June 18, 2025 • 32 mins
The Supreme Court upheld's Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors. It's probably one of the most significant rulings of the term so far.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
In the case which I've been watching closely because it's
got pretty huge implications for the Equal Protection clause. The
case is United States versus Scremetti. It upheld Tennessee's ban
on gender affirming care for transgender miners. And I want
(00:21):
emphasize this is from miners, so insofar as military, etc.
That we're talking about. The Tennessee law that ban gender
affirming care for transgender miners. It's probably one of the
most significant rulings of the term so far, and it's
got really far reaching implications for transgender rights and for
(00:44):
that matter, even healthcare access across the entire country. So
here's the background. In March of twenty three, Tennessee passed
a bill that prohibited healthcare providers from administering gender affirming treatments.
Now that could include things like puberty blockers, hormone therapy,
(01:11):
transgender surgeries, anything like that to miners under the age
of eighteen. If the purpose is to enable a miner
to identify with or live as a purported identity inconsistent
with the miner's sex, that's the first purpose. Or if
(01:34):
the treatment is or to treat purported discomfort or distress
from gender dys for you. It did allow those treatments
for cisgender miners for other medical purposes a hormonal deficiency,
(01:57):
but it explicitly banned them for trans gender miners that
just wanted to align their bodies with their gender identity.
And Tennessee went one step further. It imposed civil penalties,
not kriminal.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
I don't think.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
I don't think it was kriminal. I think it was
only civil on doctors who violated the ban. They could
lose their medical license if banned the gender affirming surgeries
for miners, and if you did it, you could you
could up to lose your medical license. Obviously civil penalties
involved otherwise. So there were three transgender miners and their parents,
(02:39):
and a Tennessee doctor who had treated a transgender youth,
and of course the Biden administration. Those were the planeffs.
They were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee,
the LAMB Illegal and the Aching gump strauss Our law firm.
It's a big DC international law firm. Their argument was
(03:04):
that the Tennessee law violated the equal Protection clause of
the Fourteenth Amendment because it discriminated on the basis of
sex and transgender status. So here's the history. How we
got to the Supreme Court. A federal district court, a
trial court initially issued a priminary injunction. That court found
(03:24):
that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in proving that
the Tennessee law was unconstitutional. But then it got to
the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which reversed the decision
and upheld the band. And that's what prompted the Biden
administration to appeal to the Supreme Court. So we get
to that's why it's the case. Maybe not interesting to you,
(03:47):
but it's interesting to me. That's why the case is
styled Us versus Scrimmetti. Now, this is the first time
that the Court has directly addressed the constitutionality of a
state and on gender affirming care for transgender miners. The
court had a couple of legal illegal questions to address.
(04:11):
The primary issue is whether Tennessee's ban violates the equal Protection
clause that requires, generally speaking, the government to treat similarly
situated individuals equally. You have to treat me and a
(04:32):
rod equally. You have to treat me and you equally,
as long as we are both being affected and are
in similar circumstances.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
That's kind of the general rule.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Now, the plaintiffs, the government, the law firm for the children,
and the firm for the parents, plus the ACLU and
the others and LAMBDA. They argued that the law discriminated
based on sex. Now, I found that argument interesting. And
(05:12):
they made that argument by claiming that by treating transgender
and cisgender kids differently for similar treatments, and that it
was discrimination because it was based on transgender status and
because it was based on a particular status that required,
(05:33):
under previous Supreme Court rulings a higher level of scrutiny
under our constitution. Now, Tennessee's argument was that the law
was based on age, not sex, because it had to
do with minors and it served a compelling state interest.
(05:54):
I love the fact that Tennessee made this argument because
they were arguing that they had a state a compelling
state interest in protecting minors by regulating medical treatments with
debated risks, arguable benefits, and clearly some disadvantages and problems.
(06:16):
The state argument that argued that the band should be
reviewed under the less stringent rational basis standard. They and
they set the argument up perfectly, I think, by pointing
out that, look, we have a compelling interest in protecting
kids based on their age. We don't let kids under
the age of eighteen into contracts, we don't let them smoke,
(06:38):
we don't let them buy guns. Why should we let
them whack their penises off or whack the boobs off
and so doing so or they do so by engaging
in medical treatments that have debatable risks. It's not clear.
It's not you know, well established that, hey, these surgeries
(07:01):
are fine. I mean, you know, going back to our
earlier discussion about America first in the return of common Sense,
Tennessee is making a common sense argument here. So the courts,
I'm happy to say. The decision was six to three.
(07:22):
The opinion was written by Justice Roberts, joined by Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh,
and Barrett. Although to uphold the ban, they ruled that
the ban does not violate the equal protection clause of
the Fourteenth Amendment. Roberts wrote, and I had barely enough
(07:46):
time to skim through this, but generally speaking, he wrote
that preventing miners from accessing puberty blockers and hormone therapy
does not require a higher standard of scrutiny. In other words,
they stricter standard of review, and or he wrote that
it doesn't require that higher standard of review because the
(08:09):
law does not discriminate based on sex or transgender status
in a way that triggers any kind of higher scrutiny.
