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* Indiana…
The Indiana Supreme Court has denied the rehearing request by abortion advocates after the Supreme Court ruled in June that the pending abortion ban is constitutional. […]
With this move, Indiana is likely days away from the abortion restrictions passed in August 2022 from taking effect. The ban will take effect as soon as their June 30 ruling is certified by the Appellate Clerk. […]
Under the new law, there are four abortion exceptions — rape, incest, life and physical health of the mother, and lethal fetal anomalies.
Rape or incest exemptions will need to be performed 10 weeks before post-fertilization. In the case of the life of a mother or lethal fetal anomalies, women will have up to 20 weeks post-fertilization for an abortion.
* Idaho’s loss is Illinois’ gain…
When Karen Lauritzen was named the 2023 Idaho Teacher of the Year last September, she was hoping it would be her best school year yet. Instead, she said, it turned out to be one of the worst in her two decades teaching — and, she decided by the summer, her last.
Despite her selection by a Republican administration after a rigorous application process, her nomination was met with attacks on her character from conservative outlets in the state, accusing her of “promoting transgenderism” and being a “left-wing activist,” smears that carried into her fourth-grade classroom in the form of sudden suspicions about her from parents in her school.
Lauritzen, 44, is still the reigning teacher of the year, but she is no longer teaching elementary school or even living in Idaho. Instead she is taking her talents to a university in Illinois, a long-considered career move hastened by the experience. […]
The day after she was announced as Idaho Teacher of the Year, Lauritzen was accused by conservative outlets in her state of being a “left-wing activist” because she had expressed support for the LGBTQ+ community and Black Lives Matter on her personal social media accounts. Though the outlets offered no evidence linking her personal views to her classroom instruction, parents in her rural western Idaho community began emailing and confronting her with questions. Some accused her of teaching fourth-graders inappropriate content, even though no discussion of sexuality was in her curriculum and was already prohibited by her school district. Her own global interests often inspired her teaching, but Lauritzen said she faced complaints from parents about a lesson on some worldwide cultures who eat insects, and even objections to students learning about the United Nations.
“When it’s, ‘My kid can’t do this because it’s propaganda,’ and ‘My kid can’t do that because we don’t believe in United Nations,’ it’s like, what? It’s not Santa Claus, what do you mean you don’t believe in it?” Lauritzen said. “Even if I have certain beliefs myself, that does not mean that I teach kids. It’s not my job to ‘indoctrinate’ or make kids little versions of myself. It’s to make kids into the best versions of themselves.”
* Arkansas…
The six Arkansas schools that planned to offer an Advanced Placement (AP) course on African American studies say they will continue to do so despite state officials saying the class will not count toward a student’s graduation credit.
The North Little Rock and Jacksonville North Pulaski school districts and eStem charter schools said on Thursday they would offer the course as a “local elective” despite the Arkansas education department saying it is not considered a state-approved course. They join two other school districts that have said they will continue offering the class. […]
The state, however, has said that schools can still offer the course and it can count toward a student’s grade-point average. […]
The Little Rock school district on Wednesday said it planned to continue teaching the course at Central high, site of the historic 1957 racial desegregation crisis. Central is one of six schools in the state that had been slated to offer the course this year. The Jonesboro school district told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette it also planned to continue offering the course.
* Missouri…
The Missouri Supreme Court upheld a state law requiring school attendance after two Lebanon, Missouri, parents were sentenced to jail following excessive absences by their children.
Court documents indicated that during the 2021-2022 academic year, a first-grade student missed nine days of school, while a kindergartner missed seven days without any explanation. […]
The two mothers, Caitlyn Williams and Tamarae Larue, took their case to the Supreme Court, arguing that the state law mandating “regular” attendance lacks clarity. […]
Williams received a one-week jail sentence for her first grader’s attendance, while Tamarae Larue was sentenced to 15 days in jail for her kindergartner’s attendance. Larue later agreed to serve on a two-year probation. […]
“I don’t know that jailing parents — and these were both single moms, I want to point out — taking them out of their households and away from their children, when the issue is the children attending school,” [Family law attorney Susan Guthrie] said. “I think the ends are not justified by the needs.”
