ACLU: Don’t Let the Supreme Court Open the Door to More Discrimination Against LGBTQ People

Don’t Let the Supreme Court Open the Door to More Discrimination Against LGBTQ People

The Supreme Court will soon hear oral arguments in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, a case about whether governments can be forced to give taxpayer funding to faith-based organizations that provide government services in ways that discriminate against LGBTQ people.
If that sentence took you a minute to unravel, and then you couldn’t quite believe you read it right — well, you’re not alone. But unfortunately, it’s true.

The Fulton case, which will be heard on Nov. 4, involves the foster care system. Catholic Social Services had a contract from Philadelphia to provide services to foster youth, including screening foster parents. When the city learned CSS insisted on following its own religious screening criteria — which rejected same-sex couples as foster parents — the city didn’t renew its contract. CSS then sued the city.

In a similar case, a Protestant organization contracted to provide these services declined to place foster youth with foster parents who were not Protestants, and specifically discriminated against Jewish and Catholic families. Child welfare experts agree that these types of policies lead to more foster youth spending more time in group homes, because the agencies are turning away eligible foster parents.

But the implications of the case go far beyond the foster care system. Local, state, and federal governments often give taxpayer dollars to private agencies to provide government services. Many of these private agencies are faith-based. For example, the U.S. State Department contracts with nine organizations to provide resettlement services to refugees, including housing. Six of the nine are faith-based, and five of those six are Christian. Faith-based organizations have government contracts to provide everything from public assistance to substance use treatment, from childcare to shelters. Many of these faith-based organizations do not discriminate and follow best practices in their field to put the needs of those receiving their services first. And that’s how it should be.

In the past, the Supreme Court has said that governments can’t deny an organization funding just because the organization is religious. But our opponents in Fulton want something much more than the ability to compete for government funding on equal footing with secular organizations. They want a right for religious organizations to receive government funding to provide government services, even if they selectively refuse to provide those services and discriminate in violation of contract terms and the law. This isn’t religious liberty. It’s government-funded discrimination against the most vulnerable in our society, excused because some want to impose their religious beliefs on others.
If the Supreme Court agrees with Catholic Social Services, it is the people who are most marginalized who will suffer.

Middle class and wealthy people for the most part get to choose whether and how to engage with faith-based organizations. Working class and poor people do not. The possibilities for harm are sweeping, and there would be no clear stopping point. If you stop by your local church on your way home from work to apply for food stamps, they might stop processing your application as soon as they learn you are pregnant and unmarried. If you are a transgender woman with no housing and no place to stay, you could be turned away from a federally-funded homeless shelter run by a faith-based organization. You could end up sleeping on the street in the freezing cold because of who you are.

If you were told you had to complete a drug treatment program funded by the state government to avoid jail time, that program could insist that you embrace Christianity to complete it. You might not be allowed to bring your kids to a taxpayer-funded daycare center because you have a partner who is the same sex as you or a different religion than you. If you are a high school student interested in an after-school program paid for by your local government, you could be rejected because you are Mormon or bisexual.
These same communities are under attack in many other ways. For example, the Trump administration recently proposed a regulation designed to allow federally-funded homeless shelters to turn people away because they are transgender, or because they don’t match sex stereotypes. If this proposal were to become law, it would embolden life-threatening discrimination against some of the most vulnerable people in the nation, and lead to more early deaths of trans people.

The wrong decision in Fulton could do the same. And because a ruling in Fulton would be based on the constitution, Congress would not be able to fix it. But that’s not a reason to give up — it’s a reason to fight harder for our communities in every way we can, both before the court’s decision and after. We must insist that the court not bend the constitution to force the government to withhold services from some of the most vulnerable in our communities. We must fight for the economic security of LGBTQ people, whether that is through passing the Equality Act, decriminalizing sex work, or providing emergency COVID-19 rent relief. And we must fight for genuine religious liberty for all.