So they've applied what lawyers referred to as the rational
basis review, which is the least stringent review, which I
find in of itself fascinating. They didn't say, oh, because
(08:32):
it's kids, because it's transgenderism, because.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
It's such a popular, you know.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Cultural phenomenon right now that we've got, or because of
their status. They really didn't address, as best I can tell,
the classification or the status, much like you would, for example,
a black person versus an Asian person versus a white person.
Those are immutable characteristics. They have status because of those
(09:01):
immutable characteristics, something you can't change. They kind of said
here that we're not going to deal with that because
we don't find that there's any sort of protected island.
Let me rephrase that they didn't specifically find. They ignored
the idea that there is a protected status or that
would require a higher scrutiny. So that's why they applied
(09:24):
the rational basis review. They found that the Tennessee's state
interest in regulating generally medical treatments for miners start to
say kids, but I'm going to be technical that Tennessee
legislators passing laws regulating medical treatments for miners, particularly when
(09:48):
you have ongoing debates about the risk and benefit of
gender affirming care, satisfied the standard of simply a rational
basis review. Now the opinion emphasizes, which I think is important,
that states have broad authority to regulate medical care, especially
(10:10):
for miners, and when the medical experts are divided, that
even enhances the state's interests in protecting miners from procedures
or medicines or whatever. But in this case, a procedure
that is of dubious or at least divided efficacy. Interestingly,
(10:36):
Roberts pointed to restrictions in some European countries, like the
National Health Service in England, that limits puberty blockers solely
for use in clinical trials. They cited that as evidence
of legitimate concerns about the long term effects of these
kinds of treatments, and he concluded by writing this, having concluded,
(11:00):
this is justice, this is the chief Justice, having concluded
that it does not violate the equal protection clause, we
leave questions regarding its policy to the people, their elected representatives,
and the democratic process. Holy cow, as much as I've
(11:21):
been pissed off about Justice Robert Chief Justice Roberts lately,
can we stand up and get a hallelujah for that
phrase right there? Having concluded that the Tennessee law does
not violate the equal protection clause, we leave questions regarding
Tennessee's policy to the people at Tennessee, to their elected representatives,
(11:45):
and to the democratic process. Now that's interesting because that
kind of mirrors the Court's approach in the Dobbs decision,
which overturned Roe v. Wade, because they in that case,
if you and I know you remember this, they deferred
abortion policy to state legislatures. So once again the Court
(12:10):
is saying, you know what, under our constitution, all we
have to do is look at the standard of review,
and it's the lowest standard of review, and we find
that this is a debatable issue that ought to be
left to the people and their representatives. Now, they did
(12:33):
one more thing. They distinguished the case from Bostock versus
Clayton County. That's a twenty twenty Supreme Court case where
they ruled that workplace discrimination that's based on transgender status
constituted sex discrimination under Title seven. But the majority in
this case noted that that case involved a very specific
(12:58):
statutory interpretation, whereas this case, they say, concerns the broader,
more general equal protection clause. Now that may be like
legal mumbo jumbo to you, but what they're saying is
that the earlier case involved a very specific statutory interpretation
and that's all they were ruling on, and here we're
(13:20):
just ruling on a general policy, a general rule that
bans these things for minors. Now, of course Sodoma or
Kagan and Jackson Brown Brown Jackson they descended, but they
don't assign the descent to any particular author that I
could find. They argued that the band likely discriminates based
(13:46):
on sex and transgender status, so they would argue that
it just required a stricter review by the court, and
they went to the boss Stock case to do so.
They emphasize the minority, emphasize that the medical consensus that
(14:06):
supports gender affirming care, and then they cite the usual suspects.
The American Medical Association woke the American Academy of Pediatrics
WOKE and the American Psychiatric Association way woke.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Those groups. Of course, they.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Argue that this kind of care is evidence based, produces
or reduces mental health risks like depression and suicidality.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
But we know that it does not.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
It actually has serious risks of depression and suicide. And
so they argue that these treatments are The minority did
that these treatments are critical for transgender youth that have
gendered this for you, So what would they do? The
minority would take it away from the legislation and say, hey,
(15:02):
we're going to find I mean what they would do
they do they would do a New Row kind of
case and rule that bans on transgender care is unconstitutional.
Now they I'll just say, probably because I haven't read
it closely enough. They're probably criticizing the majority for deferring
(15:25):
to the state legislature on a matter that they claim
involves fundamental rights. I think they do so because this
is a highly politicized issue, transgender healthcare, and they think
it has a disproportionate impact on what they would classify
as as a marginalized group.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
I just think they're wrong.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
So this is I think one of at least twenty
five more than half. I think it's more than half
of the state the restrict gender affirming care for transgender miners.
The stats I have from old notes are that there's
about one hundred and thirteen thousand, certainly less than two
(16:14):
hundred thousand transgender youth between the ages of thirteen and
seventeen that are seeking this kind of treatment. I mean,
that's a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny minority. And then
states like Alabama, Arkansas, even Montana, they've got bands like this.
