Tag Archives: court

Obama’s Overtime Rule Is Perfectly Sensible and Deserves Judicial Deference

by HilarioConnibere Posted on November 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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Prepare to be fascinated. Last week I noted that a Texas judge had blocked the Obama administration’s new overtime rules. The basic issue here is simple: the law states that you’re exempt from overtime rules if you’re a “bona fide” executive, administrative, or professional (EAP) employee. But what does that mean? That’s up to the Department of Labor, which has always had a two-part test. First, you have to have the actual duties of an EAP employee. Second, there’s a salary floor: you have to make more than a certain amount. This is basically designed to keep employers from pretending that someone is an EAP even though they’re paying them peanuts.

The previous floor, set in 2004, was $23,660, or about $29,000 in 2014 dollars. The new rule raised that to about $47,000. The judge ruled that was too high. At $23,660, it made sense that no one under that level could possibly be a bona fide EAP. But at $47,000? Maybe they could.

Was the judge right? Jared Bernstein, who’s been deeply involved in this issue, writes today that he’s not. The basic problem is that the judge accepted the Bush administration’s number as gospel without considering the entire history of the salary floor. Adjusted for inflation, here’s what it looks like since 1940:1

The new level of $47,000 looks perfectly reasonable in historical context. In fact, it’s the 2004 number that looks way out of whack. But what if you use PCE instead of CPI as your inflation measure?

Now it’s the $47,000 number that looks like an outlier. Maybe the judge was right?

I don’t think so. As a matter of bloggy interest, we can certainly argue whether CPI or PCE (or some other measure) is “best” for measuring long-term inflation. However, they’re both widely used and perfectly acceptable in a broad sense. If the Department of Labor uses CPI, that’s a reasonable choice, which the court should give deference to under the Chevron rule. Beyond that, if DOL chooses to look at the historical record for the salary floor, rather than solely at the Bush administration’s number, that’s also reasonable and deserves deference.

Bottom line: the Labor Department set the salary floor in a reasonable way, backed by plenty of empirical evidence. (More empirical evidence than just the historical level of the salary test, I should add.) If anyone was out of line here, it was the Bush administration, not the Obama administration.

1The actual raw numbers are a little tricky to figure out. From 1950 through 1975, DOL used two different salary floors related to a “long test” and a “short test.” (Don’t ask.) As near as I can tell, the best fit to the previous floors is an average of the two, so that’s what I used. Bernstein has more on this here.

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Obama’s Overtime Rule Is Perfectly Sensible and Deserves Judicial Deference

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West Virginia Just Sued a Major Coal Company for Fraud

by Rocco2294huv Posted on November 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Wednesday, West Virginia’s environmental regulator filed suit against coal industry giant Alpha Natural Resources for fraud. The agency alleges that the company and its senior management “knowingly” made “false and misleading” financial projections in order to finalize its bankruptcy plan with the court. The suit comes in the wake of news that the company has a funding shortfall of $100 million, a financial hole that puts its future at risk. Alpha Natural Resources is one of a string of coal companies that have filed for bankruptcy in recent years amid a downturn related to competition from cheap natural gas, environmental regulations, and increasing mechanization.

The company disclosed the shortfall only three months after reaching a bankruptcy settlement based on financial projections that are now being called into question by West Virginia’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). The discrepancy between Alpha’s original projections and the recently declared shortfall make it appear that during the bankruptcy process, senior management underestimated the company’s cash flow “for their own benefit,” according to a court filing by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection.

The regulator wrote in court filings on Tuesday that “it is hard to imagine that a shortfall of this nature and order of magnitude was just a mistake” and accused the company’s former senior executives of knowing but failing to disclose the liabilities in order to reach the bankruptcy settlement.

On Wednesday, West Virginia’s DEP doubled down on those statements, filing a fraud complaint alleging that the faulty financial projections originally provided by the company in the bankruptcy process “cannot reasonably be characterized as an error or mistake,” calling them “razor thin on their face.”

