Here are this week’s SWAJ Research Links, compiled by SWAJ Team Member Mark Kurth.
National Inquiries
'Parents' rights' groups labeled extremist: SPLC lists a key Florida group as anti-government
Moms for Liberty and the other organizations are being designated as “anti-government extremist groups,” based on longstanding criteria, explained the law center's Intelligence Project Director Susan Corke. Corke said the grassroots conservative groups are part of a new front in the battle against inclusivity in schools, though they are drawing from ideas rooted in age-old white supremacy.
“(The movement) is primarily aimed at not wanting to include our hard history, topics of racism, and a very strong push against teaching anything having to do with LGBTQ topics in schools,” Corke said. ”We saw this as a very deliberate strategy to go to the local level.”
SCOTUS ruling prompts fear, criticism from LGBTQ community leaders
“This decision by the Supreme Court is a dangerous step backward, giving some businesses the power to discriminate against people simply because of who we are," said Kelley Robinson, the president of the Human Rights Campaign.
She continued, "This decision continues to affirm how radical and out-of-touch this Court is, especially when 80 percent of Americans support robust and LGBTQ+ inclusive nondiscrimination laws."
What is the cost of racism? More lawmakers are embracing reparations for Black people
Polling shows reparations for slavery is just as divisive as other issues along lines of race, but in recent years the subject has been injected with new vigor from activists exhausted with being ping-ponged between protest and vote strategies.
Pia Harris, a Black activist and program director for the San Francisco Housing Development Corp., said reparations are necessary to compensate for the lack of progress made in housing discrimination and other areas.
“We’re just trying to be brought to the same point as everyone else. We really are at a disadvantage and not at a starting line,” she said.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says justices are ‘destroying the legitimacy’ of the Supreme Court
“We have a broad level of tools to deal with misconduct, overreach and abuse of power, and the Supreme Court has not been receiving the adequate oversight necessary in order to preserve their own legitimacy,” Ocasio-Cortez told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”
The progressive lawmaker cited recent allegations against Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas over ethics improprieties. Her comments come as the court wrapped up its term with a slew of consequential rulings, including ending affirmative action for college admissions, clocking student loan debt relief and limiting LGBTQ protections.
The ‘American Whitelash’ Is Far From Over
But Pulitzer-winning Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery says viewing that backlash solely through the lens of Obama’s election — or as a response to social justice movements like Black Lives Matter — glosses over a deeper pattern: The white racial violence that has been embedded in our culture not just in the last few election cycles, but since the nation’s founding.
What we call backlash at certain moments is really a long-running “whitelash” that’s intricately woven into American history and currently targets not just Black people, but any group that threatens a shifting consensus of who is American and who is not.
America is now in fascism’s legal phase
The contemporary American fascist movement is led by oligarchical interests for whom the public good is an impediment, such as those in the hydrocarbon business, as well as a social, political, and religious movement with roots in the Confederacy. As in all fascist movements, these forces have found a popular leader unconstrained by the rules of democracy, this time in the figure of Donald Trump.
House Republicans scared to lose majority push back on extreme agenda
The House’s focus on the far-right’s demands over the past month has irritated Republicans who represent swing districts or are worried that an extreme legislative agenda will push voters away and hand the House majority to Democrats in 2024. So they are learning to flex their procedural muscles, largely behind the scenes, to keep some proposals they see as most damaging off the House floor.
The ‘Shrinking Baptist Convention’ Is Doubling Down on the Culture Wars
Not long ago, during Donald Trump’s presidency, white evangelical Christians had taken comfort in the idea that their interests carried weight at the highest levels in Washington, in conservative Supreme Court appointments and otherwise. Even if it had taken some rationalization for them to get behind a thrice-married former casino owner who botched basic religious conventions and was eventually indicted for his alleged role in a scheme to pay hush money to a porn star, the Trump years were good years for these Baptists.