(16:35):
So this ruling strengthens the state bands. In other words,
it makes it harder for the plaints to challenge them
on constitutional grounds, but it does something else. It kind
of emboldens or empowers. Of course, Colorado would never do
anything like this because we're controlled by Democrats, but for
states that might have, you know, split House and Senate,
(16:57):
it kind of gives them an opening to either enact
or expand their restrictions on transgender rights, things like old
bathroom access, sports participation, birth certificate changes, and most recently
a federal district judge that ruled the state Department cannot
(17:18):
require you to put your birth sex on your passport application. Yeah,
it opens all of that up now, Senator Padilla, because
I'm afraid that, considering that hundreds of ordinary Americans had
their lives destroyed by the Biden Justice Departments policy choices
(17:41):
in how it prosecuted the January sixth defendants, that the
bureaucrats in the Department of Justice might let Senator Padilla
slip by. And I think he ought to be charged.
You remember what he did last week, decided that it
would be wise for him to break in out. Now,
(18:05):
think about this. We've had political assassinations in this country.
We've had ICE agents attacked, We've had attempted assassinations on
the president of the United States. Democrats call, you know,
anybody that opposes them Nazis and that we ought to
(18:25):
be eliminated. I mean, the rhetoric is just at the
boiling point. And so here you have a member of
the President's cabinet surrounded by ICE agents talking about what's
going on in California, and it is a closed press conference,
so there was the public's not there. Only you know,
(18:45):
the credential media is allowed in and some big, kind
of heavyset guy comes barging in.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Just says, I'm Senator Padilla.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Now if I'm not exag you here if now not
true today, but before this event and I realized, oh yeah,
I forgot that there was a Newsome appointment to take
Was it Feinstein's place? I think it was Feinstein's place? Uh, I,
(19:24):
as so called politically astute as I am, I just
didn't remember him being appointed. And as somebody had said,
who was the appointed senator to replace Dianne Feinstein? Or
who named the two US senators in California, I would
have been, oh, Adam Schiff because he just won an election.
And I wouldn't even be able to say, I know
(19:49):
it's a his hispanic surname. I couldn't even told you
that I could have. I couldn't have told you anything
about what he looked like or anything else, and neither
could A you. And don't lie to me about it.
Well that was a week ago. Now, of course today
he comes barging here and says, oh, I'm senator to Padilla,
I've seen enough photos of him now that I go, oh, hi, senator,
(20:13):
A hello, senator dirt bag. That's what I would have done. No,
I would actually show him some respect, even though I
think he's a dufist, but here he is under those circumstances,
and he goes barging in and I do I'm not
exaggerating barging into the press conference. He comes through a
(20:34):
back door. He's approaching from the side, he's pushing people aside.
He's almost like he's a he's almost like a tackle
on a football team who sees the quarterback coming and
he's he's kind of bent down and he's ready to tackle,
and he's headed toward the the lectern. I'm Senator Padilla.
(20:58):
And everybodys seeing themselves, how do we know? And who
they hell? Senator Padilla. So they wrestle him to the ground.
They hadn't cuffing. They finally get his credentials, they finally
find out that he is, and they release him. Okay,
all well and good. However, let's go to Title eighteen
of US Code, Section one to eleven in general, Section
(21:25):
A in general, whoever number one forcibly assaults, resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates,
or interferes with any person designated in Section eleven fourteen
of this title while engaged in or or on account
of the performance of official duties or two who forcibly
(21:48):
assaults or intimidates any person who formally served as a
person designated in a Section eleven fourteen on on account
of the performance of official duties during such person's turn.
I'm a service shall where the acts in violation of
this section constitute only simple assault, be fined under this
(22:10):
title or imprison not more than one year, or both,
And where such acts involve physical contact with the victim
of that assault or the intent to commit another felony,
be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than
eight years or both. Does that sound familiar to you
at all or not? But it should, because hundreds of
(22:34):
people charged and convicted of that very crime in connection
with the events of January sixth at the United States
Capitol in twenty twenty one. I've seen hours of video
evidence of hundreds, dozens of January sixth defendants who engaged
(22:59):
in that type of activity or who were not engaged
in that kind of activity but were nonetheless charged under
that act. There was no way for the judges to
forget what they had seen other defendants in the video
evidence they had watched previously. So the judges that saw
(23:23):
other evidence had more defendants come in front of them,
and pretty soon it all becomes a blur. The whole
spectrum of offenses or of offense conduct that the Biden
Justice Justice Department enveloped under the umbrella of the extremely
(23:45):
broad statutory language of that section. I just read you.
