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      US justice department to appeal Daca court decision, says Biden

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      US immigrationUS justice department to appeal Daca court decision, says BidenTexas federal judge’s ruling prevents government from approving new applications but doesn’t affect current recipients Victoria BekiempisSat 17 Jul 2021 11.25 EDTLast modified on Sat 17 Jul 2021 11.44 EDTJoe Biden has said the US Department of Justice intends on appealing a new court decision that effectively halts an Obama-era program aimed at protecting young immigrants from deportation.Texas federal judge Andrew Hanen on Friday deemed illegal the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program. This program prevents the deportation of immigrants who were brought to the US unlawfully as children, known as “Dreamers”.Texas borderlands too often a photo op for politicians pushing stereotypesRead moreThis ruling bars the government from approving any new applications – in other words, suspending Daca. For now, Daca is preserved for the more than 616,000 people enrolled in the program until other courts weigh in. Hanen’s decision is also in favor of the eight other conservative states suing to thwart Daca.“Yesterday’s federal court ruling is deeply disappointing. While the court’s order does not now affect current Daca recipients, this decision nonetheless relegates hundreds of thousands of young immigrants to an uncertain future,” the president’s statement said.“The Department of Justice intends to appeal this decision in order to preserve and fortify Daca. And, as the court recognized, the Department of Homeland Security plans to issue a proposed rule concerning Daca in the near future.”Daca has come under fire from conservatives since its creation in 2012. Texas in 2018 requested to halt the program through a preliminary injunction.While Hanen denied this request, his ruling then appears to have presaged. Hanen stated that he believed Daca, as instituted, was probably unconstitutional without Congress’s approval.Hanen also decided in 2015 that Barack Obama could not broaden Daca protections or implement a program that protected Dreamers’ parents.In September 2017, the Trump administration announced that it planned to end Daca, throwing recipients into turmoil. Following extensive legal battles, the US supreme court blocked Donald Trump’s efforts.Biden has pushed for Daca to become permanent, and vowed on the campaign trail that he would make the program permanent. While the US House green-lit legislation in March that created a path toward citizenship for Dreamers, the measure has languished in the Senate.“In 2012, the Obama-Biden administration created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) policy, which has allowed hundreds of thousands of young immigrants to remain in the United States, to live, study and work in our communities. Nine years later, Congress has not acted to provide a path to citizenship for Dreamers,” Biden’s statement also said.“But only Congress can ensure a permanent solution by granting a path to citizenship for Dreamers that will provide the certainty and stability that these young people need and deserve. I have repeatedly called on Congress to pass the American Dream and Promise Act, and I now renew that call with the greatest urgency.“It is my fervent hope that through reconciliation or other means, Congress will finally provide security to all Dreamers, who have lived too long in fear,” Biden said.The Associated Press contributed to this reportTopicsUS immigrationUS politicsTexasJoe BidenLaw (US)newsReuse this content More

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      The Engagement review: a tour de force on the fight for same-sex marriage