Published October 26, 2020 at 05:11PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2HAIimC

Sudan : Staff-Monitored Program-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Sudan

Sudan : Staff-Monitored Program-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Sudan
Published October 23, 2020 at 07:00AM
Read more at imf.org

ACLU: Attacks on Trans Athletes are Also an Attack on Intersex People

Attacks on Trans Athletes are Also an Attack on Intersex People

Intersex people make up as much as 1.7 percent of the population and are born with bodies that differ from what others might think of as “typically” male or female. Although being intersex isn’t that rare, this population is widely misunderstood and underrepresented, much like the trans community. Racist colonial erasure, late-stage capitalism, and the medical industrial complex have combined to create implicit assumptions (and often explicit recommendations) with which trans and intersex groups are all-too familiar. We are told, usually by cis and non-intersex people, there’s only one right way to have a body — and that that body should be as normatively close to binary and cis as possible.

At interACT: Advocates for Intersex Youth, we are working hard with our partners at Patterson Belknap LLP to prepare our friend-of-the-court brief to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. This follows the district court blocking an Idaho law that targeted trans student athletes and sought to exclude trans and intersex women and girls from school sports. We’re hopeful the judges of the Ninth Circuit recognize why it is so important to stop this law from going into effect.

As we prepare our brief, we also approach Intersex Awareness Day on October 26. It is particularly important on this day to recognize why intersex people continue to show up in support of the trans community and in opposition to the unrelenting efforts to deny trans people their rights. Intersex groups and the advocates who work on their behalf joined the effort to oppose HB 500 — Idaho’s law attacking transgender student athletes — not only because many intersex people are also trans (and vice versa), and not only becase the proposed approach to sex testing in sports violates the rights of the intersex community as well.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/XeL5R5N_3L8

Intersex people are fighting this fight too because the community viscerally understands what’s at stake. As the complaint filed by ACLU clients Lindsay Hecox and Jane Doe explains, “Often, children discovered to be intersex in infancy are subjected to nonconsensual, harmful, and irreversible ‘normalizing’ surgical interventions, including reducing the size of the clitoris, creating a vaginal opening, and removing hormone-producing gonads in an attempt to erase their intersex differences based on notions of what is ‘normal’ for boys’ or girls’ bodies.” This is precisely the type of abuse (and it is abuse: this is deemed a form of torture by the United Nations) that flows from anti-trans bills like HB 500. There are intersex students in every school district in Idaho who in infancy survived the trauma of these surgeries, only to still be considered not “female” enough to participate on women and girls’ teams.

The plaintiffs in this case are women who were fortunate enough to have medical decision-making power over their own bodies, at least in the realm of trans-related care, and who rightfully deserve to engage in college sports without anyone scrutinizing their sex characteristics. No one should be told by a surgeon or a coach or anyone else that their clitoris is too big to be female, or that their chromosomes are more real than their gender, or that their hormones are too “masculine” to allow them to compete as who they are. Trans and intersex communities have allied together because we know these are false boundaries invented to exclude already oppressed communities, usually along racist and ableist lines. Our bodies may transcend common conceptions of sex and gender, yet we exist within these systems (like sports, medicine, and institutional settings) every day and most often leave them better than when we found them.

Simplistic, bigoted approaches to trans and intersex people in these settings succeed because of intellectual and moral laziness. The refusal by the cis community to creatively imagine solutions isn’t surprising because they operate everyday within systems that prioritize cis-ness. But what’s especially egregious is when attempts are made to change the  rules of the system with the specific intent of further harming groups that are already targeted in virtually all other areas, as in the case of HB 500. 

The appropriate response when trans and intersex athletes try to work within an already flawed system is gracious celebration, rather than exclusion and derision. It’s telling that the resources in support of HB 500 are funneled toward litigation to appeal to the far right rather than actually building up women’s sports. These attacks are never about meaningfully protecting women. 