The consequences of millions of dollars in liabilities could prove fatal for the reorganized company, part of which continued operating mines as a new company called Contura Energy. From the start of the bankruptcy process in August 2015, Alpha had committed to pay $244 million to clean up the area damaged by its former coal mines in West Virginia, according to the complaint. By law, once coal companies cease to operate mines, they must restore the abandoned mine area. If the company now operating as Contura goes out of business, the burden for cleaning up the land could fall on taxpayers.

In a statement emailed to Mother Jones, Alpha Natural Resources CEO David Stetson said, “Alpha is executing on a 2017 mining plan that reflects the stronger market for our coal and our continued focus on realizing the significant cost savings necessary to keep Alpha sustainable in the long run. We are confident that we will fulfill our obligations to fund and complete reclamation in accordance with our agreements with the state and federal governments.”

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West Virginia Just Sued a Major Coal Company for Fraud

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Trump will be the fossil fuel industry’s greatest gift

by Karry9314j Posted on November 10, 2016

Among climate hawks, the reactions to Donald Trump’s election have ranged from hopeless to Pollyannaish and everything in between. Former Vice President Al Gore expresses hope that Trump will work with the “overwhelming majority of us who believe that the climate crisis is the greatest threat we face as a nation,” while the New York Times’ Andy Revkin argues that the U.S. president doesn’t make a huge amount of difference when it comes to climate anyway.

Going by his campaign promises, though, the Trump era is shaping up as an open season for the fossil fuel industry. Coal stocks are soaring, and there are strong indications that TransCanada might put the Keystone XL pipeline back on the table.

Trump certainly can’t dismantle climate action and the clean energy economy as quickly as he’s promised (day one), and in some cases, he won’t be able to do it at all. But here’s what’s on his hit list, along with an analysis of what he can and can’t do.

Gutting the Paris climate deal

Trump promised to “cancel” the international climate change accord in his first 100 days of office. Seeing that the deal went into effect last week, he will have to wait a little longer. There’s a three-year period before any country can give notice to withdraw, plus one year before that pullout takes effect. But in the meantime, the United States could severely handicap the deal by not following through on emissions cuts and reneging on promised funds for global climate adaptation.

Trump, though, doesn’t determine whether other countries will stay the course. Most of the world remains committed, for the time being. He will, however, be able to severely undermine the next round of international climate negotiations in 2020, which were supposed to bring about an even stronger, more ambitious agreement than the one signed in Paris. Without the United States involved — much less leading climate diplomacy, as Obama did — the effort may be doomed. That’s even more true if Trump follows through on his promise to eliminate all U.S. contributions to global climate finance.

Scrapping the Clean Power Plan

Trump has promised to repeal the Environmental Protection Agency regulations that would curtail carbon dioxide emissions from power plants — the single biggest domestic accomplishment of the Obama administration on climate. Bureaucratically, reversing the regulations isn’t as easy as promised by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (who thinks “day one would be a good idea”), but Trump’s EPA could choose not to enforce the rule by giving states waivers. The Supreme Court has ruled that EPA has the legal obligation to regulate CO2 as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, so environmental organizations and liberal states can sue the Trump administration to try to force it to regulate once again. But a court system stacked with Trump appointees would be far less friendly to those kinds of lawsuits. The Clean Power Plan already appears headed for the Supreme Court — which would soon include a Trump appointee in addition to four judges consistently hostile to environmental regs.

Rolling back smog and mercury standards and coal ash regulations

Trump promised to repeal every new rule imposed by the Obama administration that harms coal. All three of these fit the bill. Smog, mercury, and coal ash are conventional air or water pollutants that can sicken people who live near coal-burning or processing facilities. Under Obama, the EPA updated and strengthened these rules (though not always to the satisfaction of environmental advocates).

Based on the latest science, the agency lowered the allowable levels of mercury and smog and regulated the disposal of coal ash. The coal ash rules were weak, and the smog rules were both weak and long-overdue. But it was still bad news for the coal industry. The good news for environmentalists is that, while the executive branch can reverse these rules on its own, it will require a new rulemaking process. That takes time, requiring a public comment period, and it’s also — like any rulemaking — subject to legal challenge. Green groups will likely go after all these moves, arguing that they violate laws like the Clean Air Act that charge the EPA with protecting public health.

