Supreme Court sides with woman claiming anti-straight job discrimination
The Supreme Court on Thursday sided with a straight woman who claimed she faced bias in the workplace after she was passed over for positions that went to gay colleagues. The decision that will make it easier for members of majority groups to prove job discrimination claims.
The justices unanimously struck down a standard used in nearly half the nation's federal circuits that required people who are White, male or not gay to meet a higher bar to prove workplace bias in certain cases than do individuals whose minority communities have traditionally faced discrimination.
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Trump officials are vowing to end school desegregation orders. Some parents say they're still needed
FERRIDAY, La. -- Even at a glance, the differences are obvious. The walls of Ferriday High School are old and worn, surrounded by barbed wire. Just a few miles away, Vidalia High School is clean and bright, with a new library and a crisp blue 'V' painted on orange brick. Ferriday High is 90% Black. Vidalia High is 62% white. For Black families, the contrast between the schools suggests 'we're not supposed to have the finer things,' said Brian Davis, a father in Ferriday. 'It's almost like our kids don't deserve it,' he said. The schools are part of Concordia Parish, which was ordered to desegregate 60 years ago and remains under a court-ordered plan to this day. Yet there's growing momentum to release the district — and dozens of others — from decades-old orders that some call obsolete. In a remarkable reversal, the Justice Department said it plans to start unwinding court-ordered desegregation plans dating to the Civil Rights Movement. Officials started in April, when they lifted a 1960s order in Louisiana's Plaquemines Parish. Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the department's civil rights division, has said others will 'bite the dust.' It comes amid pressure from Republican Gov. Jeff Landry and his attorney general, who have called for all the state's remaining orders to be lifted. They describe the orders as burdens on districts and relics of a time when Black students were still forbidden from some schools. The orders were always meant to be temporary — school systems can be released if they demonstrate they fully eradicated segregation. Decades later, that goal remains elusive, with stark racial imbalances persisting in many districts. Civil rights groups say the orders are important to keep as tools to address the legacy of forced segregation — including disparities in student discipline, academic programs and teacher hiring. They point to cases like Concordia, where the decades-old order was used to stop a charter school from favoring white students in admissions. 'Concordia is one where it's old, but a lot is happening there,' said Deuel Ross, deputy director of litigation for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. 'That's true for a lot of these cases. They're not just sitting silently.' Last year, before President Donald Trump took office, Concordia Parish rejected a Justice Department plan that would have ended its case if the district combined several majority white and majority Blac k elementary and middle schools. At a town hall meeting, Vidalia residents vigorously opposed the plan, saying it would disrupt students' lives and expose their children to drugs and violence. An official from the Louisiana attorney general's office spoke against the proposal and said the Trump administration likely would change course on older orders. Accepting the plan would have been a 'death sentence' for the district, said Paul Nelson, a former Concordia superintendent. White families would have fled to private schools or other districts, said Nelson, who wants the court order removed. 'It's time to move on,' said Nelson, who left the district in 2016. 'Let's start looking to build for the future, not looking back to what our grandparents may have gone through.' At Ferriday High, athletic coach Derrick Davis supported combining schools in Ferriday and Vidalia. He said the district's disparities come into focus whenever his teams visit schools with newer sports facilities. 'It seems to me, if we'd all combine, we can all get what we need,' he said. Others oppose merging schools if it's done solely for the sake of achieving racial balance. 'Redistricting and going to different places they're not used to ... it would be a culture shock to some people," said Ferriday's school resource officer, Marcus Martin, who, like Derrick Davis, is Black. The district's current superintendent and school board did not respond to requests for comment. Concordia is among more than 120 districts across the South that remain under desegregation orders from the 1960s and '70s, including about a dozen in Louisiana. Calling the orders historical relics is 'unequivocally false,' said Shaheena Simons, who until April led the Justice Department section that oversees school desegregation cases. 'Segregation and inequality persist in our schools, and they persist in districts that are still under desegregation orders,' she said. With court orders in place, families facing discrimination can reach out directly to the Justice Department or seek relief from the court. Otherwise, the only recourse is a lawsuit, which many families can't afford, Simons said. In Concordia, the order played into a battle over a charter school that opened in 2013 on the former campus of an all-white private school. To protect the area's progress on racial integration, a judge ordered Delta Charter School to build a student body that reflected the district's racial demographics. But in its first year, the school was just 15% Black. After a court challenge, Delta was ordered to give priority to Black students. Today, about 40% of its students are Black. Desegregation orders have been invoked recently in other cases around the state. One led to an order to address disproportionately high rates