The U.S. Supreme Court had only one case slated for oral argument Wednesday morning, but it was a doozy. With protesters chanting outside, the court heard arguments for 2-1/2 hours from attorneys for the state of Tennessee, the Department of Justice, and the ACLU in a challenge to the constitutionality of Tennessee’s ban on “gender-affirming” care for minors. In U.S. v. Skrmetti, the Biden Justice Department and the ACLU argued that the state law violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment because it discriminates based on sex. To the contrary, the state of Tennessee and its attorney general, Jonathan Skrmetti, say the law restricts conduct based only on age (for those children under the age of 18) and how certain drugs are used (for so-called gender-affirming care). Legal challenges to these types of laws are typically brought by parents who seek drugs, such as puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, and surgical intervention for their children who profess to identify with the opposite sex. They argue that laws like Tennessee’s violate two parts of the 14th Amendment—the Due Process Clause, by depriving parents of the right to make medical decisions for their children, and the Equal Protection Clause, by discriminating against their children based on sex. President Joe Biden’s administration, rather than parents, brought this challenge, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit rejected both arguments. Last year, the 8th Circuit struck down a similar Arkansas law, but only on equal protection grounds. The Supreme Court, therefore, is addressing only that argument, because that is the one on which the 6th and 8th circuits disagreed. During the argument, however, Justice Amy Coney Barrett clarified that upholding the Tennessee statute on equal protection grounds would not prevent parents from pursuing their claim that such laws violate the Due Process Clause. ‘Main Issue on the Table’ The heart of the challengers’ case is that the Tennessee statute treats people differently based on sex. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson agreed that this is the “main issue on the table.” The kind of classification of a law is important to determining the appropriate standard of review, which in turn determines how easy or difficult it is to defend that law against a challenge under the Equal Protection Clause. Most laws that make distinctions as to when they will or will not apply do not do so on the basis of a “suspect class.” Such laws are subject to rational basis review and are constitutional if they are a “rational” way of addressing a “legitimate” legislative purpose—a relatively easy standard to meet. If a law makes distinctions by classifying people based on a “sex,” it is subject to heightened or “intermediate scrutiny” review. Such laws will be upheld only if they are “substantially related” to achieving an “important” government purpose. As Tennessee persuasively argues, rather than classifying based on sex, the law classifies on based on purpose. In other words, it distinguishes based on minors seeking drugs for gender transition and minors seeking drugs for any other medical purposes. The Supreme Court has never recognized restrictions on the use of drugs for a particular medical purpose to demand heightened scrutiny review, so rational-basis review applies. That standard, the state of Tennessee easily satisfies, and the 6th Circuit agreed. ‘A Sex-Based Classification’? But the challengers want to label the law a sex-based classification to make it harder for Tennessee to defend. Arguing for the Biden administration, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar asked the court simply to put the Tennessee statute in that category and send the case back to the lower courts to apply the “intermediate scrutiny” review test. But Justice Brett Kavanaugh observed that, if it did, the case would soon be right back in the Supreme Court’s lap. Prelogar insisted that the Tennessee statute is obviously based on sex, but her argument is inconsistent with the text of the statute itself. She argued that the law would allow a boy to obtain puberty-blockers to delay experiencing a normal male puberty, but a girl could not. But the statute only says that a minor may not obtain such drugs for the purposes of identifying with a different sex—and that prohibition applies equally to both boys and to girls. Despite Prelogar’s insistence, the law only restricts access to the drugs based on age and on the medical use of the drugs. Kavanaugh, Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justice Samuel Alito expressed hesitancy about involving themselves in issues that are better left to state legislatures to decide. ‘Leave the Issue to the Legislatures’? Roberts argued that the court was “not [in] the best situation to make determinations about medical considerations. Doesn’t that make the case for us to leave the issue to the legislatures?” He also alluded to the court’s landmark ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in June 2022, which overturned Roe v. Wade, saying that the current case was really about “constitutional allocations of authority.” In an almost verbatim recitation from the Dobbs majority opinion, he continued: “Perhaps we should leave this issue to the people and their elected representatives.” Roberts and Kavanaugh also stressed the shaky scientific footing of gender “medicine,” and cited various European reports, saying that “countries who have been at the forefront [are now] pumping the brakes on this,” something that Kavanaugh noted gave the court “a yellow light, if not a red light” in moving forward into “constitutionalizing” a new area of law. But it was perhaps the line of questioning from Alito that was the most intense of the morning. Alito, too, cited specific studies from Sweden and England, including the bombshell Cass report, which indicated that gender medicine is largely unproven and presents significant health risks to children. He chided Prelogar, saying that she had “relegated [it] to a footnote.” In their briefs, both the government and the ACLU asserted a different basis on which the court could provide relief. If the justices didn’t think the law discriminated based on sex, they could find that the law discriminated on the basis of transgender status, and that, too, they argued, would require that the law be subject to intermediate scrutiny review. This alternative argument also took center stage in Wednesday’s argument. A majority of the justices, however, did not seem to buy it. Both Barrett and Alito pointed out that the court had turned down other requests to expand constitutionally protected categories, such as age and mental disability. Their line of demarcation in Equal Protection Clause cases had always been immutable characteristics—those derived by accident of birth, such as race, sex, and national origin. So, when transgender lawyer Chase Strangio took the podium for the ACLU, Alito continued his grilling, asking pointedly “Is transgender status immutable?” When Strangio responded that it would indeed “satisfy an immutability test,” Alito peppered the ACLU lawyer with various hypotheticals: What about people who are “gender-fluid,” or who change gender identities over time, or who are “nonbinary”? ‘An Immutable Characteristic’? When Strangio floundered, Alito retorted, “So, transgender status is not an immutable characteristic, is it?” Unsurprisingly, the more liberal members of the court, Jackson and Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, appeared more favorable to Prelogar’s and Strangio’s arguments. Jackson likened the current case to Loving v. Virginia, the court’s landmark civil rights decision that determined that laws banning interracial marriage violated the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the 14th Amendment. In arguing that the state had once legislated in such a way based on racial classifications, and that the court had overridden those state legislative judgments based on the Constitution’s promise of equality, Jackson argued it should do the same here.   Twenty-six states have passed laws similar to Tennessee’s in the past few years, and some of them have been challenged in the courts. But U.S. v. Skrmetti is the first case of its kind to reach the Supreme Court. The court’s decision, which likely won’t be issued till June, no doubt will have a significant impact on the legislative and litigation efforts on this controversial issue for years to come. The post Most Justices Skeptical of Interfering With Tennessee’s Ban on ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ for Minors appeared first on The Daily Signal.

DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—Annual college closures may increase as enrollment at higher education institutions continues to decline, according to a new report. If enrollment at universities continues its downward trend, as many as 80 additional colleges may be forced to shut down, according to the December report published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Recent data shows freshman college enrollment has reached its lowest point since the COVID-19 pandemic, declining by over 5%. Even if enrollment declines at a steady, slow pace, about five more colleges may close every year as a result, the report says. Total enrollment at colleges and universities already had fallen by 15% from 2010 to 2021. “These simulations point to the precarious potential situation facing postsecondary education in the coming years, especially if the demographic cliff materializes in a moderate to severe fashion,” the report states. “While some of these estimated increases might seem small at the national level, they would be significant for the handful of localities predicted to experience college closures in a given year.” The total number of higher education institutions declined by 2% from the previous academic year as of August, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Several factors affect students’ decision to opt out of higher education, though tensions on college campuses arising from continuous protests since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war may have made universities less desirable. Many high school graduates are instead choosing short-term certificate training programs over traditional degrees. Universities have also been facing backlash for their apparent lack of response to—and sometimes blatant encouragement of—campus protests, leading to financial difficulties after several major donors ended their support of the institutions. Meanwhile, the number of students enrolled at vocational schools rose 16% in 2023, and those training to become construction workers increased by 23%, according to The Wall Street Journal. The report also points to a declining number of high school graduates as a possible reason for low college enrollment. Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation The post College Closures Expected to Skyrocket as Americans Turn Away From Higher Education appeared first on The Daily Signal.

