In addition to declaring war on Los Angeles and the Trump administration, Gavin Newsom also sued the federal government yesterday to demand inclusion of males in girls sports. Here is my reaction to the lawsuit:
Use of the term "cisgender" is disqualifying, but we're in San Francisco, and things are different there.
California refers to Ed Code 221.5(f), which requires that schools allow kids to use the facilities and play on teams that align with their gender identity instead of sex, as an "equal opportunity law." Which is ironic, because its logical end is the elimination of girls sports.
The State is mad that Harmeet Dhillon, AAG for Civil Rights at the US DOJ, demanded certification from California schools that they will comply with the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution and refrain from implementing CIF Bylaw 300(D), which mirrors Ed Code 221.5(f).
According to the State, forcing girls to compete with males is necessary to "afford[] all students the benefits of an inclusive school environment, including participation in school sports, and prevent[] the serious harms that transgender students would suffer from a discriminatory, exclusionary policy."
What they are getting at here is that it is discriminatory to treat males as males if they *identify* as not male. Doing so violates the Equal Protection Clause, they say! Perhaps a radical leftist judge would agree. But I doubt a logical jurist could reach such a conclusion.
And ultimately, followed to its logical end, this means no more girls sports.
And then we get back to the problematic framing--that there is a "ban." There is no ban. There is a demand that the girls category remain for girls, and that males do not compete in the girls category.
OK now my brain really hurts. According to Bonta and Newsom, complying with the DOJ demand to stop allowing males to compete in girls sports forces school districts to violate the Equal Protection Clause.
Oh AND, the DOJ made this demand because they "hate transgender people." Not because they want fairness for girls. If you say that a "transgender woman" is a man pretending to be a woman, you hate "trans people" according to the state. I predict a First Amendment counter claim.
And now Rob Bonta and Gavin Newsom play doctor. They say a doctor assigns sex at birth!
Now psychologist Rob Bonta and Gavin Newsom say a "transgender identity" is not a mental illness. But if you require a "transgender girl" to participate in boys sports, you are harming his well being!
So they're not mentally ill, but then we get to the suicide stats.
If you protect girls sports from male invasion, you are increasing risk of suicide in males who want to play girls sports by 72%, according to the state.
"Trans girls" can only experience benefits associated with sex separated school athletics by participating on teams with girls, according to the State. I want to be a fly on the wall in @HarmeetKDhillon 's office while reading this.
@HarmeetKDhillon I am getting impatient and need to get to an appointment so I'll try to wrap this up. They're very mad that "trans girls" are called boys.
@HarmeetKDhillon Count One: Dec relief that California law allowing males in women's sports and spaces doesn't violate the EPC.
@HarmeetKDhillon Count II: DOJ didn't have authority to demand certification by LEAs.
@HarmeetKDhillon Count III: California did not have notice that the federal government would require them to keep males out of girls sports to maintain funding under Title 9.
@HarmeetKDhillon Count IV: Defendants can't condition any federal funding on the State or its LEAs refusing to allow K-12 students to participate in athletic programs in accordance with their gender identity, because such a funding condition would violate the Spending Clause.
@HarmeetKDhillon Count V: To the extent that Defendants seek to impose a new condition on California LEAs’ federal funding through the Certification Demand Letter, such a condition violates the Spending Clause and is thus contrary to law and unconstitutional.
In conclusion: buckle up for the showdown between common sense and radical ideology. The setting for round 1 is a San Francisco district court. Round 2 is the 9th Circuit. Final boss: SCOTUS. Newsom says it's deeply unfair for boys to compete with girls, but when it comes time to act he doubles down on unfairness and sues to keep boys in girls sports and spaces.
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I'm skimming the Big Beautiful Bill (that is its actual name) and some things are jumping out at me in the student loan reform section. Congress is calling out "low earning outcomes" programs and restricting use of certain federal funds for those programs.
BTW they're also taxing private university endowments. 😮
8% tax on endowments over 2 million.
SALT cap temporarily raised to 40k, with reductions for people making over 500k annually. It will revert back to 10,000 in 2030.
