Michigan’s Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed a bill on Tuesday that outlaws defense lawyers from using a victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity as part of their defense argument.
The bill passed the state House in a 56-54 vote, and prohibits people accused of violent crimes from claiming that their alleged victim’s perceived or actual gender identity or orientation caused them to “panic.” Michigan is now the 20th state to pass such a law.
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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled 2-1 to uphold a decades-long Tennessee policy that prohibits changes to a person’s sex on their birth certificate to reflect their gender identity instead of their biological sex at birth.
The policy treats the sex listed on a birth certificate as a historical fact unchangeable by an individual’s transition to a different gender identity.
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The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi has halted the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from implementing its final rule which redefines the Affordable Care Act’s prohibition against discrimination based on “sex” to include “gender identity” at the request of Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti.
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Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti joined Tuesday’s episode of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show for an exclusive interview where he discussed the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to hear arguments and rule on whether Tennessee’s law that bans “gender-affirming care” on minors violates the Constitution.
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Tom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, said it “makes sense” how Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) appears to have some sort of role in introducing teenagers and children with mental health problems to transgenderism for further treatment.
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A Catholic school’s ability to operate in accord with its faith is in jeopardy.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit heard oral arguments June 11 in St. Joseph Parish v. Nessel. The case involves St. Joseph Catholic School in Saint Johns, Michigan, which is asking the court to protect its ability to hire staff who share the same faith.
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A federal judge with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky granted Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti and Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman’s preliminary injunction request to block the Biden Administration’s new Title IX rule from taking effect on Monday.
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Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti and Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman urged a federal judge in Kentucky to block the U.S. Department of Education’s (DOE) finalized rule to rewrite Title IX to encompass gender identity and sexual orientation.
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Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti and Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch led a coalition of 13 other states in filing a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) final rule, which redefines the Affordable Care Act’s prohibition against discrimination based on “sex” to include “gender identity.”
As of May 6, HHS’ final rule requires medical providers to perform surgeries and administer hormone drugs to both children and adults for the purpose of gender transition, without regard for a doctor’s medical judgment as to whether that treatment was appropriate.
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued three federal agencies Tuesday to “stop an unlawful attempt to redefine federal law through agency guidance” that mandates “gender identity” accommodation in the workplace.
Paxton sued the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and other federal officials to block April 29 EEOC guidance that redefines the meaning of “sex” in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
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An Ohio senator wants state lawmakers to send a message to the U.S. Department of Education to exclude sexual orientation and gender identity from Title IX.
U.S. Rep. Andrew Brenner, R-Delaware, recently introduced Senate Concurrent Resolution 11 that calls on the Biden administration and Congress to remove all references from sexual orientation and gender identity from Title IX.
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Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti led a coalition of 17 other states in filing a lawsuit challenging the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) final guidance on harassment in the workplace which went into effect on April 29.
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School Library Journal (SLJ) promoted We Are Kid Lit Collective’s 2024 summer reading list, which includes recommendations for books about gender identity for children as young as three to five years old.
SLJ, a professional resource for school librarians and educators, shared the release of We Are Kid Lit Collective’s recommendations for their yearly summer reading book list in a post on the Facebook platform on Thursday.
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An Ohio judge has extended the temporary restraining order preventing House Bill 68 from taking effect at the request of American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Ohio, which filed a lawsuit challenging the bill last month.
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Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said the Biden administration’s finalized rule to rewrite Title IX is “extreme,” noting how the administration’s determination to rewrite anti-discrimination rules to encompass gender identity issues appears to be one of its “highest priorities.”
On Tuesday, Skrmetti led six states in suing the Biden administration’s Department of Education on Tuesday over its finalized rule to rewrite Title IX to encompass gender identity and sexual orientation.
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A judge ruled Monday that barring Kansas drivers from identifying as transgender on their licenses did not violate their constitutional rights.
