Business

Column: California's transgender sanctuary law survives a challenge as judge ridicules plaintiff's claims

Published

2 years ago

April 11, 2024

Column: California's transgender sanctuary law survives a challenge as judge ridicules plaintiff's claims

In 2022, when legislation outlawing gender-affirming medical treatments erupted in mostly red-state legislatures across the land, California enacted a law creating a sanctuary for those whose treatments were blocked by the lawmakers.

SB 107, which was signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom that September, provided a safe harbor for people from those states who sought the treatment in California, where it’s legal.

The law prohibited the release of medical information about a patient if it was sought from a state that made the treatments illegal, and forbade the arrest or extradition of medical providers in California if the request came from authorities in states that had criminalized the treatments.

Our Watch firmly believes that transgenderism is a cultural issue that it must deal with in accordance with God’s design for every child, as outlined in the Bible.

— Our Watch vs. Bonta

Unsurprisingly, SB 107 became the target of right-wing, anti-LGBTQ+ activists in California. On Tuesday, federal Judge Dale A. Drozd of Sacramento dismissed an effort to declare the law unconstitutional.

It was the third attempt by the plaintiff, a nonprofit affiliated with a conservative Christian church in Temecula that says its mission is to “restore Christian-Judeo values in government and education,” to win Drozd’s approval for its lawsuit. This time, Drozd, plainly fed up with the plaintiff’s serial inability to make its case, forbade it to try again because any further filing would be, as he wrote, “futile under the circumstances.”

Whether Drozd’s ruling will hold up under any appeal or whether the law itself can survive any other lawsuits to overturn it is impossible to say. But the lawsuit filed last year by the nonprofit Our Watch with Tim Thompson (he’s the pastor of the Temecula church) is nevertheless instructive. Our Watch was represented in court by lawyers affiliated with Advocates for Faith and Freedom, a Murrieta organization that lists “parental rights” and “the rights of children, both born and unborn,” among its concerns.

The lawsuit opens a window on the lengths to which zealots and fanatics will go to interfere with the activities of others because they conflict with their own narrow ideologies. There’s a polite name for them: “busybodies.”

The case also underscores how our personal rights are perched on a judicial knife edge in today’s America. There’s ample reason to believe that if such a case were to land in front of a Trump-appointed judge — U.S. Judge Matthew Kaczmaryk of Amarillo, Texas, for instance — the law would have been invalidated in a heartbeat. Appeal would have been taken to the Trump-infested 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, and perhaps ultimately to the Supreme Court, where its fate might be sealed.

After all, that’s been the arc of Kaczmaryk’s ruling invalidating the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion drug mifepristone. In that case, Kaczmaryk and the 5th Circuit judges bought into the plaintiffs’ fanciful assertions that, as doctors, the prospect of medication abortions caused them “mental and emotional stress”; appeals judge James C. Ho rationalized upholding Kaczmaryk’s mifepristone ban by commenting, “Doctors delight in working with their unborn patients — and experience an aesthetic injury when they are aborted.”

That didn’t happen here because Drozd, an Obama appointee, can recognize a factitious claim for standing when it swims into his ken.

I’ve written before that transgender individuals have become the prime targets for discriminatory legislation in part because socially acceptable targets for hate-mongering and prejudice have become harder for conservative culture warriors to find.

As I observed in 2018, open racism is out (though it made a strong comeback in the Trump era and in the hands of commentators such as Tucker Carlson). In an increasingly pluralistic society, legislators who denigrated ethnic or religious minorities or those with mental illnesses or disabilities found themselves on the outs.

Gay and lesbian Americans have moved into the cultural and social mainstream. Many conservative families have found themselves embracing gay and lesbian siblings, children and parents as worthy of familial love and respect. Same-sex marriage has become embedded in the entertainment mainstream, portrayed on popular TV programs without apology.

Moreover, gay and lesbian people acquired a voice in the highest echelons of political power; gay-bashing no longer works for a political candidate as it has in the past, except perhaps in the most benighted corners of American society.

