Louisiana
Louisiana asks appeals court to keep Title IX rule protecting LGBTQ+ students on hold
On Monday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans heard oral arguments in the case stemming from Louisiana’s lawsuit.
“Given the fact that the United States Supreme Court has already denied stays on these injunctions, I’m optimistic that this court will also uphold the injunction,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill told reporters after the Monday evening hearing.
At issue is the new U.S. Department of Education rule that says discrimination against students based on sexual orientation and gender identity is prohibited under Title IX, a 1972 federal law that bans sex-based discrimination in schools and colleges that receive federal funding. Other provisions of the rule add protections for pregnant students and expand the definition of sexual harassment at schools and colleges.
The rule, which was set to take effect Aug. 1, does not address transgender students’ participation in school sports, a highly contentious issue that will be the subject of a separate directive.
The new federal regulations could invalidate Louisiana laws that forbid transgender people from using school bathrooms that match their gender identity and protect teachers who refuse to refer to students by their preferred names and pronouns. If the rules took effect and Louisiana was found in violation of them, the state would face the prospect of losing billions of dollars in federal funding for schools, Murrill said Monday.
Murrill’s office filed a federal lawsuit to block the new Title IX rule immediately after it was issued in April. The lawsuit, which three other states joined, said that Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration had overstepped its authority and upended Title IX, which they argued was intended to protect only biological girls and women.
“This law was driven originally by a desire to stop discrimination against women in the education environment,” Murrill said Monday. “It is now being turned on its head.”
In a court filing, the state’s attorneys said the new Title IX interpretation would “transform” schools and harm students.
“Boys and girls will be forced to share bathrooms, locker rooms, and lodging on overnight field trips with members of the opposite sex, including adults,” the Sept. 19 filing said. “Students and teachers will be forced to use whatever pronouns a student demands based on his or her self-professed ‘gender identity.’”
Lawyers for the federal government argue that the new Title IX rule is based on a 2020 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Bostock v. Clayton County, that said a federal ban on sex-based discrimination in the workplace also prohibits discrimination against gay and transgender people. The same logic applies to discrimination in schools, the Biden administration says.
“It is impossible to explain what it is you’re doing when you are intentionally discriminating against someone based on their gender identity without consideration of that person’s sex,” said Jack Starcher, an attorney representing the federal government, at Monday’s hearing. “Discrimination based on gender identity is discrimination based on sex.”
The Biden administration asked the court to limit the pause on the law to just those parts dealing with gender identity, allowing other provisions — such as those dealing with lactation spaces for pregnant students — to take effect while the legal challenges proceed. But Louisiana’s lawyers argue the rule’s expanded definition of sex-based discrimination touches every aspect of the law.
“Their new definitions are pervasive throughout the rule,” Murrill said after the hearing, adding that it would be confusing for schools to determine which parts of the new rule were in effect and which were paused.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals is considered one of the country’s most conservative appellate courts. Judge Jerry Smith, one of the three presiding judges at Monday’s hearing, appeared skeptical of the Biden administration’s rule.
Smith, who was appointed by former President Ronald Reagan, gave a hypothetical scenario in which a biological female student objected to playing volleyball during physical education class alongside a transgender girl. Under the new rule, Smith suggested, the student would lose access to her P.E. class if she refused to participate.
That “young woman would be denied the benefits of educational services by saying, ‘I don’t want this great big burly guy coming in here and competing against me,’” he said, referring to the transgender student as a “guy.”
The appeals court is expected to rule in the coming weeks. Murrill said she expects that one of the cases challenging the new Title IX will eventually head to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Louisiana
Democrats hope to flip a reliably Republican Louisiana congressional seat with new boundaries
BATON ROUGE, La. — In a critical election year, Democrats are looking to flip a once reliably Republican Louisiana congressional seat, where political boundaries were recently redrawn to form the state’s second mostly Black congressional district.
With five people on the ballot for Louisiana’s Sixth Congressional District, Democrats have thrown their support behind longtime politician Cleo Fields, 61. The state senator has been involved in state politics for three decades and served two terms in Congress after being elected in 1992.
Across the aisle, Republicans are looking to preserve the seat, especially in an election year where the GOP is trying to hold on to their majority in the U.S. House. The only Republican on the ballot is former state lawmaker Elbert Guillory, 80.
For nearly 50 years, only one Democrat has won the seat in Louisiana’s 6th Congressional District. But the district’s boundaries have recently been recrafted.
In January state lawmakers passed Louisiana’s new congressional map with a second majority-Black district, marking a win for Democrats and civil rights groups after a legal battle and political tug-of-war that spanned nearly two years.
The new 6th District boundaries stretch across the state in a narrow and diagonal path, from the state capital, Baton Rouge, to Shreveport in the northwest corner. Black residents account for 54% of its voters, up from 24% previously. Both Fields and Guillory are Black.
A lower court ruled that the new map was an illegal racial gerrymander, but in May the Supreme Court ordered Louisiana to use it in this year’s congressional elections — boosting Democrats’ chances of gaining control of the closely divided House.
Currently, out of Louisiana’s six congressional seats, there is one Democrat, U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, the state’s sole Black member of Congress.
Noticeably absent from the race is incumbent U.S. Rep. Garret Graves. The white Republican announced that he would not seek reelection, saying that it did not make sense to run under the new map.
