On one side was Casey Pick, advocate and lawyer for LGBTQ young people, determined to protect transgender youth who had long been “treated like a political football.”
On the other was Kim Colby, who had fought for religious freedom in cases before the United States Supreme Court and was seen as “always the last to concede.”
The goal was for the two women and others to explore whether mutual respect could alter the ferocity of the nation’s political battles. Was it possible to find a legislative compromise for issues that both sides see in identity-defining, existential terms?
It was the beginning of the Fairness for All movement. Partisans on both sides have rejected the group’s efforts as “an affront to existing civil rights protections” or as offering “quite minimal” protections. But at the heart of the movement is a model for democratic pluralism and a question: “What are we willing to forgo in order for the other person to be made better?”
Split Mississippi appellate court upholds, against Eighth Amendment challenge, an LWOP habitual-offender sentence for marijuana possession
As report in this AP piece, the Mississippi Court of Appeals on Tuesday upheld a life sentence for a man convicted of a marijuana possession charge because he had previous convictions and those made him a habitual offender. Here is bit more about the ruling from the AP:
Allen Russell, 38, was sentenced to life in Forrest County in 2019 after a jury found him guilty of possession of more than 30 grams (1.05 ounces) of marijuana.
In Mississippi, a person can be sentenced to life without parole after serving at least one year in prison on two separate felonies, one of which must be a violent offense. Russell was convicted on two home burglaries in 2004 and for unlawful possession of a firearm in 2015. By law, burglary is a violent offense in Mississippi, whether or not there is proof that violence occurred. That was not the case when Russell was
Friday, May 14, 2021
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced Monday it now interprets and will enforce Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, effective immediately. Section 1557 generally prohibits discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, age, and disability in any health program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.
Background
Whether Section 1557 protects LGBTQ+ individuals from discrimination has received considerable attention and varying positions from HHS and the courts. The 2016 final rule interpreted “on the basis of sex” under Section 1557 as including “an individual’s internal sense of gender, which may be male, female, neither, or a combination of male and female, and which may be different from an individual’s sex assigned at birth.” The 2020 final rule on Section 1557 reversed the position taken in the 2016
Arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court are usually rough-and-tumble affairs, with lawyers peppered with questions by judges sometimes competing to get a word in. The use of teleconferencing, however, has required a more orderly process.