Bringing back the coal industry

Trump pledged on the campaign trail to essentially wish the coal industry back into existence on day one. Unless he’s got a genie in a bottle (maybe that explains Tuesday’s results?), this is a complete fantasy. Coal employment is plummeting for a few reasons: Strip mining and mechanization have reduced the number of miners needed, Appalachian mines have essentially been tapped out, and it’s more expensive to unearth the remaining coal than to burn natural gas or convert to wind and solar. It’s a myth that the Obama administration regulated coal out of existence; that was happening anyway. Reversing Obama’s rules would have a very marginal on coal employment and would only temporarily boost coal use, since economic factors are against it.

Filling the White House with fossil fuel execs

Trump has already named the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Myron Ebell, a noted climate science denier, to head his environmental policy transition team. Trump’s favorite for leading the Department of Energy is oil and gas executive Harold Hamm. His other energy advisers include coal magnate Robert Murray, and pro-fossil fuel Rep. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota. The specter has been raised of Sarah Palin as Secretary of the Interior (which manages much of the federal government’s public land).  Although Democrats can filibuster cabinet appointments, there’s a good chance that most Trump nominees will get confirmed.

Approving pipelines and more drilling permits

The Keystone XL pipeline is back from the grave. With Trump’s election, TransCanada, the company behind the pipeline that would bring Canadian tar sands oil to the Gulf, is ready to finally get the greenlight after the Obama administration’s refusal. The Dakota Access pipeline is also a sure bet, says Trump’s energy adviser Cramer. The president-elect has promised that “private sector energy infrastructure projects” — namely, pipelines and coal export terminals — will get a rubber stamp. Trump has also promised to open more of the oceans and federal lands to mining and drilling. The president has wide latitude to fulfill those promises, with only public opinion standing in the way.

Gutting the EPA, rather than abolishing it

Right-wing Republican candidates always propose eliminating disfavored cabinet departments. But creating and abolishing federal agencies is actually the prerogative of Congress. And although there might be enough votes in the extremely anti-government, anti-environment House GOP caucus to get rid of the Environmental Protection Agency, it would be unlikely to pass the closely divided Senate. Dirty air and dirty water poll terribly, after all. Instead, the death by a thousand cuts imposed on the agency since Republicans took control of Congress in 2011 will likely continue. Republicans will reduce the EPA’s budget and pass laws restricting its powers — like the ones the House Republicans have passed repeatedly for the last six years. Whether the Senate will still have enough votes to reject them remains to be seen.

Trump’s most measured comments on climate and the environment came in his written questionnaire to the group Science Debate: “Perhaps we should be focused on developing energy sources and power production that alleviates the need for dependence on fossil fuels,” his campaign wrote. The above list, however, doesn’t instill confidence that Trump will follow through on a “perhaps.”

Over the course of his campaign, Trump showed himself to be a wildcard on a few other energy issues, like when he said he would protect public lands. “I am for energy exploration, as long as we don’t do anything to damage the land,” he said earlier this year. “And right now we don’t need too much — there’s a lot of energy.”

In August, Trump thought local fracking bans should be upheld. But his energy advisers have walked back many of these comments since then. Considering the fossil fuel team he will put in place, the chances are nil that Trump follows through on a few stray remarks.

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Trump will be the fossil fuel industry’s greatest gift

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ExxonMobil just got some bad news.

by JadaMcBride3335 Posted on October 27, 2016

The New York State Supreme Court is requiring the oil giant and its accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers to turn over documents subpoenaed by state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. He’s conducting a fraud investigation into the company, spurred by a report from InsideClimate News last year that revealed Exxon knew fossil fuel burning was heating up the atmosphere back in the 1970s and deliberately misled the public about it.

Earlier this month, Exxon attempted to halt the investigation by suing Schneiderman, as well as Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, and arguing that their investigations are politically motivated.

Exxon has also been arguing, under a Texas statute, that documents held by PricewaterhouseCoopers are privileged. But yesterday, the New York court ruled against the company on that point. The court, as the Washington Post reports, determined that New York law, not Texas law, governs the dispute, and ordered the company to comply with Schneiderman’s subpoena.

Schneiderman was pleased with the ruling, of course. He said he looks forward to “moving full-steam ahead with our fraud investigation” and called on Exxon to “cooperate with, rather than resist,” the probe.

