Exactly a century ago this year, the Supreme Court, in its decision in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, recognized the right of parents to direct the education of their children, writing that “[t]he fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the State to standardize its children . . . The child is not the mere creature of the state.” Today, just as they did a century ago, parents rely on the courts to serve as a backstop against abusive government policy.
Sadly, some courts in America are shutting the door of justice in the face of parents seeking to vindicate their rights and the rights of their children. In a case out of Wisconsin called Parents Protecting Our Children v. Eau Claire Area School District in the Seventh Circuit, the federal court of appeals with jurisdiction over cases arising in Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana, parents challenged the school district’s policy directing school officials to hide a child’s “social gender transition” from their parents. As the school told its employees, “parents are not entitled to know their kids’ identities.That knowledge must be earned.”
Incredibly, the Seventh Circuit found that the parents’ harm in that case was merely speculative. Apparently, since plaintiffs must show harm to have standing to sue, parents must wait until they find out that their son’s school has been helping him dress as a girl and use the girls’ restroom for six months before they can challenge the policy.
The Supreme Court chose not to review the Seventh Circuit’s decision in that case. Justice Samuel Alito wrote a short dissent, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, explaining that the parents’ harm is not speculative and that “some federal courts are succumbing to the temptation to use the doctrine of Article III standing as a way of avoiding some particularly contentious constitutional questions.”
Nor is this an isolated incident of judges dodging the controversy of gender ideology. The Fourth Circuit, the appeals court with jurisdiction over Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, came to the same conclusion in John and Jane Parents 1 v. Montgomery County Board of Education. A district court in Ohio did the same in Doe v. Pine-Richland School District.
Parents’ fundamental rights to direct the upbringing of their children, and the right of children to be free from ideological indoctrination by school officials, depends on courts that are willing to protect those rights. That is why Advancing American Freedom is filing an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to take up Blake Warner’s challenge to an Eleventh Circuit rule which effectively requires parents to hire a lawyer before they can represent their children’s interests in court. Specifically, while people can bring their own claims in court without a lawyer, and parents can sue on behalf of their children, the Eleventh and some other courts have found that parents cannot sue on behalf of their children without hiring a lawyer. While Mr. Warner’s claim is not related to gender ideology, his challenge to this rule is essential because his success would ensure that parents who are unable to afford an attorney can still seek judicial protection for the rights of their children.
On Jan. 29, President Trump issued an executive order that, among other things, ordered the removal of federal funding from schools that engage in “social transitions of a minor student” and directed the attorney general to work with state and local officials “to enforce the law and file appropriate actions” against school officials who “facilitate the social transition of a minor student.” Trump’s order is important but know that gender ideologues will undoubtedly stage massive resistance. Parents must remain vigilant, and courts must begin to take their claims seriously. The Supreme Court should entrench parents’ rights by taking Mr. Warner’s case and striking down the counsel mandate.
After Tuesday’s blunder from Arizona’s chief executive, those across the state are again questioning the competency of Governor Katie Hobbs and her staffers.
Hobbs submitted an error-ridden letter to the Arizona Congressional Delegation on Tuesday afternoon requesting their assistance in resisting the Trump administration’s federal funding freeze.
Hobbs’ letter failed to include two of Arizona’s congress members: Congressmen Abraham Hamadeh and Paul Gosar. Her letter also incorrectly claimed Trump’s federal funding freeze extended to federal assistance programs providing individuals with healthcare, public safety, veterans’ services, and financial assistance.
“Without these programs, Arizonans will be denied healthcare, families will struggle to stay housed, and communities will become less safe. The effects of this funding freeze will have impacts across the state, and weaken Arizona’s ability to care for its residents,” said Hobbs. “Congress must act. These actions directly violate the Constitution’s delegation of power of the purse to Congress and the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. Courts, including the Supreme Court, have made it clear that presidents cannot unilaterally withhold the funding appropriated by Congress for these services.”
Hobbs also threatened to sue the Trump administration over its funding freeze.
As the White House and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) clarified in a memo and other public statements preceding Hobbs’ letter, the federal funding freeze doesn’t affect programs providing direct benefits to individuals. The OMB supplemented its memo with a Q&A on the guidance.
“This is not a blanket pause on federal assistance and grant programs from the Trump Administration. Individual assistance that includes […] Social Security benefits, Medicare benefits, food stamps, welfare benefits […] will not be impacted by this pause,” said Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt during Tuesday morning’s White House press briefing.
