USA: Late metal drummer wanted to donate his organs after his death. The government says he can’t, because he’s gay
According to a document from the US Health and Human Services Department, there are restrictions in place on sexually active gay and bisexual men donating organs. The document claims that men who have had sex with men (MSM) in the 12 months preceding their death are considered to have an “increased risk” of HIV, Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C.
The US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit heard oral arguments on Tuesday in a case filed by gay conversion therapists who argue that the practice should be protected by the First Amendment.
The Florida city of Boca Raton and Palm Beach County outlawed conversion therapy in 2017, part of a growing national and international trend. Opponents of the practice characterize it, as did Boca Raton’s attorney in court on Tuesday, as a “dangerous and ineffective medical procedure.”
The therapists’ complaint, however, argued that gay conversion regulations “storm the office doors of mental health professionals, thrust themselves into the therapeutic alliance, violate the sacred trust between client and counselor, and run roughshod over the fundamental right of client self-determination and the counselors’ cherished First Amendment liberties.” The plaintiffs in the Florida case contend that such rules “discriminate against [their] speech on the basis of the content of the message they offer.”
The district court denied their motion to enjoin the laws from taking effect. It was willing to see the bans as narrowly focused on a medical practice rather than a broad variety of speech. The governments “do ban efforts, through a medical intervention, by a licensed provider, to therapeutically change a minor’s sexual orientation,” the court wrote. But they “did not identify any problem with therapists providing coping strategies and support to children; they have identified problems with therapists providing” gay conversion treatment.
The therapists appealed the decision. Before the Eleventh Circuit on Tuesday, the plaintiffs’ attorney likened gay conversion therapy to a car’s GPS system, saying it was the patient, like the driver in a car, who asked for the therapist’s direction in overcoming homosexual attraction, not the therapist’s coercion controlling the patient. Asking the attorney to help delineate what aspects of the ban were at issue, one judge noted that it is the court’s job to determine “what is conduct and what is content” in terms of free speech in the medical sphere. The governments, she noted, had made efforts to narrow the scope of their rules to harmful conduct, such as by focusing on minor children only. In response, the therapists’ attorney characterized the bans as overly broad, prohibiting conversations essential to counseling in many situations with a transgender patient, for example.
Boca Raton’s counsel, in response, said that “there is not a single phrase or word that the ordinance prohibits these psychologists or anyone else from uttering.” Instead, he argued, it is a regulation of conduct by medical professionals, rather than speech. Under the ban, he said Psychologists can speak about and even recommend conversion therapy elsewhere, but if they are licensed and practicing in Boca Raton, they cannot themselves carry out the practice the city has extensive evidence is harmful. Their ability to cause harm as “trained professionals that learn methods and methodologies” capable of affecting their patients’ behavior, he said, renders them subject to regulation, unlike religious leaders or any person with “a soapbox on a street corner.”
The case is one of many lawsuits over gay conversion therapy currently occupying the courts, and many expect a high-profile example to reach the Supreme Court in the near future.
The post Federal appeals court hears gay conversion ban case appeared first on JURIST – News – Legal News & Commentary.
USA: Federal appeals court upholds school’s policy allowing students to use bathroom matching gender identity
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled Wednesday in favor of an Oregon school district’s policy allowing transgender students to use the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity. A group of parents and students had sued to challenge the policy, arguing that it violated their constitutional rights to privacy and that the policy was itself discriminatory.
“It is clear that this case touches on deeply personal issues about which many have strong feelings and beliefs,” the panel wrote. “We agree with the district court and hold that there is no Fourteenth Amendment fundamental privacy right to avoid all risk of intimate exposure to or by a transgender person who was assigned the opposite biological sex at birth. We also hold that a policy that treats all students equally does not discriminate based on sex.”
The plaintiffs in the case had likened the school’s policy to past cases in which the government had intruded on people’s bodily privacy. High school students, they argued, have “the right to be free from State-compelled risk of intimate exposure of oneself to the opposite sex,” a right “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.” But the district court that heard the case disagreed; the cases the plaintiffs cited involved more egregious government intrusions such as arbitrary strip searches. “The potential threat that a high school student might see or be seen by someone of the opposite biological sex while either are undressing or performing bodily functions in a restroom, shower, or locker room does not give rise to a constitutional violation,” the district court wrote.
The Ninth Circuit on Wednesday agreed. Additionally, the panel said, “the Fourteenth Amendment does not provide a fundamental parental right to determine the bathroom policies of the public schools to which parents may send their children.” In dismissing the plaintiffs’ overly broad characterization of privacy rights, the court added, “this conclusion is supported by the fact that the Student Safety Plan provides alternative options and privacy protections to those who do not want to share facilities with a transgender student.” The plaintiff students had argued that the alternatives were inconvenient and less desirable, but the court noted judicial precedent holding that when the government seeks to accommodate competing interests, like a transgender student’s well-being and that of the offended students, inconvenience and discomfort do not establish privacy violations.
The post Federal appeals court upholds school’s policy allowing students to use bathroom matching gender identity appeared first on JURIST – News – Legal News & Commentary.
Jeudi 2 avril 2020
18h – 19h30
Hôtel de Ville, Place de la Palud, Lausanne
Mariage pour tous
Où en sont la Suisse et l’Europe
dans la régulation de la vie commune ?
ENTRÉE LIBRE
Programme : http://www.isdc.ch
Information : news.isdc@unil.ch
Brazil top court rejects attempt to remove LGBT movie from Netflix
Brazil’s Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a lower court’s decision to remove a Netflix comedy that displayed Jesus Christ in a gay relationship.
