In today’s News:
President raises Roe revisit possibility
President Donald Trump has said it is “certainly possible” that his Supreme Court pick will be involved in a ruling revisiting the landmark 1973 decision that legalized abortion in the U.S. Trump said he did not discuss abortion rights with Amy Coney Barrett before choosing her for the top court. She has been chosen to replace the late liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg but awaits Senate confirmation.
Gender-confused California inmates get to choose
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation during the weekend allowing gender-confused convicts to be incarcerated on the basis of their claimed “gender identity” rather than their actual biological sex. Under the new law, officers overseeing the prisoner intake process must ask inmates if they self-identify as transgendered, nonbinary or intersex, The Hill reported, at which point inmates can request to go to a male or female prison. Requests cannot be rejected solely on the basis of an inmate’s actual sex but on whether the state has “management or security concerns” about that inmate. State officials must further present inmates with a written explanation of any rejections as well as the opportunity to object to them.
Vermont challenged about religious discrimination
Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing a student, her parents and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington filed a federal lawsuit against Vermont officials last Wednesday for discriminating against students and denying them tuition vouchers because they attend religious high schools. Vermont maintains a town tuition program, which provides educational vouchers for students who live in towns without public schools. Towns that pay tuition for their students instead of maintaining a public high school are called “sending towns” and they directly pay the full amount of tuition, up to the town’s approved tuition rate, on behalf of their students. Students at public and secular private schools are eligible, students at religious private high schools are excluded. That includes Rice Memorial High School, which the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington owns and operates. The complaint notes that some Vermont school districts continue to employ a “pervasively sectarian” test, which evaluates whether a child’s chosen school is “too religious” to participate in the town tuition public benefit. Other school districts, like the Grand Isle Supervisory Union, categorically refuse to allow any religious school to participate.
San Francisco is warned about its church policy
The Justice Department has warned San Francisco Mayor London Breed that the city’s limitations on indoor worship to one congregant at a time in response to the covid-19 pandemic “is contrary to the constitution and the nation’s best tradition of religious freedom.” In response to the city’s policy of only allowing one person at a time to enter houses of worship, the Justice Department said in its letter to Breed that the city could not limit places of worship to a single congregant while “allowing multiple patrons in other indoor settings including gyms, tattoo parlors, hair salons, massage studios and daycares.”