It's pretty hard to describe with any precision.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
But the most.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Important lesson to be learned from that language is that
assault is only one of six verbs describing conduct that
Congress criminalized with Section one eleven. Now, that point was
driven home in a January sixth case when a lawyer
(24:15):
was arguing for the acquittal of a client during closing
argument in a bench trial, meaning a trial in front
of the judge. The lawyer focused on the word assault,
and the judge pointed out the broad reach of the
statue to conduct not involving assault behavior, and then asked
(24:36):
the lawyer, and I'm just paraphrasing the judge here, wouldn't
your argument be more appropriately addressed to me? It's sentencing
that your client's conduct fell short of assault behavior, and
as a result, the sentence imposed should reflect that. But
his conduct, the client's conduct, the defendant's conduct nevertheless violated
(24:58):
the statue with respect to the non assault behavior that
was also criminalized by Congress, such as resisting or impeding.
The client's conduct short of assault behavior still violated those
other provisions of the statute, didn't it, And the judge
(25:19):
convicted the client but made a very specific finding that
the client had not assaulted any officer while still violating
that statute. Now, the judge did impose a very modest
sentence as compared to the harsh sentence that's given to
the co defendants in those cases where the judge found
(25:39):
that they had actually physically assaulted the officers in the
same sequence of events. Now, that's just one example of
conduct directed to federal law enforcement officers that is relatively
benign as an objective matter. But as that judge points out,
(26:00):
it still met the statutory definition of a felony under
Section eleven A that I just read to you. The
penalty provision says that physical contact with the victim in
the case of January sixth, the officer or in the
case of Senator Padella, Secretary Nome makes the offensive felony,
(26:22):
not a misdemeanor. So then the Biden Department of Justice
made use of that penalty provision to charge hundreds of
J six defendants with felony assault. The description that put
in charging documents and in the press releases. In nearly
every case where a January sixth defendant simply put their
(26:44):
hands on a Capitol Police officer or a DC Metro
police officer, they didn't shove, they didn't push, they didn't slap,
they didn't punch. They merely touched the officer, sometimes purposely,
sometimes incidentally. They got charged. So when you come charging
(27:08):
into a press conference like Senator Padilla did, shouldn't seem
standard apply to him.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Uh, shouldn't.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
And in the case of Senator to Padilla, he physically
pushed Ice agents and Secret Service agents aside, so much
so that they had to forcibly pull him out of
the room while he still continued to push and swing
at him and do everything, and finally wrestle him to
(27:40):
the ground and get him in handcuffs before they could
finally figure out who he was. Now, if those charges
were good enough for a J six defendant, I want
to make the case that that very same charge is
good for Senator Padilla and this administration to charge him. So,
(28:02):
Pam Bondi, you need to call the US Attorney in
whatever jurisdiction he was in. I think it was in
LA but I'm not sure, and charge Senator Padilla, and
then we can watch every Democrats had explode. Remember how
Spartacus Senator Corey Booker went to the floor of the
US Senator and gave that rip roaring speech about oh
(28:24):
my god, what kind of country do we live in?
I want to listen to him. All do that and
then say, oh, well, we're just using the same statute
that you used to charge. You know, these January sixth
defendants who did nothing but just touch somebody, your fellow senator, shoved, push,
(28:44):
and literally assaulted law enforcement officers. Charge the bastard. Nearly
half the population sixty seven million people face starvation. Over
more than four million people are internally just placed only
about fifty two percent of basic sanitation. Life expectancy is
(29:06):
a whopping fifty eight years. That's one of the lowest globally.
Healthy life expectancy is only forty five years, high child
mortality rates, ongoing conflicts. It's a crap whole country, total
craphole country. And there are a lot of things that
in this country I think are turning us into a
(29:27):
craphole country, but a United States Congressman elon Omar. I
wonder if she's speaking on behalf of her brother that
she married, or is she speaking on belf of herself.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
To be coming out of our country. I mean, I
grew up in a dictatorship and I don't even remember
ever witnessing anything like that.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
To have a democracy, a peakan of hope for the world,
to to now be turned into one of the one
of the worst countries.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
Where the military are in our streets without any regard
for people's constitutional rights, while our president is spending millions
of dollars prompting himself up like a failed dictator with
a military parade. It is really shocking and it should
be a wake up call for all Americans to say,
(30:28):
this is not the country we were born in, This
is not the country we believe in, This is not
the country our founding fathers imagined, and this is not
the country that is supported by our constitution, our ideals,
our values, and we should all collectively be out in
the streets rejecting what is taking place this week.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Now.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
I guess what I should do is just tell Martino
to just stay at Bay for another fifteen or twenty minutes,
because I'll need at least fifteen or twenty minutes to
dissect all of the bald faced lies that she just spewed,
and then to rip her apart for saying that we're
actually becoming worse than her home country of Somalia. And
(31:15):
this is a member of the United States Congress, which
I find, I would say find hard to believe, except
when you understand the demographics of her district. That should
give you a warning that the more we allow unfettered
immigration and we allow people to come to this country
and not learn to assimilate, to create their own little enclaves,
(31:40):
you know, little Italy, Chinatown, they all still abide by
American culture, even though they may celebrate their own culture Muslims, No,
they don't. That's pretty much all I got, ladies, gentlemen,
(32:05):
Elvis has loved the Builders,
In the case which I've been watching closely because it's
got pretty huge implications for the Equal Protection clause. The
case is United States versus Scremetti. It upheld Tennessee's ban
on gender affirming care for transgender miners. And I want
(00:21):
emphasize this is from miners, so insofar as military, etc.
