News Flash!

Supreme Court votes unanimously if favor of a trans person!

At first this was an “Oh hum…” case, it was a trans person fighting to keep from deportation, but…

Justice Jackson writes ruling for trans woman who fled violence in Guatemala

The Supreme Court actually reached a commonsense decision. Those may be fewer and farther between as we near the end of the term.

MSNBC

By Jordan Rubin

May 11, 2023

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a Supreme Court opinion published Thursday siding with a transgender woman from Guatemala fighting her removal from the United States. It was a commonsense decision, but don't expect too many more reasonable ones as we approach the end of the term, with rulings still pending on affirmative action, voting rights, student debt relief and more.

In Thursday's case, the woman, Estrella Santos-Zacaria, had testified that she fears returning to Guatemala “because she suffered physical harm and faced death threats as a transgender woman who is attracted to men.” She sought protection from removal because she said she'd be persecuted in her native country.

[…]

Yet, Jackson’s opinion Thursday rejected the 5th Circuit’s harsh ruling. “If exhaustion is jurisdictional,” Jackson wrote, “litigants must slog through preliminary nonjudicial proceedings even when, for example, no party demands it or a court finds it would be pointless, wasteful, or too slow.” The justices sent the case back to the lower court for further proceedings, giving Santos-Zacaria another chance to prove her immigration case.

Oh hum… just another court case except, People magazine added…

Every judge — including the most conservative on the court — agreed with the court's ruling, and traditionally right-leaning justices co-signed the official opinion of the court, which uses proper she/her pronouns to describe a transgender woman who fled Guatemala after being assaulted and persecuted on the basis of her gender identity and sexual orientation.

The opinion also referred to the petitioner as a non-citizen, rather than an "illegal alien" (a dehumanizing term that has been in conservative opinions in the past).

Little victory have a large impact on us!

The decision is largely technical, but the language used in the opinion is historic, particularly considering the recent wave of anti-LGBTQ measures across the country.