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Trump DOJ Urges Supreme Court to Let Religious Adoption Agencies Discriminate Against LGBTQ Families

New Civil Rights Movement | June 8, 2020

Topics: adoption, Antonin Scalia, Catholic Social Services, Civil Rights Act, Department of Justice, LGBTQ adoption, Noel Francisco, Trump administration

As far as the US Justice Department is concerned, forcing cities to work with discriminatory religious groups is the American way.

President Donald Trump’s Dept. of Justice is telling the U.S. Supreme Court it should allow religious and faith-based adoption agencies discriminate against LGBTQ families.

Solicitor General Noel Francisco has filed a strongly-worded 35 page amicus brief in a case claiming that Catholic Social Services is being denied their First Amendment rights after signing a contract with the City of Philadelphia to provide adoption and foster services – and to not discriminate.

Philadelphia dropped the religious non-profit after it said it would not allow same-sex couples, married or unmarried, to adopt or foster children. Catholic Social Services could continue to operate as it chooses, but the City of Philadelphia would no longer place children with it. In this suit, CSS is essentially saying that it has a First Amendment right to taxpayer-funded placements of children.

In the brief, Francisco and other DOJ attorneys, including Eric Dreiband, actually criticize a Philadelphia Human Services Commissioner for what they call “an impermissible lack of neutrality,” after she told Catholic Social Services “they should be following ‘the teachings of Pope Francis’ as she understood them.”

The DOJ goes all-out against those remarks, calling them “unconstitutional,” and claims they represent an “overt hostility toward religious belief,” an “animosity to religion or distrust of its practices,” and an “impermissible hostility to religion” – despite admitting a lower court noted the Commissioner was educated as a Jesuit and was “simply making ‘an effort to reach common ground.’”

The DOJ uses the word “hostility” in its brief 25 times.

“The U.S. government isn’t a party to the case, known as Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, so the brief is completely voluntary,” The Washington Blade reports. “In justifying the brief before the Supreme Court, the filing makes the case the Justice Department has a compelling interest to intervene.”

The Supreme Court accepted the case in February. The far right wing Becket Fund for Religious Liberty is representing Catholic Social Services.

Francisco has represented the Trump administration in telling the Supreme Court the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not protect gay people in the workplace from discrimination. As Solicitor General he has also asked the Supreme Court to rule that firing an employee simply because they are gay is legal, and that it is legal under federal law for employers to fire transgender workers merely for being transgender.

Francisco clerked for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who represented the court’s animus against LGBTQ Americans and same-sex couples for decades. He also served on the Board of Directors of the Lumen Christi Institute, which says it works “to renew our civilization by forming leaders for a global society in need of Christian wisdom.”

In years past anti-gay activists and the Catholic Church have falsely claimed the Catholic Social Services adoption agency in Boston was “forced” to shut its doors in 2006 because it refused to allow LGBTQ people adopt. In reality, its board members voted to allow LGBTQ people to adopt, but it chose to close rather than allow same-sex parents adopt.

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Image via NCRM

Civil Rights Office at HHS Moves Closer to Killing Protections for LGBTQ Patients

New Civil Rights Movement | April 29, 2020

Topics: Affordable Care Act, Department of Justice, Heritage Foundation, Obamacare, religious freedom, Roger Severino, US Department of Health and Human Services

Run by Christian right activist Roger Severino, the Health And Human Services office has been pushing in this direction for a while now.

Roger Severino, a Christian right activist who heads the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services’s Office for Civil Rights, is one step closer to his own personal goal of removing protections for LGBTQ patients, a move that would allow discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation.

Under Severino’s leadership, the Trump administration has been moving quickly toward the final stages of dismantling critical protections for LGBTQ patients, Politico reports. The Dept. of Health and Human Services has sent a draft of its rewrite of an Obama-era policy to the Dept. of Justice for review, a sign it could soon announce the rollback of hard-fought regulations protecting some of the nation’s most vulnerable people.

