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      Which States Have Passed Bans on Treatment for Transgender Minors?

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      The challenge to a Tennessee law before the Supreme Court this week traces its roots to the spring of 2021, when Arkansas became the first state to pass a law prohibiting gender-transition treatments for minors. Alabama followed in 2022. Tennessee’s was part of a coordinated deluge: Of 28 states where Republicans control the legislature, 24 now restrict doctors from providing puberty blockers, hormone therapies or surgery to transgender minors. Two more, New Hampshire and Arizona, ban only surgeries.Why the flood? In exploring the motivation behind Florida’s ban, one federal district judge, Robert Hinkle, concluded that some of the state’s lawmakers acted on “old-fashioned discriminatory animus.” But Republican lawmakers in many states have said that they are seeking to shield adolescents from a path that has become more common, with consequences they are too young to fully comprehend. Republican strategists, for their part, have said that elevating the issue was a winning strategy leading up to the 2024 election.United States v. Skrmetti, the challenge to Tennessee’s ban, is one of 18 filed over the last three years, with mixed results. The highest courts in two states, Texas and Nebraska, have upheld their restrictions. By contrast, two federal district judges — Judge Hinkle in Florida and Judge James M. Moody Jr. in Arkansas — struck down bans in those states. But their decisions are being appealed, and preliminary injunctions on enforcement of the bans in Alabama and Indiana, each issued by a federal district judge, were reversed by separate appeals courts. Eleven other cases are in various stages of litigation.How the Supreme Court rules on Skrmetti will almost surely affect how lower courts handle the challenges to similar statutes in states across the country. But the outcome may not be universal.“If Tennessee wins, the states will say ‘Skrmetti controls,’ and vice versa,” said Jim Campbell, chief counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal advocacy group that is helping to defend Idaho’s ban on transition treatments for minors. “And then the other side, the losing side, will say, ‘No, it’s actually different, and here’s why.’” More

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      End of Trump Cases Leaves Limits on Presidential Criminality Unclear

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      Donald J. Trump is set to regain office without clarity on the scope of presidential immunity and with a lingering cloud over whether outside special counsels can investigate high-level wrongdoing.The end of the two federal criminal cases against President-elect Donald J. Trump on Monday left momentous, unsettled questions about constraints on criminal wrongdoing by presidents, from the scope of presidential immunity to whether the Justice Department may continue to appoint outside special counsels to investigate high-level wrongdoing.Both cases against Mr. Trump — for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election and his later hoarding of classified government documents and obstruction of efforts to retrieve them — were short-circuited by the fact that he won the 2024 election before they could be definitively resolved.Jack Smith, the special counsel who brought both cases against Mr. Trump, asked courts on Monday to shut them down. The prosecutor cited the Justice Department’s longstanding view that the Constitution implicitly grants temporary immunity to sitting presidents, lest any prosecution distract them from their official duties.The result is not just that Mr. Trump appears set to escape any criminal accountability for his actions. (Mr. Smith left the door open to, in theory, refiling the charges after Mr. Trump leaves office, but the statute of limitations is likely to have run by then.) It also means that two open constitutional questions the cases have raised appear likely to go without definitive answers as Mr. Trump takes office.One is the extent of the protection from prosecution offered to former presidents by the Supreme Court’s ruling this summer establishing that they have a type of broad but not fully defined immunity for official acts taken while in office.The other is whether, when a president is suspected of committing crimes, the Justice Department can avoid conflicts of interest by bringing in an outside prosecutor to lead a semi-independent investigation into the matter.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ¿La Corte Suprema podría decidir estas elecciones presidenciales?

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      Los expertos señalan que es poco probable que el tribunal termine ejerciendo un papel importante en el resultado, pero es posible. Te contamos por qué.Es día de elecciones y la contienda entre la vicepresidenta Kamala Harris y el expresidente Donald Trump parece estar empatada, lo que lleva a algunos a temer que la elección se alargue y la Corte Suprema de EE. UU. pueda determinar el resultado.Un puñado de disputas relacionadas con las elecciones ya han llegado a la Corte Suprema. La semana pasada, el tribunal emitió decisiones que permitieron a Virginia eliminar a 1600 personas de su censo electoral, se negó a retirar a Robert F. Kennedy Jr. de la papeleta electoral en dos estados disputados y permitió a los votantes de Pensilvania cuyos votos por correo se habían considerado inválidos emitir votos provisionales en persona.La cuestión sigue siendo si las elecciones presidenciales serán tan reñidas que el tribunal, que tiene una mayoría conservadora de 6-3, se ocupará en los próximos días o semanas de un caso que decida quién ocupará la presidencia.Según los expertos en elecciones, es poco probable que la Corte Suprema acabe desempeñando un papel importante en el resultado, pero es posible. Esto es lo que hay que saber.¿Qué papel podría desempeñar la Corte Suprema?Por lo general, la Corte Suprema ha tratado de mantenerse al margen de las luchas políticas y electorales, y la mayoría de los litigios relacionados con las elecciones permanecerán en los tribunales inferiores. Pero una vez que un caso está en el sistema judicial, es posible que la Corte Suprema decida asumirlo.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      At Women’s March in Washington, Hope That They Will Hold Off Trump