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      BooksThe Engagement review: a tour de force on the fight for same-sex marriageDon’t let the length or density of Sasha Issenberg’s new book put you off – it is a must-read on the fight for true civil rights Michael Henry AdamsSun 4 Jul 2021 02.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 4 Jul 2021 02.01 EDTSasha Issenberg’s tour-de-force, 900-word chronicle of “America’s quarter-century struggle over same-sex marriage” might have been even better had it been given even a few illustrations.This is the Fire review: Don Lemon’s audacious study of racism – and loveRead moreThe New Yorker contributor Michael Shaw’s cartoon of 1 March 2004 would have been one candidate. Its arch question, “Gays and lesbians getting married – haven’t they suffered enough?”, seems to encapsulate how an unlikely issue, consistently championed, achieved a broader vision of “gay liberation” than many dreamed could be attained so rapidly.Thanks to works of scholarship like Charles Kaiser’s The Gay Metropolis and The Deviant’s War by Eric Cervini, it has become clear that the seemingly impossible is often achievable. With The Engagement, Issenberg adds to such proof that one can write LGBTQ+ history in a way that is engaging, authoritative and impeccably sourced.He conveys a telling truth for activists beyond the campaign for gay rights. Brimming with a promise of inclusion, of acceptance beyond mere toleration, his book shows there are indeed more ways than one to skin a cat. Awakened and empowered by Black Lives Matter and Trumpism’s exposure of widespread white supremacist alliances, many progressives were certain that only the most radical policy positions – “defund the police”, anyone? – and candidates offered any real remedy. But older black voters were certain of a different way of maneuvering. And it looks as if they were right, just as proponents of marriage equality were right – to a point at least.If The Engagement lacks snappy cartoons or colorful or insightful photographs, Issenberg manages nonetheless to present compelling depictions of fascinating individuals. Their pursuit of gay marriage propels his narrative, lawsuit by lawsuit, legislative victory by legislative victory and political endorsement by political endorsement.False starts, setbacks, losses – they are all here too. But then finally, on 26 June 2015, with Obergefell v Hodges, the supreme court invalidated same-sex marriage bans all across the land. In time, a court-sanctioned right to self-determination expanded the rights of transgender people too.Gay marriage declared legal across the US in historic supreme court rulingRead moreIf the quest began with an almost stereotypically flamboyant figure, Bill Woods, Issenberg shows with deft sensitivity how for all Woods’ drive and flair for manipulating media and politicians, two more reticent lesbians played a pivotal role. Their relatable story is one of opposites determined to fashion a life together, just three months after meeting in 1990. Initially, the LGBTQ+ community was compelled to fight just to be allowed to love one another. But this committed couple’s saga goes a long way to showing how marriage, as opposed to a brave new world of sexual revolution and limitless pairings, emerged as the definitive cause of gay civil rights.When Genora Dancel, a broadcast engineer, presented a ruby ring to Nina Baehr, she “thought our love could withstand anything”. Coming home to find Baehr in pain from an ear infection, Dancel learned otherwise. Baehr’s university health coverage had yet to take effect. Her new “wife” had two policies from her employers but could not use them for her partner. She had to pay out of pocket to to aid her.Out of this practical desire to care for each other, the pair joined two other same-sex couples organized by Bill Woods. On 17 December 1990, in Honolulu, they applied for marriage licenses. When they were denied, Dan Foley, an attorney who was straight, sued the state on their behalf. After a battle lasting nearly three years, they were vindicated. The Hawaii supreme court was the first in the US to determine that the right to wed was a basic civil right.Many, like the lesbian feminist Paula Ettelbrick, were convinced there was an alternative to marriage and that “making room in our society for broader definitions of family” was better. They saw little utility in such a gain.Jasmyne Cannick, a journalist from Los Angeles, was dubious as well. Following the passage of Proposition 8, a ballot initiative to ban same-sex marriage in California, she outlined the looming disconnect between disaffected queers of color and our sometimes oblivious white brethren.
      The white gay community is banging its head against the glass ceiling of a room called equality, believing that a breakthrough on marriage will bestow on it parity with heterosexuals.
      But the right to marry does nothing to address the problems faced by both Black gays and Black straights. Does someone who is homeless or suffering from HIV but has no healthcare, or newly out of prison and unemployed, really benefit from the right to marry someone of the same sex?
      In books such as Nigel Nicholson’s Portrait of a Marriage and Elizabeth Drexel Lehr’s King Lehr and the Gilded Age, one gets a poignant look at how especially for upper-class gays, conventional alliances, with partners of the opposite sex and children, are as old as time, assuring inheritances and perpetuating dynastic ties. George Chauncey’s Gay New York tells of how in Harlem same-sex couples, from the 1920s on, staged elaborate nuptial ceremonies, anticipating current trends.The Deviant’s War: superb epic of Frank Kameny and the fight for gay equalityRead moreYes, one way or another, even in the realm of queers, marriage still seems to constitute a profound idea.Issenberg contends that without overwhelming opposition, gay marriage would never have subsumed gay activism; that conservatives, lying in wait, biding their time, are poised to try to take it away. When they do, will we be ready, armed with the lesson of Issenberg’s book?Today, self-segregated into competing camps of righteous activists and dogged pragmatists, freedom fighters still at struggle and insiders who just happen to be gay, do we sincerely value the efficacy of throwing down our buckets where we stand? Have we lost hope that every road leads to a common victory? That in a street fight, every contribution adds value to our effort?
      The Engagement: America’s Quarter-Century Struggle Over Same-Sex Marriage is published in the US by Penguin Random House
      TopicsBooksLGBT rightsSame-sex marriage (US)US constitution and civil libertiesLaw (US)US politicsActivismnewsReuse this content More

