June 27, 2023

Tuesday, June 27, 2023. Annette’s News Roundup.

I think the Roundup makes people feel not so alone.

To read an article excerpted in this Roundup, click on its blue title. Each “blue” article is hyperlinked so you can read the whole article.

Please feel free to share.

Invite at least one other person to subscribe today! buttondown.email/AnnettesNewsRoundup

_________________________

Joe is always busy.

You may have heard. The section of highway I-95 in Pennsylvania which collapsed on June 11 opened on Friday, June 24th.

The prediction was the repair work would take a year. It took 2 weeks.

“We haven’t always had a can-do attitude around here, that we can get big things done, that we can get it done quickly and safely,” Shapiro told reporters Tuesday. “I’m a governor who believes we can get things done again. We’re going to change that attitude of people being surprised to folks expecting excellence from us.”

The team that delivered the results for users of I-95 included the President, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, American workers, American unions.

They got the job done.

Remarks by President Biden on his Administration's Work to Aid I-95 Efforts | Philadelphia, PA | The White House.

THE PRESIDENT:  Hello, folks.  We just finished a — an aerial tour of — survey of I-95 and — from the tanker truck explosion, the damage done.
 
To the people of Philadelphia, I want to say that we’re with you.  We’re going to stay with you and — as this is rebuilt — until it’s totally finished.  And we’re going to try to do that in as quick a time as possible.
 
And I told the governor there’s no more important project right now in the country, as far as I’m concerned.  I’m directing my team — not figuratively, but literally — to move heaven and earth to get it done as soon as humanly possible.
 
So, since Sunday morning, we’ve worked closely with Governor Shapiro, Senators Casey and Fetterman, and Representative Boyle — it’s his district — and Mayor Kenney to provide the necessary federal assistance to support an all-hands-on-deck response to this crisis.  And it is a crisis.
 
And I want to thank these officials for working collaboratively, effectively, efficiently with each other and with our federal team.
 
I also want to thank the fi- — first responders who dealt with the immediate aftermath and the workers on site.  We saw some of them today as we flew over the site.  They’ve been working 24/7 to clear the debris.
 
Within hours of the crash, officials from the U.S. Department of Transportation were on the ground, supporting Pennsylvania officials to get the site cleared and be able to start the rebuilding.
 
The immediate release of $3 million — it was called “quick release” emergency funds — were made to offset the cost of repairs.
 
This is just a down payment, obviously.  It’s a lot more than that.  You’re going to be getting a lot more federal funding out the door in the coming weeks.
 
Additionally, Pennsylvania has already received $8.9 billion from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, including $6.5 billion for transportation projects, which gives the governor some flexibility to move existing state funds to this project right away, knowing that this money is in the — in the bank.
 
Also, union crews have been hard at work 24/7 since the crash.  Operating engineers, the laborers, the carpenters, cement finishers, teamsters, and the ironworkers are going to help rebuild.  And they’re doing — they’re doing it right now.
 
And folks here know that the crews finished demolition on Thursday, ahead of schedule, and now they’re working on emergency repairs to quickly and safely reopen the roadway to traffic.
 
The federal government — I’ve committed we’re going to reimburse 100 percent of this phase of the work in well over the first 200 days.  And then, after that, 90 percent of the work.
 
We’ll be here until the end.  We won’t leave until it’s finished.
 
And that’s why I want to — I asked Mayor Landrieu, who runs my operation relative to the infrastructure legislation, to lead the effort.  He knows, as mayor, what it takes — Mayor Kenney, as you know — to get this done.  He — New Orleans never had any problems like tornados and hurricanes and floods and the like.  But all kidding aside, he’s on it — on this every day.
 
We’re using materials made of recycled glass, manufactured here in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.  And the design of the project is incredibly innovative in order to get this work done in record time.
 
We’re also working with local officials to redirect traffic, minimize congestion, and — along alternative routes.
 