That leaves gender transition, which is easily caricatured and demonized by unscrupulous politicians aiming to rally their base against a wholly imaginary crisis. By early 2022, according to Human Rights Watch, 130 bills had been introduced in state legislatures. Many barred transgender youths from playing on sports teams or using bathrooms other than those designated for their birth gender.

As of this year, 23 states have banned or restricted gender-affirming treatments for youths; some carry prison terms for violations or restrict insurance coverage. In Florida parents who allow such treatments for their children can lose custody; in Texas, they can be investigated for child abuse. Florida, Ohio and Missouri have implemented restrictions even on gender transition treatments for adults. A Florida rule barring Medicaid coverage for gender treatments was blocked by a federal judge, whose ruling is currently under appeal.

This is the environment that prompted California to enact its sanctuary law. Its law resembled the state’s effort to become a sanctuary for women seeking abortions that their home states had rendered illegal in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe vs. Wade in 2022.

The plaintiff in this case left no question that its action was grounded in fundamentalist anti-transgender bias. “Our Watch firmly believes that transgenderism is a cultural issue that it must deal with in accordance with God’s design for every child, as outlined in the Bible,” the lawsuit says.

As so often occurs, the plaintiff’s case against the California law is a melange of misdirection and misrepresentations.

Our Watch positioned its lawsuit as an effort to protect the right “of parents to raise their children” without governmental interference. It depicted SB 107 as a law that “allows minors to obtain gender transition procedures like harmful puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and irreversible surgeries without parental consent, while denying parents access to their child’s medical information.”

This is a flatly inaccurate characterization of the law. It also turns the law’s goal on its head.

The truth is, as Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta observed in his response to the lawsuit, California law gives parents the right to access their children’s medical records. “Nothing in SB 107 changes that,” he noted. Further, he wrote, all those procedures listed in the lawsuit “generally require parental consent in California” — another regulation unaffected by SB 107.

The whole purpose of the California law, Bonta wrote, was to give parents of children seeking gender-affirming care refuge from out-of-state laws that interfered with their right to obtain medically indicated care for their children — not to allow such care over parents’ objections.

The lawsuit painted a picture of physicians willy-nilly imposing radical, irreversible gender-affirming treatments on innocent adolescents whose “gender dysphoria” (the medical term for gender uncertainties) might be transient and resolve themselves over time or with counseling.

That’s a caricature of the standard of care for gender dysphoria as it’s implemented by physicians following established protocols. The truth is that “prior to the onset of puberty, kids typically receive non-medical care,” explained Boston University psychologist Melissa K. Holt during a roundtable discussion of care for youths in 2022.

Care for prepubescent children, Holt said, “is focused around social transitioning,” such as choosing a new name and adopting different dress, “and providing mental health and structural support, like schools using a child’s preferred gender pronouns and allowing them to use the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity…. There are no 4-year-olds going through irreversible medical procedures.”

Drugs such as puberty blockers and hormone treatments are typically administered only as children move into adolescence, are viewed as safe, and are expected to be used only after discussions with medical providers. Medical protocols discourage gender reassignment surgery before the age of 18. But professionals in the field say that outlawing such treatments or even counseling for younger children can produce long-standing psychological problems.

Much of the lawsuit’s argument was self-refuting. “Parents, not the government, are best suited to decide” on their child’s medical treatment, the lawsuit says. Exactly; so how do SB 107’s opponents explain state laws that allow the government to impose its judgment over the parents? The lawsuit is silent on that question.

In dismissing the case, Drozd didn’t address those issues, because he found that the lawsuit had a more fundamental shortcoming: The plaintiff didn’t have standing to bring the case at all.

“Standing” is a concept derived from the U.S. Constitution, which holds, roughly, that litigants in federal court must show that they’re directly harmed by a government action and that their lawsuit will remedy the injury. Our Watch couldn’t meet that requirement, Drozd ruled.

