Latest news with #SixthCircuitCourtofAppeals
Axios
7 days ago
- Politics
- Axios
Federal judge blocks part of Tennessee's "abortion trafficking" law
A federal judge struck down a key pillar of Tennessee's so-called "abortion trafficking" law, saying it violated First Amendment speech protections. Why it matters: The judge's July 18 ruling strikes down the "recruitment" section of the 2024 law, which made it illegal for adults to "recruit" minors to get legal, out-of-state abortions. The case highlights how speech has become a new battleground in the abortion debate. Catch up quick: State Rep. Aftyn Behn (D-Nashville) and Nashville attorney Rachel Welty sued to block the law, arguing the "recruitment" section could broadly block their efforts to share information about how to obtain legal abortions in other states. They said the law unconstitutionally criminalized their speech based on their viewpoints. The court agreed, cementing an earlier preliminary injunction that temporarily blocked the law while legal arguments took place. Yes, but: Other prongs of the law making it illegal to help transport or provide shelter for a minor seeking an abortion remain in place. Context: Tennessee banned abortions in 2022, soon after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The state ban only allows for narrow exceptions if the mother's life is in danger. What she's saying: Tennessee's 2024 law "prohibits speech encouraging lawful abortion while allowing speech discouraging lawful abortion. That is impermissible viewpoint discrimination, which the First Amendment rarely tolerates — and does not tolerate here,"senior U.S. Circuit Judge Julia Gibbons wrote. She said the "recruitment" provision was "'an egregious form of content discrimination' that punishes speech based on 'the opinion or perspective of the speaker.'" Gibbons added that "public advocacy, information-sharing, and counseling" about obtaining legal abortions outside of Tennessee were protected forms of speech. Between the lines: Gibbons, who heard the case in Nashville's federal district court, previously served as a judge on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. She was appointed by former President George W. Bush.
Politico
14-07-2025
- Politics
- Politico
Senate confirms first new judge of Trump's second term
The Senate has voted to confirm the first judicial nominee of Donald Trump's second term, marking the resumption of the president's longstanding campaign to install a conservative tilt across the federal judiciary. Whitney Hermandorfer was confirmed in a 46-42 vote along party lines to replace an Obama-era appointee on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals — pushing the court which hears appeals from Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee further to the right. Trump has long indicated he expects a level of enduring loyalty from his picks to the federal bench, calling them 'my judges.' But the Senate vote also follows an aggressive campaign from Trump allies to target existing judges whose rulings have created obstacles to the administration's agenda, culminating in calls for their impeachment. The House never pursued those impeachment resolutions. And efforts to hamstring the power of district court judges — including by limiting their ability to issue injunctions with sweeping, nationwide implications — have also proved fruitless, after the provisions were stripped from Trump's landmark domestic policy bill signed into law earlier this month. In Trump's first term, the vast transformation of the federal judiciary was a marquee accomplishment. He nominated hundreds of judges to the federal bench, buoyed by changes to Senate rules that facilitated their swift confirmation. Now, relatively few seats remain for Trump to fill, after former President Joe Biden also nominated and succeeded in seating hundreds of judges. Official U.S. courts data show roughly 49 existing vacancies. A graduate of Princeton University and George Washington University Law School, Hermandorfer clerked for Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett and then-D.C. Circuit judge Brett Kavanaugh. She has served as director of the Strategic Litigation Unit of the Tennessee Attorney General's office and defended the state's near-total abortion ban along with its prohibition on gender-affirming care for minors. In his announcement of her nomination, Trump called Hermandorfer 'a staunch defender of Girls' and Women's Sports.' Democrats and their allies argued that Hermandorfer, who graduated law school in 2015, lacked the professional experience to hold a lifetime appointment on the powerful appeals court and criticized her work on the frontlines of conservative culture wars. Democratic Senators voted in unison to reject her nomination.
