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New Hampshire courts hear 2 cases on transgender girls playing girls sports
Court Issues |
2024/11/22 14:21
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Two New Hampshire fathers who were barred from school district events for wearing pink wristbands marked “XX” to represent female chromosomes insisted at a federal court hearing Thursday that they didn’t set out to harass or otherwise target a transgender soccer player at the game they attended.
But a judge hearing the case suggested the message the parents sent may matter more than their intentions.
Kyle Fellers and Anthony Foote sued the Bow school district after being banned from school grounds for wearing the wristbands at their daughters’ soccer game in September. The no-trespass orders have since expired, but a judge is deciding whether the plaintiffs should be allowed to wear the wristbands and carry signs at upcoming school events, including basketball games, swim meets and a music concert, while the case proceeds.
Testifying at Thursday’s hearing, both men said that they did not view the wristbands as a protest against Parker Tirrell, a transgender girl on the opposing team, but rather as a show of support for their daughters and their teammates. U.S. District Court Judge Steven McAuliffe questioned whether there is a meaningful distinction and whether their intentions matter.
“Sometimes the message you think you’re sending might not be the message that is being sent,” he said.
McAuliffe asked Foote whether it occurred to him that a transgender person might interpret the pink XX wristbands as an attempt to invalidate their existence.
“If he’s a trans female, pink might be a color he likes,” Foote said.
McAuliffe also noted that while both plaintiffs said they had no problem with transgender people outside the issue of sports, they repeatedly referred to the athlete in question as a boy.
“You seem to go out of your way to suggest there’s no such thing as a trans girl,” McAuliffe said. Foote disagreed, saying it was “like learning a new language” to refer to transgender people.
In a separate courtroom earlier Thursday, another judge held a hearing on a lawsuit brought by Parker Tirrell and another student challenging the state law that bans transgender athletes in grades 5 to 12 from teams that align with their gender identity. It requires schools to designate all teams as either girls, boys or coed, with eligibility determined based on students’ birth certificates “or other evidence.”
U.S. District Court Chief Judge Landya McCafferty ruled earlier this year that the teens can try out for and play on girls school sports teams. The order only applies to those two individuals for now as they seek to overturn the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act on behalf of all transgender girl students in New Hampshire.
Lawyers for the teens said in court Thursday they hoped the matter could go to trial and be resolved before the start of the next school year in September. They said the teens’ school districts and others in the state have asked for guidance regarding the statute. Lawyers for the state said they needed more time to prepare.
Judge Talesha Saint-Marc suggested the timing of the trial was ambitious and asked that both sides talk further about scheduling. Gov. Chris Sununu, who signed the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act into law in July, has said it “ensures fairness and safety in women’s sports by maintaining integrity and competitive balance in athletic competitions.” About half of states have adopted similar measures.
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Election 2024 highlights: Republicans win House majority of 218 seats
Court Issues |
2024/11/11 23:02
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The past two years of Republican House control were defined by infighting as hardline conservative factions sought to gain influence and power by openly defying their party leadership. While Johnson — at times with Trump’s help — largely tamed open rebellions against his leadership, the right wing of the party is ascendant and ambitious on the heels of Trump’s election victory.
The Republican majority also depends on a small group of lawmakers who won tough elections by running as moderates. It remains to be seen whether they will stay on board for some of the most extreme proposals championed by Trump and his allies.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, meanwhile, is trying to keep Democrats relevant to any legislation that passes Congress, an effort that will depend on Democratic leaders unifying over 200 members, even as the party undergoes a postmortem of their election losses.
When Trump was elected as president in 2016, Republicans also swept Congress, but he still encountered Republican leaders resistant to his policy ideas, as well as a Supreme Court with a liberal majority. Not this time.
When he returns to the White House, Trump will be working with a Republican Party that has been completely transformed by his “MAGA movement” and a Supreme Court dominated by conservative justices, including three that he appointed.
“Republicans in the House and Senate have a mandate,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said earlier this week. “The American people want us to implement and deliver that ‘America First’ agenda.”
Republicans have won enough seats to control the U.S. House, completing the party’s sweep into power and securing their hold on U.S. government alongside President-elect Donald Trump.
A House Republican victory in Arizona, alongside a win in slow-counting California earlier Wednesday, gave the GOP the 218 House victories that make up the majority. Republicans earlier gained control of the Senate from Democrats.
With hard-fought yet thin majorities, Republican leaders are envisioning a mandate to upend the federal government and swiftly implement Trump’s vision for the country.