Look, I grew up not very far from here, just across the line in Pennsylvania — I mean from Pennsylvania — in Claymont, Delaware.  I know how important this stretch of highway is not just to Philly but to the entire Northeast Corridor and to my home state.
 
Over 150,000 vehicles travel on it every day, including 14,000 — 14,000 trucks. 
 
It’s critical.  It’s critical to our economy, and it’s critical to our quality of life.
 
We’re going to continue to do everything we can within our power to get this back open as quickly and easily as possible.
 
We’re not leaving until it’s done.  And we’re going to get this done, God willing, in record time.
 
I’m looking forward to hearing more from the folks on the ground in — in a moment.
 
And now, I’m going to turn it over to the governor, who is doing one hell of a job.  He gets tired of my calls, I think, but he’s doing a hell of a job.
 
Thank you.
 
Gov.
 
11:41 A.M. EDT

Statement From President Biden on Reopening I-95 | The White House

When I visited Philadelphia on Saturday and met with local officials and union workers, I made clear: my Administration would move heaven and earth to reopen I-95 as soon as possible.

Thanks to the grit and determination of operating engineers, laborers, cement finishers, carpenters, teamsters, and so many other proud union workers doing shifts around the clock, I-95 is reopening. And it’s ahead of schedule.

I want to thank Governor Shapiro for his great work and leadership, as well as Senator Casey, Senator Fetterman, Congressman Boyle, Mayor Kenney, and my team including Senior Advisor and Infrastructure Coordinator Landrieu, Secretary Buttigieg, FHWA Administrator Bhatt and many others. This emergency repair is 100% federally funded and all approvals were given as quick as possible. We also deployed officials from the U.S. Department of Transportation to the crash site within hours – to help fast-track the effort.  We are proving that when we work together, there is nothing we cannot do.

I grew up in Claymont, Delaware not far from the damaged stretch of I-95. I know how important it is to people’s quality of life, the local economy, and the 150,000 vehicles that travel on it every day. That’s why I’m so proud of the hard-working men and women on site who put their heads down, stayed at it, and got I-95 reopened in record time.

This is an important step forward. We’ll be here to provide whatever it takes to keep the permanent repairs on track.  

###

_________________________

Joe and Kamala are always busy.

Touch to watch the Vice President. 👇

_________________________

SCOTUS -yesterday and presently.

Yesterday.

Today (kind of, really June 23rd) - Supreme Court supports the President on immigration.

U.S. Supreme court immigration ruling reinstates Biden's enforcement guidelines : NPR

The case concerned the administration's effort to set guidelines for whom immigration authorities can target for arrest and deportation. Texas and Louisiana had sued to block the guidelines.

And this happened too.

_________________________


FLOTUS is always busy.

Keep in mind. The parade commemorative of Stonewall was Sunday, but the anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising is tomorrow.

_________________________

Is Title IX going to be in trouble?

The Legal Foundation of Women’s Sports Is Under Fire.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/25/opinion/womens-sports-under-fire.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

What is the legal foundation for women’s sports? It’s a simple question with a surprisingly complex answer. After all, the most potent federal statute supporting parallel men’s and women’s sports leagues would appear — on its face — to also prohibit separate leagues. Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 states, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”

The act contains explicit exceptions — such as permitting fraternities and sororities and beauty pageants and protecting the liberty of religious educational institutions — but its language tracks that of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VI prohibits race discrimination in federally funded educational programs using virtually identical language, declaring, “No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”

In the realm of athletics, however, these two statutes have traditionally worked in remarkably different ways. Race segregation in athletic programs is a legal and cultural taboo. There are no legally segregated white and Black football leagues, for example, and if a school decided to create a Black league and a white league, it would face an immediate civil rights complaint. Excluding a football player from a team simply because of his race is unlawful discrimination.