The challenges faced by the plaintiffs in this case and those they represent are considerable already. As we celebrate Intersex Awareness Day on the 26th, let’s remember that a lack of awareness about trans and intersex lived realities — and the fact that many of us are actually joyful about our trans and intersex bodies — has allowed a cloud of shame and stigma to conceal what no lawsuit can change. Trans and intersex people are a part of the vast and diverse beauty of human existence. We will continue to improve upon tired understandings of sex and gender for as long as these systems exist. 

Alesdair H. Ittelson is the Legal Director at interACT: Advocates for Intersex Youth, the nation’s largest and oldest organization working to protect the rights of people born with variations in sex characteristics. 

Published October 23, 2020 at 10:12PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/35qR9PI

ACLU: Attacks on Trans Athletes are Also an Attack on Intersex People

Attacks on Trans Athletes are Also an Attack on Intersex People

Intersex people make up as much as 1.7 percent of the population and are born with bodies that differ from what others might think of as “typically” male or female. Although being intersex isn’t that rare, this population is widely misunderstood and underrepresented, much like the trans community. Racist colonial erasure, late-stage capitalism, and the medical industrial complex have combined to create implicit assumptions (and often explicit recommendations) with which trans and intersex groups are all-too familiar. We are told, usually by cis and non-intersex people, there’s only one right way to have a body — and that that body should be as normatively close to binary and cis as possible.

At interACT: Advocates for Intersex Youth, we are working hard with our partners at Patterson Belknap LLP to prepare our friend-of-the-court brief to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. This follows the district court blocking an Idaho law that targeted trans student athletes and sought to exclude trans and intersex women and girls from school sports. We’re hopeful the judges of the Ninth Circuit recognize why it is so important to stop this law from going into effect.

As we prepare our brief, we also approach Intersex Awareness Day on October 26. It is particularly important on this day to recognize why intersex people continue to show up in support of the trans community and in opposition to the unrelenting efforts to deny trans people their rights. Intersex groups and the advocates who work on their behalf joined the effort to oppose HB 500 — Idaho’s law attacking transgender student athletes — not only because many intersex people are also trans (and vice versa), and not only becase the proposed approach to sex testing in sports violates the rights of the intersex community as well.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/XeL5R5N_3L8

Intersex people are fighting this fight too because the community viscerally understands what’s at stake. As the complaint filed by ACLU clients Lindsay Hecox and Jane Doe explains, “Often, children discovered to be intersex in infancy are subjected to nonconsensual, harmful, and irreversible ‘normalizing’ surgical interventions, including reducing the size of the clitoris, creating a vaginal opening, and removing hormone-producing gonads in an attempt to erase their intersex differences based on notions of what is ‘normal’ for boys’ or girls’ bodies.” This is precisely the type of abuse (and it is abuse: this is deemed a form of torture by the United Nations) that flows from anti-trans bills like HB 500. There are intersex students in every school district in Idaho who in infancy survived the trauma of these surgeries, only to still be considered not “female” enough to participate on women and girls’ teams.

The plaintiffs in this case are women who were fortunate enough to have medical decision-making power over their own bodies, at least in the realm of trans-related care, and who rightfully deserve to engage in college sports without anyone scrutinizing their sex characteristics. No one should be told by a surgeon or a coach or anyone else that their clitoris is too big to be female, or that their chromosomes are more real than their gender, or that their hormones are too “masculine” to allow them to compete as who they are. Trans and intersex communities have allied together because we know these are false boundaries invented to exclude already oppressed communities, usually along racist and ableist lines. Our bodies may transcend common conceptions of sex and gender, yet we exist within these systems (like sports, medicine, and institutional settings) every day and most often leave them better than when we found them.

Simplistic, bigoted approaches to trans and intersex people in these settings succeed because of intellectual and moral laziness. The refusal by the cis community to creatively imagine solutions isn’t surprising because they operate everyday within systems that prioritize cis-ness. But what’s especially egregious is when attempts are made to change the  rules of the system with the specific intent of further harming groups that are already targeted in virtually all other areas, as in the case of HB 500. 