HHS has been working on re-interpreting and re-writing the nondiscrimination provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The agency’s website currently says Section 1557 of the ACA “prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability in certain health programs or activities.”

“Advocates fear that it would allow hospitals and health workers to more easily discriminate against patients based on their gender or sexual orientation,” Politico reports, noting the provision “also offered specific protections for transgender patients for the first time and extended protections for women who had abortions.”

Severino has been called a “radical” anti-LGBTQ religious right activist. He previously served as CEO and counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a religious right non-profit that opposes separation of church and state. He also once served as the Director of the DeVos family’s Center for Religion and Civil Society in the Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity.

Late last year a federal judge voided a rule Severino had implemented allowing medical providers to cite their personal religious or moral beliefs as a reason to refuse to provide care to certain individuals or to perform certain procedures. It would have allowed doctors and other health care professionals to refuse to perform or participate in abortions, prescribe or deliver contraception, or provide care to and LGBTQ person.

Severino is also tied to the Trump administration’s efforts to ban same-sex couples and LGBTQ people from adoption services.

Severino has long sought to gut ObamaCare’s LGBTQ protections. Before coming to the Trump administration Severino co-authored a Heritage Foundation report claiming new proposed ObamaCare nondiscrimination provisions “threaten the religious liberty, freedom of conscience, and independent medical judgment of health care professionals.”

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Image via NCRM

DOJ Intervenes to Support Lawsuit Filed by Christian Photographer Refusing to Photograph Same-Sex Weddings

New Civil Rights Movement | March 3, 2020

Topics: ACLU, Alliance Defending Freedom, Bill Barr, Chelsey Nelson, Department of Justice, Louisville, religious freedom, Trump administration

A Kentucky wedding photographer has filed a pre-emptive lawsuit to protect herself from the possibility of a hypothetical gay couple trying to hire her for their wedding. And Trump’s DOJ is backing her, because of course they are.

The U.S. Dept. of Justice under Attorney General Bill Barr has intervened in a pre-emptive lawsuit filed by a Kentucky wedding photographer who claims her interpretation of her Christian religion bars her from taking photos of weddings of same-sex couples.

No same-sex couple has ever tried to hire Chelsey Nelson to photograph their nuptials, but her attorneys, the far right wing Alliance Defending Freedom, filed the lawsuit against Louisville city officials anyway, according to the AP. The ADF appears on the Southern Poverty Law Center list of anti-LGBTQ hate groups.

And now the Justice Dept. in a 23-page “statement of interest” says the “Court should find that Plaintiffs have demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits.”

In other words, the DOJ has told the court hearing her case directly that it agrees with the ADF.

The Louisville law bans businesses from discriminating against LGBTQ people. Many legal experts agree that refusing to provide a service to an entire class of people is discrimination, hence the countless laws across the country that protect LGBTQ people and other minorities from being refused services their non-LGBTQ peers regularly pay for and receive without question.

The DOJ, however, in a press release claims the legal statement it filed explains that Nelson “is likely to succeed on her claim that requiring her to photograph weddings against her conscience constitutes government-compelled speech that violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.”

“The First Amendment forbids the government from forcing someone to speak in a manner that violates individual conscience,” said Eric Dreiband, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. “The U.S. Department of Justice will continue to protect the right of all persons to exercise their constitutional right to speech and expression.”

The ACLU disagrees, and “filed a brief defending the city, arguing that the Nelson’s intent to offer wedding photography only to heterosexual couples violates the city law.”

The renowned  civil rights group calls Nelson’s position “identity-based discrimination.”

The SPLC says the Alliance Defending Freedom “has supported the recriminalization of homosexuality in the U.S. and criminalization abroad; has defended state-sanctioned sterilization of trans people abroad; has linked homosexuality to pedophilia and claims that a ‘homosexual agenda’ will destroy Christianity and society.”