That we're talking about. The Tennessee law that ban gender
affirming care for transgender miners. It's probably one of the
most significant rulings of the term so far, and it's
got really far reaching implications for transgender rights and for
(00:44):
that matter, even healthcare access across the entire country. So
here's the background. In March of twenty three, Tennessee passed
a bill that prohibited healthcare providers from administering gender affirming treatments.
Now that could include things like puberty blockers, hormone therapy,
(01:11):
transgender surgeries, anything like that to miners under the age
of eighteen. If the purpose is to enable a miner
to identify with or live as a purported identity inconsistent
with the miner's sex, that's the first purpose. Or if
(01:34):
the treatment is or to treat purported discomfort or distress
from gender dys for you. It did allow those treatments
for cisgender miners for other medical purposes a hormonal deficiency,
(01:57):
but it explicitly banned them for trans gender miners that
just wanted to align their bodies with their gender identity.
And Tennessee went one step further. It imposed civil penalties,
not kriminal.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
I don't think.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
I don't think it was kriminal. I think it was
only civil on doctors who violated the ban. They could
lose their medical license if banned the gender affirming surgeries
for miners, and if you did it, you could you
could up to lose your medical license. Obviously civil penalties
involved otherwise. So there were three transgender miners and their parents,
(02:39):
and a Tennessee doctor who had treated a transgender youth,
and of course the Biden administration. Those were the planeffs.
They were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee,
the LAMB Illegal and the Aching gump strauss Our law firm.
It's a big DC international law firm. Their argument was
(03:04):
that the Tennessee law violated the equal Protection clause of
the Fourteenth Amendment because it discriminated on the basis of
sex and transgender status. So here's the history. How we
got to the Supreme Court. A federal district court, a
trial court initially issued a priminary injunction. That court found
(03:24):
that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in proving that
the Tennessee law was unconstitutional. But then it got to
the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which reversed the decision
and upheld the band. And that's what prompted the Biden
administration to appeal to the Supreme Court. So we get
to that's why it's the case. Maybe not interesting to you,
(03:47):
but it's interesting to me. That's why the case is
styled Us versus Scrimmetti. Now, this is the first time
that the Court has directly addressed the constitutionality of a
state and on gender affirming care for transgender miners. The
court had a couple of legal illegal questions to address.
(04:11):
The primary issue is whether Tennessee's ban violates the equal Protection
clause that requires, generally speaking, the government to treat similarly
situated individuals equally. You have to treat me and a
(04:32):
rod equally. You have to treat me and you equally,
as long as we are both being affected and are
in similar circumstances.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
That's kind of the general rule.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Now, the plaintiffs, the government, the law firm for the children,
and the firm for the parents, plus the ACLU and
the others and LAMBDA. They argued that the law discriminated
based on sex. Now, I found that argument interesting. And
(05:12):
they made that argument by claiming that by treating transgender
and cisgender kids differently for similar treatments, and that it
was discrimination because it was based on transgender status and
because it was based on a particular status that required,
(05:33):
under previous Supreme Court rulings a higher level of scrutiny
under our constitution. Now, Tennessee's argument was that the law
was based on age, not sex, because it had to
do with minors and it served a compelling state interest.
(05:54):
I love the fact that Tennessee made this argument because
they were arguing that they had a state a compelling
state interest in protecting minors by regulating medical treatments with
debated risks, arguable benefits, and clearly some disadvantages and problems.
(06:16):
The state argument that argued that the band should be
reviewed under the less stringent rational basis standard. They and
they set the argument up perfectly, I think, by pointing
out that, look, we have a compelling interest in protecting
kids based on their age. We don't let kids under
the age of eighteen into contracts, we don't let them smoke,
(06:38):
we don't let them buy guns. Why should we let
them whack their penises off or whack the boobs off
and so doing so or they do so by engaging
in medical treatments that have debatable risks. It's not clear.
It's not you know, well established that, hey, these surgeries
(07:01):
are fine. I mean, you know, going back to our
earlier discussion about America first in the return of common Sense,
Tennessee is making a common sense argument here. So the courts,
I'm happy to say. The decision was six to three.
(07:22):
The opinion was written by Justice Roberts, joined by Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh,
and Barrett. Although to uphold the ban, they ruled that
the ban does not violate the equal protection clause of
the Fourteenth Amendment. Roberts wrote, and I had barely enough
(07:46):
time to skim through this, but generally speaking, he wrote
that preventing miners from accessing puberty blockers and hormone therapy
does not require a higher standard of scrutiny. In other words,
they stricter standard of review, and or he wrote that
it doesn't require that higher standard of review because the
(08:09):
law does not discriminate based on sex or transgender status
in a way that triggers any kind of higher scrutiny.
