An Arch Enemy

There is an organization that is spreading the hate against us, they helped to pick judges for Trump, they have brought cases against trans laws, and have helped to pass anti-trans legislation. They also have a case here in Connecticut about trans athletes, it is Alliance Defending Freedom.

Editorial: Iowa Republicans take a victory lap as they inflict suffering with law restricting trans girls
The participation- and rights-restricting law Republicans rushed to enact lacks the nuance and compassion this issue demands.
Des Moines Register
March 3, 2022


A festive signing ceremony was the perfect cap to a month where Iowa's elected Republicans displayed scant awareness that transgender Iowans are human beings.

Throughout hearings and debates about a law barring trans girls and women from playing girls and college women's sports, Republicans concocted menacing-sounding scenarios of cisgender girls losing races, games, scholarships, and roster spots to a crush of Iowans with unfair advantages. 

A couple used offensive language to refer to trans girls and women and equated trans gender identity with mental illness or delusion. Many ignored or rejected witnesses' repeated reminders that there has never been a problem in our state in girls competitions with people who were assigned male at birth. Similarly unmoving was testimony that trans Iowans are disproportionately subject to bullying and other discrimination.

No, the concern was only ever about the on-its-face absurd idea that girls sports are on a precipice of becoming a Title IX-erasing farce. Unable to provide evidence for this beyond incessant references to one Ivy League swimmer, lawmakers instead decided the vague prospect of an Iowa girl someday, somewhere, facing a competitive disadvantage easily outweighed the costs of removing other Iowans' rights and denying them opportunities to play sports with their friends and enjoy the mental health benefits that sports provide.

I see a future of legal wrangling all the way to the Supreme Court because of Title IX and the Supreme Court ruling in June 2020 that ruled “sex” also includes gender identity and expression.

But it is a crap shoot in trying to figure out how the Trump’s court will rule.

Federal court dismisses NY lawsuit from Alliance Defending Freedom
The U.S. District Court ruled that all New Yorkers are entitled to equal access to the public marketplace under the law
LA Blade
By LA Blade Digital Staff
December 17, 2021


An Elmira, New York wedding photographer who had filed a lawsuit Federal lawsuit claiming that New York’s anti-discrimination laws violated her right to refuse photographing same-sex marriages, was thwarted when a Federal judge dismissed her suit Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Frank P. Geraci Jr. ruled that Emilee Carpenter’s suit “would relegate [same-sex couples] to an inferior market than that enjoyed by the public at large,” under New York State statutes.

New York Attorney General Letitia James in a statement released by her office noted:

“This week, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York agreed with Attorney General James and ruled that all New Yorkers are entitled to equal access to the public marketplace under the law.

“This court decision is a huge victory in our pursuit to ensure that every New Yorker has equal access and equal protections under the law,” said Attorney General James.

Represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom — an Arizona-based, Christian, nonprofit advocacy group — Carpenter wrongly claimed, in her lawsuit, that the New York public accommodations law violated her right to choose to accept or deny photographing same-sex marriages.”

Once again I see this going all the way to the Supreme Court because that is the goal of the ADF to getting non-discrimination laws over turned. But it is going to be a dangerous journey.

The Groups Pushing Anti-Trans Laws Want to Divide the LGBTQ Movement
The same people keep pushing bill after bill, developing their strategy as they go.
The New Republic
By Melissa Gira Grant
February 17, 2022


Indiana Stonewall Democrats have responded in a novel way to Republicans’ sponsorship of a sports ban targeting trans students, alongside other anti-trans bills: with a Freedom of Information request, aiming to expose and highlight the sponsors’ relationship with national anti-LGBTQ groups. These relationships are no secret. But the Stonewall Democrats are hoping, in particular, to get documents on Alliance Defending Freedom, a group that has spent the past decade drafting, advising on, and testifying in favor of anti-trans legislation across the United States. “[ADF] wants to do all they can to make transgender kids afraid of themselves, and force them to believe that they’re broken,” said Indiana state Senator J.D. Ford last week. “They are being pitted against their neighbors and their communities solely for political purposes.”

[…]

ADF’s nationwide network of lawyers, working from county school boards to the Supreme Court, have helped state legislatures and the courts in attempts to roll back LGBTQ rights under religious “viewpoint discrimination” claims, and crafted state bans on abortion explicitly meant to overturn Roe v. Wade. Their fight to enshrine anti-trans discrimination into law is just as audacious: So far in 2022, more than a dozen states have introduced anti-trans bills, which if passed would work step by step to exclude trans people from the public sphere. ADF calls all these “generational wins.”

So far they have lost the Connecticut case of the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference trans policy. According to the Hartford Courant,

U.S. District Court Judge Robert Chatigny has dismissed on procedural grounds a lawsuit filed in federal court against the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference, which sought to halt transgender female athletes from participating in girls high school sports in Connecticut, but the plaintiffs say they will appeal the ruling.

And the last that I have heard the case hasn't been appealed yet.

Back under the Trump administration the Department of Education ruled that Title IX did not cover us even through the Supreme Court ruled earlier in the year that it did, the Trump DoE ignored the court ruling in their policy.

But as I said it is a crap shoot.

Justices eye expansion of religious exemption to anti-bias law
Reuters
By Daniel Wiessner
February 28, 2022


Members of the U.S. Supreme Court's conservative wing on Monday signaled an interest in expanding an exemption for religious employers from anti-discrimination laws, but turned away a case raising the issue involving a social work professor at a Christian college in Massachusetts.

The court declined to review a decision from Massachusetts's state supreme court that said the professor, Margaret DeWeese-Boyd, could sue Gordon College for allegedly denying her a promotion because she criticized the school's anti-LGBT policies.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court found that DeWeese-Boyd did not teach religion, lead students in prayer or deliver sermons, distinguishing her from other workers who courts have found to qualify for the so-called “ministerial exception” from anti-discrimination laws.

[…]

But Alito said the Massachusetts court's "narrow view of religious education" was troubling, and that teachers of secular subjects can still have key roles in instilling religious values in students.

"In an appropriate future case, this Court may be required to resolve this important question of religious liberty," Alito wrote.

Alito was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

Place your bets and throw the dice!