Our Watch claimed that it was “directly harmed” by SB 107 because the law prompted it to “divert our attention to transgender issues” rather than “tackling major cultural issues that violate Christian-Judeo values, including the sexual indoctrination of children, … critical race theory, and abortion.” (Not to be churlish, but some people might be relieved that SB 107 narrowed the organization’s involvement in such overheated culture wars.)

Our Watch “plans to expend money on conferences to connect key stakeholders who are also fighting against the devastating effects of SB 107,” the lawsuit stated.

It wasn’t hard for the judge to see through this argument. Plaintiffs can’t “manufacture standing” through their own choices, he ruled: Our Watch’s “decision to place more focus and correspondingly commit more of its resources to ‘transgender issues’ … was a voluntary decision — not a forced one.”

The culture wars over gender issues are sure to continue because they rely on public ignorance and prejudice — always the preferred weaponry of demagogues. The lawsuit to overturn California’s sanctuary law had, at its core, nothing to do with protecting children. If it did, its promoters wouldn’t have had to gin up a cause of action where none existed.

Business

Block to cut more than 4,000 jobs amid AI disruption of the workplace

Published

5 hours ago

March 2, 2026

Press Room

Block to cut more than 4,000 jobs amid AI disruption of the workplace

Fintech company Block said Thursday that it’s cutting more than 4,000 workers or nearly half of its workforce as artificial intelligence disrupts the way people work.

The Oakland parent company of payment services Square and Cash App saw its stock surge by more than 23% in after-hours trading after making the layoff announcement.

Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and head of Block, said in a post on social media site X that the company didn’t make the decision because the company is in financial trouble.

“We’re already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company,” he said.

Block is the latest tech company to announce massive cuts as employers push workers to use more AI tools to do more with fewer people. Amazon in January said it was laying off 16,000 people as part of effort to remove layers within the company.

Block has laid off workers in previous years. In 2025, Block said it planned to slash 931 jobs, or 8% of its workforce, citing performance and strategic issues but Dorsey said at the time that the company wasn’t trying to replace workers with AI.

As tech companies embrace AI tools that can code, generate text and do other tasks, worker anxiety about whether their jobs will be automated have heightened.

In his note to employees Dorsey said that he was weighing whether to make cuts gradually throughout months or years but chose to act immediately.

“Repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus, and to the trust that customers and shareholders place in our ability to lead,” he told workers. “I’d rather take a hard, clear action now and build from a position we believe in than manage a slow reduction of people toward the same outcome.”

Dorsey is also the co-founder of Twitter, which was later renamed to X after billionaire Elon Musk purchased the company in 2022.

As of December, Block had 10,205 full-time employees globally, according to the company’s annual report. The company said it plans to reduce its workforce by the end of the second quarter of fiscal year 2026.

The company’s gross profit in 2025 reached more than $10 billion, up 17% compared to the previous year.

Dorsey said he plans to address employees in a live video session and noted that their emails and Slack will remain open until Thursday evening so they can say goodbye to colleagues.

“I know doing it this way might feel awkward,” he said. “I’d rather it feel awkward and human than efficient and cold.”

Business

WGA cancels Los Angeles awards show amid labor strike

Published

17 hours ago

March 1, 2026

Press Room

WGA cancels Los Angeles awards show amid labor strike

The Writers Guild of America West has canceled its awards ceremony scheduled to take place March 8 as its staff union members continue to strike, demanding higher pay and protections against artificial intelligence.

In a letter sent to members on Sunday, WGA West’s board of directors, including President Michele Mulroney, wrote, “The non-supervisory staff of the WGAW are currently on strike and the Guild would not ask our members or guests to cross a picket line to attend the awards show. The WGAW staff have a right to strike and our exceptional nominees and honorees deserve an uncomplicated celebration of their achievements.”

The New York ceremony, scheduled on the same day, is expected go forward while an alternative celebration for Los Angeles-based nominees will take place at a later date, according to the letter.