All of Louisiana’s six congressional seats are up for election. The five other races feature incumbents, including two of the country’s most powerful Republicans – U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise.
Also seeking reelection are Carter and Republicans Clay Higgins and Julia Letlow. All the incumbents are facing lesser-known challengers on the ballot.
Louisiana
US supreme court to rule on new mostly Black Louisiana congressional districts
The US supreme court said on Monday it will take up a new redistricting case involving Louisiana’s congressional map with two mostly Black districts.
The court will not hear arguments until early next year and the 2024 elections are proceeding under the challenged map, which could boost Democrats’ chances of retaking the closely divided US House.
A lower court had invalidated the map, but the justices allowed it to be used in 2024 after an emergency appeal from the state and civil rights groups.
The issue in front of the justices is whether the state relied too heavily on race in drawing a second majority Black district.
The court’s order on Monday is the latest step in federal court battles over Louisiana congressional districts that have lasted more than two years. Louisiana has had two congressional maps blocked by lower courts – and the US supreme court has intervened twice.
The state’s Republican-dominated legislature drew a new congressional map in 2022 to account for population shifts reflected in the 2020 census. But the changes in effect maintained the status quo of five Republican-leaning majority white districts and one Democratic-leaning majority Black district in a state that is about one-third Black.
Noting the size of the state’s Black population, civil rights advocates challenged the map in a Baton Rouge-based federal court and won a ruling from US district judge Shelly Dick that the districts probably discriminated against Black voters.
The supreme court put Dick’s ruling on hold while it took up a similar case from Alabama. The justices allowed both states to use the maps in the 2022 elections even though both had been ruled likely to be discriminatory by federal judges.
The high court eventually affirmed the ruling from Alabama, which led to a new map and a second district that could elect a Black lawmaker. The justices returned the Louisiana case to federal court, with the expectation that new maps would be in place for the 2024 elections.
The fifth US circuit court of appeals gave lawmakers in Louisiana a deadline of early 2024 to draw a new map or face the possibility of a court-imposed map.
Jeff Landry, the state’s Republican governor, had defended Louisiana’s congressional map as the state’s attorney general. Now, though, he urged lawmakers to pass a new map with another majority-Black district at a special session in January. He backed a map that created a new majority Black district stretching across the state, linking parts of the Shreveport, Alexandria, Lafayette and Baton Rouge.
A different set of plaintiffs, a group of self-described non-African Americans, filed suit in western Louisiana, claiming that the new map was also illegal because it was driven too much by race, in violation of the US constitution. A divided panel of federal judges ruled 2-1 in April in their favor and blocked use of the new map.
The supreme court voted 6-3 to put that ruling on hold and allow the map to be used.
Liz Murrill, the state attorney general whose office has defended both maps enacted by lawmakers, called on the court to “provide more clear guidance to legislators and reduce judicial second-guessing after the legislature does its job”.
“Based upon the supreme court’s most recent pronouncements, we believe the map is constitutional,” Murrill said.
The state and civil rights groups were at odds over the first map but are allies now.
“Federal law requires Louisiana to have a fair map that reflects the power and voice of the state’s Black communities,” Stuart Naifeh of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund said in a statement. “The state recognized as much when it adopted a new map with a second majority-Black district in January. Now the supreme court must do the same.”
The supreme court vote to use the challenged map in this year’s elections was unusual in that the dissenting votes came from the three liberal justices, who have been supportive of Black voters in redistricting cases. But, in an opinion by justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, they said their votes were motivated by their view that there was time for a new map to be drawn – and their disagreement with past court orders that cited the approach of an election to block lower-court rulings.
“There is little risk of voter confusion from a new map being imposed this far out from the November election,” Jackson wrote in May.
In adopting the districts that are being used this year, Landry and his allies said the driving factor was politics, not race. The congressional map provides politically safe districts for the House speaker, Mike Johnson, and majority leader, Steve Scalise, fellow Republicans. Some lawmakers have also noted that the one Republican whose district was greatly altered in the new map, Garret Graves, supported a Republican opponent of Landry in the 2023 governor’s race. Graves chose not to seek re-election under the new map.
Among the candidates in the new district is Cleo Fields, a Democratic state senator and former congressman who is Black.
Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage
Louisiana
3 dead, including infant, in helicopter crash on rural street in Louisiana
The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating after three people, including an infant, died in a helicopter crash in southwest Louisiana.
The crash took place on Friday night in the town of Iowa, prompting local law enforcement, local firefighters and the Louisiana State Police to respond to the scene, Calcasieu Parish Sheriff Gary “Stitch” Guillory reported.
According to the FAA, a Robinson R44 helicopter crashed about 9 p.m. on a rural street in the town, about 60 miles directly east of Lafayette near Lake Charles.
Three people were on board, Rick Breitenfeldt, a FAA spokesperson told USA TODAY on Monday morning.
Couple, infant killed in helicopter crash on rural street
A male, female and infant died in the crash, Guillory told KFDM-TV, and the aircraft appeared to be personal helicopter.
It was not immediately known where the helicopter took off from or where it was headed.
No other injuries were reported.
The victims’ identities were not immediately released.
USA TODAY has reached out to the sheriff’s office.
The cause of the crash remained under investigation on Monday by the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board, who will head the investigation.
Natalie Neysa Alund is a senior reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at nalund@usatoday.com and follow her on X @nataliealund.
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