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      Nearly eight years after the first Women’s March in Washington demonstrated a furious backlash to the election of Donald J. Trump, thousands of women gathered again in the capital and across the country on Saturday, this time with the hope that Vice President Kamala Harris would triumph at the polls and prevent his return to the White House.The rally and march, taking place three days before the election, was much smaller than the original in 2017 that drew at least 470,000 people — three times the number of people who had attended Mr. Trump’s inauguration the day before. But the mood was far more optimistic, if also somewhat combative.The rally at Freedom Plaza was primarily focused on threats to women’s reproductive rights and other liberties.Cheriss May for The New York Times“We will not go back!” was the rallying cry on Saturday, echoing what has become a signature line for Ms. Harris on the campaign trail. While the march was primarily focused on threats to women’s reproductive rights and other liberties, speakers and signs expressed support for a wide array of Democratic and progressive policy positions. Those included gun control, transgender rights and support for Palestinians. The speakers also urged people to vote, and to take others to vote, although many people in the crowd said they had already cast a ballot for Ms. Harris.“I just hope that all these people — not just women, but men — convince a few people to vote and vote the way we want them. Vote for democracy and our rights, reproductive rights,” said Janice Wolbrink, 69.Ms. Wolbrink was joined by her two sisters, each carrying a bright pink sign that read, “Now you’ve pissed-off Grandma.” Together, the three of them had 24 grandchildren.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Supreme Court Rejects Bid to Block Count of Some Pennsylvania Provisional Ballots

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      Republicans had sought to block the counting of provisional ballots by voters whose mail-in ballots were deemed invalid. Democrats celebrated the ruling as a win in a crucial state.The Supreme Court cleared the way on Friday for some voters in Pennsylvania whose mail-in ballots had been deemed invalid to cast provisional ballots in person, rejecting an appeal by Republicans not to count such votes.Democrats immediately celebrated the decision, which like in many such emergency petitions was unsigned and gave no reasoning, as a victory in a state crucial to each party’s presidential and Senate hopes. It could affect thousands of mail-in ballots in a contest where the latest polls show Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump virtually tied.The ruling was one in a string of court victories for Democrats, whose voters are more likely to use mail ballots and were therefore more likely to have had their votes tossed out if Republicans had succeeded in the case.“In Pennsylvania and across the country, Trump and his allies are trying to make it harder for your vote to count, but our institutions are stronger than his shameful attacks,” the Harris campaign said in a statement after the ruling. “Today’s decision confirms that for every eligible voter, the right to vote means the right to have your vote counted.”The Republican National Committee was “disappointed” in the court’s ruling, a spokeswoman said.In a brief statement attached to the court’s order, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote that the case was “a matter of considerable importance.” But he said the justices had no way to give the Republicans what they were asking for — a statewide block on allowing these provisional ballots.Only Butler County elections officials were parties to the case, he wrote, which meant the justices could not force elections officials in other counties to block those ballots. He was joined by two other conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      November’s Second-Most-Important Election Is in Florida

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      I’ll never forget the first time I heard my oldest daughter’s heartbeat. My wife was experiencing trouble in the first three months of pregnancy, and we were worried she was miscarrying. We rode together to her doctor’s office, full of anxiety. And then, we heard the magical sound — the pulsing of our little girl’s tiny heart. We didn’t know if she would ultimately be OK, but there was one thing we knew: Our daughter was alive.I’ve long supported so-called heartbeat laws. A well-drafted heartbeat law bans abortion after a heartbeat is detected, which typically occurs roughly six weeks into pregnancy. Whether you refer to that sound we heard all the way back in 1998 as a heartbeat or simply as a form of early cardiac activity, it sends the same message, that a separate human life is growing and developing in the mother’s womb.The significance of that heartbeat is the reason I believe that the second-most-important election of 2024 is the Florida contest over Amendment 4, a ballot measure that would enshrine a right to abortion in the Florida Constitution.The text of the amendment is broad: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s health care provider.” And it is aimed straight at what I believe to be one of the most reasonable pro-life laws in the nation.Florida’s Heartbeat Protection Act bans abortions if the gestational age of the fetus is over six weeks, but it also contains exceptions for pregnancies that are a result of rape, incest or human trafficking; for fatal fetal abnormality; and to preserve the life of the mother or “avert a serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman.”Properly interpreted (problems interpreting pro-life laws have tragically led to too many terrible incidents), this is not a law that leaves women vulnerable to dangerous pregnancy complications. It has elements that are necessary to assure doctors that they won’t be prosecuted if they provide life or health-saving care. In short, it represents a statutory effort to respect the lives and health of both mother and child.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Lawyers Should Not Assist Trump in a Potential Power Grab