Harvard’s Admissions Is Challenged for Favoring Children of Alumni
It’s been called affirmative action for the rich: Harvard’s special admissions treatment for students whose parents are alumni, or whose relatives donated money. And in a complaint filed on Monday, a legal activist group demanded that the federal government put an end to it, arguing that fairness was even more imperative after the Supreme Court last week severely limited race-conscious admissions.
After Supreme Court's affirmative action ruling, race-based scholarships under scrutiny
In Missouri, the attorney general directed all colleges to "immediately" stop considering race in scholarships, and in Kentucky, the flagship university’s president suggested the institution should do the same. Even in purple Wisconsin, the assembly’s Republican speaker alluded to forthcoming legislation that would ban race-conscious financial aid.
Over 6,000 United Methodist congregations voted to leave the denomination over LGBTQ+ issues
In annual conferences since 2019, 6,182 congregations of United Methodists voted to leave the church which composes the second-largest Protestant denomination in the United States. This year alone, 4,172 congregations left, according to an unofficial tally by United Methodist News Service.
While the church forbids the marriage or ordination of “self-avowed, practicing homosexuals,” many churches and conferences defy those bans. This prompted more conservative congregations to leave the denomination.
States Fights
These trans women would have to reverse their gender identity on ID documents under a new Kansas law
he law requires the sex designation on Kansas driver’s licenses and birth certificates to reflect a person’s sex at birth, the state’s Republican attorney general said in a legal opinion Monday, years after Kansas – as part of a 2019 federal equal protection lawsuit settlement – began allowing birth certificates to be changed to reflect a person’s gender identity.
Now, Senate Bill 180 – dubbed the “Kansas Women’s Bill of Rights” – mandates “an individual’s ‘sex’ means such individual’s biological sex, either male or female, at birth,” Kris Kobach said in the legal opinion; he issued it in response to a GOP state legislator’s inquiry about the impact of “the 2023 law requiring state records reflect biological sex,” he told CNN this week.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders says new nominee will create a first-time conservative majority for state Supreme Court
Hiland, who is also the chairman of Arkansas Republican Party, was nominated by former President Trump in 2017 to be the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas and was confirmed by the Senate in September 2017. He later resigned from the role on Dec. 31, 2020, and then became the chief legal counsel for the Arkansas Department of Public Safety before stepping down to work for Sanders’s gubernatorial campaign, the governor said.
Insight: Swing state Republicans bleed donors and cash over Trump's false election claims
The withdrawal of bankrollers like Weiser reflects the high price Republicans in the battleground states of Michigan and Arizona are paying for their full-throated support of former President Trump and his unsubstantiated claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
The two parties have hemorrhaged money in recent years, undermining Republican efforts to win back the ultra-competitive states that could determine who wins the White House and control of the U.S. Congress in next November's elections, according to a Reuters review of financial filings, plus interviews with six major donors and three election campaign experts.
Abortion rights likely headed for showdown in Ohio this fall
A coalition of abortion-rights groups has submitted more than 700,000 signatures for a ballot initiative that would codify the right to an abortion in the state constitution. The submission sets up a crucial test of the potency of abortion as a political issue ahead of 2024, with vulnerable Democrats in the House and Senate attempting to cling to their seats in an increasingly red state.
Vocal Locals
Man cited in Supreme Court LGBTQ rights case says he was never involved
Except Stewart — who didn’t want his full name used out of fear of being harassed — is not gay. In fact, he has been married to a woman for 15 years, and he’s a web designer himself.
“I’ve been active and vocal on LGBTQ rights,” he told The Washington Post on Saturday. “So it was frustrating to see my name being used.”
Even if the existence of Stewart’s request wasn’t real, the justices did not seem to regard it as legally relevant to considering Smith’s case. The justices who disagreed didn’t raise it as an issue. Writing for the dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the court was denying protection for LGBTQ+ people. “The opinion of the court is, quite literally, a notice that reads: ‘Some services may be denied to same-sex couples.’”
The court filing in Stewart’s name has left many baffled, including Stewart himself, who said he was concerned that the case had proceeded without anyone verifying if the request was authentic.