Republican Attorney General Kris Kobach filed a lawsuit against Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly in July 2023 after the governor’s office said that the state would continue to issue driver’s licenses reflecting a person’s gender identity despite the Kansas Legislature passing a bill requiring only biological sex on government IDs, according to the Kansas Reflector. Judge Teresa Watson upheld her previous ruling from last year barring the Kansas Department of Revenue from adding options other than a person’s biological sex to driver’s licenses and further stated that the law did not violate transgender individuals’ rights under the state constitution, according to court documents.
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The Presbyterian Church (USA) has permitted, but not required, its ministers to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies since 2014. But that allowance is no longer sufficient for the progressive denomination; it now aims to mandate that future ministers affirm transgenderism and same-sex marriage as prerequisites for ordination. At its General Assembly this June, the denomination will take up legislation that would implement that requirement.
The Presbyterian Church (USA)’s proposed requirement stands out for its inclusion of affirmation for transgenderism alongside same-sex marriage. Specifically, it does so by adding “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” to its list of groups protected from discrimination, included in “worship, governance, and emerging life.” The proposal would also change the denomination’s “[s]tandards for ordained service” to make it obligatory for ministry candidates to pledge adherence to this principle of “non-discrimination.”
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Georgia school teachers and counselors will continue to have free reign to talk to students about gender and gender identity issues without having to notify parents.
In a setback to supporters of parental rights, SB 88, also known as the Parents and Children Protection Act of 2023, missed the opportunity to advance legislation meant to restrict the ability of teachers and counselors to discuss gender issues without parental oversight.
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The Ohio Supreme Court coordinated a conference where an activist group held a training for judges that claimed children have a “stable sense” of their gender identity by the age of four.
The presentation, titled “The Judicial System & LGBTQ+ Families: A Cultural Humility Approach,” was given by a local activist group, Equality Ohio, during the Ohio Association of Magistrates (OAM) Fall 2023 conference. The presentation featured the “gender unicorn” — a graphic portraying gender identity and expression as spectrums — and encouraged “affirming” youth transgender identities by “respecting their pronouns and allowing them to change legal documents,” according to the slideshow obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation via a public records request.
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by Debra Heine A girls’ basketball game between two Massachusetts high schools was cut short earlier this month after three female players were injured while playing against a six foot tall trans-identified biological male. On February 6, the Collegiate Charter School of Lowell forfeited against KIPP Academy after only 16 minutes of play, ItemLive reported. KIPP was leading the February 6 game 31-14, but the game reportedly went into the books as a 10-0 forfeit win for KIPP. A video posted on YouTube by “Inside Lowell” shows a Collegiate Charter School girl being dragged to the ground like a ragdoll while wrestling for a rebound with the much larger biological male player from KIPP Academy. The girl can be seen grabbing her back and wincing in pain as she tried to get back up off the floor. According to ItemLive’s sources, the biological male player is “more than 6 feet tall with facial hair.” He has reportedly been on the roster since the beginning of the season. “A man hitting a woman used to be called domestic abuse. Now it’s called brave,” said former competitive swimmer Riley Gaines on X. “Who watches this and actually thinks this is ‘compassionate, kind, and inclusive’?” Prior…
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The United States Census is planning to introduce questions on gender identity and sexual orientation for the first time in its history, according to The Associated Press.
The questions will be sent to 480,000 households and can be answered online, by mail, via phone or during in-person interviews, with only half expected to respond, according to the AP. If approved, the bureau plans to include them in its annual American Community Survey and will ask respondents about their sex assigned at birth and their sexual orientation.
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A bill to require public and charter schools in the state to socially “transition” children who request using a different name than their birth name is making its way through the Colorado legislature.
The bill, introduced in January, would require public schools and charter schools to use a child’s “preferred name” and label the refusal of a school to do so “discrimination.” It would also create a task force within the Colorado Department of Education to “provide recommendations” to schools on how to implement “non legal name changes” for children.
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Psychologist Dr. Harriette Wimms told attendees at a medical training summit in 2022 that parents who do not affirm their child’s gender identity have a “mental illness,” according to audio obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The discussion took place at the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s (WPATH) 27th annual training symposium in Montreal, Canada, on Sept. 17, 2022. Wimms, clinical director for The Village Family Support Center of Baltimore, suggested in a WPATH lecture on autism that parents who don’t affirm their children’s decisions are “transphobic” and have a “mental illness,” according to audio obtained in a public records request.