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      US supreme court deals blow to voting rights by upholding Arizona restrictions

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      The US supreme court has upheld two Arizona voting restrictions in a ruling that dealt a major blow to the Voting Rights Act, the landmark 1965 civil rights law designed to prevent voting discrimination.In a 6-3 ruling, the justices upheld Arizona statutes that prohibit anyone other than a close family member or caregiver from collecting mail-in ballots, which are widely used in the state.The court also upheld a statute that requires officials to wholly reject votes from people who show up to cast a ballot in the wrong precinct, even if the person is otherwise entitled to vote in the state.“Neither Arizona’s out-of-precinct rule nor its ballot-collection law violates §2 of the VRA. Arizona’s out-of-precinct rule enforces the requirement that voters who choose to vote in person on election day must do so in their assigned precincts,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for a majority that included the court’s five other conservative justices, referring to section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.He added: “Having to identify one’s own polling place and then travel there to vote does not exceed the ‘usual burdens of voting’.”The decision means that the Arizona statutes will remain in effect and make it harder to challenge discriminatory voting laws across the US at a time when a swath of Republican-run state legislatures are pushing a wave of new voting restrictions that voting rights advocates say are aimed at suppressing the vote and especially target communities of color.“Today the supreme court made it much harder to challenge discriminatory voting laws in court. The justices stopped short of eviscerating the Voting Rights Act, but nevertheless did significant damage to this vital civil rights law and to the freedom to vote,” Sean Morales-Doyle, the acting director of the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center for Justice, said in a statement.Richard Hasen, an election law scholar at the University of California, Irvine, said the decision was a significant blow to the Voting Rights Act, one of America’s landmark civil rights laws.“The conservative supreme court has taken away all the major available tools for going after voting restrictions. This at a time when some Republican states are passing new restrictive voting law[s],” he wrote in a blogpost. “This is not a death blow for section 2 claims, but it will make it much, much harder for such challenges to succeed.”The larger dispute in the case, Brnovich v Democratic National Committee, was how courts should interpret section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits any voting practice that results in the “denial or abridgment” of the right to vote based on race. The provision has become a critical tool for civil rights lawyers to challenge discriminatory voting laws in recent years, especially after a 2013 supreme court ruling that dramatically weakened the Voting Rights Act.Alito declined to endorse a specific test for future section 2 cases, but outlined five “guideposts” that could be applied in future cases.Courts should weigh the size of the burden that a voting law imposes, the magnitude of disparities in how they affect different minority groups, the state’s interest in enacting such a law, as well as how far the challenged law departs from standard practice in 1982, the year when the relevant portion of the Voting Rights Act was adopted, Alito wrote.And when courts evaluate a voting law, they need to consider the accessibility of a state’s entire electoral system, rather than just the law at hand, Alito added.Alito used those five factors to set an extremely high bar for challenging the Arizona law.Arizona’s prohibition on out-of-precinct voting only required voters to ensure they showed up at the right precinct on election day, a minimal burden in Alito’s view. Alito also dismissed evidence that minority voters were about twice as likely to have their provisional ballots rejected than white voters, noting that only a small percentage of Arizona voters overall cast an out-of-precinct provisional ballot on election day.“A policy that appears to work for 98% or more of voters to whom it applies – minority and non-minority alike – is unlikely to render a system unequally open,” he stated.Alito took a similar approach in upholding Arizona’s ban on third-party ballot collection. He noted that voters who cast their ballot by mail have several ways to return the ballot other than having someone collect it. The plaintiffs in the case also failed to provide statistically significant evidence, Alito said, that the ban disproportionately harmed Native American voters.Alito also gave states significant leeway to use voter fraud – which is extremely rare – as an excuse to restrict voting. “It should go without saying that a state may take action to prevent election fraud without waiting for it to occur and be detected within its own borders,” he wrote.Justice Elena Kagan wrote a searing dissenting opinion for the court’s three liberal justices, bluntly saying the majority opinion “enables voting discrimination”.The Voting Rights Act, Kagan wrote, makes any voting law that results in racial discrimination illegal, no matter how small the burden is for the voter, since even burdens that seem small can lead to discrimination in voting.She also rejected Alito’s suggestion that the Arizona laws did not provide more of a burden on minority voters because 98% of voters overall were unaffected.“Suppose a state decided to throw out 1% of the Hispanic vote each election. Presumably, the majority would not approve the action just because 99% of the Hispanic vote is unaffected,” she wrote.She also dismissed Alito’s acceptance of voter fraud as an excuse to pass voting restrictions. “Of course preventing voter intimidation is an important state interest. And of course preventing election fraud is the same. But those interests are also easy to assert groundlessly or pre-textually in voting discrimination cases,” she wrote.Joe Biden said in a statement he was “deeply disappointed” with the ruling and renewed his call for federal voting legislation, which Republicans blocked in the US Senate last month.“In a span of just eight years, the court has now done severe damage to two of the most important provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 – a law that took years of struggle and strife to secure,” he said in a statement.Biden added: “While this broad assault against voting rights is sadly not unprecedented, it is taking on new forms. It is no longer just about a fight over who gets to vote and making it easier for eligible voters to vote. It is about who gets to count the vote and whether your vote counts at all.”Democrats in Washington are scrambling to find a way to pass new federal voting rights protections.One of the bills under consideration would restore the portion of the Voting Rights Act that section 2 has been used in lieu of in recent years and require certain states across the country to get voting changes approved by the federal government before they go into effect, in a bid to minimize discrimination.Kagan also noted in her dissenting opinion that the case came to the court at a time when states were considering hundreds of laws that would make it harder to vote, a moment she described as uniquely dangerous for American democracy.“The court decides this Voting Rights Act case at a perilous moment for the nation’s commitment to equal citizenship. It decides this case in an era of voting-rights retrenchment,” she wrote. “What is tragic here is that the court has (yet again) rewritten – in order to weaken – a statute that stands as a monument to America’s greatness, and protects against its basest impulses. What is tragic is that the court has damaged a statute designed to bring about ‘the end of discrimination in voting’.” More

