, facing accusations of racial discrimination, may find itself at a distinct legal disadvantage. Both efforts by Texas Republicans and California Democrats are blatantly partisan, proposing a mid-decade redrawing of district lines for the express purpose of benefiting their party in the 2026 midterm elections. California Gov. Gavin Newsom is working with a Democratic supermajority in the Legislature on 'trigger' legislation that would schedule a ballot initiative this fall for the new maps. It was a direct response to a Texas plan, supported by Trump and currently in motion in the Austin statehouse, to potentially flip five seats in the upcoming election from blue to red. The Supreme Court has ruled that judges are powerless to review partisan gerrymandering, even if, as it wrote in 2019, the practice is 'incompatible with democratic principles.' The court ruled in Rucho vs. Common Cause that partisan gerrymandering 'is incompatible with the 1st Amendment, that the government shouldn't do this, and that legislatures and people who undertake this aren't complying with the letter of the Constitution,' said Chad Dunn, a professor and legal director of the UCLA Voting Rights Project who has argued multiple cases before the Supreme Court. 'But it concluded that doesn't mean the U.S. Supreme Court is the solution to it.' What courts can still do, however, is enforce the core provisions of the Voting Rights Act, which bars states from redistricting that 'packs' or 'cracks' minority groups in ways that dilute their voting power. 'Texas doesn't need to have a good reason or a legitimate reason to engage in mid-decade redistricting — even if it's clear that Texas is doing this for pure partisan reasons, nothing in federal law at the moment, at least, would preclude that,' said Richard Pildes, a constitutional law professor at New York University. 'But Texas cannot redistrict in a way that would violate the Voting Rights Act.' In 2023, addressing a redistricting fight in Alabama over Black voter representation, the current makeup of the high court ruled in Allen vs. Milligan that discriminating against minority voters in gerrymandering is unconstitutional, ordering the Southern state to create a second minority-majority district. Today, Texas' proposed maps may face a similar challenge, amid accusations that they are 'cracking' racially diverse communities while preserving white-majority districts, legal scholars said. Already, the state's 2021 congressional maps are under legal scrutiny over discrimination concerns. 'The Supreme Court affirmed two years ago that the Voting Rights Act works the way we all thought it worked,' said Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School and former deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division. 'That's part of the reason for current litigation in Texas, and will undoubtedly be a part of continuing litigation if Texas redraws their lines and goes ahead with it.' The groundwork for the current Texas plan appears to have been laid with a letter from Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Justice Department, who threatened Texas with legal action over three 'coalition districts' that she argued were unconstitutional. Coalition districts feature multiple minority communities, none of which comprises the majority. The resulting maps proposed by Texas redraw all three. J. Morgan Kousser, a Caltech professor who recently testified in the ongoing case over Texas' 2021 redistricting effort, said the politics of race in Texas specifically, and the South generally, make its redistricting challenges plain to see but harder to solve. How do you distinguish between partisanship, which is allowed, and racism, which is not, in states where partisanship falls so neatly down racial lines? That dilemma may become Texas' greatest legal problem, as well as its saving grace in court, Kousser said. 'In Texas, as in most Southern states, the connection between race and party is so close that it is exceedingly difficult to distinguish between them,' he said. 'That seems to give a get-out-of-jail free card, essentially, to anybody who can claim this is partisan, rather than racial.' Today, nine states face ongoing litigation concerning potential violations of the Voting Rights Act, a law that turned 60 years old this week. Seven are in the South — states that had for decades been subject to a pre-clearance requirement at the Justice Department before being allowed to change state voting laws. The Supreme Court struck down the requirement, in the case of Shelby County vs. Holder, in 2013. Newsom has been vocal in his stance that California should position itself to be the national bulwark against the Texas plan. Last week, the Democratic caucuses of the state Legislature heard a presentation by the UCLA Voting Rights Project on how California might legally gerrymander its own maps for the 2026 midterms. Matt Barreto, the co-founder of the project and a professor of political science and Chicana/o and Central American studies, said his organization's position is that gerrymandering 'should not be allowed by any state,' he said. But 'if other states are playing the game, the governor is saying he wants to play the game too,' Barreto added. He said that although five seats have been discussed to match what Texas is doing, he sees a pathway for California to create seven seats that would be safely Democratic. That includes potential redraws in Orange County, San Diego, the Inland Empire and the northern part of the state. Barreto said there are many districts that currently skew as much as 80% Democratic, and by pulling some of those blue voters into nearby red districts, they could be flipped without risk to the current incumbents, though some new districts may have odd shapes. For example, districts in the north could become elongated to reach into blue Sacramento or the Bay Area, 'using the exact same standards that Texas does,' he said. Legislators seemed receptive to the idea. 