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Image via NCRM

Anti-Gay ‘Hookers For Jesus’ Group Gets Major DOJ Grant

New Civil Rights Movement | February 14, 2020

Topics: Annie Lobert, anti-LGBTQ discrimination, Department of Justice, Hookers For Jesus, human Trafficking

The Department of Justice gave a grant from their anti-human trafficking program to Hookers For Jesus, which restricts what occupants of their safe houses are allowed to read and labels homosexuality immoral.

According to an exclusive report from Reuters, internal complaints are emerging from the US Justice Department’s anti-human trafficking grant program. The complaints stem from two nonprofits that were denied funds which instead went to two less established groups “whose applications were not recommended by career DOJ officials.”

“The awarding of more than $1 million total to the two groups, Hookers for Jesus in Nevada and the Lincoln Tubman Foundation in South Carolina, has triggered a whistleblower complaint filed by the Justice Department’s employee union to the department’s Inspector General,” Reuters reports.

Hookers for Jesus is run by born-again Christian Annie Lobert who is also a trafficking survivor. The organization runs a safe house which bars occupants from reading “secular magazines” that portray worldly views/advice on living, sex, clothing, makeup tips.” When asked if her organization is all-inclusive, Lobert replied that they are “not going to discriminate toward anyone.”

“But we are Christian. And there is an understanding before they come in here that we are Christian,” she added.

Reuters also reported that the group’s staff training manual describes homosexuality as immoral and describes drug use as “witchcraft.”

A Nevada official who reviewed a state grant in 2018 questioned whether Hookers for Jesus treated sex-trafficking victims like “prisoners.”

Read the full report here.

Written by Sky Palma of Raw Story, via The New Civil Rights Movement. Photo via NCRM

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Remains Determined To Cut Payday Loan Protections

VCU CNS | November 4, 2019

Topics: 2017 Payday Rule, Center For Responsible Lending, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Department of Justice, Kathleen Kraninger, Payday loans, Pew Charitable Trust, predatory lending

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau insists that individual states, not the federal government, should regulate payday loans. But here in Virginia, payday loans are very weakly regulated, with no upper limit on interest rates.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has not budged on its June decision cutting additional protections.

“There was insufficient evidence and legal support for these requirements,” CFPB Director Kathleen Kraninger wrote in a Sep. 23 letter to Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California, who is chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee and a critic of the agency’s move.

Kraininger added that states should regulate payday lending, as they “have determined it is in their residents’ interests to be able to use such products, subject to state-law limitations.”  

The 2017 Payday Rule governs “unfair and abusive” lending practices, such as withdrawing money from borrowers’ bank accounts without their knowledge, neglecting borrowers’ “ability to pay” when approving loans, and issuing balloon loans, in which payments are consistently lower for the majority of the lending term but “balloon” to one significantly larger payment at the end.

In June, CFPB finalized a separate rule that said it is not considering the ability-to-pay requirements “at this time,” and delayed the August compliance date to Nov. 19, 2020. The agency is considering loan requirements and disclosure practices for lenders.

In August, more than 100 House Democrats joined Waters in a letter asking the CFPB to abide by the rule’s initial provisions.

Rep. Jennifer Wexton of VA’s 10th District and Rep. Don Beyer of VA’s 8th District were among the signers.

In a Financial Services Committee hearing earlier this month, Kraninger said the bureau is working to define “abusive” as it pertains to lending.

The hearing lasted for more than three hours, with Kraninger in the hot seat fielding concerns from both parties.

“If you’re not following direction of your staff to help consumers that are harmed, then you are absolutely worthless,” Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-New York, told Kraninger.

Maloney, who left after the remark, later returned to apologize, amid outrage from Republican committee members.

Photo by scurzuzu, via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Expert: Payday loans are a “debt trap”

Payday loans are intended to be short-term, issued in relatively small amounts and due when borrowers receives their next paycheck.