of discipline for Black students, and in another a predominantly Black elementary school was relocated from a site close to a chemical plant. The Trump administration was able to close the Plaquemines case with little resistance because the original plaintiffs were no longer involved — the Justice Department was litigating the case alone. Concordia and an unknown number of other districts are in the same situation, making them vulnerable to quick dismissals. Concordia's case dates to 1965, when the area was strictly segregated and home to a violent offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan. When Black families in Ferriday sued for access to all-white schools, the federal government intervened. As the district integrated its schools, white families fled Ferriday. The district's schools came to reflect the demographics of their surrounding areas. Ferriday is mostly Black and low-income, while Vidalia is mostly white and takes in tax revenue from a hydroelectric plant. A third town in the district, Monterey, has a high school that's 95% white. At the December town hall, Vidalia resident Ronnie Blackwell said the area 'feels like a Mayberry, which is great,' referring to the fictional Southern town from 'The Andy Griffith Show.' The federal government, he said, has 'probably destroyed more communities and school systems than it ever helped.' Under its court order, Concordia must allow students in majority Black schools to transfer to majority white schools. It also files reports on teacher demographics and student discipline. After failing to negotiate a resolution with the Justice Department, Concordia is scheduled to make its case that the judge should dismiss the order, according to court documents. Meanwhile, amid a wave of resignations in the federal government, all but two of the Justice Department lawyers assigned to the case have left. Without court supervision, Brian Davis sees little hope for improvement. 'A lot of parents over here in Ferriday, they're stuck here because here they don't have the resources to move their kids from A to B," he said. 'You'll find schools like Ferriday — the term is, to me, slipping into darkness."
Hamilton Spectator
an hour ago
- Hamilton Spectator
As his trade war faces legal pushback, Trump has other tariff tools he could deploy
WASHINGTON - U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs are facing legal headwinds for the first time — but he has other tools he could deploy in his quest to realign global trade. A federal appeals court is still deciding whether there will be a stay on Trump's universal tariffs enacted through the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, usually referred to by the acronym IEEPA. The U.S. Court of International Trade ruled the duties were unlawful last month. IEEPA is a national security statute that gives the U.S. president authority to control economic transactions after declaring an emergency. It had never previously been used for tariffs. Trump declared emergencies at the United States' northern and southern borders linked to the flow of fentanyl and migrants in order to hit Canada and Mexico with economywide tariffs. He later declared an emergency over trade deficits to impose his retaliatory 'Liberation Day' duties on most nations. The trade court found Trump exceeded presidential powers by using IEEPA to broadly implement the duties. The Trump administration quickly appealed the decision and the White House said it would take the case to the Supreme Court. Following the ruling, White House Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said he was confident the court ultimately would decide in Trump's favour. Hassett said that if it doesn't, 'we'll have other alternatives that we can pursue as well to make sure that we make American trade fair again.' While the U.S. Constitution gives power over taxes and tariffs to Congress, Greta Peisch, the former general counsel for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, said it passed laws over the last century that allow the president some control in certain situations. Trump is now looking to use those laws — some of them for the first time. The president may be considering Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930. It allows a president to hit countries with tariffs of up to 50 per cent if the country 'is treating products of the United States disfavourably, compared to products of another foreign country,' said Peisch, a partner at Wiley Rein in Washington, D.C. Section 338 has never been used by a president before and Peisch said it might be difficult for the administration to make a case for it. Trump also might look to Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which allows a president to take trade actions if an investigation finds a trading partner's policies are unreasonable and discriminatory. Trump used this law during his first administration to impose tariffs on some Chinese imports and European Union goods. But Section 301 requires country-by-country investigations of trade policy before a tariff can be imposed — investigations that could take weeks or months and would include a period for public comment. That certainly would slow down Trump's efforts to target the world with tariffs. If the president is looking for speed, Peisch said, he might try to use Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 — another law that has never before been used. Section 122 allows a president to implement tariffs of up to 15 per cent to address large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits. But those duties can only stay in place for a maximum of 150 days before they need Congressional approval to continue. That reduces Trump's leverage if his goal is to pressure countries to sign trade deals — those countries could simply decide to wait the president out. Trump also has said tariffs will help pay down the deficit; the short-term Section 122 power is unlikely to work as a long-term revenue strategy. Ultimately, Peisch said, none of the replacement statutes could easily build Trump's universal tariff wall around the United States. 'Nothing is a great fit without a lot of work,' she said. 'So I think it's potentially going to be a challenge.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 7, 2025.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Americans are divided over religious freedom. The Supreme Court? Not as much