So they've applied what lawyers referred to as the rational
basis review, which is the least stringent review, which I
find in of itself fascinating. They didn't say, oh, because
(08:32):
it's kids, because it's transgenderism, because.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
It's such a popular, you know.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Cultural phenomenon right now that we've got, or because of
their status. They really didn't address, as best I can tell,
the classification or the status, much like you would, for example,
a black person versus an Asian person versus a white person.
Those are immutable characteristics. They have status because of those
(09:01):
immutable characteristics, something you can't change. They kind of said
here that we're not going to deal with that because
we don't find that there's any sort of protected island.
Let me rephrase that they didn't specifically find. They ignored
the idea that there is a protected status or that
would require a higher scrutiny. So that's why they applied
(09:24):
the rational basis review. They found that the Tennessee's state
interest in regulating generally medical treatments for miners start to
say kids, but I'm going to be technical that Tennessee
legislators passing laws regulating medical treatments for miners, particularly when
(09:48):
you have ongoing debates about the risk and benefit of
gender affirming care, satisfied the standard of simply a rational
basis review. Now the opinion emphasizes, which I think is important,
that states have broad authority to regulate medical care, especially
(10:10):
for miners, and when the medical experts are divided, that
even enhances the state's interests in protecting miners from procedures
or medicines or whatever. But in this case, a procedure
that is of dubious or at least divided efficacy. Interestingly,
(10:36):
Roberts pointed to restrictions in some European countries, like the
National Health Service in England, that limits puberty blockers solely
for use in clinical trials. They cited that as evidence
of legitimate concerns about the long term effects of these
kinds of treatments, and he concluded by writing this, having concluded,
(11:00):
this is justice, this is the chief Justice, having concluded
that it does not violate the equal protection clause, we
leave questions regarding its policy to the people, their elected representatives,
and the democratic process. Holy cow, as much as I've
(11:21):
been pissed off about Justice Robert Chief Justice Roberts lately,
can we stand up and get a hallelujah for that
phrase right there? Having concluded that the Tennessee law does
not violate the equal protection clause, we leave questions regarding
Tennessee's policy to the people at Tennessee, to their elected representatives,
(11:45):
and to the democratic process. Now that's interesting because that
kind of mirrors the Court's approach in the Dobbs decision,
which overturned Roe v. Wade, because they in that case,
if you and I know you remember this, they deferred
abortion policy to state legislatures. So once again the Court
(12:10):
is saying, you know what, under our constitution, all we
have to do is look at the standard of review,
and it's the lowest standard of review, and we find
that this is a debatable issue that ought to be
left to the people and their representatives. Now, they did
(12:33):
one more thing. They distinguished the case from Bostock versus
Clayton County. That's a twenty twenty Supreme Court case where
they ruled that workplace discrimination that's based on transgender status
constituted sex discrimination under Title seven. But the majority in
this case noted that that case involved a very specific
(12:58):
statutory interpretation, whereas this case, they say, concerns the broader,
more general equal protection clause. Now that may be like
legal mumbo jumbo to you, but what they're saying is
that the earlier case involved a very specific statutory interpretation
and that's all they were ruling on, and here we're
(13:20):
just ruling on a general policy, a general rule that
bans these things for minors. Now, of course Sodoma or
Kagan and Jackson Brown Brown Jackson they descended, but they
don't assign the descent to any particular author that I
could find. They argued that the band likely discriminates based
(13:46):
on sex and transgender status, so they would argue that
it just required a stricter review by the court, and
they went to the boss Stock case to do so.
They emphasize the minority, emphasize that the medical consensus that
(14:06):
supports gender affirming care, and then they cite the usual suspects.
The American Medical Association woke the American Academy of Pediatrics
WOKE and the American Psychiatric Association way woke.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Those groups. Of course, they.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Argue that this kind of care is evidence based, produces
or reduces mental health risks like depression and suicidality.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
But we know that it does not.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
It actually has serious risks of depression and suicide. And
so they argue that these treatments are The minority did
that these treatments are critical for transgender youth that have
gendered this for you, So what would they do? The
minority would take it away from the legislation and say, hey,
(15:02):
we're going to find I mean what they would do
they do they would do a New Row kind of
case and rule that bans on transgender care is unconstitutional.
Now they I'll just say, probably because I haven't read
it closely enough. They're probably criticizing the majority for deferring
(15:25):
to the state legislature on a matter that they claim
involves fundamental rights. I think they do so because this
is a highly politicized issue, transgender healthcare, and they think
it has a disproportionate impact on what they would classify
as as a marginalized group.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
I just think they're wrong.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
So this is I think one of at least twenty
five more than half. I think it's more than half
of the state the restrict gender affirming care for transgender miners.
The stats I have from old notes are that there's
about one hundred and thirteen thousand, certainly less than two
(16:14):
hundred thousand transgender youth between the ages of thirteen and
seventeen that are seeking this kind of treatment. I mean,
that's a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny minority. And then
states like Alabama, Arkansas, even Montana, they've got bands like this.