However, Rebecca Borné, a senior policy counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending, told Capital News Service the terms of the loans are marketed that way, but purposely designed to keep people in debt.

Interest rates can be as high as 300 percent. Lenders often have access to borrowers’ accounts and withdraw the money once the borrower receives a paycheck, leaving the person with little funds for other expenses, Borné said.

Borrowers may take out another loan as a result, putting them in a “debt trap,” she said.

A 2014 report from the CFPB found that 80 percent of payday loans were renewed within 14 days, and the majority of borrowers renewed their loans so many times that they ended up paying more in fees than the principal amounts.

“The delay is the bureau’s way of trying to buy time to gut the rule altogether, so that it never goes into effect,” Borné said of the CFPB’s June decision.

The Washington Post reported Tuesday that payday lenders are planning to donate as much money as possible to President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign, hoping that a relationship with the president’s office will weaken regulations against them.

One of the biggest takeaways of the 2017 Payday Rule is that it would cap interest rates at 36 percent for the length of the lending term, which is typically a few weeks.

In Maryland, payday loans up to $2,000 have a maximum annual interest rate of 33 percent, and a maximum monthly rate of 2.75 percent. For loans greater than $2,000, interest is capped at 24 percent annually and 2 percent monthly.

Meanwhile, a Pew Charitable Trust report said Virginia’s laws around payday loans “have unusually weak consumer protections.” Virginia has no maximum interest rate limit, one of only six states lacking any such restriction. Pew found that companies charge three times as much for payday loans in Virginia as they do in other states, and that the average annual interest rate paid on payday loans in Virginia was 251 percent.

Bureau authority under court challenge

The constitutionality of the agency’s structure has been questioned in recent years. The CFPB was founded in 2011 in response to the 2008 recession. In 2017, Trump and the Department of Justice determined a statute that says CFPB directors can only be removed from their position for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office” is unconstitutional.

They argued that this restriction unfairly insulates the agency from the president’s executive control.

The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California denied this claim in a lawsuit against the consumer bureau by Seila Law, a California law firm. The case has since gone to the Supreme Court and oral arguments will be heard in the spring.

But in September, Kraninger, too, adopted the administration’s reasoning.

“I have decided that the Bureau should adopt the Department of Justice’s view that the for-cause removal provision is unconstitutional,” she wrote in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky. She added that she advised the agency’s lawyers not to fight the opinion in court.

Kraninger reaffirmed her decision at the October congressional hearing.

However, Maloney criticized Kraninger’s stance, calling it “disrespectful” to congressional intent that the CFPB should an independent regulator.

But several House Republicans applauded the decision.

“When you have an unaccountable organization, with a director that not even the president can remove, that is going to be problematic,” Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Michigan, said. “I appreciate your efforts in trying to put this back in a reasonable box.”

Written by Ayana Archie, Capital News Service. Top Photo by The New York Public Library, via Unsplash

Trump DOJ Tells Supreme Court It Is Legal To Fire Transgender Workers

New Civil Rights Movement | August 23, 2019

Topics: anti-trans discrimination, Civil Rights Act, Department of Justice, Title VII, Trump administration, US Supreme Court

The legal brief filed by Trump’s Department of Justice is the most overt step his administration has taken thus far to legalize anti-trans discrimination in the workplace.

Last Friday, the Trump administration informed the U.S. Supreme Court it is the opinion of the Dept. of Justice that it is legal under federal law for employers to fire transgender workers merely for being transgender.

The DOJ’s brief states Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, does not apply to transgender workers.

In reporting the development Buzzfeed calls it one of the Trump administration’s “most agressive steps yet to legalize anti-transgender discrimination.”

Friday’s move comes just days after the DOJ attempted to strong-arm the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission into telling the Supreme Court discrimination on the basis of gender identity is not sex discrimination. To do so would have contradicted up to eight years of EEOC findings and rulings.

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Image via NCRM

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