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      As the presidential campaign begins its final sprint, Donald Trump has made crystal clear how he will respond if he loses. He will refuse to accept the results; he will make baseless claims of voter fraud; and he will turn, with even more ferocity than he did in 2020, to the courts to save him.Mr. Trump has made clear that he views any election he loses — no matter how close or fair — as by definition illegitimate. The question then is whether there will be lawyers willing to cloak this insistence in the language of legal reasoning and therefore to assist him in litigating his way back to the White House.Republican lawyers have already unleashed lawsuits ahead of Election Day. These legal partisans have pursued their efforts across the country but have concentrated on swing states and key counties. The moves are clearly intended to lay the groundwork for Mr. Trump’s post-election efforts in states where the margins of victory are close.Such post-election efforts will be credible only if credible attorneys sign on to mount them. So it is critical that lawyers of conscience refuse to assist in those endeavors. As Mr. Trump’s rhetoric grows ever more vengeful and openly authoritarian, a great deal turns on the willingness of members of the legal profession to make common cause with him.At least since 2000, every close presidential election has involved recounts or litigation. Both sides lawyer up, and a high-stakes game of inches ensues.Although the lawyers engaged in those efforts are playing hardball, their work is predicated on a shared set of premises: In elections, the candidate who gets the most votes prevails (whether that means winning state or federal office or winning a state’s electoral votes). And in a close election, skilled lawyers will seek to develop legal arguments that determine which votes count, and therefore who emerges as the winner.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Supreme Court to Decide Whether Mexico Can Sue U.S. Gun Makers

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      The justices will consider whether a 2005 law that gives gun makers broad immunity applies in the case, which accuses them of complicity in supplying cartels with weapons.The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide whether Mexico may sue gun manufacturers in the United States for aiding in the trafficking of weapons used by drug cartels.Mexico sued seven gun makers and one distributor in 2021, blaming them for rampant violence caused by illegal gun trafficking from the United States spurred by the demand of Mexican drug cartels for military-style weapons.Mexico has strict gun control laws that it says make it virtually impossible for criminals to obtain firearms legally. Indeed, the suit said, its single gun store issues fewer than 50 permits a year. But gun violence is rampant.The lawsuit, which seeks billions of dollars in damages, said that 70 to 90 percent of the guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico came from the United States and that gun dealers in border states sell twice as many firearms as dealers in other parts of the country.Judge Dennis F. Saylor, of the Federal District Court in Boston, dismissed Mexico’s lawsuit, saying it was barred by the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, a 2005 law that prohibits many kinds of suits against makers and distributors of firearms. The law, Judge Saylor wrote, “bars exactly this type of action from being brought in federal and state courts.”But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, in Boston, revived the suit, saying that it qualified for an exception to the law, which authorizes claims for knowing violations of firearms laws that are a direct cause of the plaintiff’s injuriesIn urging the Supreme Court to hear the case, the gun makers said that “Mexico’s suit has no business in an American court.” Mexico’s legal theory, they added, was an “eight-step Rube Goldberg, starting with the lawful production and sale of firearms in the United States and ending with the harms that drug cartels inflict on the Mexican government.”“Absent this court’s intervention,” the gun makers’ petition continued, “Mexico’s multi-billion-dollar suit will hang over the American firearms industry for years, inflicting costly and intrusive discovery at the hands of a foreign sovereign that is trying to bully the industry into adopting a host of gun-control measures that have been repeatedly rejected by American voters.”In response, Mexico said the defendants were complicit in mass violence.“The flood of petitioners’ firearms from sources in the United States to cartels in Mexico is no accident,” Mexico’s brief said. “It results from petitioners’ knowing and deliberate choice to supply their products to bad actors, to allow reckless and unlawful practices that feed the crime-gun pipeline, and to design and market their products in ways that petitioners intend will drive up demand among the cartels.” More