* Texas…
The Justice Department scoffed Thursday at Texas’ assertion it’s free to install anti-migrant buoys in the Rio Grande, regardless of treaties and federal law, because “Texas purportedly is being ‘invaded’” by migrants.
“Whether and when an `invasion’ occurs is a matter of foreign policy and national defense, which the Constitution specifically commits to the federal government,” the Justice Department argued.
A federal judge in Austin will hear arguments Tuesday as the Biden administration tries to force Gov. Greg Abbott to remove the $850,000 floating barrier deployed near Eagle Pass last month. […]
The evidence includes a survey showing that Texas put most of the buoys on the wrong side of the border, and excerpts from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed in 1848, where Mexico gave up its claims to Texas three years after statehood.
Transgender youth in North Carolina lost access Wednesday to gender-affirming medical treatments after the Republican-led General Assembly overrode the governor’s vetoes of that legislation and other bills touching on gender in sports and LGBTQ+ instruction in the classroom.
GOP supermajorities in the House and Senate enacted — over Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s opposition — a bill barring medical professionals from providing hormone therapy, puberty-blocking drugs and surgical gender-transition procedures to anyone under 18, with limited exceptions.
The law takes effect immediately. But minors who had begun treatment before Aug. 1 may continue receiving that care if their doctors deem it medically necessary and their parents consent.
North Carolina becomes the 22nd state to enact legislation restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors. But most face legal challenges, and local LGBTQ+ rights advocates vow to take the ban to court. The Senate voted 27-18 to complete the veto override after the House voted 74-45 earlier. Two House Democrats joined all present Republicans in supporting the override bid.
* Florida…
This year, Florida lawmakers made national headlines for approving anti-LGBTQ+ measures. And as those laws went into effect, they have pushed a majority of transgender Floridians to consider leaving the state, according to results of a survey released Thursday morning.
The survey, co-sponsored and released by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, found that four of five transgender people wanted — or were planning — to leave Florida for another state or country because of gender-affirming care bans. More than 93% stated that they feel less safe now than they did before the laws. […]
Almost 80% of trans people — and 45% of other LGBTQ+ adults — reported that bans on gender-affirming care affect their or their loved ones’ physical or mental health.
More than 80% of trans people — and more than 76% of other LGBTQ+ adults — felt that bans on gender-affirming care worsen stereotypes, discrimination, hate and stigma.
* Oklahoma…
After two failed efforts in the state legislature to define a woman and a man based on their sex assigned at birth, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signed an executive order limiting those definitions, the latest blow to transgender rights in the state.
The order, which along with government agencies applies to schools and state institutions, stipulates definitions for certain terms, like “man,” “boy,” “woman,” “girl,” “father,” and “mother.” The narrow definitions in the so-called “Women’s Bill of Rights” exclude trans and nonbinary people or anyone whose gender does not fit into the binary categories of woman or man. The order’s language does not make room for those with chromosomal variations, like intersex people. […]
Nicole McAfee, executive director of Freedom Oklahoma, an LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, said the directive is “neither about rights, nor is it about protecting women.”
It “instead opens the door for further civil rights violations that open all women to being harassed and targeted as they have their femininity assessed and judged by a public who feels increased permission to police gender,” they said.
* Kentucky, Mississippi and Virginia…
Voters in the South will elect dozens of local prosecutors this November. But the proceedings are overshadowed by Southern state governments’ escalating maneuvers to undercut the will of voters in prosecutor races—fueled in part by Republican anger against some prosecutors’ policies of not enforcing low-level charges and new abortion bans.
Mississippi this year removed predominantly white sections of Hinds County, the majority-Black county that’s home to Jackson, from the control of its Black district attorney. Georgia reacted similarly to recent wins by DAs of color: It cut off a white county from a circuit that had elected a Black prosecutor, and also set up a new state agency with the power to fire DAs. Last week, Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis suspended Orlando’s elected Democratic prosecutor, citing disagreements with her office’s approach to prosecution, one year after he similarly replaced Tampa’s Democratic prosecutor with a member of the Federalist Society. […]
Still, the electoral cycle churns on. There will be 123 local prosecutor races across Kentucky, Mississippi, and Virginia—the only three Southern states voting on this office in 2023.