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Parents Joe and Serena Wailes were shocked and horrified to discover that their 11-year-old daughter had been assigned to not only room with, but also share a bed with, a boy on her school trip.
That boy identified as a transgender girl, the Wailes say, and his parents had allegedly told the school district that he was operating under “stealth mode”—meaning that his gender identity was to be kept secret.
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The state of Nevada paid $12.5 million for transgender medical services and procedures over the past eight years, according to documents obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Nevada Department of Health and Human Services provided data to the Daily Caller News Foundation showing that from January 2015 to May 2023, the state paid $12,572,974 for transgender medical procedures, therapy and treatments through Medicaid and Nevada Check Up (NCU). The payments were for insurance claims tagged with “Gender Identity” and national drug codes, as well as for claims tagged with procedure codes related to transgender care, including surgeries, infertility, counseling and speech therapy, according to the documents.
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Educators at a Pennsylvania middle school acknowledged that the school was withholding information about a student’s “gender identity” and preferred name after the child was bullied and told to commit suicide, according to documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Southern Lehigh School District (SLSD) instructed teachers and staff in October 2021 to use students’ preferred names or pronouns but told them to keep the information from parents if students request it, according to a DCNF investigation. Tara Cooke, a counselor for SLSD’s Joseph P. Liberati Intermediate School, and Deanna Webb, formerly the school’s vice principal, discussed an incident in which several male students allegedly told a “female” student to kill herself. The administrators noted that they had yet to inform the child’s parents about the victim’s “gender identity,” according to a May 18, 2022 email in a public records request by several concerned parents, who asked to remain anonymous for safety reasons.
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Proponents of the importance of biological sex to sports, science and law want to explain to critics and undecideds why gender identity is not a substitute. Some of their critics are working to ensure they can’t get a hearing.
It’s not just former NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines, now in a spat with Pennsylvania State University over whether she was ever approved to speak on campus for “Real Women’s Day” on Oct. 10, a date chosen for its Roman numerals that mirror women’s XX chromosomes.
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Fifty-six years after it exempted antiwar teenagers from First Amendment protections while on campus, a federal appeals court in America’s heartland affirmed students’ speech rights in public schools on an equally contentious subject today.
The St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a preliminary injunction Monday against an Iowa school district policy that threatens suspension and expulsion for “intentional and/or persistent refusal … to respect” a peer’s gender identity, finding it’s likely too vague to survive legal scrutiny.
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Rhode Island’s biggest school district is refusing to name the adult advisors to its LGBTQ student clubs, claiming the parent activist seeking their identities posted “medical information” about the primary subject of the public records request.
That medical information is the gender identity of Aarav Sundaresh, Providence Public Schools director of equity and belonging, a biological woman who has spoken publicly about identifying as a man. The district even identifies Sundaresh as a “founding Core Collective member for the National Trans Educators Network.”
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The California legislature passed a bill Friday that requires a judge to consider whether or not a parent “affirms” their child’s “gender identity” in a custody dispute.
Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener and Democratic Assembly Member Lori Wilson introduced the bill in February, with Wiener claiming that the legislation was needed to protect the “health, safety, and welfare of the child,” according to the Associated Press. The bill passed the state Senate Wednesday with a 30-9 vote before making it through the general assembly only days later at 57- 16.
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A Georgia school board voted Thursday to fire a teacher who read her fifth-grade students a book on gender identity, according to The Associated Press.
In March, Katie Rinderle, a fifth-grade teacher at Cobb County School District, says she got in trouble for reading her class “My Shadow is Purple,” a picture book about a child who discovers they are neither a girl or a boy, according to the AP. The Cobb County School Board voted 4-3 to fire Rinderle, finding that the teacher had violated the state’s divisive concepts law, which bars educators from giving lessons on race and “espousing personal political beliefs.”