(16:35):
So this ruling strengthens the state bands. In other words,
it makes it harder for the plaints to challenge them
on constitutional grounds, but it does something else. It kind
of emboldens or empowers. Of course, Colorado would never do
anything like this because we're controlled by Democrats, but for
states that might have, you know, split House and Senate,
(16:57):
it kind of gives them an opening to either enact
or expand their restrictions on transgender rights, things like old
bathroom access, sports participation, birth certificate changes, and most recently
a federal district judge that ruled the state Department cannot
(17:18):
require you to put your birth sex on your passport application. Yeah,
it opens all of that up now, Senator Padilla, because
I'm afraid that, considering that hundreds of ordinary Americans had
their lives destroyed by the Biden Justice Departments policy choices
(17:41):
in how it prosecuted the January sixth defendants, that the
bureaucrats in the Department of Justice might let Senator Padilla
slip by. And I think he ought to be charged.
You remember what he did last week, decided that it
would be wise for him to break in out. Now,
(18:05):
think about this. We've had political assassinations in this country.
We've had ICE agents attacked, We've had attempted assassinations on
the president of the United States. Democrats call, you know,
anybody that opposes them Nazis and that we ought to
(18:25):
be eliminated. I mean, the rhetoric is just at the
boiling point. And so here you have a member of
the President's cabinet surrounded by ICE agents talking about what's
going on in California, and it is a closed press conference,
so there was the public's not there. Only you know,
(18:45):
the credential media is allowed in and some big, kind
of heavyset guy comes barging in.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Just says, I'm Senator Padilla.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Now if I'm not exag you here if now not
true today, but before this event and I realized, oh yeah,
I forgot that there was a Newsome appointment to take
Was it Feinstein's place? I think it was Feinstein's place? Uh, I,
(19:24):
as so called politically astute as I am, I just
didn't remember him being appointed. And as somebody had said,
who was the appointed senator to replace Dianne Feinstein? Or
who named the two US senators in California, I would
have been, oh, Adam Schiff because he just won an election.
And I wouldn't even be able to say, I know
(19:49):
it's a his hispanic surname. I couldn't even told you
that I could have. I couldn't have told you anything
about what he looked like or anything else, and neither
could A you. And don't lie to me about it.
Well that was a week ago. Now, of course today
he comes barging here and says, oh, I'm senator to Padilla,
I've seen enough photos of him now that I go, oh, hi, senator,
(20:13):
A hello, senator dirt bag. That's what I would have done. No,
I would actually show him some respect, even though I
think he's a dufist, but here he is under those circumstances,
and he goes barging in and I do I'm not
exaggerating barging into the press conference. He comes through a
(20:34):
back door. He's approaching from the side, he's pushing people aside.
He's almost like he's a he's almost like a tackle
on a football team who sees the quarterback coming and
he's he's kind of bent down and he's ready to tackle,
and he's headed toward the the lectern. I'm Senator Padilla.
(20:58):
And everybodys seeing themselves, how do we know? And who
they hell? Senator Padilla. So they wrestle him to the ground.
They hadn't cuffing. They finally get his credentials, they finally
find out that he is, and they release him. Okay,
all well and good. However, let's go to Title eighteen
of US Code, Section one to eleven in general, Section
(21:25):
A in general, whoever number one forcibly assaults, resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates,
or interferes with any person designated in Section eleven fourteen
of this title while engaged in or or on account
of the performance of official duties or two who forcibly
(21:48):
assaults or intimidates any person who formally served as a
person designated in a Section eleven fourteen on on account
of the performance of official duties during such person's turn.
I'm a service shall where the acts in violation of
this section constitute only simple assault, be fined under this
(22:10):
title or imprison not more than one year, or both,
And where such acts involve physical contact with the victim
of that assault or the intent to commit another felony,
be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than
eight years or both. Does that sound familiar to you
at all or not? But it should, because hundreds of
(22:34):
people charged and convicted of that very crime in connection
with the events of January sixth at the United States
Capitol in twenty twenty one. I've seen hours of video
evidence of hundreds, dozens of January sixth defendants who engaged
(22:59):
in that type of activity or who were not engaged
in that kind of activity but were nonetheless charged under
that act. There was no way for the judges to
forget what they had seen other defendants in the video
evidence they had watched previously. So the judges that saw
(23:23):
other evidence had more defendants come in front of them,
and pretty soon it all becomes a blur. The whole
spectrum of offenses or of offense conduct that the Biden
Justice Justice Department enveloped under the umbrella of the extremely
(23:45):
broad statutory language of that section. I just read you.