'We've taken basic American rights for granted for too long,and I think we're ill equipped to protect them,' said Assemblymember Maggy Krell (D-Sacramento), who attended the meeting. 'To me, this is much bigger than Texas,' she said. State Sen. Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana), who has worked on redistricting in the past, echoed that support for Newsom, saying he was not 'comfortable' with the idea of gerrymandering but felt 'compelled' in the current circumstances. 'In order to respond to what's going on in Texas in particular,' Umberg said, 'we should behave in a like manner.' Barreto, the UCLA professor, warned that if any redistricting happens in California, 'no matter what, there's going to be a lawsuit.' Dunn said that it's possible voters could sue under the Voting Rights Act in California, claiming the new districts violate their right to fair representation — even white voters, who have more traditionally been on the other side of such legal actions. The 1965 law is 'for everybody, of every race and ethnicity,' Dunn said. A lawsuit 'could be on behalf of the places where the white community is in the minority.' The prospect of that litigation and the chaos it could cause gives pause to some voting rights experts who see the current situation as a race to the bottom that could ultimately harm democracy by undermining voters' trust in the system. 'It's mutual destruction,' said Mindy Romero, a voting expert and professor at USC, of the Texas-California standoff. The best outcome of the current situation, she said, would be for Congress to take action to prohibit partisan gerrymandering nationwide. This week, Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin), who represents a district north of Sacramento that would be vulnerable in redistricting, introduced legislation that would bar mid-decade redistricting. So far, it has gained little support. 'Just like lots of other things, Congress is dropping the ball by not addressing this national problem,' said Richard Hasen, a UCLA professor of political science and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project. 'When it comes to congressional redistricting, fairness should be evaluated on a national basis, since the decisions made in California or Texas affect the whole country,' he said. The must-read: Tired of waiting for the city, Angelenos paint their own crosswalks. Some become permanent The what happened: Federal agents use Penske rental truck as 'Trojan Horse' to raid Los Angeles Home DepotThe L.A. Times special: Inside the high-stakes clandestine poker world that led to a Hollywood Hills murder Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here to get it in your inbox.
Politico
an hour ago
- Politico
Blue State Republicans Helped Win the House Majority. The Redistricting Wars May End Their Careers.
Trump's move may well work. Even if California's new map wipes out five Republicans and shores up some Democratic seats there, more than neutralizing GOP gains in Texas, the president can likely rely on additional red states such as Ohio, Missouri and Indiana to salute him and overhaul their congressional boundaries to squeeze out the few Democrats left in their delegations. And this is to say nothing of how many more majority-minority districts in red states could be wiped out should the Supreme Court effectively gut the Voting Rights Act before next year's elections. Such an endgame will surely wind up in a series of state and federal courts, transforming the early going of the midterms into as much a legal fight as a political one. It would make for a mess. And it wouldn't stop with 2026. New York, for example, is constrained by its voter-approved independent redistricting commission and can't undo the commission and redraw its House maps until the 2028 election. But why would Democrats in Albany not do so if Trump effectively muscles a House majority into existence next year via a series of red states upending their own maps? If New York Democrats do pursue such a redraw, it will likely doom the most politically vulnerable House Republicans still left there after the midterms. Which gets to the cold reality for GOP lawmakers in California and New York: The very Republicans who helped deliver their party's congressional majority by winning in the two mega-states in 2020 and 2022 could be collateral damage to Trump's gambit. That includes House veterans such as Reps. Darrell Issa and Ken Calvert, both of California, but also younger, promising Republican lawmakers such as Kiley, 40, and Rep. Mike Lawler (N.Y.), 38. 'This creates a situation where you're going to lose blue state members, which over the long haul are critical to keeping the majority,' Lawler told me. It's all, Lawler said, 'mutually assured destruction once people go full throttle.' The redistricting threat is especially cruel to Lawler, who was already eager to avoid yet another tough race in his Hudson Valley district by running for governor next year. But Trump made clear he preferred Rep. Elise Stefanik, a born-again MAGA disciple, as the standard-bearer even though running a Trump acolyte statewide may only ensure Stefanik ends next year where she started this year: hoping for a Trump cabinet appointment.
