Next Supreme Court term will feature cases on child gender reassignment bans, guns and pornography | Newstalk Florida

Katelynn Richardson

The Supreme Court’s next term will include cases on banning child sex reassignment, guns and pornography.

The 2024-2025 term will begin when the justices hear their first case on October 7. To date, 28 motions have been granted, and more cases will be added to the docket in the coming weeks.

Below are some of the most important cases that will be decided this quarter.

The Biden administration’s ‘ghost guns’ rule

One of the first cases to come before the court will be a challenge to the Biden administration’s “ghost guns” rule. The oral arguments for Garland v. Vanderstok are scheduled for October 8.

Under the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) “frame or receiver” rule issued in 2022, the definition of a firearm was expanded to encompass kits of parts “readily convertible into functional weapons », subjecting them to the same regulations as traditional weapons. firearms.

The high court’s majority intervened twice in response to emergency requests to keep the rule in place after it was blocked by lower courts.

The Fifth Circuit concluded in November 2023 that the ATF rule “tramples clear statutory text and exceeds the statutorily imposed limits on the agency’s power in the name of public policy.” But the Biden administration argues that the lower court’s ruling poses an “acute threat to public safety.”

“Under the Fifth Circuit’s interpretation, anyone can purchase a kit online and assemble a fully functional weapon in minutes – no background checks, records, or serial numbers required,” the government wrote in his petition. “The result would be a flood of untraceable phantom guns in our nation’s communities, endangering the public and thwarting law enforcement’s efforts to solve violent crime.”

The San Francisco EPA Challenge

There’s a case on the agenda this year where the interests of one of the nation’s most liberal cities and energy trade groups align.

San Francisco sued the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) after the agency issued a permit under the Clean Water Act (CWA) that did not prescribe clear limits for wastewater discharge. The vague requirements leave the city exposed to “‘crushing consequences’ of the CWA’s enforcement mechanism without notice of what the law requires,” the city’s lawyers argued.

“These generic water quality terms expose San Francisco and many permit holders nationwide to enforcement action, while failing to inform them to what extent they must limit or treat their discharges to comply with law,” the city argued in its petition.

An amicus brief joined by groups like the American Petroleum Institute and the American Gas Association claims that many companies “now cannot know whether they are complying with their permits.”

Oral arguments are scheduled for October 16.

Tennessee ban on transgender procedures for minors

Tennessee’s law banning procedures such as cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers and sex reassignment surgeries for children, one of 25 similar state laws across the country, is at the center of a another case on the docket this season.

The Biden administration argues that Tennessee’s ban violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. They say the procedures it restricts are “safe, effective, and may be medically necessary to treat gender dysphoria in transgender adolescents.”

However, unsealed documents from another case challenging Alabama’s similar ban revealed in June that supposedly “evidence-based” medical standards created by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH ), cited by the Biden administration, had been influenced by external factors. political pressure.

Tennessee says the medical interventions it bans “lead to serious and potentially irreversible side effects, including infertility, decreased bone density, sexual dysfunction, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.”

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed Tennessee to enforce its ban in a September 2023 decision, in which the majority wrote that transgender people are not a “politically powerless” group.

Texas Porn Age Verification Law

Under a Texas law passed in 2023, websites that distribute “sexual material harmful to minors” must confirm that their users are over 18 years old. Nineteen other states, including Utah, Virginia, and Arkansas, have also passed age verification laws.

The Supreme Court agreed in July to review a Fifth Circuit ruling allowing the Texas law to take effect.

A trade group representing online pornography distributors, the Free Speech Coalition, says the Texas law “places significant constraints on adults’ access to constitutionally protected expression” because of the attempt to alienate minors from websites.

“What is critically important here is that every user, including adults, must submit personally identifiable information to access sensitive and intimate content on a medium – the Internet – that poses unique challenges regarding security and privacy,” the coalition wrote in its petition.

Texas notes that its law does not ban pornography but simply requires that an industry that “makes billions of dollars from trafficking in obscenities take commercially reasonable steps to ensure that those who access such material are adults.” .

FDA Refusal to Approve Flavored E-Cigarettes

The Supreme Court has agreed to review a Fifth Circuit ruling that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” when it denied applications to market flavored vaping products.

In a 10-6 en banc decision, Judge Andrew Oldham wrote that the FDA had sent manufacturers on a “wild goose chase.”

“After telling manufacturers that their marketing plans were ‘critical’ to their applications, FDA frankly admitted that it had not read a single word of the million plans,” the notice said.

The FDA maintains that the products pose “serious risks to young people.” In a brief, he wrote that the plaintiffs “failed to demonstrate that authorizing their flavored products would be appropriate for the protection of public health.”

Featured Image: Screenshot/U.S. Supreme Court

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