But this is not the case when it comes to sex. The result of Title IX was not the large-scale creation of coed sports leagues, where men and women have an equal opportunity to compete in the same events, where the best man or woman makes the team, and the best man or woman wins the race. Instead, Title IX has resulted in the expansion of women’s sports into an enormous, separate and parallel apparatus, where women by the millions compete against one another, winning women’s titles in women’s leagues.

Why this difference? Why have two statutes with such similar language created such different realities? Because sex is substantially different from race, and treating sex the same as race would be a profound injustice for women in sports.

Let’s go back to the language of the statute itself, which speaks in terms of both “participation” and “benefits.” If you treat people of different races the same, people of all races can both participate and receive the benefits of participation in athletics. If you treat people of different sexes the same, the reality is very different.

The evidence is overwhelming that there is a significant average difference between male and female athletic performance, including at the most elite levels and even when female athletes receive funding, training and nutrition comparable to that of the best male athletes. In a 2020 article in The Duke Journal of Gender Law and Policy, the authors, Doriane Lambelet Coleman, Michael J. Joyner and Donna Lopiano, observed that “depending on the sport and event, the gap between the best male and female performances remains somewhere between 7 to 25 percent; and even the best female is consistently surpassed by many elite and nonelite males, including both boys and men.”

The authors walk through a number of examples of disparate performance, but here’s one: Vashti Cunningham is one of the best female high jumpers in the world. Her best jump places her in the world’s top 10 among females. But in 2019 alone, 760 American high school boys jumped higher than she did when she was in high school.

Citing this fact is not intended in any way to denigrate women or women’s sports. (One of the great joys of my life has been watching my two daughters play sports.) But I raise such facts because they’re legally important.

This month, an en banc panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit heard arguments in a prominent case about whether Title IX prohibits transgender girls from participating in women’s sports. The case involves claims by four former Connecticut female high school track athletes who lost races to two transgender (natal male) athletes, including state championships.

The plaintiffs in the case sought a declaration that the state sports league’s policy permitting transgender girls to compete in women’s athletics violated Title IX by “failing to provide competitive opportunities that effectively accommodate the abilities of girls” and failing to provide “equal treatment, benefits and opportunities for girls in athletic competition.” The plaintiffs argued that Title IX was intended to grant women and girls the “chance to be champions,” not just a right to compete.

Last year, a three-judge panel of the appellate court rejected the plaintiffs’ claims. The panel didn’t reject the “chance to be champions” theory entirely, but Judge Denny Chin, writing for the court, said that the plaintiffs had not claimed “an injury in fact” (and thus lacked standing to bring their claims) because “all four plaintiffs regularly competed at state track championships as high school athletes, where plaintiffs had the opportunity to compete for state titles in different events.” Indeed, as the court notes, one of the plaintiffs even beat the transgender athletes in a 100-meter race in 2019. Under the court’s reasoning, the chance to compete was a “chance to be a champion.”

But then something unusual happened. The entire appeals court asked to hear the case. This month, the court heard oral arguments, and a decision is expected soon. The oral arguments were dominated by questions of standing — whether a loss of a championship should be considered a legally recognizable injury, an injury that courts should or could address.

To be clear, the question was not whether the transgender girls did anything wrong — casting any aspersions on their participation in the races would be profoundly unjust. They ran the race in accordance with the rules of the race. The question was whether the rules were wrong.

The transgender athletes intervened in the case, with the aid of the A.C.L.U., and argued that “Title IX does not require sex-separated teams or an equal number of trophies for male and female athletes.” They emphasized that the plaintiffs “repeatedly outperformed” the transgender athletes “in direct competition.”

But the argument is not that transgender athletes will always win, but rather that if schools replace sex with gender identity as the relevant criterion for participation, then the statutory sex-based promises of participation and benefits in educational programs will be undermined. (Gender identity, as the A.C.L.U. defined it, is a “medical term for a person’s ‘deeply felt, inherent sense’ of belonging to a particular sex.”)