.@PressSec: "This is not a blanket pause on federal assistance and grant programs from the Trump Administration. Individual assistance that includes…Social Security benefits, Medicare benefits, food stamps, welfare benefits…will not be impacted by this pause." pic.twitter.com/4Ifx4cm97P
The following executive orders pertain to the federal funding freeze: “Protecting the American People Against Invasion,” “Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid,” “Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements,” “Unleashing American Energy,” “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” and “Enforcing the Hyde Amendment.”
An OMB memorandum meant to offer guidance on those executive orders, M-25-13, prompted an eleventh-hour federal court injunction on Tuesday. The federal funding freeze was scheduled to take place at 5 pm on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, Leavitt confirmed that the OMB rescinded its memo to “end any confusion” created by the injunction. In effect, this provided the administration with a workaround to the court order. A follow-up OMB memo advising of its rescission directed agencies to contact their general counsel for implementation of Trump’s executive orders.
“The President’s [Executive Orders] on federal funding remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented,” said Leavitt.
As first reported by the Arizona Daily Independent, other leaders took the effort to clarify the scope of the federal funding freeze — among them, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin.
“I’ve spoken to senior officials at the White House and confirmed the temporary pause by OMB does not impact individual assistance and will not interrupt disaster recovery efforts, school and childcare funding, healthcare for seniors or low-income families, funding for our roads, meals and lunches, or any of the other misinformation that has spread,” said Youngkin. “The partisan stunt to disseminate knowingly misleading information is dangerous fearmongering and completely wrong.”
AZ Free News is your #1 source for Arizona news and politics. You can send us news tips using this link.
Attorney General Kris Mayes signed onto a lawsuit with other Democratic attorneys general against President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship.
Mayes called the order “unconstitutional” in a press release published Tuesday.
“No executive order can supersede the United States Constitution and over 150 years of settled law,” said Mayes. “While President Trump may want to take this nation back to a time before all American citizens were treated equally under the law – we will not allow him to do so.”
Mayes defended the modern interpretation of birthright citizenship — which inspired popularity of the pejorative “anchor baby” — as an accurate reading of the Fourteenth Amendment. Mayes cited the 1898 Supreme Court landmark decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark.
In its ruling, the court declared that the defendant, Wong Kim Ark, had obtained citizenship through his birth on U.S. soil to parents who were legally residing in the U.S. but not citizens, and that those subject to U.S. jurisdiction apply to all domiciled within the country. The ruling remains precedent.
“Every person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, becomes at once a citizen of the United States, and needs no naturalization,” ruled the court.
Mayes’ lawsuit against the Trump administration estimated there were about 255,000 children born in the U.S. to illegal immigrant mothers and about 153,000 children born to illegal immigrant parents in 2022. In Arizona that year, the lawsuit reported those numbers to be around 6,000 children born to illegal immigrant mothers and around 3,400 children born to illegal immigrant parents. Based on those latest totals, the lawsuit estimated that there are over 12,000 children born to illegal immigrants every month throughout the nation.
Additionally, Mayes’ lawsuit argued that the end to birthright citizenship for children born to illegal immigrant parents would harm Arizona and other states because they would lose federal funding.
Joining Arizona in this lawsuit against the Trump administration in the Washington Western District Court are Washington, Illinois, and Oregon.
The lawsuit is a separate one from another joint lawsuit filed earlier this week in the Massachusetts District Court by 18 states, along with Washington, D.C. and both the city and county of San Francisco: New Jersey, Massachusetts, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin.
In his executive order, “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” Trump asserted that the Fourteenth Amendment never interpreted the extension of citizenship universally to all born within the U.S., highlighting the provision excluding those “not subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
Those that lack subjection to U.S. jurisdiction, the order says, include any individual whose mother was unlawfully present in the country and whose father wasn’t a citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of their birth, or; any individual whose mother’s presence in the country at the time of their birth was lawful but temporary, and whose father wasn’t a citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of their birth. For the latter case, “lawful but temporary” means those eligible to reside in the country under the Visa Waiver Program or those visiting on a student, work, or tourist visa.
The executive order is not retroactive. The order only applies to those born 30 days after the order’s issuance: February 19, 2025.
AZ Free News is your #1 source for Arizona news and politics. You can send us news tips using this link.