ExxonMobil has no such intention. The company said it will appeal the ruling.

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ExxonMobil just got some bad news.

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Obama Fights Back in the Battle Over Where Transgender Kids Pee

by EdwardoIks Posted on October 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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The Obama administration is pushing back against a ruling by a Texas judge that dealt a serious blow to its fight for transgender rights.

On Thursday, the Department of Education announced that it would appeal an August decision by US District Judge Reed O’Connor. O’Connor’s decision temporarily allowed schools across the country to block trans students from the bathroom of their choice until the courts decide whether doing so violates federal civil rights law.

The judge’s decision came in response to a lawsuit filed by Texas and 12 other states against the Department of Education, after the department threatened to pull federal funding from schools that did not allow trans kids to use bathrooms matching their gender identity, rather than the sex listed on their birth certificate. With its appeal, the Obama administration will take the case to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, one of the country’s most conservative appellate courts.

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Obama Fights Back in the Battle Over Where Transgender Kids Pee

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Good News for the Weekend: The World Just Took a Huge Step to Fight Climate Change

by DanShirley Posted on October 15, 2016

Mother Jones

Barack Obama is, by far, the most climate-friendly president ever. Granted, the competition isn’t fierce, and he failed in his signature effort to pass a carbon tax, but he’s still done fairly well:

He doubled CAFE standards.
He played an instrumental role at both the Copenhagen and Paris climate negotiations.
He forged an agreement with China to cut greenhouse gases and ratify the Paris agreement.
He pushed the Clean Power Plan to reduce carbon emissions from power plants. All that’s left is for the Supreme Court to let it go into effect.
Via the stimulus bill and in other ways, he has funded a big increase in solar power.

And now he’s added one more big achievement to his list. On Friday the world agreed to a legally-binding treaty to phase out and eliminate hydrofluorocarbons in air conditioners:

The talks in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, did not draw the same spotlight as the climate change accord forged in Paris last year. But the outcome could have an equal or even greater impact on efforts to slow the heating of the planet.

….HFCs are just a small percentage of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but they function as a sort of supercharged greenhouse gas, with 1,000 times the heat-trapping potency of carbon dioxide.

….The Kigali deal includes specific targets and timetables to replace HFCs with more planet-friendly alternatives, trade sanctions to punish scofflaws, and an agreement by rich countries to help finance the transition of poor countries to the costlier replacement products. So, narrow as it is, the new accord may be more likely to yield climate-shielding actions by industry and governments, negotiators say. And given the heat-trapping power of HFCs, scientists say that the Kigali accord will stave off an increase of atmospheric temperatures of nearly one degree Fahrenheit.

Bottom line: this agreement may do as much for climate change as the Paris agreement that became effective last week. The phase-in dates for eliminating HFCs vary by country, but once the market starts supplying air conditioners using other refrigerants, it’s likely that even hot, poor countries like India and Pakistan may beat their targets. And the United States and other developed countries have agreed to fund R&D into new refrigerants and to provide financial support to poorer countries for the changeover.

Bit by bit, the world is finally taking climate change seriously, even if the Republican Party isn’t. Greenhouse gas reductions may not be happening as fast as they need to, but they’re happening.

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Good News for the Weekend: The World Just Took a Huge Step to Fight Climate Change

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Court’s CFPB Ruling Is Part of a Dangerous Trend

by MargaritaTejada Posted on October 12, 2016

Mother Jones

Conservatives are thrilled about yesterday’s court decision regarding the CFPB. Here’s Iain Murray:

In a rare victory for the Constitution and American political tradition, the US Court of Appeals from the DC Circuit today found that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was “structurally unconstitutional.” The offending structure consists of an independent agency with a single, all-powerful executive director. The Court found that structure fell between two stools — an agency with a single head needs to be accountable to the President, while an independent agency needs to have internal checks and balances by having a multi-member commission format like the SEC and others.

This judgment echoes the arguments the Competitive Enterprise Institute and its co-plaintiffs have been making in a separate court case, where my colleague Hans Bader argued, “The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s lack of checks and balances violates the Constitution’s separation of powers. Its director is like a czar. He is not accountable to anyone, and can’t be fired even if voters elect a president with different ideas about how to protect consumers.”