After all, when we survey the performance gap between male and female athletes, is that gap best explained by the differences in gender identity between the competitors or the differences that are inherent in biological sex? And if those differences are best explained by biological sex rather than gender identity, then any rule that wipes out biological sex as the determining factor in eligibility will undermine both the practical and legal basis for women’s sports.

I’m not a catastrophist. I hate rhetoric that declares that women’s sports will be “destroyed” by the inclusion of a small number of trans women in athletic competition. I hate even more any demonization or disparagement of the trans athletes themselves. When they compete according to the rules of the sport, they are doing nothing wrong. But legal definitions do matter, especially when they are rooted in hard facts, such as the systematic, documented performance gap between the sexes.

All people are created equal, and possess equal moral worth, but we are not all created the same. To protect equal opportunity, there are times when the law should recognize differences. And in the realm of athletics, if we want to both secure and continue the remarkable advances women have made in the 51 years since Congress passed Title IX, it’s important to remember that sex still matters, and sex distinctions in the law should remain. (Guest op-ed, David French, New York Times).

_________________________

Some religions support abortion rights.

The sleeper legal strategy that could topple abortion bans .

WEBSTER GROVES, Mo. — Revs. Jan Barnes and Krista Taves have logged hundreds of hours standing outside abortion clinics across Missouri and Illinois, going back to the mid-1980s. But unlike other clergy members around the country, they never pleaded with patients to turn back.

The sight of the two women in clerical collars holding up messages of love and support for people terminating a pregnancy “so infuriated the anti-abortion protesters that they would heap abuse on us and it drew the abuse away from the women,” recalled Taves, a minister at Eliot Unitarian Chapel in Kirkwood, Missouri, as she sat on a couch at Barnes’ stately church in this quiet suburb of St. Louis.

“I thought: ‘Whoa, these people really are not messing around.’ But then I thought, ‘Well, I’m not messing around either.’”

So when Missouri’s abortion ban took effect after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, Barnes and Taves decided to fight back. Along with rabbis and ministers across several denominations, they joined a first-of-its-kind lawsuit arguing Missouri blurred the line between church and state, imposed a particular Christian idea of when life begins over the beliefs of other denominations, and threatened their ability to practice their religions.

As the nation nears the one year anniversary of the fall of Roe, the Missouri case is one of nearly a dozen challenges to abortion restrictions filed by clergy members and practitioners of everything from Judaism to Satanism that are now making their way through state and federal courts — a strategy that aims to restore access to the procedure and chip away at the assumption that all religious people oppose abortion.

In fact, many of the lawsuits are wielding religious protection laws enacted by anti-abortion state officials to target those officials’ own restrictions on the procedure.

In Indiana, a group of Jewish, Muslim and other religious plaintiffs sued over the state’s near-total abortion ban. Their argument: that it violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act signed into law in 2015 by then-Gov. Mike Pence. A lower court judge sided with them in December and blocked the state’s ban from taking effect — the most significant win the religious challengers have notched so far.

Then, earlier this month, the Indiana judge granted the challengers class action status, meaning a win for them could apply to anyone in the state whose religion supports abortion access in cases prohibited by state law.

Even if the Religious Freedom law was intended by Mike Pence to discriminate against people, we thought: ‘Let’s use this for good instead,’” said Amalia Shifriss, a leader of Hoosier Jews for Choice, one of the Indiana plaintiffs. “It brings me joy to think how much this must upset him.”

A Pence spokesperson characterized the lawsuit as a “pursuit to legalize abortion up to and even after birth. They added: “It will probably strike Americans as pretty tasteless to call the latest iteration of their abortion crusade as a cause ‘for good’ and a source of ‘joy.’”

Conservatives with a history of mounting their own religious challenges to state laws dismiss the effort as doomed to fail, arguing that even if people can prove the abortion bans violate their beliefs, it won’t be enough to halt enforcement.