The main holding of Mahmoud v. Taylor: "In light of the record before us, we hold that the Board’s introduction of the “LGBTQ+-inclusive” storybooks—combined with its decision to withhold notice to parents and to forbid opt outs—substantially interferes with the religious development of their children and imposes the kind of burden on religious exercise that Yoder found unacceptable."
California school districts that prohibit notice and opt outs of gender and sexuality content (usually found in AR 6142.8) are in direct violation of First Amendment as interpreted by the United States Supreme Court in Mahmoud.
On p. 25: "These books carry with them “a very real threat of undermining” the religious beliefs that the parents wish to instill in their children. Yoder, 406 U. S., at 218. Like the compulsory high school education considered in Yoder, these books impose upon children a set of values and beliefs that are “hostile” to their parents’ religious beliefs. Id., at 211. And the books exert upon children a psychological “pressure to conform” to their specific viewpoints. Ibid. The books therefore present the same kind of “objective danger to the free exercise of religion” that we identified in Yoder. Id., at 218."
"These books" means the same books that Newsom, Thurmond, Bonta, and the State of California have been force feeding California children.
From p. 26 "In other contexts, we have recognized the potentially coercive nature of classroom instruction of this kind. “The State exerts great authority and coercive power through” public schools “because of the students’ emulation of teachers as role models and the children’s susceptibility to peer pressure.” ... Young children, like those of petitioners, are often “impressionable” and “implicitly trus[t]” their teachers...
Here, the Board requires teachers to instruct young children using storybooks that explicitly contradict their parents’ religious views, and it encourages the teachers to correct the children and accuse them of being “hurtful” when they express a degree of religious confusion... Such instruction “carries with it precisely the kind of objective danger to the free exercise of religion that the First Amendment was designed to prevent.”"
No more ideological indoctrination on sexuality and gender topics! Once again, this directly conflicts with California's coercive teaching methods on these topics.
I have lost my patience with propagandist media. When I give my time to a journalist and carefully explain legal issues, and the journalist then turns out a propagandist piece based on false information and incredibly biased opinion, it makes me mad. 1/11
When Linda Jacobson at @the74 reached out to me in April to discuss the FERPA complaint I filed with the USDOE, I thought she wanted to write about the hideous concealment scheme implemented by California school districts to hide information from parents. 2/11
I gave her a lot of time on the phone, and followed up with links to documents. In the end, she never read my FERPA complaint--which has been posted online since January. 3/11
"Because existing precedent did not expressly
address Regino’s articulation of her asserted fundamental rights, the district court held that the rights she asserted were not fundamental. This was error. We have never held that a plaintiff asserting a substantive due process claim must show that existing precedent clearly establishes the asserted fundamental right, and we see no reason to import this standard now."
To me, this is great. At issue is the concept of fundamental parental rights in the context of a school transitioning a child without informing the parent.
Last week, Assemblyman Bill Essayli asked the Legislature to investigate allegations by the U.S. Department of Justice against a sitting member who has been accused of soliciting and accepting bribes. 1/x
The plea agreement refers to the member as "Person 20," an elected official who, starting in 2017 and ending in November 2018, was running for State elected office. 2/x
The DOJ alleges Person 20 approached defendant, former Baldwin Park city attorney Robert Tafoya, and asked him to solicit a bribe payment from a company seeking a marijuana permit in the City using the same intermediary scheme utilized by councilman Ricardo Pacheco. 3/x
A thread on the absolute insanity that is the City of Los Angeles Sanctuary policy, and a rebuttal to the local news outlets and activists who are incorrectly telling the public that violent criminals are exempt. 🧵 1/15
The fact that we’re even discussing this at all is maddening. Intentionally subverting efforts to control the border and federal immigration laws should be met with severe penalties. 2/15
I noted in a post “the City of Los Angeles and LAPD Chief declare that they will not cooperate with ICE to deport violent criminals,” lamenting the insanity of passing this ordinance the same week Laken Riley's Venezuelan gang member murderer was convicted on all counts. 3/15