There’s no telling if this ruling will hold up on appeal, but if it does, the CFPB director will now serve at the pleasure of the president. This means that President Trump could fire Jeopardy champion Richard Cordray and instead install Apprentice champion Omarosa to oversee America’s financial industry. Luckily, it appears we will be spared that indignity.

I don’t expect this ruling to have a big impact in real life. Basically, it means that a new president will be able to install a new CFPB director immediately instead of having to wait a year or two for the old one to finish out her term. In the long run that’s likely to have a neutral effect on party control of the bureau. As for being able to fire the director without cause, that’s mostly hemmed in by political considerations anyway.

At a practical level, then, I don’t have much heartburn over this. On a more abstract level, though, it represents a disturbing trend from conservatives. In this case, their real problem with the CFPB is that they don’t want to regulate the financial industry at all. Likewise, their problem with Obamacare is that they don’t want to provide poor people with health coverage. Their problem with the EPA’s Clean Power Plan is that they hate regulations that offend their business backers.

But conservatives can’t go to court on those grounds, and there’s nothing obviously illegal or unconstitutional about any of these liberal initiatives. So instead they contrive some other hair-splitting argument. The CFPB is too independent. The individual mandate violates a shiny new constitutional doctrine custom built just for Obamacare. The Clean Power Plan uses the wrong interpretation of the word “system.” These arguments vary in their legitimacy, but that hardly matters. Their goal is not legal brilliance. Their goal is to provide conservative justices with a facade they can use to overturn liberal legislation.

And it works, because these days conservative justices treat hot button cases—and, tellingly, only hot button cases—as a way to enforce their political opinions when they can’t do so through the ballot box. This is not a healthy trend.

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Court’s CFPB Ruling Is Part of a Dangerous Trend

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2016 Is the Most Policy-Heavy Election in Decades

by AutumnSidwell69 Posted on October 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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It’s conventional wisdom that this year’s presidential campaign is one of the most policy-free of all time. The reason is obvious: Donald Trump is a policy void. He knows nothing, doesn’t want to know anything, and brags frequently about how everything you need to know to be president can be learned in an hour or two. His milieu is entertainment and insults, not policy wonkery.

I think this view is wrong, and I’d like to present a thoughtful, nuanced argument against it. Unfortunately, I don’t have that in me at the moment. Instead, here’s a quickie blog-length micro-essay making my case.

Among political junkies, “policy” means white papers. It means understanding the details of how government programs work. It means charts and tables. It means historical context. It means stuff generally written by folks with PhDs who have deep subject matter expertise.

This is my meat and drink. If this blog had a mission statement, it would be something like this: Bringing policy lite to the masses. I like reading academic papers and trying to explain them in plain English that any ordinary educated person can understand. I like historical context. I respect folks with deep subject matter expertise. I adore charts and tables. And I want to spread all this stuff to more people.

But we live in a country where a third of the population can’t name the three branches of government and something like 95 percent probably have no idea how Social Security works. Feel free to sneer if you must, but most people just aren’t interested in policy deep dives. And why should they be? Being a political junkie is basically a hobby, like collecting stamps or writing bad poetry. You probably aren’t interested in that stuff, and there’s no reason lots of people should be interested in your hobby.

But that doesn’t mean they don’t care about political issues. Many of them care more than you do. They just don’t have much a jones for white papers. Nonetheless, all of these things are policy:

Building a wall to reduce illegal immigration from Mexico.
Keeping troops in Afghanistan.
Changing our strategy for destroying ISIS.
Improving relations with Russia.
Toughening visa requirements to keep potential terrorists out of the country.
Expanding or repealing Obamacare.
Signing an agreement with Iran to halt their nuclear program.
Making college free.
Halting new trade agreements until they’re made better for American workers.
Spending more on the military.
Insisting that treaty allies pay a higher share of defense costs.
Creating a federal maternity leave and child care program.
Tackling climate change.
Whether we should make America more energy independent via more clean power or more extraction of fossil fuels.
Profiling Muslims and surveilling mosques to stay ahead of Islamic terrorism.
Appointing liberal vs. conservative Supreme Court justices.
Routine stop-and-frisk as a way of combating crime.
Raising the minimum wage.
Rebuilding infrastructure.