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      Legal scholars publish letter calling for Stephen Breyer to retire from supreme court

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      A group of 18 legal academics has issued an extraordinary joint letter urging the US supreme court justice Stephen Breyer to retire so that Joe Biden can name his successor.The intervention came after Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader in the Senate, warned that Biden would not get a supreme court nominee confirmed in 2024 if Republicans regain control of the chamber and a vacancy arises.With conservatives holding a 6-3 majority on the court, progressive activists have been calling for the liberal Breyer, who at 82 is the oldest member on the bench, to step down this year while Democrats narrowly control the Senate.“It is time for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer to announce his intent to retire,” the legal scholars say in a statement. “Breyer is a remarkable jurist, but with future control of a closely divided Senate uncertain, it is best for the country that President Biden have the opportunity to nominate a successor without delay.”The signatories include Niko Bowie of Harvard Law School, Erwin Chemerinsky and David Singh Grewal of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law; Daniel Morales of the University of Houston Law Center; Samuel Moyn of Yale Law School, Zephyr Teachout of Fordham University; and Miranda Yaver of Oberlin College.The statement was released by Demand Justice, a progressive group mounting a concerted campaign to make Breyer consider his position, with everything from reproductive rights to voting rights and gun control potentially at stake.This week it is among 13 liberal groups, including Black Lives Matter, the Sunrise Movement and Women’s March, publishing an advertisement in prominent media outlets. It says: “Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer should immediately announce his intent to retire from the bench.“With future control of a closely divided Senate uncertain, President Biden must have the opportunity to nominate a successor without delay and fulfill his pledge to put the first Black woman on the Supreme Court.”The ad concludes: “If Breyer were replaced by an additional ultra-conservative justice, an even further-right Supreme Court would leave our democracy and the rights of marginalized communities at even greater risk. For the good of the country, now is the time to step aside.”While serving as majority leader, McConnell blocked Barack Obama from filling a vacancy left by the death of the conservative justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016, contending that it would be inappropriate to confirm a supreme court nominee during a presidential election year.McConnell and his fellow Senate Republicans refused to consider Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, who now serves as Biden’s attorney general. That enabled Donald Trump, the winner of the November 2016 election, to appoint the conservative justice Neil Gorsuch in 2017.Democrats accused McConnell of hypocrisy last year when he allowed the Senate to confirm Trump’s conservative nominee Amy Coney Barrett to replace the liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in September, about six weeks before the 2020 presidential election.Christopher Kang, co-founder and chief counsel of Demand Justice, told the Guardian’s Politics Weekly Extra podcast: “I think certainly that looking back, and even at the time, a lot of people thought that the prudent thing for Justice Ginsburg to do to ensure her legacy would have been to retire.“I think this is the same conversation that a lot of progressives are having right now with respect to Justice Breyer, who is one of those three Democratic-appointed justices on the supreme court. He’s 82 years old. He could retire and we believe he should retire now and make way for the first Black woman to serve on the supreme court.Kang, who served in the Obama White House, added: “But it’s challenging because supreme court justices are nominated right now for life and the decision when to retire is completely up to them.“I was not part of the decision-making process at the time with respect to whether or not to reach out to Justice Ginsburg. I understand that the White House chose at the time not to do that but I think certainly looking at the impact of what happened, we could be in a very different place.” More