Yahoo
20-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Supreme Court's Dobbs bombshell helped pave the way for this week's blow to trans rights
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court upheld Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming for minors. The 6-3 ruling is a major blow to transgender rights, including in the dozens of states with similar bans already enacted. To a striking degree, the majority's analysis— and the opinions of several concurring justices — relied on cases that restricted another right: the right to choose abortion. This week's holding shows how the fallout from the end of Roe v. Wade extends far beyond abortion. The case, U.S. v. Skrmetti, began in 2023 when three transgender teenagers, their parents and a Memphis physician argued that Tennessee's law constituted unconstitutional sex discrimination under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The Biden administration eventually joined the suit and, in June 2023, the district court blocked the law from going into effect. Later that year, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, and the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. The plaintiffs relied on a 2020 case called Bostock v. Clayton County, a 6-3 ruling which held that sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1963 also encompassed sexual orientation and gender identity. In the majority opinion by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the court reasoned that there was no way for an employer to discriminate based on sexual orientation or gender identity without accounting for a worker's sex too. In other words, gender identity discrimination always involved sex discrimination. The plaintiffs in Skrmetti argued that the same logic applied to their case. To rebut this, Tennessee pointed to Dobbs. In undoing a right to choose abortion, the Supreme Court rejected the determinations in Roe that the right to choose abortion was (as the Roe majority wrote) 'founded in the 14th Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action.' But the court also rejected the idea that abortion bans were fueled by sex discrimination, and thus violated the same amendment's guarantee of equal protection under the law. That latter finding figures prominently in Skrmetti. There were a variety of ways of arguing that abortion bans discriminate on the basis of sex: for example, pointing to the bans' frequent invocations of stereotypes and generalizations about motherhood. But in Dobbs, the court concluded that the discrimination argument was 'squarely foreclosed by our precedents' — in particular, the rarely cited, often-pilloried 1974 ruling Geduldig v. Aiello that ruled that discriminating on the basis of pregnancy didn't count as sex discrimination. States could regulate a 'medical procedure that only one sex can undergo,' the Dobbs majority concluded, unless there was evidence that the legislation was mere pretext for discriminatory animus. In ruling that Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care didn't involve sex discrimination either, the majority opinion didn't mention Dobbs directly (though concurring opinions by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito did). Nevertheless, the reasoning of Dobbs ran throughout the majority opinion as well. Even if transgender individuals were the only ones to seek out treatment for gender dysphoria, the court suggested, that didn't matter. 'A State does not trigger heightened constitutional scrutiny by regulating a medical procedure that only one sex can undergo,' Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority, citing Geduldig but using the language from the Dobbs ruling. In addition to Dobbs, the majority also relied on a 2007 case called Gonzales v. Carhart, which upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. The federal statute prohibited a specific procedure, dilation and extraction, that the plaintiffs argued would be safer for some women (because it involved fewer passes with a sharp instrument). The high court upheld the law, however, because there was enough scientific uncertainty about the benefits of the procedure. That uncertainty, of course, was no accident: anti-abortion groups had not just fielded their own experts, but launched new organizations to establish that the procedure was unnecessary. In upholding bans on gender-affirming care, the Supreme Court in Skrmetti cited Gonzales v. Carhart to justify giving lawmakers 'wide discretion to pass legislation in areas where there is medical and scientific uncertainty.' It's true that gender-affirming care is a rapidly developing area of study. But the court used that fact to give state legislatures a free pass. Tennessee's law is hardly nuanced: Violators can face penalties of $25,000 per treatment. Other states' bans include prison sentences of five or even 10 years. None of that sounds like lawmakers carefully weighing incoming evidence about a specific treatment. But the court could fall back on its abortion cases to let legislators do whatever they want. The message sent in the Skrmetti ruling reaches further than just the issue at hand, and not just because much of the majority's logic would shield bans on gender-affirming care for adults too. If legislators can convince the justices that they are regulating based on a medical procedure or medical condition, the court may simply wave away any concern about sex discrimination. This offers conservative lawmakers and activists a roadmap for circumventing protections against sex discrimination in other contexts. The Southern Baptist Convention recently endorsed overturning Obergefell v. Hodges, the decision recognizing same-sex couples' right to marry, which relies partly on the Equal Protection Clause. The conservative Christian legal movement despises Bostock. And the Dobbs and Geduldig rulings prove that the meaning of sex discrimination has already narrowed for women. The more these cases can be framed on turning on biological difference, the more likely the court will sign off on discriminatory laws. The court's ruling in Skrmetti shows how much the undoing of abortion rights will reverberate beyond Dobbs, changing how the Supreme Court understands sex discrimination and transforming what equality under the law means. This article was originally published on