UNRWA Calls For Censoring Israelis and Their Allies

As part of the latest developments in the $1 billion defamation suit against them, CNN was attempting to keep anchor Jake Tapper from being compelled to answer deposition questions about his salary and comments he had made on-air regarding Fox News’s defamation settlement with Dominion Voting Systems. That’s according to a court filing exclusively obtained by NewsBusters. As NewsBusters reported in late November, Plaintiff and Navy veteran Zachary Young via lead counsel Vel Freedman wanted the court to compel Tapper to answer some of the “more than thirty questions” CNN’s counsel directed him not to answer: Mr. Tapper sat for deposition on November 20, 2024. In the course of less than two hours, CNN’s counsel directed Tapper not to answer more than thirty questions. The end result was that CNN prevented Plaintiffs from (1) gathering basic financial information (e.g., Tapper’s salary); (2) exploring issues the jury might need to assess a punitive damages award (e.g., Tapper’s opinion on what financial penalty might deter CNN from future misconduct); and (3) from even asking for clarification of Tapper’s answers or getting complete answers to the questions the witness did answer (e.g., interrupting the witness mid-answer saying: “Just answer the question as asked”). In their counter motion to keep Tapper from being deposed a second time, CNN’s lawyers argued: When the Court permitted Plaintiffs to depose Tapper as part of punitive damages/financial worth discovery, it expressly instructed that Plaintiffs were not to explore fact[1]discovery issues, and, if they did, CNN would be well within its rights in objecting and instructing the witness not to answer. That’s exactly what CNN counsel did here, citing to the Court’s decision and Rule 1.310 of the Florida Rules of Civil Procedure, which expressly permits counsel to instruct a witness not to answer in order “to enforce a limitation on evidence directed by the court[.]” CNN’s counsel only instructed Tapper not to answer when Plaintiffs’ counsel posed questions that were flagrantly outside the scope of the deposition as set by the Court. Plaintiffs are not entitled to re-open Tapper’s deposition to pose questions outside of the boundaries the Court correctly circumscribed. Regarding questions about Tapper’s salary, CNN contended that that information doesn’t speak “to CNN’s resources and profitability” as Young’s filing argued. Rather, “What speaks to “CNN’s resources and profitability” is the total amount CNN spends on compensation relative to the revenue it generates.” The filing also suggested, “CNN has produced documents disclosing that information, in addition to producing information about the 7 overall amount The Lead in particular spends on employees and on-air talent.” They also provided this assumption as why information about Tapper’s was specifically requested: “Their only purposes for pressing Tapper to disclose his salary are to harass him and to inflame the jury by calling attention to the salary number of one its more recognizable on-air talents.” Evidence was not provided as how they came to that conclusion. Further in the filing, CNN’s lawyers defended interjecting and instructing Tapper not to answer questions about his opinions regarding the $785 million settlement Fox News paid to Dominion and if that seemed enough of a punitive damage, similar to what CNN could be on the hook for in this case: In many instances, Plaintiffs’ counsel set up the question by playing a clip of 8 Tapper expressing opinions on some other matter entirely. For instance, Plaintiffs’ counsel played a clip of Tapper commenting on Fox News’ $787.5 million settlement with Dominion, and then asked these questions: Q. Mr. Tapper, do you think this 785-and-a-half-million-dollar settlement was enough to financially disincentivize Fox from engaging in further defamation? Mr. Tobin: I instruct Mr. Tapper not to answer that question for the reasons I’ve stated. Q. Mr. Tapper, do you believe a similar sanction against CNN would disincentivize CNN from engaging in defamation. Mr. Tobin: Same instruction. They pointed out that they did allow Tapper to answer if/how “he, personally, would be greater incentivized to tell the truth if CNN were hit with a massive punitive damages award.” “On that question, Tapper testified that his core and animating professional commitment is to doing his best to always report the truth, and that, accordingly, no punitive damages award would increase his commitment to truth-telling,” CNN’s lawyers paraphrased. On the matter of Tapper telling the truth; he once insisted there was “no reason to doubt” Gaza death toll claims by the Hamas terrorist organization, misled Americans about how “Russia hacked the [2016] election,” and perpetuated the lie that the U.S. Supreme Court gave President-elect Trump the ability to assassinate his political opponents.

A man was found naked inside of an elementary school with a stash of sex toys and marijuana on Thanksgiving day, according to Florida police. The Port St. Lucie Police Department said officers were called to the Windmill Point Elementary School on a report about a possible burglary, but when they arrived, they found a nude man inside of a classroom at about 9:30 p.m. Urias was booked on numerous charges, including lewd and lascivious behavior and burglary.Police said the man noticed their presence, quickly dressed, and tried to escape through the back of the school. He allegedly punched the deputy but was arrested after backup officers arrived. An investigation led to the alleged discovery of a makeshift place to sleep at the school, clothing, sex toys, and women's underwear as well as marijuana. The man told police that he was homeless. The man was identified as 34-year-old Joe Urias, who is employed as a teacher at Somerset College Prep, a different school also in Port St. Lucie. Urias was booked on numerous charges, including lewd and lascivious behavior, burglary, possession of marijuana, and battery of a law enforcement officer. He was held on a $31,000 bond at the St. Lucie County jail. Somerset College Prep officials issued a statement saying they were cooperating with police and were taking steps to "ensure that this individual does not return to our campus." They also referred to him as a "formerly" employed teacher and assured parents that they perform background checks on all teachers. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

The time has come for Marvel Rivals to fling open its doors and let superhero fans battle it out with its impressive roster of characters. The free-to-play hero shooter has been on a rampant announcement-spree in the build up to launch, and it’s just pulled one final ace from its sleeve. Monetization is often a topic that’s hard to talk about without irking players one way or another, but from what I’m seeing in Marvel Rivals’ new post on skins, currencies, and battle passes, it might just have the perfect monetization formula. Continue reading Marvel Rivals says no to time-gated battle passes and pay-to win elements MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Marvel Rivals release date, Marvel Rivals characters, Marvel Rivals System Requirements

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