Border apprehensions continue to be high in southern Arizona.
Last week, the Chief Patrol Agent of the U.S. Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector, John R. Modlin, posted an update on the number of apprehensions of illegal aliens from his area of jurisdiction. Chief Modlin wrote that there were 7,500 encounters over the last week.
According to Modlin, there were also 23 human smuggling events and 6 significant arrests.
A local reporter noted that “apprehensions in the Tucson Sector remain steady in the first week with Biden’s executive order in effect.” There were over 7,400 encounters of illegal aliens in each of the previous two weeks.
In the first week at the border with Biden's EO in effect apprehensions in the Tucson Sector remain steady.
7,500 this week compared to 7,800 last week, and 7,400 the week before that.
Chief Modlin also shared a chart to compare year-over-year apprehensions in the sector, showing that the past three weeks have produced thousands more encounters than in Fiscal Year 2023.
Over the past year, Tucson has been at the top – if not the top – of the nation when it comes to apprehensions of illegal immigrants at the southern border each month.
These numbers do not factor in the ‘gotaways’ who escape detection from law enforcement on the ground. The ‘gotaways’ in the Tucson Sector are always estimated to be very high.
In addition to a large number of apprehensions and ‘gotaways,’ the Tucson Sector is home to one of the most active drug smuggling corridors in the nation, with international cartels able to send much of their illicit and deadly stashes north through Arizona and across the rest of the country.
The out-of-control and dangerous border crisis has forced Arizona legislative Republicans to find ways to take matters into their own hands to help secure and protect communities around the state. Earlier this month, the Arizona Legislature put the finishing touches on HCR 2060, the Secure the Border Act, to send the measure to state voters for the November General Election. If courts do not pause its inclusion on the ballot, Arizonans will have the opportunity to enact multiple border-related policies that will help local law enforcement to mitigate the negative effects of this crisis.
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
Arizona’s Republican Legislative Leaders continue to fight in federal court on behalf of state laws.
On Monday, House Speaker Ben Toma and Senate President Warren Petersen filed an amicus brief for the case Toomey v. State of Arizona, seeking “to protect Arizona’s recently-enacted statute prohibiting gender reassignment surgeries for minors.”
— Arizona House Republicans (@AZHouseGOP) July 11, 2023
In a statement about the amicus brief, Speaker Toma said, “Although Governor Hobbs and I may disagree on matters of policy, state statute prevails over any statements or executive orders from the Governor. Given that Arizona law prohibits gender reassignment surgeries for anyone under 18, Governor Hobbs cannot expressly or implicitly undo Arizona’s statutory prohibition, through litigation or otherwise. It was critical that the legislature provide this important perspective, which the parties neglected to address in their proposed settlement.”
According to the release issued by Speaker Toma about the submission of the court filing, the amicus brief “seeks to protect Arizona’s statutory mandate by encouraging the court to narrowly interpret the governor’s executive order to avoid a conflict with current law, and it also urges the court to reject the parties’ unreasonable agreement to award $500,000 in taxpayer monies for the plaintiffs’ attorney’s fees.”
The Speaker’s release added that Hobbs’ recent Executive Order, which requires “the state employee health care plan to cover gender reassignment surgeries,” made “no mention of A.R.S. 32-3230, a law that the legislature passed and was signed last year by then-Governor Ducey which prohibits irreversible gender reassignment surgeries for minors.”
That law was the result of SB 1138, which was sponsored by Petersen in 2022. In a letter to then-Secretary of State Hobbs, Ducey wrote, “Distinguishing between an adult and a child in law, as this bill does, is not unique. Throughout law, children are protected from making irreversible decisions, including buying certain products or participating in activities that can have lifelong health implications. These decisions should be made when an individual reaches adulthood. Further, many doctors who perform these procedures on adults agree it is not within the standards of care to perform these procedures on children. The irreversible nature of these procedures underscores why such a decision should be made as an adult, not as a child, and further supports the importance of this legislation.”
Last month, Hobbs signed three Executive Orders that generated significant controversy, including the one in focus for Toma and Petersen’s amicus brief. After the governor’s action, Petersen tweeted, “Instead of helping struggling AZ families plagued by inflation, the governor just issued an order for taxpayers to cover the cost of elective, sex reassignment surgeries. This illegal, out of touch, unprecedented overreach did not receive proper JLBC review as required by law.”
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
