ERA ratification is more legally complicated than the Instagram posts pushing for it make it seem.
If we want the ERA to be ratified, we need Congress to make it happen.
Courts and Judges
‘Significant Victory’: Ninth Circuit Court Mixed Ruling ‘Frees Idahoans to Talk With Pregnant Minors About Abortion’
In April of 2023, Idaho passed the nation’s first abortion “trafficking” law (travel ban) making it a crime to procure an abortion for a minor. The law was challenged by reproductive rights advocates, who argued that the legislature had created a statute that makes unclear when lawful mentoring support stops, and unlawful conduct begins. Agreeing with the plaintiffs, in November of 2023, a federal district court issued a preliminary injunction preventing the law from going into effect.
On Dec. 2, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a mixed decision in the case. Although not a complete win, as Wendy Heipt of Legal Voice, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs put it: The “decision is a significant victory … as it frees Idahoans to talk with pregnant minors about abortion healthcare.”
“Encouragement, counseling, and emotional support are plainly protected speech under Supreme Court precedent,” wrote the Ninth Circuit Court last week, “including when offered in the difficult context of deciding whether to have an abortion.”
Conservative Supreme Court to Rule on Right to Be Trans, Medical Care, Parents’ Rights, Constitutional Sex Discrimination—and the Right to Be Different
“I’m here to stand up for my kid,” Brian Williams told me outside the Supreme Court on Dec. 4. Williams and his wife Samantha have been fighting for their daughter—known as L.W. in the legal papers the ACLU filed to challenge Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming medical care for minors—for years.
Though difficult to sit through, the two-plus hours of argument in United States v. Skrmetti—a challenge by trans youth, their families, the ACLU, Lambda Legal and the Biden administration to Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors—was a nearly perfect distillation of this moment in our gender politics.
The Future of Judicial Reform
Come Jan. 3, 2025, both the Senate and the House will be in Republican hands. A few weeks later, on Jan. 20, Donald Trump will return to the White House. With a slim Democratic majority in the Senate and a Republican House, the likelihood Democrats could make headway on judicial ethics over the last four years was never high. It’s now nil. The need for reform, however, is greater than ever—as is public support for it.
Power will shift in January, but conversation about the necessity of and path to judicial reform as a way of laying the legislative groundwork must continue.
Ahead of Election, Right-Wing Extremist Leonard Leo Seeks to Further Eliminate U.S. Abortion Access
The fights over upcoming ballot initiatives provide insight into just how many levers of power are at the disposal of antiabortion powerbroker Leonard Leo—the man who engineered the right-wing takeover of the U.S. Supreme Court that in turn reversed Roe—and his network.
National antiabortion groups with ties to Leo, like Students for Life of America and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, have set up PACs in multiple states where abortion is on the ballot. These groups are also canvassing, phone banking, running ads and helping sow distrust in the ballot signature collection process in certain states.
Our Elections Are Not Fragile
Citizens can vote in 2024 with confidence. Despite the noise and lies and melodrama, voting will likely be uneventful for the vast majority of Americans.
But even as we grow more confident about Election Day, it is increasingly clear that partisans plan to disrupt the counting and undermine trust after the votes are cast.
War on Women Report: 27 Women Accuse Trump of Sexual Assault; Louisiana’s Controlled Substances Law Criminalizing Abortion Medication Takes Effect
U.S. patriarchal authoritarianism is on the rise, and democracy is on the decline. But day after day, we stay vigilant in our goals to dismantle patriarchy at every turn. The fight is far from over. We are watching, and we refuse to go back. This is the War on Women Report.
Since our last report:
—Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the city of Austin over its abortion travel fund.
—The number of women who have accused Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump of sexual assault is now up to 27.
—Louisiana’s law reclassifying the abortion medications mifepristone and misoprostol as “controlled dangerous substances” took effect on Oct. 1.
—In Manhattan, a 20-year-old woman is facing criminal charges for miscarrying in a restaurant bathroom.
The Crusade to Elect Three Democrats to the Texas Supreme Court
“The Texas Supreme Court took our freedoms. And what we need to do about it in November is vote out Jimmy Blacklock, John Devine and Jane Bland,” said Gina Ortiz Jones, Texas woman and founder of the Find Out PAC.
Jones said she’s confident that “people are very motivated to hold somebody accountable” for their loss of reproductive rights in Texas, and that flipping three seats on the state Supreme Court may not be as difficult as it seems.
“When people say, ‘Oh, that’s really tough’—well how do we know?” she said. “We’ve never tried.”
Immigration Is an Opportunity, Not a Problem: The Ms. Q&A with Tolu Olubunmi of ‘How to Speak American’
Naturalized citizens made up one in 10 U.S. voters in 2020. Yet, there are few organizations dedicated to supporting this growing segment of the electorate.
Tolu Olubunmi, who grew up undocumented in the United States, is trying to change that by sharing her story and encouraging civic participation of immigrants through her new organization, How to Speak American. Olubunmi’s advocacy is premised on the idea that immigration presents an opportunity rather than a problem and that this often-ignored group could make a measurable difference in protecting our democratic ideals.
“I went to an immigration lawyer who said, ‘You’re a pretty young thing. Find a nice young man and get married,’ because that’s the only path available,” Olubunmi said. “I decided to help change U.S. law instead.”
Gisèle Pelicot, the Woman at the Center of France’s Mass Rape Trial, ‘Never Regretted’ Making the Decision to Go Public
“I never, even for a single second, gave my consent to Mr. Pelicot or those other men.”
Halfway through the mass rape trial in France that has been shocking the world and brewing feminist rage since September, survivor Gisèle Pelicot took the stand for the first time on Wednesday to share her nightmarish story.
On why she’s taking a stand: “I wanted all woman victims of rape—not just when they have been drugged, rape exists at all levels—I want those woman to say: Mrs. Pelicot did it, we can do it too.”