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      McConnell: ‘Highly unlikely’ I would let Biden fill supreme court seat in 2024

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      The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, said on Monday it was “highly unlikely” he would allow Joe Biden to fill a supreme court vacancy arising in 2024, the year of the next presidential election, if Republicans regained control of the chamber.“I think it’s highly unlikely – in fact, no, I don’t think either party, if it were different from the president, would confirm a supreme court nominee in the middle of an election,” McConnell told Hugh Hewitt, a conservative radio host.McConnell blocked Barack Obama from filling a vacancy in 2016, denying Merrick Garland, now attorney general, even a hearing after he was nominated to fill the seat vacated by the death of Antonin Scalia.McConnell said that was because no new justice should be seated in an election year – a position he reversed with alacrity in 2020, on the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg two months before polling day.Ginsburg, a liberal lion, was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett, tipping the court 6-3 to the right. Major cases are coming up on abortion rights, gun control, affirmative action and more.McConnell claimed then, and repeated to Hewitt, that no new justice should be seated in an election year when the White House and the Senate are controlled by different parties.“I think in the middle of a presidential election,” McConnell said, “if you have a Senate of the opposite party of the president, you have to go back to the 1880s to find the last time a vacancy was filled.“So I think it’s highly unlikely. In fact, no, I don’t think either party if it controlled, if it were different from the president would confirm a supreme court nominee in the middle of an election. What was different in 2020 was we were of the same party as the president. And that’s why we went ahead with it.”Asked what would happen if a vacancy arose in 2023 with Republicans in control of the Senate, McConnell said: “We’ll have to wait and see what happens.”He also said keeping Scalia’s seat open – to be filled under Donald Trump by Neil Gorsuch – “is the single most consequential thing I’ve done in my time as majority leader of the Senate”.McConnell’s hardball tactics have contributed to his status as a hate figure among progressives. On Monday, much online reaction to his remarks focused on beseeching Stephen Breyer, a liberal and at 82 the oldest justice on the current court, to retire while Biden is in the White House and Democrats hold the Senate.Rick Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine, said: “Exactly as I wrote last week. McConnell will NOT fill a Breyer seat if he’s majority leader, even if he has to wait two years with the seat open.”Jeet Heer, a columnist for the Nation, wrote: “Can someone send this to USA supreme court justice Stephen Breyer. Thanks!”The conservative hold on the court was strengthened in 2018 when Anthony Kennedy, often a swing vote on civil rights issues, stepped down and was replaced by Brett Kavanaugh, once an official in the White House of George W Bush.Kavanaugh faced and denied allegations of sexual assault during a stormy confirmation but McConnell said he was “stronger than mule piss” in support and the process was duly completed.Breyer, appointed by Bill Clinton in 1994, has shown little inclination to follow Kennedy’s example and step aside for a younger justice.Last month, he angered some on the left by telling high school and middle school students the key to working with conservatives was to talk to them more.Among progressives, support is growing for countering conservative dominance of the court by increasing the number of justices. Republicans are stringently opposed.McConnell told Hewitt he wanted to give Breyer “a shout out, though, because he joined what Justice Ginsburg said in 2019, that nine is the right number for the supreme court, and I admire him for that. I think even the liberal justices on the supreme court have made it clear that court packing is a terrible idea.”The number of justices on the court is not fixed in the constitution. More