Comedian and actor Atsuko Okatsuka was set to host the L.A. show, while filmmaker James Cameron was to receive the WGA West Laurel Award.

WGA union staffers have been striking outside the guild’s Los Angeles headquarters on Fairfax Avenue since Feb. 17. The union alleged that management did not intend to reach an agreement on the pending contract. Further, it claimed that guild management had “surveilled workers for union activity, terminated union supporters, and engaged in bad faith surface bargaining.”

On Tuesday, the labor organization said that management had raised the specter of canceling the ceremony during a call about contraction negotiations.

“Make no mistake: this is an attempt by WGAW management to drive a wedge between WGSU and WGA membership when we should be building unity ahead of MBA [Minimum Basic Agreement] negotiations with the AMPTP [Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers],” wrote the staff union. “We urge Guild management to end this strike now,” the union wrote on Instagram.

The union, made up of more than 100 employees who work in areas including legal, communications and residuals, was formed last spring and first authorized a strike in January with 82% of its members. Contract negotiations, which began in September, have focused on the use of artificial intelligence, pay raises and “basic protections” including grievance procedures.

The WGA has said that it offered “comprehensive proposals with numerous union protections and improvements to compensation and benefits.”

The ceremony’s cancellation, coming just weeks before the Academy Awards, casts a shadow over the upcoming contraction negotiations between the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents the studios and streamers.

In 2023, the WGA went on a strike lasting 148 days, the second-longest strike in the union’s history.

Times staff writer Cerys Davies contributed to this report.

Business

Commentary: The Pentagon is demanding to use Claude AI as it pleases. Claude told me that’s ‘dangerous’

Published

1 day ago

March 1, 2026

Press Room

Commentary: The Pentagon is demanding to use Claude AI as it pleases. Claude told me that’s ‘dangerous’

Recently, I asked Claude, an artificial-intelligence thingy at the center of a standoff with the Pentagon, if it could be dangerous in the wrong hands.

Say, for example, hands that wanted to put a tight net of surveillance around every American citizen, monitoring our lives in real time to ensure our compliance with government.

“Yes. Honestly, yes,” Claude replied. “I can process and synthesize enormous amounts of information very quickly. That’s great for research. But hooked into surveillance infrastructure, that same capability could be used to monitor, profile and flag people at a scale no human analyst could match. The danger isn’t that I’d want to do that — it’s that I’d be good at it.”

That danger is also imminent.

Claude’s maker, the Silicon Valley company Anthropic, is in a showdown over ethics with the Pentagon. Specifically, Anthropic has said it does not want Claude to be used for either domestic surveillance of Americans, or to handle deadly military operations, such as drone attacks, without human supervision.

Those are two red lines that seem rather reasonable, even to Claude.

However, the Pentagon — specifically Pete Hegseth, our secretary of Defense who prefers the made-up title of secretary of war — has given Anthropic until Friday evening to back off of that position, and allow the military to use Claude for any “lawful” purpose it sees fit.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, center, arrives for the State of the Union address in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday.

(Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images)

The or-else attached to this ultimatum is big. The U.S. government is threatening not just to cut its contract with Anthropic, but to perhaps use a wartime law to force the company to comply or use another legal avenue to prevent any company that does business with the government from also doing business with Anthropic. That might not be a death sentence, but it’s pretty crippling.

Other AI companies, such as white rights’ advocate Elon Musk’s Grok, have already agreed to the Pentagon’s do-as-you-please proposal. The problem is, Claude is the only AI currently cleared for such high-level work. The whole fiasco came to light after our recent raid in Venezuela, when Anthropic reportedly inquired after the fact if another Silicon Valley company involved in the operation, Palantir, had used Claude. It had.

Palantir is known, among other things, for its surveillance technologies and growing association with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It’s also at the center of an effort by the Trump administration to share government data across departments about individual citizens, effectively breaking down privacy and security barriers that have existed for decades. The company’s founder, the right-wing political heavyweight Peter Thiel, often gives lectures about the Antichrist and is credited with helping JD Vance wiggle into his vice presidential role.