“As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg explained in one Free Exercise case, the right to swing your arm ends just where the other man’s nose begins,” said Denise Harle, senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal group that has filed briefs defending state abortion restrictions, including from faith-based challenges in Wyoming and Florida. “Even if you have religious freedom, there is a line at which you are doing actual deadly harm and destroying human life, so it’s appropriate to limit what can be done in the name of religion.”

But with oral arguments and rulings in several of the cases expected this summer and fall, other legal experts say there’s a solid chance the challengers can persuade courts to grant religious exemptions to abortion bans if not strike them down altogether.

Shlomo C. Pill, a lecturer at the Emory University School of Law who specializes in religious rights, said the lawsuits have “a strong basis and should be successful,” particularly after a series of Covid-19-related cases paved the way for more religious exemptions. Pill pointed to multiple Supreme Court decisions during the pandemic that said whenever states create secular exemptions to laws — like indoor gathering restrictions or vaccine mandates — they have to justify not offering religious exemptions as well.

“So the fact that secularly-motivated exemptions to abortion bans exist — such as for rape and incest — means the legislature could also have to offer similar exemptions for people with religious objections,” he said.

‘Real chutzpa’

Most of the cases, including those in Indiana, Kentucky, and Texas, are demanding exemptions from the bans for people whose religions support abortion rights. But a few, including the lawsuits in Florida, Missouri and Wyoming, are attempting to have the bans struck down entirely.

In Missouri, the plaintiffs argue that because lawmakers put religious language in the text of the abortion ban itself and made explicit religious appeals when voting on it, they violated the Establishment Clause.

“It took real chutzpah for the legislators to voice their own religious motivations, to wantonly and shamelessly purport to know what God wants or doesn’t want and to enshrine that into law,” said Rabbi James Bennett of Congregation Shaare Emeth in St. Louis, another plaintiff in the Missouri lawsuit. “They’re entitled to their interpretation of when life begins, but they’re not entitled to have the exclusive one.”

Last week, the group faced off in a St. Louis courtroom with state officials who are pushing to have the case thrown out. A ruling could come as soon as this summer.

In Florida, clergy representing Reform Judaism, Buddhism, the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist Church sued in state court both to overturn the state’s 15-week abortion ban, and — if that fails — to secure religious exemptions. Their case makes free speech arguments as well — claiming that state bans on “aiding and abetting” abortions are muzzling clergy members who want to offer counseling to parishioners grappling with whether to terminate a pregnancy.

In Kentucky, three Jewish women are arguing that the state’s near-total abortion ban violates their belief that life only begins when a baby takes its first breath, saying it’s preventing them from pursuing pregnancy through in-vitro fertilization.

“To have someone else’s religious belief that an embryo is a human being imposed on me in a way that’s so personal, that prevents me from growing my family, is just rude and un-American,” Lisa Sobel, the lead plaintiff in that case, said in an interview. Sobel had one child through IVF and was planning to have another before Dobbs made her and her fellow plaintiffs fear prosecution. “Discarding non-viable embryos could now be criminalized, or I could miscarry and not know what type of medical care I would get or whether I would be investigated for causing the miscarriage,” she said.

The Satanic Temple is in federal court challenging abortion bans in Texas, Idaho and Indiana, arguing that the laws infringe upon their congregants’ belief in bodily autonomy and right to practice abortion as a religious ritual. A Texas District Court ruled against the Satanists last fall, saying they didn’t prove the need for a temporary restraining order blocking enforcement of the ban against its members. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is poised to rule on the challenge in the coming weeks.

These cases are unlikely to restore abortion rights at the federal level given the weaker religious rights protections in the U.S. Constitution compared to many state constitutions as well as the federal judiciary’s rightward tilt.

Elizabeth Reiner Platt, director of the Law, Rights, and Religion Project at Columbia Law School, stressed that the Supreme Court has a record of protecting the religious rights of some groups and not others, pointing to its back-to-back decisions in 2017 upholding the right of a Christian baker to refuse to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding and allowing the right of the Trump administration to deny entry to travelers from majority-Muslim countries.