The appropriate response when trans and intersex athletes try to work within an already flawed system is gracious celebration, rather than exclusion and derision. It’s telling that the resources in support of HB 500 are funneled toward litigation to appeal to the far right rather than actually building up women’s sports. These attacks are never about meaningfully protecting women. 

The challenges faced by the plaintiffs in this case and those they represent are considerable already. As we celebrate Intersex Awareness Day on the 26th, let’s remember that a lack of awareness about trans and intersex lived realities — and the fact that many of us are actually joyful about our trans and intersex bodies — has allowed a cloud of shame and stigma to conceal what no lawsuit can change. Trans and intersex people are a part of the vast and diverse beauty of human existence. We will continue to improve upon tired understandings of sex and gender for as long as these systems exist. 

Alesdair H. Ittelson is the Legal Director at interACT: Advocates for Intersex Youth, the nation’s largest and oldest organization working to protect the rights of people born with variations in sex characteristics. 

Published October 23, 2020 at 05:42PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/35qR9PI

ACLU: The Supreme Court Case That Could Jeopardize LGBTQ Rights

The Supreme Court Case That Could Jeopardize LGBTQ Rights

In March 2018, the city of Philadelphia learned that two of the agencies it contracted with to provide foster care services would not, based on religious objection, accept same-sex couples as foster parents. The city told the agencies their contracts with the city were in jeopardy unless they complied with basic nondiscrimination requirements.

While one of the agencies agreed to comply, the other — Catholic Social Services (CSS) — refused. Instead, CSS sued the city, claiming the Constitution gives it the right to opt out of the nondiscrimination requirement. After a lower court and a federal circuit court ruled in the city’s favor, CSS appealed to the Supreme Court. The case, Fulton v City of Philadelphia, has implications not only for the future of foster care, but for the protection of all people from discrimination in the alleged name of religion. Arguments are set for November 4th. 

Louise Melling, Deputy Legal Director of the ACLU, joined the podcast this week to discuss what’s at stake in Fulton.

“The ACLU has no question about the right of people and organizations to have their beliefs and to practice their beliefs, but it’s to practice your beliefs as long as they don’t hurt others,” said Melling. “And in this context, if Catholic Social Services can practice its beliefs in terms of turning away families because they’re same-sex, it is hurting others.”

https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/915607339

Published October 23, 2020 at 09:15PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/35rnrdl

ACLU: The Supreme Court Case That Could Jeopardize LGBTQ Rights

The Supreme Court Case That Could Jeopardize LGBTQ Rights

In March 2018, the city of Philadelphia learned that two of the agencies it contracted with to provide foster care services would not, based on religious objection, accept same-sex couples as foster parents. The city told the agencies their contracts with the city were in jeopardy unless they complied with basic nondiscrimination requirements.

While one of the agencies agreed to comply, the other — Catholic Social Services (CSS) — refused. Instead, CSS sued the city, claiming the Constitution gives it the right to opt out of the nondiscrimination requirement. After a lower court and a federal circuit court ruled in the city’s favor, CSS appealed to the Supreme Court. The case, Fulton v City of Philadelphia, has implications not only for the future of foster care, but for the protection of all people from discrimination in the alleged name of religion. Arguments are set for November 4th. 

Louise Melling, Deputy Legal Director of the ACLU, joined the podcast this week to discuss what’s at stake in Fulton.

“The ACLU has no question about the right of people and organizations to have their beliefs and to practice their beliefs, but it’s to practice your beliefs as long as they don’t hurt others,” said Melling. “And in this context, if Catholic Social Services can practice its beliefs in terms of turning away families because they’re same-sex, it is hurting others.”

https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/915607339

Published October 23, 2020 at 04:45PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/35rnrdl

ACLU: At the Polls, Episode 6: Your Voting Questions, Answered

At the Polls, Episode 6: Your Voting Questions, Answered

When we launched the podcast miniseries, At the Polls, we asked listeners to send us their questions about voting this year. While over 44 million people have already cast their ballots, some questions remain about our rights and options as voters. Listen to the full podcast for your most frequent voter questions, answered.  

https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/913781386

Should I deliver my ballot by hand or by mail? 