USA Today
2 hours ago
- USA Today
'I won't humiliate myself': Brazil's president sees no point in tariff talks with Trump
BRASILIA, Aug 6 (Reuters) - As U.S. tariffs on Brazilian goods jumped to 50% on Wednesday, Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva told Reuters in an interview that he saw no room for direct talks now with U.S. President Donald Trump that would likely be a "humiliation." Brazil is not about to announce reciprocal tariffs, he said. Nor will his government give up on cabinet-level talks. But Lula himself is in no rush to ring the White House. "The day my intuition says Trump is ready to talk, I won't hesitate to call him," Lula said in an interview from his presidential residence in Brasilia. "But today my intuition says he doesn't want to talk. And I won't humiliate myself." Despite Brazil's exports facing one of the highest tariffs imposed by Trump, the new U.S. trade barriers look unlikely to derail Latin America's largest economy, giving Lula more room to stand his ground against Trump than most Western leaders. More: President Trump's new tariffs take effect, targeting dozens of US trading partners Lula described U.S.-Brazil relations at a 200-year nadir after Trump tied the new tariff to his demands for an end to the prosecution of right-wing former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is standing trial for plotting to overturn the 2022 election. The president said Brazil's Supreme Court, which is hearing the case against Bolsonaro, "does not care what Trump says and it should not," adding that Bolsonaro should face another trial for provoking Trump's intervention, calling the right-wing former president a "traitor to the homeland." "We had already pardoned the U.S. intervention in the 1964 coup," said Lula, who got his political start as a union leader protesting against the military government that followed a U.S.-backed ouster of a democratically elected president. "But this now is not a small intervention. It's the president of the United States thinking he can dictate rules for a sovereign country like Brazil. It's unacceptable." More: Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro put under house arrest ahead of coup trial The Brazilian president said he had no personal issues with Trump, adding that they could meet at the United Nations next month or U.N. climate talks in November. But he noted Trump's track record of dressing down White House guests such as South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. "What Trump did with Zelenskiy was humiliation. That's not normal. What Trump did with Ramaphosa was humiliation," Lula said. "One president can't be humiliating another. I respect everyone and I demand respect." Lula said his ministers were struggling to open talks with U.S. peers, so his government was focused on domestic policies to cushion the economic blow of U.S. tariffs, while maintaining "fiscal responsibility." The president declined to elaborate on pending measures to support Brazilian companies, which are expected to include credit lines and other export assistance. He also said he was planning to call leaders from the BRICS group of developing nations, starting with India and China, to discuss the possibility of a joint response to U.S. tariffs. "There is no coordination among the BRICS yet, but there will be," Lula said, comparing multilateral action to the strength of collective bargaining in his union days. "What is the negotiating power of one little country with the United States? None." Separately, he said Brazil was looking at lodging a collective complaint with other countries at the World Trade Organization. More: Trump hits Brazil with whopping 50% tariffs over 'harm' to U.S. companies "I was born negotiating," said Lula, who was raised in poverty and rose through union ranks to serve two terms as president from 2003 to 2010, then re-entered politics in the 2022 election to defeat the incumbent Bolsonaro. But he said he was in no rush to strike a deal or retaliate against U.S. tariffs: "We need to be very cautious," he said. Asked about countermeasures targeting U.S. companies, such as greater taxation of big technology companies, Lula said his government was studying ways to tax U.S. firms on equal standing with Brazilian companies. Lula also described plans to create a new national policy for Brazil's strategic mineral resources, treating them as a matter of "national sovereignty" to break with a history of mining exports that added little value in Brazil. (Reporting by Brad Haynes and Lisandra Paraguassu; Editing by Alistair Bell)