This is a long list, and it doesn’t even include the usual evergreens (abortion, guns, tax cuts) or stuff that hasn’t broken through enough to really affect things (vets, charter schools, NSA spying). In a nutshell, then, I’d argue not only that 2016 is a policy-heavy year, but that thanks to Donald Trump’s, um, earthy approach to things, the differences in policy between the two candidates are sharper than in nearly any election during my adult life. Lack of detail is irrelevant. Nor does it matter if you don’t like Trump’s earthiness. For the average Joe and Jane, Trump’s coarse approach makes his positions more policy-centric than arguments over whether we should use chained CPI for Social Security COLAs or support a public option for Obamacare.

There is, obviously, a vast rhetorical gap between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, but their policy gap is equally far-reaching. And my guess is that more people know about their policy differences than in any year in recent memory. If anything, 2016 has featured more policy topics making it into the spotlight than usual. It’s the year that policy truly took over an American presidential election.

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2016 Is the Most Policy-Heavy Election in Decades

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Pence Tells Evangelicals He’ll Help Trump Restrict Abortion Rights

by KelseyNunley Posted on September 10, 2016

Mother Jones

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GOP vice presidential nominee Mike Pence spoke to a convention of conservative Christians Saturday, drawing loud applause for his promises that he will work with Donald Trump to restrict abortion rights and appoint right-wing justices to the Supreme Court.

“Let me be clear: People who know me well know I’m pro-life, and I don’t apologize for it,” said Pence, the Republican governor of Indiana, to the largely evangelical crowd at the Values Voters Summit in Washington, DC. “I want to live to see the day that we put the sanctity of life back at the center of American law, and we send Roe v. Wade to the ash heap of history, where it belongs.”

Pence’s speech provided a stark contrast to his running mate’s address at the same summit. On Friday night, Trump asked attendees for their support in November without ever mentioning abortion or marriage. The pair of speeches reinforced this political duo’s dynamic, with Pence—a lifelong anti-abortion advocate with a legislative record to prove it—once again providing a salve for religious voters skeptical of the thrice-married, formerly pro-choice Trump.

Penny Nance, the president of Concerned Women for America, introduced Pence. She opened with an anecdote about getting a call from a reporter after Trump’s selection of Pence. She told the reporter there was one thing people needed to know: On abortion, “Mike Pence has a 100 percent Concerned Women for America voting record, and a zero percent record with the National Abortion Rights Action League,” also known as NARAL Pro-Choice America, an abortion rights group.

The audience roared with applause, and Nance lavished praised on Pence’s record both as a congressman and as Indiana Governor. “Mike was a leader in Congress before most people knew Planned Parenthood was the abortion mafia,” she said, citing the deceptively edited Center for Medical Progress videos released last summer that purported to show Planned Parenthood officials negotiating the sale of fetal tissue. (So far, four congressional investigations and 12 state-level investigations have found no wrongdoing by Planned Parenthood.) Nance also lauded Pence’s efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, both in Congress and as Indiana’s governor. By 2014, Pence had cut Planned Parenthood’s funding nearly in half in his state, resulting in the closure of five clinics, none of which ever provided abortions.

When Pence took the podium, he sharply criticized Hillary Clinton. He cited the Benghazi investigation—a popular topic among many of the speakers. Pence also blasted Clinton’s comments at a New York fundraiser Friday night, in which she said that “half” of Trump’s supporters represented “a basket of deplorables.”

“Let me just say from the bottom of my heart: Hillary, they are not a basket of anything,” Pence said. “They are Americans and they deserve your respect.” Pence added that he hadn’t heard “that level of disdain for Americans” since 2008, when Barack Obama said that residents of Midwestern towns with high unemployment “get bitter and cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Pence went on to promise that a Trump administration would shore up the military, stand with Israel, and cut a variety of taxes. But soon, he turned back to abortion. Citing his own extensive record—including his funding for crisis pregnancy centers in Indiana and state legislation prohibiting women from obtaining an abortion because of the race, gender, or disability of the fetus—Pence outlined the Trump team’s plan for reproductive health access.