The incoming president has promised to carry out the country’s largest-ever deportation operation, extend tax breaks, punish his political enemies, seize control of the federal government’s most powerful tools and reshape the U.S. economy. The GOP election victories ensure that Congress will be onboard for that agenda, and Democrats will be almost powerless to check it. |
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A man who threatened to kill Democratic election officials pleads guilty
Court Issues |
2024/10/29 15:50
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A Colorado man repeatedly made online threats about killing the top elections officials in his state and Arizona — both Democrats — as well as a judge and law enforcement agents, according to a guilty plea he entered Wednesday.
Teak Ty Brockbank, 45, acknowledged to a federal judge in Denver that his comments were made “out of fear, hate and anger,” as he sat dressed in a khaki jail uniform before pleading guilty to one count of transmitting interstate threats. He faces up to five years in prison when he’s sentenced on Feb. 3.
Brockbank’s case is the 16th conviction secured by the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force, which Attorney General Merrick Garland formed in 2021 to combat the rise of threats targeting the election community.
Earlier this year, French actor Judith Godrèche called on France’s film industry to “face the truth” on sexual violence and physical abuse during the Cesar Awards ceremony, France’s version of the Oscars. “We can decide that men accused of rape no longer rule the (French) cinema,” Godrèche said.
“As we approach Election Day, the Justice Department’s warning remains clear: anyone who illegally threatens an election worker, official, or volunteer will face the consequences,” Garland said in a statement.
Brockbank did not elaborate Wednesday on the threats he made, and court documents outlining the plea agreement were not immediately made public. His lawyer Thomas Ward declined to comment after the hearing.
However, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Colorado said in statement that the plea agreement included the threats Brockbank made against the election officials — identified in evidence as Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold and former Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, now the state’s governor.
Griswold has been outspoken nationally on elections security and has received threats in the past over her insistence that the 2020 election was secure. Her office says she has gotten more frequent and more violent threats since September 2023, when a group of voters filed a lawsuit attempting to remove former President Donald Trump from Colorado’s primary ballot.
“I refuse to be intimidated and will continue to make sure every eligible Republican, Democrat, and Unaffiliated voter can make their voices heard in our elections,” Griswold said in a statement issued after Brockbank’s plea.
Investigators say Brockbank began to express the view that violence against public officials was necessary in late 2021. According to a detention motion, Brockbank told investigators after his arrest that he’s not a “vigilante” and hoped his posts would simply “wake people up.” He has been jailed since his Aug. 23 arrest in Cortez, Colorado.
Brockbank criticized the government’s response to Tina Peters, a former Colorado county clerk convicted this year for allowing a breach of her election system inspired by false claims about election fraud in the 2020 presidential race, according to court documents. He also was upset in December 2023 after a divided Colorado Supreme Court removed Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot.
In one social media post in August 2022, referring to Griswold and Hobbs, Brockbank said: “Once those people start getting put to death then the rest will melt like snowflakes and turn on each other,” according to copies of the threats included in court documents. In September 2021, Brockbank said Griswold needed to “hang by the neck till she is Dead Dead Dead,” saying he and other “every day people” needed to hold her and others accountable, prosecutors said. |
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Kenya’s deputy president pleads not guilty in impeachment process
Court Issues |
2024/10/22 14:49
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Kenya’s deputy president, who faces impeachment, pleaded not guilty in a senate hearing Wednesday to all allegations including corruption, inciting ethnic divisions and support for anti-government protests that saw demonstrators storm the country’s parliament.
Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, who has called the allegations politically motivated, could be the first sitting deputy president impeached in Kenya.
The case highlights the friction between him and President William Ruto — something that Ruto once vowed to avoid after his past troubled relationship as deputy to Kenya’s previous president, Uhuru Kenyatta.
Gachagua has said he believes the impeachment process has Ruto’s blessing, and has asked legislators to make their decision “without intimidation and coercion.”
The tensions risk introducing more uncertainty for investors and others in East Africa’s commercial hub. Court rulings this week allowed the parliament and senate to proceed with the impeachment debate, despite concerns over irregularities raised by the deputy president’s lawyers.
The impeachment motion was approved in parliament last week and forwarded to the senate. Gachagua’s legal team will have Wednesday and Thursday to cross-examine witnesses, and the senate will vote Thursday evening.
Under the Kenyan Constitution, the removal from office is automatic if approved by both chambers, though Gachagua can challenge the action in court — something he has said he would do.
Kenya’s president has yet to publicly comment on the impeachment process. Early in his presidency, he said he wouldn’t publicly humiliate his deputy.
Ruto, who came to office claiming to represent Kenya’s poorest citizens, has faced widespread criticism for his efforts to raise taxes in an effort to find ways to pay off foreign creditors. But the public opposition led him to shake up his cabinet and back off certain proposals. |
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