Minister Dias Toffoli stated that “the exercise of freedom of expression reaffirms and enhances other constitutional freedoms.” The film on Netflix is called, “The First Temptation of Christ,” and was produced by the company Porta dos Fundos. The film was released on December 3 and was streamed on Netflix. The film is meant to be a satirical comedy, oriented around Jesus’ return home with his boyfriend after 40 days in the desert.
The film has drawn staunch opposition from conservative politicians and religious evangelicals, as the country is mainly composed of Catholics. Minister Toffoli also explained his reasoning by identifying “the judgment of ADI 4439 (concerning religious teaching in schools), the Supreme Court established as premises the willingness of exposure to the content and the prohibition that the Government favors a group in to the detriment of others.”
The post Brazil
France: Court of Cassation rules for the first time on the possibility for the husband of the father to adopt through full adoption, the child born through surrogacy
(reported by #Caroline Mecary who as the lawyer involved)
In two decisions dated February 12, 2020, the Court of Cassation ruled for the first time on the possibility for the husband of the father to adopt through full adoption, the child born through surrogacy.
The Court of Cassation declared inadmissible the appeals lodged by the Public Prosecutor in Paris against the decisions of September 18, 2018, which admitted for the first time the full adoption of the husband’s child in case of surrogacy, reiterated in another décision on November 27, 2018.
The Court thus validated the full adoptions declared on September 18 and November 27, 2018, by the Court of Appeal of Paris in favour of two families, a couple of men with two children for the first one and a single child for the second.
It is the first time that the Court of Cassation rules on this question of full adoption of the child of the husband, born thanks to surrogacy: assuming that there is only one father on the foreign birth certificate.
The Court of Cassation had already admitted on July 5, 2017, that the simple adoption of the spouse’s child could be pronounced in a specific configuration allowing simple adoption of the spouse’s child only: by supposing that on the foreign birth certificate, the names of the father and the surrogate are mentioned, in that case the only possibility for the husband of the father to adopt the child born through surrogacy, is to request a simple adoption.
The Court of Cassation thus shows the best way to be taken by the trial judges who could be seized of requests for full adoption of the spouse’s child, by couples of men or hetero couples who had a child through surrogacy.
It is a great victory for the children of these families. The Court of Cassation has just allowed their families to be totally protected by the law, even though it took more than four years of proceedings for these two families to achieve this result.
USA: St. Louis County To Pay $10.25 Million To Settle Wildhaber’s Gay Discrimination Suit
USA: Texas files suit in Supreme Court over California state-funded travel ban against States that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender
Texas filed an original action in the US Supreme Court Monday to overturn California’s ban on state-funded travel to a list of 11 states—including Texas—that have adopted policies that California has deemed discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation or gender.
California Assembly Bill 1887, enacted in 2016 and expanded in 2017, bans state-funded or required travel of California agencies or their employees to a list currently comprising 11 states that have passed legislation that, according to AB 1887, discriminates or authorizes discrimination “against same-sex couples or their families or on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression, as specified, subject to certain exceptions. ”
The expansion of the California travel ban in 2017 added four states—Alabama, Kentucky, South Dakota and Texas—each for various laws passed affecting LGBTQ individuals and families in the state.
Texas was added to the 2017 list expansion for its enactment of HB 3859, which, according to the press release from California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, “allows foster care agencies to discriminate against children in foster care and potentially disqualify LGBT families from the state’s foster and adoption system.”
The action filed Monday by Texas in response to its addition to California’s list of banned states calls into questions whether the restriction on state-funded travel will be able to stand against the 10 other states currently listed.
In the press release announcing the suit’s filing, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton characterized the states to which California restricts state travel as states that “uphold First Amendment protections for religious liberty,” defending the Texas bill that landed his state on the list in 2017:
The law California opposes does not prevent anyone from contributing to child-welfare; in fact, it allows our state to partner with as many different agencies as possible to expand the number of safe and loving homes available to foster children. Boycotting states based on nothing more than political disagreement breaks down the ability of states to serve as laboratories of democracy while still working together as one nation—the very thing our Constitution intended to prevent.
The suit filed by Texas cites examples of trips canceled due to the ban, including a group of college students from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, whose trip to a conference of minority architects in Houston was canceled last minute in 2017.
The post Texas files suit in Supreme Court over California state-funded travel ban appeared first on JURIST – News – Legal News & Commentary.
Switzerland: Controversial initiative on married couples’ tax equality (excluding same-sex couples) withdrawn
Proponents of a people’s initiative that seeks equal tax treatment for married and unmarried couples have withdrawn it in favour of relaunching a more gay-friendly version. The formality, which was communicated to the governing Federal Council on Wednesday, was already announced last month by the Christian Democratic Party who were behind it. The initiative sought to prevent penalising a significant number of married couples who would pay less tax if they were taxed individually instead of as a unit. The withdrawal of the text was a result of change of heart by Christian Democrats over the definition of marriage. The new text will also aim to end tax discrimination against married couples but will no longer define the institution as the lasting union of a man and a woman. According to party’s president Gerhard Pfister, the text should benefit all married couples and people living in registered partnership, therefore also gay couples. In 2016, the initiative was put to a …
USA – South Dakota: Republicans kill bill to criminalise doctors who treat trans kids after fierce backlash
A South Dakota bill that would criminalise doctors who provide treatment to trans kids has been shelved after an outcry from medical experts and LGBT+ campaigners.
International and Comparative SOGIESC Law - Professor Andreas R Ziegler 