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A judge has blocked Arizona’s new law prohibiting transgenders from participating in girls’ sports from going into effect. U.S. District Court Judge Jennifer Zipps, who was appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama, issued the injunction on July 20 after a lawsuit was filed by two anonymous transgender athletes. Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne said he will appeal the ruling.
Arizona Women of Action issued a response afterwards to the ruling. “Title IX was enacted to protect girls,” the group said in a statement. “To give them equal rights to fair competition, safety, and future opportunities. Arizona’s Save Women’s Sports Act was enacted to solidify the intent of Title IX — to protect biological girls. Sadly, the judge ruled NOT to protect girls OR Arizona / US law.”
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The California State Parent Teacher Association (PTA) is co-sponsoring a bill that seeks to establish a framework for parenting that enshrines in law the idea that failing to affirm a child’s self-identified gender will be considered detrimental to his or her well-being, a press release from Capitol Resource Institute (CRI) announced Monday.
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The American Medical Association (AMA) pledged to ramp up its support for cross-sex medical interventions for minors with gender identity issues in a resolution its House of Delegates approved this week.
The AMA already supported cross-sex medical interventions for children, but the new resolution makes this stance more proactive in response to state-level restrictions on such procedures; it passed Monday, according to the Endocrine Society, which sponsored the resolution. The organization pledged to work with special interest groups to fight state and federal limits on cross-sex medical procedures, which it euphemistically referred to as “gender-affirming care.”
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Results of a poll targeting California voters have found an overwhelming majority say parental rights continue when children attend government schools.
The survey, conducted by Rasmussen Reports and Real Impact, an organization that seeks to “equip the Church to stand for righteousness in the public square,” observed 82 percent of respondents disagreed with a statement that says, “A person loses their parental rights when a child enters public school.”
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The country’s largest teachers union released an LGBTQ toolkit Wednesday for educators, explaining “ze/zim” pronouns and how to address bias around sexual orientation and gender identity within the classroom.
The National Education Association’s (NEA) newest guidance aims to provide resources to educators to help them support LGBTQ students within the classroom by “using inclusive language [and] addressing harmful comments.” The toolkit includes a guide that encourages teachers to introduce themselves with their pronouns and use “gender neutral” pronouns such as “they, them, or their” when they are unsure of someone’s gender.
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Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) added two prominent parental rights in education groups to its 2022 hate and extremist list on Tuesday.
The group lists 1,225 groups or organizations that Southern Poverty Law Center deemed hateful and against the government. Moms for Liberty, a coalition of parents fighting for transparency in education and Parents Defending Education (PDE) were noted as hateful and/or extremist.
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by Laurel Duggan State laws have made it effectively illegal for therapists to help children with gender identity issues come to terms with their natural bodies and biological sex in much of the country by labeling the practice an illegal form of “conversion therapy.” While conversion therapy is broadly understood to refer to clinical attempts to get patients to stop feeling same-sex attractions, and has historically included practices like shock therapy, the term has expanded since the mid-2010s to include efforts by health care professionals to help gender-confused patients accept their birth sex rather than putting them on the transgender medicalization track. As states pushed new conversion therapy bans under this new definition, therapists are facing intimidation, legal battles and threat of licensure loss for offering a critical or exploratory approach to children who struggle with their gender identity. “If someone tells you what their gender identity is you must affirm them; you must accept it at face value,” Joseph Burgo, a psychotherapist and vice director of Genspect, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “It has a chilling effect on the whole profession. I know therapists who avoid gender altogether because they’re afraid of activists coming after them.” Many transgender activist groups advocate…
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Governor Bill Lee has signed a bill that amends the Tennessee code to apply biology-based definitions across all state statutes.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) is drawing fire throughout Europe for continuing its Comprehensive Sex Education (CSE) guidance that recommends children under four years of age be taught “enjoyment and pleasure when touching one’s own body, early childhood masturbation,” and “the right to explore gender identities.”
The “Standards for Sexuality Education in Europe,” first published in 2010 by the WHO, the global health organization of the United Nations, is being challenged by various pro-family organizations concerned about the sexualization of young children, as the Daily Mail reported.
