Justice System

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.

‘Take Beauty From Ashes’: Advocating for Felony Murder Law Reform

In 2017, Briana Martinson, then 20, and Megan Cater, 19, went to the apartment of a man whom they believed had stolen medication from Martinson, with the intent to steal it back. By the time they arrived at the apartment, Martinson and Cater were joined by several other individuals, two of whom were older men that the women did not know. According to Martinson, one of the men threatened them with a gun before entering, at which point she realized, “Okay, there’s no turning back.”

In the end, they were each sentenced to 13 and a half years in prison for aiding and abetting second-degree unintentional felony murder.

Was this a case of wrongful conviction? It’s complicated.

How the Supreme Court Endorsed the Authoritarian Behavior of State Legislatures

In 2019, the Supreme Court ruled along political lines that it could not review disputes over partisan gerrymandering. The conservatives in Rucho v. Common Cause insisted that the question of how state legislatures draw their maps is a “political” question and thus “nonjusticiable” by the Court.

The truth is more that the Court silenced the Constitution and set our democracy on a destructive course. As Justice Kagan wrote in the liberals’ dissent, the Court had “encouraged a politics of polarization and dysfunction.” The resulting “unchecked” gerrymanders, she warned, “may irreparably damage our system of government.”

Most Girls in the Juvenile System Experience Abuse Prior to Incarceration. Their Stories of Abuse Don’t End There.

Over 80 percent of girls in the juvenile justice system in multiple U.S. states are sexually or physically abused prior to incarceration. But their stories of abuse do not end there. Many young women continue to experience sexual and physical abuse by juvenile justice employees after being placed in juvenile detention.

Keeping Score: Chloé Zhao Makes Oscars History; Philonise Floyd Calls Chauvin Verdict “Necessary”; Senate Passes Anti-Hate Crime Bill; Reuters’s First Woman Editor-in-Chief

This week: Biden administration speaks on Black maternal health; all U.S. adults are eligible for COVID-19 vaccination; Derek Chauvin is convicted for murdering George Floyd; Senate passes bill to address anti-Asian crimes; Biden pledges to cut emissions in half; and more!

Kristen Clarke Makes History as First Woman *and* First Black Woman to Lead DOJ Civil Rights Division

Kristen Clarke

Kristen Clarke is President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris’s nominee for assistant attorney general of the Civil Rights Division.

In accepting her nomination, Clarke vowed to “turn the page on hate and closed the door on discrimination by enforcing our federal civil rights laws,” citing leaders like Thurgood Marshall and Constance Baker Motley as key influences.