“While I don’t like to read the tea leaves, I don’t have any hope that the current Supreme Court would, after ruling that there was no due process right or privacy right to abortion, would find a right under the Free Exercise Clause or the Establishment Clause,” Platt said.

Still, she and other legal experts see the state-level religious challenges as one of the best chances abortion-rights advocates have to chip away at bans on the procedure.

“The arguments are quite powerful for creating religious exemptions in the reproductive context under First Amendment doctrine and under state laws for Free Exercise,” said Micah Schwartzman, director of the Karsh Center for Law and Democracy at the University of Virginia Law School. “What judges do with them is another story.”

In order to succeed, these lawsuits must prove: that the right to an abortion is central to the religious practices of the people suing; that they are sincere in their beliefs and have a track record of observing them; and that state abortion bans make it impossible for them to live according to their faith.

The cases challenging abortion restrictions in their entirety face an additional hurdle: proving that state officials stepped over the line separating church and state in crafting the bans.

“We have a really strong Establishment Clause argument because it’s clear that these bills were passed for religious reasons,” said Marci Hamilton, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Pennsylvania who is part of the legal team representing clergy in Florida. “The 15-week bill was signed in a church and members of the state legislature repeatedly referred to God when arguing why this had to be done.”

Other experts are skeptical, however, of the strength of these arguments.

“There are a million-and-one other explanations a state could give for their abortion restrictions,” Pill said. “They could argue it’s a matter of secular conscience, for example. And once you have any kind of secular justification, an Establishment Clause argument becomes more difficult.”

For their part, the states defending their abortion laws and the conservative legal groups supporting them have to prove that they have a compelling interest — unrelated to religion — in protecting fetal life, that they’re using the least restrictive means to protect that interest, and that the challengers’ claims are speculative and premature because none of them have actually sought an abortion or been blocked from obtaining one since the laws took effect.

“I think these are much more like political stunts than they are viable court cases,” said Lori Windham, a vice president and senior counsel at the Becket Fund, the legal firm behind the Hobby Lobby case that secured a Supreme Court ruling allowing many employers to opt out of covering certain forms of birth control for their workers due to a religious objection. “You can have a sincere political belief or policy preference, and it can be passionate and deeply held, but that doesn’t make it a religious practice.”

Citing scripture

Judges have historically avoided questioning the sincerity of someone’s religious beliefs, but Becket and other groups have filed amicus briefs that do so.

To combat these accusations, the challengers point to scripture that lays out a case for abortion rights as well as support from religious leaders for their claims.

The Jewish challengers in Kentucky cite religious texts including the Mishnah that say life begins when a baby takes its first breath, not when it is conceived, and if medical issues arise during pregnancy, the pregnant person’s life “comes before the life of [the child].” They also submitted to the court letters from rabbis arguing that current state exemptions for life-threatening medical emergencies aren’t enough, saying Jewish law permits, and in some cases requires, an abortion when there is “a risk of poverty, abuse, addiction, or mental illness.”

The case challenging Missouri’s ban cites the United Church of Christ’s vote in 1971 to acknowledge the right to abortion and members’ “autonomy to determine what happens to their own bodies,” as well as the Episcopal Church’s “long-standing opposition” to any government attempt to infringe on reproductive choices.

“There’s a tendency to see these cases as kind of a clever, legal switcheroo. Like, here’s a way to take these laws that are often thought of as very conservative and use them to protect abortion rights,” Platt said. “But the idea of reproductive rights as a religious liberty issue is absolutely not something that came from lawyers. It’s how faith communities themselves have been talking about their approach to reproductive rights for literally decades.” (Politico).

_________________________

Jen Psaki got a prime interview with Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi. 👇

Watch segments. 👇

Watch the whole interview.👇

Here is the full interview with Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi on Dobbs anniversary, SCOTUS, House GOP and Donald Trump.


_________________________