Thursday was a surprising day at the Supreme Court, and a religion case was part of the action. The justices released six unanimous or near-unanimous decisions, including in a closely watched battle over the scope of faith-based tax breaks. In that religion case, the full court agreed that Wisconsin officials were unlawfully privileging certain religious nonprofits over others by basing access to religious exemptions on how they expressed their beliefs. Organizations that served only members of their own religion or that openly evangelized were typically eligible for the tax break, while organizations that served all comers with no strings attached often were deemed not religious enough to qualify. 'It is fundamental to our constitutional order that the government maintain 'neutrality between religion and religion.' There may be hard calls to make in policing that rule, but this is not one,' Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the Supreme Court's opinion, which reversed a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling against a group of Catholic nonprofits. The decision is significant, since it could lead to changes to religious exemptions nationwide. But the fact that it was unanimous isn't as surprising as it may, at first, have appeared. If there's a case to be made that the Supreme Court's ruling was unexpected, it centers on the role religious freedom advocates played in the battle. Faith-related groups did not speak with one voice on how the justices should interpret the First Amendment. They put together competing legal briefs and press releases. More liberal organizations and individuals supported Wisconsin's narrow religious exemption, arguing that an overly broad tax break would harm workers, including people of faith. More conservative groups, on the other hand, said religious freedom law requires broad exemptions, which enable faith-based organizations to operate according to their beliefs. While these arguments were specific to the Supreme Court case on Catholic nonprofits, they should be familiar to anyone who follows faith-related policy debates. Religious groups and faith-related advocacy organizations no longer agree on what religious freedom means — nor on whether or not conservative Christians, in particular, are demanding too many concessions in the public square. Those disagreements help explain why different religious freedom advocates held very different views on President Donald Trump and Kamala Harris during last year's election, as the Deseret News previously reported, and why some faith groups support a push to limit the application of a landmark religious freedom law. More liberal advocates generally believe religious liberty protections work best when they're balanced with other types of protections, including LGBTQ nondiscrimination laws, while more conservative advocates generally say religious freedom should win out. If you dig into the justices' track record on religion over the 20 years Chief Justice John Roberts has led the court, you'll find several rulings that reflect this tension. Among other issues, the court has split along ideological lines in cases involving school prayer, state funding for religious schools and the Affordable Care Act's birth control mandate. In these decisions and others, the court's conservative majority embraced a broad interpretation of religious exercise protections, while the court's more liberal justices called for limitations on religious freedom in their dissents. These split decisions are often what people think of when they think of the Supreme Court and religion — but they're actually the exception, not the rule. From Roberts' confirmation in September 2005 to April 2021, religious freedom claims succeeded in front of the Supreme Court 13 times. Nine of those 13 rulings were either unanimous or from a mixed 7-2 majority, according to a Deseret News analysis from 2021. In the four years since that analysis was released, the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of religion claims in merits cases seven more times. Four of the decisions were unanimous, while a fifth was 8-1. In other words, the justices are finding ways to bridge the gap between conservative and liberal takes on religious freedom, including in cases involving LGBTQ rights. When you consider the court's record on religion, Thursday's unanimous ruling no longer seems surprising. But it might still feel worth celebrating, especially if you're worried about the state of the religious freedom landscape. Before the Supreme Court enters its summer recess in early July, the justices will have one more opportunity to model consensus-building in a religious freedom case. In Mahmoud v. Taylor, the court is considering whether the First Amendment gives religious parents a right to opt their kids out of reading or hearing books about LGBTQ issues. During oral arguments in April, the court appeared divided along ideological lines, as the Deseret News reported at the time. More liberal justices seemed to support the school district, which said that religious freedom protects you from being coerced into changing your beliefs, not from being exposed to other ideas. More conservative justices seemed to support the families, who felt like their religious teachings were being drowned out. It wasn't immediately clear what a compromise ruling would look like. But even as Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked tough questions of the school district's attorney, he reminded everyone to keep searching. 'The whole goal, I think, of some of our religion precedents is to look for the win/win,' he said.
