Children's Rights

The Supreme Court handed down a strange set of opinions on Monday evening, which accompanied a decision that largely reinstates Idaho’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors. The ban was previously blocked by a lower court.

None of the opinions in Labrador v. Poe spend much time discussing whether such a ban is constitutional — although Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion does contain some language suggesting that he and Justice Amy Coney Barrett will ultimately vote to uphold the ban.

The Supreme Court ruled Monday to allow an Idaho law protecting children from life-altering transgender procedures to go into effect while the law is challenged in lower courts. 

The Supreme Court on Monday allowed Idaho to enforce a controversial ban on gender-affirming care to minors as the law is appealed, temporarily reintroducing one of more than a dozen state bans on gender-affirming care, an increasingly hot-button issue for the GOP.

The Supreme Court approved a stay on a federal District Court decision, allowing Idaho to enforce the ban, with the high court’s conservative justices forming the majority opinion and its three liberal justices dissenting.

Massachusetts police arrested six middle school students on hate charges over an online chat where they participated in a "mock slave auction" of other students.

Hampden District Attorney Anthony Gulluni told reporters at a media briefing that the students were charged with online bullying over the chat room that targeted two of their fellow students at Southwick Regional School.

Gulluni said the interactions were posted to the Snapchat social media app in February and involved many students who would join and leave the room.

A California bill, AB 957, would require family courts to interpret a child’s “health, safety, and welfare” to “include a parent’s affirmation of the child’s gender identity” for the purpose of custody disputes.

After three hours of fiery public debate, the Leon County School Board unanimously approved its "LGBTQ Inclusive School Guide" Tuesday night.

The policy, which the board is calling a “guide” and a "living document" that can be quickly updated, comes after weeks of deliberation from the district’s LGBTQ+ Advisory Committee. 

The document is intended to create guidelines for teachers and administrators to help students who need it and to outline state laws for employees, Assistant Superintendent Alan Cox told the Tallahassee Democrat.

The Parental Rights in Education law will force teachers to remove blatant LGBT propaganda from their classrooms as the law is set to take effect Friday.

The trouble in Orange County Public Schools began, perhaps unsurprisingly, at a seminar called “Camp Legal.”

After the deadliest school shooting in nearly a decade, lawmakers are making emotional pleas for stricter gun control legislation. "What are we doing?" an impassioned Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said on the Senate floor on Tuesday after an attack at a Texas elementary school killed at least 19 children and two adults.

Mass shootings have become so common in the US that we have developed a pathology for how to react. The aggrieved families who have lost someone they loved are the recipients of thoughts and prayers. Law enforcement is praised for keeping the tragedy from becoming even more horrific. Counseling is offered to survivors. Politicians come to town to express their sympathy and outrage, and vow that the latest community will recover and stand “Texas strong” or “Sandy Hook strong” or “Parkland strong.”

But nothing happens to prevent another shooting.