Supreme Court takes pass on Washington archdiocese bus case

April 7, 2020 CNA Daily News News Briefs 0 Print

Washington D.C., Apr 7, 2020 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear the Archdiocese of Washington’s appeal to place religious ads on public transit in Washington, D.C.

The denial leaves in place the D.C. Circuit Court’s 2018 ruling against the archdiocese, which had sought a mandatory preliminary injunction to place ads on Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) trains and buses.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who heard arguments in the case at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in March of 2018 but did not join in authoring the opinion of the court in July, also did not partake in the Supreme Court’s decision on Monday.

WMATA first issued guidelines for advertisements on its buses and trains in November of 2015, in which it prohibited ads promoting religion or religious practices and beliefs.

In December of 2017, WMATA rejected an ad proposal by the Archdiocese of Washington during Advent that would have directed people to the archdiocese’s “Find the Perfect Gift” campaign website.

The website contained Mass times, Christmas and Advent traditions, and links to make charitable contributions to various Catholic groups. The archdiocese then went to court to have its ads featured in the WMATA transit system.

The D.C. Circuit Court ruled against the archdiocese in July of 2018, saying that the archdiocese failed to prove viewpoint discrimination in the case, or that WMATA had unconstitutionally violated the First Amendment by rejecting religious ads but allowing for secular ones.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, while respecting the Supreme Court’s decision to not hear the appeal, credited it to the inability of the full Court to consider the case.

“Because the full Court is unable to hear this case, it makes a poor candidate for our review,” the justices stated on Monday.

However, they added, in their opinion WMATA engaged in “viewpoint discrimination” and violated the First Amendment by seeking out Christmas-themed advertisements but rejecting religious ones.

“No one disputes that, if Macy’s had sought to place the same advertisement with its own website address, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) would have accepted the business gladly,” the justices wrote.

“So the government may designate a forum for art or music, but it cannot then forbid discussion of Michelangelo’s David or Handel’s Messiah,” they continued. “The First Amendment requires governments to protect religious viewpoints, not single them out for silencing.”

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Appeals court rejects Biden administration request to enforce ‘gender identity’ Title IX rules

July 19, 2024 Catholic News Agency 0
The U.S. Department of Education sign hangs over the entrance to the federal building housing the agency’s headquarters on Feb. 9, 2024, in Washington, D.C. / Credit: J. David Ake/Getty Images

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 19, 2024 / 15:22 pm (CNA).

An appellate court rejected a request from President Joe Biden’s administration to enforce a regulation in four states that would broadly prohibit discrimination based on a person’s self-asserted “gender identity.”

The United States Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld a lower court ruling that prevents the U.S. Department of Education from enforcing any part of the “gender identity” provisions in the Title IX rule for public schools and colleges in Montana, Idaho, Louisiana, and Mississippi. 

The lower court’s order will remain in place as all five states continue their lawsuit, which challenges the legality of the regulation.

Courts have blocked the Department of Education from enforcing the regulation in 15 states altogether, while attorneys general in about a dozen other states have also filed lawsuits. The regulation will go into effect on Aug. 1 in jurisdictions where courts have not blocked its enforcement.

The regulation, which the administration promulgated in April, reinterprets Title IX’s prohibition on “sex discrimination” to include a prohibition on “gender identity” discrimination. 

Some lawyers and Republican attorneys general have warned that the rule would jeopardize state laws that restrict girls’ and women’s locker rooms, bathrooms, dormitories, and athletic competitions to only girls and women and could force states to allow access to men who identify as women.

“The Biden administration’s radical redefinition of sex turns back the clock on equal opportunity for women, undermines fairness, and threatens student safety and privacy,” Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Natalie Thompson, who is representing the Louisiana-based Rapides Parish School Board in the lawsuit, said in a statement. 

“The 5th Circuit now joins the 6th Circuit in holding back the Biden administration’s illegal efforts to rewrite Title IX while this critical lawsuit continues,” she added. “The administration continues to ignore biological reality, science, and common sense.” 

“The Rapides Parish School Board and schools and teachers across the country are right to stand against the administration’s adoption of extreme gender ideology, which would have devastating consequences for students, teachers, administrators, and families.”

After the lower court blocked the Department of Education from enforcing any part of the rule, the department filed an appeal that requested permission to partially enforce the rule while the litigation continues. The department claimed that the prohibition on enforcement was too broad and requested permission to enforce reporting and record-keeping rules, grievance procedures, and a variety of provisions related to “gender identity” discrimination included in the new rule.

In the ruling, the judges wrote that “the answer is no,” adding that the provisions the department wants to enforce are “complex, lengthy, and burdensome” and that the department “has given us little basis to assess the likelihood of success” in the case.

“The implementation and compliance costs would double if the partially implemented rule differs from a final judgment,” the judges wrote. “They would first have to amend their policies, alter their procedures, and train their employees to comply with a partial version of the rule pending appeal, and then they would have to do it all over again to comply with the rule as it stands at the conclusion of the litigation.”

The prohibition on sex discrimination written into the law itself makes no mention of “gender identity.” When Congress added the Title IX sex discrimination provisions into federal law in the 1970s, the intent was to provide girls and women with equal access to education and did not have any reference to transgenderism.

In spite of this, the Biden administration argues that interpreting “sex discrimination” to include “gender identity” discrimination is within the scope of the Department of Education’s regulatory authority. The states opposed to the rule argue that this interpretation is not consistent with the actual text of the law and falls outside of the department’s regulatory authority.

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