All voters should make a voting plan that works best for them, whether that means mailing their ballot, putting it in a drop box, or delivering it by hand. First, voters should make sure they know the deadlines in their state. Some states require all ballots to be back in the hands of election officials on Election Day. In others, your ballot must be postmarked by a certain date. Rules vary across states, so look up deadlines in your state as you decide how to cast your ballot — and return it early. 

How do I make sure my mail-in ballot is counted? 

In 45 states, voters can track their ballots online to see if it has been received. In other states — Texas, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, and Mississippi — some local election officials track ballots. To see if your state offers ballot tracking, check out aclu.org/voter under “voting tips.”

If I use a voting machine, how can I confirm that my vote has not been altered?

There have never been any occurrences of widespread fraud in American elections. Elections are administered at the county and municipal level throughout the country, and polling places are staffed by professional election administrators whose job is to make sure your ballot is counted and your voice is heard. Further, most jurisdictions in the U.S. use paper ballots, ballot marking devices, or machines that provide a voter with a verified paper trail that they can use to make sure their vote was recorded properly.

I’ve requested an absentee ballot. Can I change my mind and vote in person?

The answer depends on where you live. In some states, including California, Michigan, and Florida, you must bring your absentee ballot with you when you vote in person. If you haven’t received your mail-in ballot, you will have to cast a provisional ballot at the polls. 

Besides presidential candidates, what else can I expect on my ballot?

There are important and impactful races up and down the ballot this year, from the U.S. House of Representatives to the U.S. Senate and state and local elections. While advocates can’t go around knocking on doors this year due to COVID-19, we can all get involved online. Local ballot measures can impact civil rights and civil liberties nationwide. 

Oklahoma’s State Question 805 is an example. Oklahoma one of the biggest incarcerators in the country — and in the world — in part because of unjust policies that can land you in prison for decades or even life for low-level offenses like drug possession and shoplifting. There are similar policies across the country, so what happens in Oklahoma this year could help to start the conversation in other states. 

Nebraska’s Initiative 428 is another example of a critical economic justice policy that could have nationwide implications. Measure 428 would put a cap on interest rates from predatory payday lenders at 36 percent. Currently, interest rates can be as high as 400 percent — often trapping individuals into a vicious cycle of debt. Payday lending is a predatory practice that has historically targeted communities of color across the country, so all voters should pay attention to Nebraska’s outcome on Initiative 428.

If members of my family can’t speak English, can they vote? 

English is not a requirement to cast your ballot. Many jurisdictions provide resources to accommodate multilingual voting and to ensure that everybody can exercise their right to vote regardless of which language they speak. 

If you have run into issues when voting, call the non-partisan Election Protection Hotline. 

• English: 1-866-OUR-VOTE / 1-866-687-8683
• Spanish: 1-888-VE-Y-VOTA / 1-888-839-8682
• Arabic: 1-844-YALLA-US / 1-844-925-5287
• For Bengali, Cantonese, Hindi, Urdu, Korean, Mandarin, Tagalog, or Vietnamese: 1-888-274-8683

What should I do if I encounter intimidation at the polls? 

Voter intimidation can take many forms, but voters should not expect to encounter it when they go to the polls. The ACLU and the broader voting rights community remain vigilant and are working to make sure that no voters face intimidation while exercising their right to vote. 
No one has the right to take your vote from you. But if you do experience intimidation, there are ways to get help. Call 1-866-OUR-VOTE to report occurrences of voter intimidation.

At the end of the day, what everybody should know is that they can get help. The ACLU and other voting rights advocates are ready to jump into action should problems arise. Your job is to vote. 

For information on voting in your state, see the Let People Vote guide. If you want to volunteer from home, visit peoplepower.org to learn how. 

https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/913781386

Published October 22, 2020 at 11:26PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2TlkxB2