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Campus Reform surveyed the entire US and found instances of K-12 public school districts carrying children’s books with messaging about “gender identity,” some including sexually explicit material.
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Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) signed bills Wednesday that would enshrine abortion rights in state law and protect transgender medical treatments for minors, including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and transgender surgeries.
Moore said in a statement the new laws have “further strengthened our leave no one behind vision by protecting individual freedoms,” especially “solidifying reproductive rights,” and “expanding access to healthcare.”
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First Amendment speech protections may be circumscribed for therapists and medical professionals in the American West, critics warn, unless the Supreme Court scrutinizes a Washington law prohibiting any “regime that seeks to change” a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
Christian doctors, pro-life pregnancy centers, pediatricians, gender-critical feminists and a dozen states led by Idaho filed friend-of-the-court briefs last week urging the justices to review the so-called conversion law, warning it prevents providers from sharing research on the harms of hormonal and surgical procedures for gender-confused minors.
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Seattle Children’s Hospital encourages medical professionals to offer swift biomedical interventions as the default treatment for young patients with gender identity issues, even when parents are skeptical, and largely avoids recommending mental health services to gender dysphoric youth, according to documents published by the hospital.
The hospital, which recently attracted criticism for advertising transgender surgical procedures for minors, published several guides to instruct medical professionals on their treatment decisions regarding “gender affirming medical care” for youth. The guides promote puberty blockers and menstrual suppression drugs for young patients, do not list mental health screenings as a necessary step before medications are administered and instead indicate that mental health treatments are optional and must be sought externally.
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In a campaign conversation Sunday with veterans in Des Moines, biotech entrepreneur and GOP presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy called for a rejection of the idea of a “national divorce” in favor of the beginning of a national revival.
Ramaswamy, who describes himself as an unapologetic America First candidate, told a packed VFW Post 9127 hall in the city’s Beaverdale neighborhood Sunday morning that his is more than a presidential campaign — it’s a mission to reclaim the soul of America.
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The Moore County School Board in North Carolina voted Monday night to approve a “parents’ bill of rights” policy that requires school personnel to notify parents if their children desire pronoun and name changes in keeping with a new gender identification.
The policy, which passed by a vote of 6-1, requires that teachers in the district’s schools notify parents of a child’s claim of a desire for pronoun or name change before making the changes in school, reported WRAL.
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A group of conservative Pennsylvania state lawmakers on Thursday voiced outrage at the Greater Johnstown School District’s “Gender Transition Plan” and “Gender Support Plan.”
Particularly troubling to members of the Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus (PAFC) are provisions in the district policies to circumvent parents’ involvement in the way their gender-dysphoric student may address his or her condition.
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A middle school in Copley, Ohio, has eliminated a fifth-grade gender identity lesson from its health curriculum following exposure of the lesson at Libs of TikTok, a report Tuesday revealed.
At the outset of a letter sent to parents that was printed on the letterhead of Akron Children’s Hospital, Rachel O’Donnell, fifth-grade health teacher at Copley-Fairlawn Middle School, wrote the program would “cover the physical and emotional changes that can be expected during puberty” and would be taught in a way that was “age-appropriate, scientifically accurate, and non-judgmental.”
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In a letter obtained by The Star News Network, four members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) are calling upon House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to hold hearings on the Biden administration’s “radical and legally unsupported proposals to change Title IX” to require that its prohibition on sex discrimination be interpreted to bar discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
The letter, signed by USCCR Commissioners labor attorney Peter Kirsanow, University of San Diego law professor Gail Heriot, Public Interest Legal Foundation President J. Christian Adams, and South Carolina African American Chamber of Commerce CEO Stephen Gilchrist, asserts to McCarthy that the Biden Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has erred in its claim that the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County “requires that Title IX’s prohibition on sex discrimination be interpreted to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.”
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A group of Connecticut Democrat state representatives introduced legislation that would block teacher discussions with their students in the areas of race, gender identity, and sexuality from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
Nicole Solas of the Independent Women’s Forum referred to the bill on Twitter as “state-sponsored grooming.”
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