The lion’s share is in Virginia, a state that may soon experience its own version of this dynamic. Republican officials have wanted to crack down on reform prosecutors but have not been able to push their proposals through so far; they may try again in 2024 if they gain the legislature. In the meantime, these policy debates are playing out in a more usual place—the electoral arena. […]
Mississippi also features challenges to three Democratic prosecutors who have, to varying degrees, implemented some priorities of criminal justice reformers, such as expanding alternatives to incarceration or vowing to not prosecute abortion cases. Their opponents have indicated that they wish to reel back some of these efforts.
* Georgia…
A Georgia school board voted along party lines Thursday to fire a teacher after officials said she improperly read a book on gender fluidity to her fifth grade class.
The Cobb County School Board in suburban Atlanta voted 4-3 to fire Katie Rinderle, overriding the recommendation of a panel of three retired educators. The panel found after a two-day hearing that Rinderle had violated district policies, but said she should not be fired.
She had been a teacher for 10 years when she got into trouble in March for reading the picture book “My Shadow Is Purple” by Scott Stuart at Due West Elementary School, after which some parents complained. […]
Cobb County adopted a rule barring teaching on controversial issues in 2022, after Georgia lawmakers earlier that year enacted laws barring the teaching of “divisive concepts” and creating a parents’ bill of rights. The divisive concepts law, although it addresses teaching on race, bars teachers from “espousing personal political beliefs.” The bill of rights guarantees that parents have “the right to direct the upbringing and the moral or religious training of his or her minor child.”
Rinderle is believed to be the first public school teacher in Georgia to be fired because of the laws. None of the board members discussed the decision, but school district lawyer Sherry Culves said at the hearing that discussing gender identity and gender fluidity was inappropriate.
posted by Isabel Miller
Monday, Aug 21, 23 @ 1:10 pm
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The story about the Idaho teacher is behind a subscription page. What college in Illinois is she coming to?
I must admit, I am glad neither of my kids decided to become teachers. Man, the extra level of malarky you have to deal with in some parts of this country is unreal.
Comment by OneMan Monday, Aug 21, 23 @ 1:18 pm
Welcome Karen Lauritzen to the Land of Lincoln. Lincoln fought for freedom. While the replacement for his party is doing the opposite, the State of Illinois continues to fight for the rights of all.
Comment by Norseman Monday, Aug 21, 23 @ 1:20 pm
Being called a “left wing activist” is a compliment…in my book.
Comment by Dotnonymous x Monday, Aug 21, 23 @ 1:26 pm
===What college in Illinois===
Article doesn’t say.
Comment by Rich Miller Monday, Aug 21, 23 @ 1:43 pm
So the gub’nor of Oklahoma decides who’s a man and who’s a woman. I thought these Conservatives wanted the guv’mint out of their lives!
Comment by Jerry Monday, Aug 21, 23 @ 1:45 pm
Missouri wastes a lot of time on the too many absences law. Several of us in our friend group had social worker visits when the kids were young.Most of it was in the 1-3 grades when the kids were getting exposed to new diseases. Jennifer and I had a visit that was very pleasant, but we checked all the boxes of ‘good’ parents so it went nowhere.
Comment by ArchPundit Monday, Aug 21, 23 @ 1:47 pm
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Comment by Dotnonymous x Monday, Aug 21, 23 @ 1:54 pm
She’s at Milliken
Comment by ArchPundit Monday, Aug 21, 23 @ 1:55 pm
“promoting transgenderism“
It’s impossible to promote “transgenderism.” What people are is individual and can’t be manufactured by others. It’s not an ideology. You can’t make someone gay or trans by teaching about it or being tolerant. This is known by many Republicans and right wing figures, but they are pandering for votes and business, and know their base quite well.
This is all so many reasons for Illinois to not be like red states. More grateful by the day.