It's pretty hard to describe with any precision.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
But the most.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Important lesson to be learned from that language is that
assault is only one of six verbs describing conduct that
Congress criminalized with Section one eleven. Now, that point was
driven home in a January sixth case when a lawyer
(24:15):
was arguing for the acquittal of a client during closing
argument in a bench trial, meaning a trial in front
of the judge. The lawyer focused on the word assault,
and the judge pointed out the broad reach of the
statue to conduct not involving assault behavior, and then asked
(24:36):
the lawyer, and I'm just paraphrasing the judge here, wouldn't
your argument be more appropriately addressed to me? It's sentencing
that your client's conduct fell short of assault behavior, and
as a result, the sentence imposed should reflect that. But
his conduct, the client's conduct, the defendant's conduct nevertheless violated
(24:58):
the statue with respect to the non assault behavior that
was also criminalized by Congress, such as resisting or impeding.
The client's conduct short of assault behavior still violated those
other provisions of the statute, didn't it, And the judge
(25:19):
convicted the client but made a very specific finding that
the client had not assaulted any officer while still violating
that statute. Now, the judge did impose a very modest
sentence as compared to the harsh sentence that's given to
the co defendants in those cases where the judge found
(25:39):
that they had actually physically assaulted the officers in the
same sequence of events. Now, that's just one example of
conduct directed to federal law enforcement officers that is relatively
benign as an objective matter. But as that judge points out,
(26:00):
it still met the statutory definition of a felony under
Section eleven A that I just read to you. The
penalty provision says that physical contact with the victim in
the case of January sixth, the officer or in the
case of Senator Padella, Secretary Nome makes the offensive felony,
(26:22):
not a misdemeanor. So then the Biden Department of Justice
made use of that penalty provision to charge hundreds of
J six defendants with felony assault. The description that put
in charging documents and in the press releases. In nearly
every case where a January sixth defendant simply put their
(26:44):
hands on a Capitol Police officer or a DC Metro
police officer, they didn't shove, they didn't push, they didn't slap,
they didn't punch. They merely touched the officer, sometimes purposely,
sometimes incidentally. They got charged. So when you come charging
(27:08):
into a press conference like Senator Padilla did, shouldn't seem
standard apply to him.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Uh, shouldn't.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
And in the case of Senator to Padilla, he physically
pushed Ice agents and Secret Service agents aside, so much
so that they had to forcibly pull him out of
the room while he still continued to push and swing
at him and do everything, and finally wrestle him to
(27:40):
the ground and get him in handcuffs before they could
finally figure out who he was. Now, if those charges
were good enough for a J six defendant, I want
to make the case that that very same charge is
good for Senator Padilla and this administration to charge him. So,
(28:02):
Pam Bondi, you need to call the US Attorney in
whatever jurisdiction he was in. I think it was in
LA but I'm not sure, and charge Senator Padilla, and
then we can watch every Democrats had explode. Remember how
Spartacus Senator Corey Booker went to the floor of the
US Senator and gave that rip roaring speech about oh
(28:24):
my god, what kind of country do we live in?
I want to listen to him. All do that and
then say, oh, well, we're just using the same statute
that you used to charge. You know, these January sixth
defendants who did nothing but just touch somebody, your fellow senator, shoved, push,
(28:44):
and literally assaulted law enforcement officers. Charge the bastard. Nearly
half the population sixty seven million people face starvation. Over
more than four million people are internally just placed only
about fifty two percent of basic sanitation. Life expectancy is
(29:06):
a whopping fifty eight years. That's one of the lowest globally.
Healthy life expectancy is only forty five years, high child
mortality rates, ongoing conflicts. It's a crap whole country, total
craphole country. And there are a lot of things that
in this country I think are turning us into a
(29:27):
craphole country, but a United States Congressman elon Omar. I
wonder if she's speaking on behalf of her brother that
she married, or is she speaking on belf of herself.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
To be coming out of our country. I mean, I
grew up in a dictatorship and I don't even remember
ever witnessing anything like that.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
To have a democracy, a peakan of hope for the world,
to to now be turned into one of the one
of the worst countries.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
Where the military are in our streets without any regard
for people's constitutional rights, while our president is spending millions
of dollars prompting himself up like a failed dictator with
a military parade. It is really shocking and it should
be a wake up call for all Americans to say,
(30:28):
this is not the country we were born in, This
is not the country we believe in, This is not
the country our founding fathers imagined, and this is not
the country that is supported by our constitution, our ideals,
our values, and we should all collectively be out in
the streets rejecting what is taking place this week.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Now.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
I guess what I should do is just tell Martino
to just stay at Bay for another fifteen or twenty minutes,
because I'll need at least fifteen or twenty minutes to
dissect all of the bald faced lies that she just spewed,
and then to rip her apart for saying that we're
actually becoming worse than her home country of Somalia. And
(31:15):
this is a member of the United States Congress, which
I find, I would say find hard to believe, except
when you understand the demographics of her district. That should
give you a warning that the more we allow unfettered
immigration and we allow people to come to this country
and not learn to assimilate, to create their own little enclaves,
(31:40):
you know, little Italy, Chinatown, they all still abide by
American culture, even though they may celebrate their own culture Muslims, No,
they don't. That's pretty much all I got, ladies, gentlemen,
(32:05):
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