He promised to work with Congress to pass the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection act, a bill that would outlaw abortions after 20 weeks with exceptions only for cases of rape, incest, and threats to the woman’s life. (These kinds of abortions are rare and often happen when a serious fetal disability is discovered late in pregnancy.) “We will end late-term abortions nationwide,” Pence said. The post-20-week abortion ban failed in the Senate in September 2015, but was resurrected with a hearing in March.

Pence promised to uphold the Hyde amendment, which prohibits federal funding for abortions, and to defund Planned Parenthood. “The days of public funding for Planned Parenthood are over when the Trump-Pence administration arrives in Washington, DC,” he said.

And finally, Pence returned to Trump’s main selling point with evangelicals: the Supreme Court. “When it comes to life and our liberties,” he declared, “Donald Trump will appoint justices to the Supreme Court of the United States who will strictly construe the constitution of the United States in the tradition of the late and great Justice Antonin Scalia.”

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Pence Tells Evangelicals He’ll Help Trump Restrict Abortion Rights

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A Federal Judge Just Stopped Trans Students From Using the Bathrooms of Their Choice

by JaymeSeibert Posted on August 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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The school year is off to a rough start for transgender students. A federal judge in Texas has given public schools across the country permission to ignore the Obama administration’s instructions to let trans kids use bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity, rather than their birth sex.

In May, the US Department of Education sent a guidance to public schools, saying they could lose federal funding if they kept trans kids out of bathrooms of their choice. On Sunday, a federal judge in Texas granted a preliminary, nationwide injunction that blocks the department’s guidance from being enforced. The injunction also prevents the Obama administration from using the guidelines in any lawsuits.

The decision comes in response to a lawsuit filed by 13 states against the Obama administration over the federal government’s position on bathroom choice for students.

“Defendants have conspired to turn workplaces and educational settings across the country into laboratories for a massive social experiment, flouting the democratic process, and running roughshod over commonsense policies protecting children and basic privacy rights,” representatives for the states wrote in the lawsuit filed in May. The case was filed by a long list of state attorneys general, including Ken Paxton of Texas, Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma, and Jeff Landry of Louisiana.

A main question in the case is whether Title IX, a civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in schools, also bars discrimination on the basis of gender identity. The Obama administration says it does. The suing states argue that references to “sex” in Title IX refer only to biological sex.

US District Judge Reed O’Connor granted the nationwide injunction because the states that filed the lawsuit have a strong chance of winning their case, he wrote in his decision, which was filed on Sunday.

“It cannot be disputed,” he wrote, “that the plain meaning of the term sex as used…following passage of Title IX meant the biological and anatomical difference between male and female students as determined at their birth.” He noted that the injunction would only apply to states that want to separate school bathrooms according to biological sex. Other states can maintain policies allowing kids to use facilities based on gender identity.

“I’m pleased the court has ruled against the Obama Administration’s latest overreach,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wrote on Twitter following the decision. Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union, which has represented transgender students in other civil rights cases, and four other civil rights groups blasted the judge’s ruling in a joint statement.

“The court’s misguided decision targets a small, vulnerable group of young people…for potential continued harassment, stigma and abuse,” the statement said.

The impact of the injunction may be limited, however. Legal experts told the New York Times that higher-level courts in other regions have previously sided with the Obama administration’s view that transgender people are protected by existing anti-sex-discrimination laws, and those rulings won’t be affected by the new injunction.

The Texas decision follows a similar order from the US Supreme Court. Earlier this month, the high court’s justices temporarily blocked a transgender boy in Virginia from using the boys’ bathroom at his school while the justices decide whether to take up a case concerning that school board’s bathroom policy. If the justices agree to hear the case, it would be the first time the Supreme Court has weighed in on this issue.

The 13 states suing the Obama administration include Texas, Alabama, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Utah, Georgia, Maine, Arizona, Kentucky, and Mississippi. Separately, 10 other states sued the Obama administration in July over the same issue. Those states include Nebraska, Arkansas, Kansas, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Wyoming.

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A Federal Judge Just Stopped Trans Students From Using the Bathrooms of Their Choice

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