Comment by Grandson of Man Monday, Aug 21, 23 @ 1:59 pm
=so despite state officials saying the class will not count toward a student’s graduation credit.=
How Soviet style central planning of Arkansa. Very authoritarian and not much on “freedoms”.
Also, the story from Missouri on the mons going to jail is a bit suspect. 7 and 9 days missed respectively sounds more like the final straw than the sum total of days met. The truancy laws are an absolute paper tiger. I was a building admin in a rural county with a tough talking SA. We finally got a family in to court after their child missed more than 40 days of school (it was January or February at the time) and the SA dropped the case because the parents didn’t appear in court. Needless to say I was pretty ticked off. Schools are held accountable for many parent responsibilities so I have no problem with jailing a parent that does not send their kid to school without cause, but 9 days is a bit extreme. Thus the doubt.
Comment by JS Mill Monday, Aug 21, 23 @ 2:08 pm
I really feel our Congressional delegation should start banging the drum that every state should get back in real money and services only as much as they put in for taxes. We are a donor state. These opposite land stories are all from “welfare” states.
Illinois, NY, Cal. all fund these red states for way more than we ever receive. Why is my money funding Mississippi, Idaho, Georgia, KY, etc?
Comment by Frida's boss Monday, Aug 21, 23 @ 2:10 pm
Ferris: This is my ninth sick day this semester. It’s pretty tough coming up with new illnesses. If I go for ten, I’m probably going to have to barf up a lung, so I better make this one count.
Comment by Jerry Monday, Aug 21, 23 @ 2:27 pm
==the extra level of malarkey you have to deal with==
2000 - 2022: “Raise my kid. I’m too busy (exclamation point)”
2023: “No…not that way (exclamation point)”
Comment by Jocko Monday, Aug 21, 23 @ 2:40 pm
JS Mill,
Your money is going to red and blue states with lots of military bases and large populations that receive government benefits like social security, Medicaid, and Medicare. Georgia (which is sort of a purple state now) and Idaho didn’t make the top 20 list of states receiving more than they gave to Washington:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/07/07/states-federal-benefits/
Comment by Arminius Monday, Aug 21, 23 @ 3:09 pm
===large populations===
Those benefits are going to people, no?
How does a military base and the funding of federal institutions that can’t pick up and go from one state to another… “equate”
Kinda makes that whole Space Force thingy staying in Colorado vs. Alabama a different thing.
Comment by Oswego Willy Monday, Aug 21, 23 @ 3:22 pm
Wait, Missouri put the mothers in JAIL for the kids missing nine and seven days in a year?
That is absurd.
Comment by The Truth Monday, Aug 21, 23 @ 3:34 pm
—-Also, the story from Missouri on the mons going to jail is a bit suspect.
I’m betting on a prosecutor who is very conservative and has it out against single mothers. The situation you cite is understandable, but Missouri has an issue with this and add to it a prosecutor outstate who wants to be ‘tough’. There are a number of stories on this case including the WSJ that indicate that’s the right number. Not disagreeing how hard of a time you have had, but there’s a reason it’s Misery.
Comment by ArchPundit Monday, Aug 21, 23 @ 4:00 pm
=Your money is going to red=
And that means it is ok? Because my income tax goes there? Your point does not make much sense or impact my statement.
Comment by JS Mill Monday, Aug 21, 23 @ 4:15 pm
The net numbers in that WaPo story are interesting. Kentucky is the No. 1 net beneficiary. Arkansas and Oklahoma are 9 and 110.
Comment by Formerly Unemployed Monday, Aug 21, 23 @ 4:53 pm
We have Great Lakes Naval Base, the actual boot camp for the entire Navy. We have a Coast Guard manning Lake Michigan. We have Scott Air Force Base. We also have quite a few large VA medical centers.
To me that removes the military complex reason.
We also have National Parks and monuments. So that argument doesn’t fit either.
We are a net donor state. We send out more than we take in from our Fed Govt. We are supplementing welfare states. Some are on this list of “opposite land”. I’m guessing people in Illinois may be getting tired of that.
Comment by Frida's boss Monday, Aug 21, 23 @ 5:50 pm