USA Today
04-06-2025
- General
- USA Today
Trump nominees for judgeships face scrutiny of youth, lack of experience
Trump nominees for judgeships face scrutiny of youth, lack of experience Show Caption Hide Caption What we know now about the Trump administration and justice system Could the Trump administrations actions against lawyers and judges set a precedent? Here is what we know now. President Donald Trump has started appointing judges to the federal bench, and they're facing scrutiny from Democrats and outside observers who question whether they are too young or unqualified to take their positions. Whitney Hermandorfer, Trump's nominee for a seat on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Ohio, was the first to face the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 4. She's never been a judge, and said she has never tried a case to a jury verdict. "I am concerned about the striking brevity of your professional record," Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware, told Hermandorfer. He said she only graduated from law school 10 years, ago, but the judge she is being recommended to replace had 31 years on the bench before her nomination. Coons pointed to a longtime standard from the American Bar Association that says federal judicial appointees should have at least 12 years of experience. While the association has long been involved in vetting judicial appointments, Attorney General Pam Bondi has said the association, which many conservatives criticize as too liberal, won't be involved. Trump's nominees are being named at a time when his administration is seeking to broadly expand executive power through the use of executive orders and strategic firings. They have conservative records on issues such as abortion and transgender rights, and could broadly tip the judiciary more toward his agenda. Of the five lawyers who were scheduled to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee for their confirmation hearings Wednesday, only one, Cristian Stevens, is a sitting judge. Hermandorfer specializes in appeals for the Tennessee attorney general. Joshua Devine and Maria Lanahan work for the Missouri attorney general, and Zachary Bluestone works for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Missouri. The liberal group Alliance for Justice opposes the nomination of Divine, for example, to be U.S. District Court judge for the eastern and western districts of Missouri. He's currently the solicitor general of Missouri, who earned his law degree in 2016. He's challenged former President Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness programs, and defended restrictions on abortion and transgender health. The group also opposes Bluestone, who finished his law degree in 2016. Mike Davis, whose conservative Article III Project backs Trump's judicial nominees, told Reuters that Trump "doesn't need to appease the D.C. establishment with weak and timid judges." "He is picking bold and fearless judges," Davis said. During the hearing, Coons asked how she would handle a hypothetical situation in which U.S. Marshalls refused to implement her court order. "That would, as a probably junior appellate judge, be something that I would look to my colleagues and whatever governing rules or precedents would govern that situation," she said. But Republicans widely praised Hermandorfer's resume, which shows she clerked for Supreme Court Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Thomas Alito in their current roles, and worked Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who now sits on the high court, when he was an appeals court judge. Cruz, a Republican from Texas, joked that he would filibuster Hermandorfer's out of jealousy that she clerked for three Supreme Court justices, and Sen. Ashley Moody, a Republican from Florida, said youth can bring tenacity to the bench and efficiency to moving cases along. Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, signaled that the criticism about Hermandorfer's experience at the trial level wasn't relevant because she's up for an appeals court job. Instead, he asked her how many appellate cases she's handled. "I have litigated probably over 100 appellate cases," Hermandorfer answered. Contributing: Reuters
Axios
05-05-2025
- Politics
- Axios
Trump appoints Nashville-area attorney Whitney Hermandorfer to federal bench
President Trump nominated local attorney Whitney Hermandorfer to serve on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Why it matters: This is Trump's first judicial appointment of his new term. Her appointment was celebrated by Tennessee's top Republican elected officials. Zoom in: Hermandorfer serves as director of the strategic litigation unit for the Tennessee Attorney General's Office. She played basketball at Princeton, where she earned her undergrad, before earning her law degree at George Washington University. She earned prestigious clerkships for Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett. Before that, Hermandorfer graduated from Harpeth Hall. If confirmed, Hermandorfer would replace veteran appeals court Judge Jane Branstetter Stranch, who was appointed to the bench by former President Obama. What they're saying: Trump called Hermandorfer"a staunch defender of girl's and women's sports." Hermandorfer argued the lawsuit over federal sexual discrimination rules related to gender identity.