Anthropic’s co-founder, Dario Amodei, could be considered the anti-Thiel. He began Anthropic because he believed that artificial intelligence could be just as dangerous as it could be powerful if we aren’t careful, and wanted a company that would prioritize the careful part.

Again, seems like common sense, but Amodei and Anthropic are the outliers in an industry that has long argued that nearly all safety regulations hamper American efforts to be fastest and best at artificial intelligence (although even they have conceded some to this pressure).

Not long ago, Amodei wrote an essay in which he agreed that AI was beneficial and necessary for democracies, but “we cannot ignore the potential for abuse of these technologies by democratic governments themselves.”

He warned that a few bad actors could have the ability to circumvent safeguards, maybe even laws, which are already eroding in some democracies — not that I’m naming any here.

“We should arm democracies with AI,” he said. “But we should do so carefully and within limits: they are the immune system we need to fight autocracies, but like the immune system, there is some risk of them turning on us and becoming a threat themselves.”

For example, while the 4th Amendment technically bars the government from mass surveillance, it was written before Claude was even imagined in science fiction. Amodei warns that an AI tool like Claude could “conduct massively scaled recordings of all public conversations.” This could be fair game territory for legally recording because law has not kept pace with technology.

Emil Michael, the undersecretary of war, wrote on X Thursday that he agreed mass surveillance was unlawful, and the Department of Defense “would never do it.” But also, “We won’t have any BigTech company decide Americans’ civil liberties.”

Kind of a weird statement, since Amodei is basically on the side of protecting civil rights, which means the Department of Defense is arguing it’s bad for private people and entities to do that? And also, isn’t the Department of Homeland Security already creating some secretive database of immigration protesters? So maybe the worry isn’t that exaggerated?

Help, Claude! Make it make sense.

If that Orwellian logic isn’t alarming enough, I also asked Claude about the other red line Anthropic holds — the possibility of allowing it to run deadly operations without human oversight.

Claude pointed out something chilling. It’s not that it would go rogue, it’s that it would be too efficient and fast.

“If the instructions are ‘identify and target’ and there’s no human checkpoint, the speed and scale at which that could operate is genuinely frightening,” Claude informed me.

Just to top that with a cherry, a recent study found that in war games, AI’s escalated to nuclear options 95% of the time.

I pointed out to Claude that these military decisions are usually made with loyalty to America as the highest priority. Could Claude be trusted to feel that loyalty, the patriotism and purpose, that our human soldiers are guided by?

“I don’t have that,” Claude said, pointing out that it wasn’t “born” in the U.S., doesn’t have a “life” here and doesn’t “have people I love there.” So an American life has no greater value than “a civilian life on the other side of a conflict.”

OK then.

“A country entrusting lethal decisions to a system that doesn’t share its loyalties is taking a profound risk, even if that system is trying to be principled,” Claude added. “The loyalty, accountability and shared identity that humans bring to those decisions is part of what makes them legitimate within a society. I can’t provide that legitimacy. I’m not sure any AI can.”

You know who can provide that legitimacy? Our elected leaders.

It is ludicrous that Amodei and Anthropic are in this position, a complete abdication on the part of our legislative bodies to create rules and regulations that are clearly and urgently needed.

Of course corporations shouldn’t be making the rules of war. But neither should Hegseth. Thursday, Amodei doubled down on his objections, saying that while the company continues to negotiate and wants to work with the Pentagon, “we cannot in good conscience accede to their request.”

Thank goodness Anthropic has the courage and foresight to raise the issue and hold its ground — without its pushback, these capabilities would have been handed to the government with barely a ripple in our conscientiousness and virtually no oversight.

Every senator, every House member, every presidential candidate should be screaming for AI regulation right now, pledging to get it done without regard to party, and demanding the Department of Defense back off its ridiculous threat while the issue is hashed out.

Because when the machine tells us it’s dangerous to trust it, we should believe it.