15 Comments

First a question then a comment. Does the fourth circuit court’s ruling cover treatment of pediatric patients? The United States is out of step with other countries in this regard. The Scandinavian countries banned them a year ago and after the Cass report and the scandal at the Tavistock the Uk has banned pediatric gender treatment unless it is part of a clinical trial.

Part of my doctoral dissertation was a study of merger integration. I was startled to find that 75% of mergers fail to achieve their strategic objectives. The primary reason is cultural.

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Kadel didn't address that question; the plaintiffs are adults, and the question is about health insurance. It's not like the Idaho case that just went up to SCOTUS, concerning that state's ban on gender-affirming care for minors.

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Thanks for the reply

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I can’t prove this, it is rank speculation, but my impression watching the video is that Doorley was intoxicated and was doing her best, using her position of power, to avoid what everyone else in that position would have endured - a breathalyzer test and potential job loss. If she had been in another town and been a black male, had she behaved like this she would have been slammed to the ground and potentially shot (which would have been deemed “justified “). What a horrible shitshow from every perspective.

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Intriguing—I hadn't thought about that possibility. If that was the situation, then her gambit worked; despite all the bad publicity, she never underwent a breathalyzer test.

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Yes, if I’m right, then it worked. At least for now. And she never once had to fear for her life. Can you imagine any other driver ignoring the sirens, then cursing out the cops, then going *inside her house* against orders (where she could have retrieved a gun), and then coming back out hostile, and NOT at least spending the night in the slammer (or getting shot)? Not a chance for the non-entitled.

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Has the 4th Circuit now taken the 9th's crown as the most liberal circuit? The 9th seems to have moderated significantly while the 4th seems to move farther left every year

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A good topic for a future post. It's funny how far left the Fourth has moved. In the heyday of the Ninth as a crazy-left court, the Fourth was at the other end—one of the most conservative circuits in the country, not unlike the Fifth Circuit today. (And then-Judge Luttig was actually a leading voice on the right wing of the Fourth.)

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Alongside your coverage of First Amendment arguments made by protesters, you should consider covering the attacks on press freedoms at universities (Daily Bruin student reporters brutally beaten by a pro-Israel mob after UCLA backed out of promise to provide them access to a building near the encampment, Columbia attempts to require student reporters turn over their photographers’ work and then attempts to block them from covering Hamilton Hall arrests, Dartmouth student reporters arrested and college refuses to call for charges to be dropped, professional journalists arrested at California State Polytechnic University Humboldt, et cetera)

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Definitely open to covering these topics, especially if there's a legal angle—e.g., they result in litigation or they take place at law schools. Folks should feel free to send me tips!

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May 6Edited

I guess the criminal actions against student and professional journalists arrested at UT, Dartmouth, and others haven't proceeded to litigation just yet! If schools like Columbia continue to pressure journalists to turn over unpublished work, there is an interesting back story to tell about Zurcher v. Stanford Daily, 436 U.S. 547 (1978) (also involving campus protests) and subsequent congressional action to protect journalists.

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I suspect you didn't mean this, but in your (typically laudable) efforts at fairness and evenhandedness it reads as if you think many, much less most, of the glampers have direct ties to the Palestinian cause. That is, of course, absurd. Most of them just think they're just fighting The Man/The Oppressor and thus hate America and Israel.

There's a reason the counterprotestors are waiving the American flag.

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Are you referring to the section where I’m paraphrasing what a pro-Palestinian activist told me? To be clear, I’m not vouching for the truth of this person’s claims (e.g., that many of them have relatives affected by what’s going on in Gaza); I’m just relaying what this source said to me.

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1. Judge Benitez is the most pro-Second Amendment judge in California, if not the country. They even sell candles with his image on them. But in my opinion, he committed felony child abuse. He should not remain on the bench, period. He should be in a jail cell.

2. We have yet another example of performance outrage from Judge Ho. Although group boycotts may be permitted as part of the First Amendment, private groups typically organize and pursue them. Judge Ho and the other signatories to the boycott are federal officials bound by the First Amendment, lest they forget. The First Amendment prohibits any federal official from intimidating another party, even a private one, for allowing speech the official hates. Judge Ho is engaging in nothing more than extortion. Someone needs to remind him he is a government official with duties above those of a panelist on some Fox News show.

3. There is a fascinating series of articles on Slate.com about the flaws and sins of originalism. Everyone should read them. I have long believed originalism is a fraud and practiced in bad faith. Other people seem to agree.

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While I think it might be a good idea as a matter of policy to protect discrimination based on gender identity, I'm having trouble understanding how this decision on access to medical treatment falls under sex discrimination laws.

While I agree with the deciscion saying sex discrimination law in employment protects homosexuals it seems to me that rests on more complicated reasoning that most people assume.

It can't possibly mean that you are barred from firing a man for any behavior you wouldn't fire a woman for. Consider a case where you fire a cis-man for moral turpitude because they testified that their wholly owned businesses qualified for a state's women and minority owned business contractor preference status. So the simplistic, someone of the other sex who did the same thing can't be enough.

What justifies applying the sex discrimination law to firing someone for being gay is that, as originally understood, the statute was specifically trying to prevent employers refusing to hire people or firing them because of a mismatch between how they were behaving and social expectations for how someone of that sex should behave. So yes, sex discrimination law should be understood to prevent discrimination against homosexuals but that's because the law was intended to prevent employers from demanding sex stereotypical behavior (even if the authors weren't imagining that in the context of homosexuality).

So what's the corresponding argument here regarding the provision of medical treatment? Maybe I just don't understand the law in question, but it can't possibly be that the law required no difference in medical treatment based on sex -- after all different procedures for different sexes are often the the norm.

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