Justices won’t hear case involving trans rights
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court is declining to wade into a case involving transgender rights and leaving in place a lower court decision against a Catholic hospital that wouldn’t allow a transgender man to have a hysterectomy there.
The high court turned away the case Monday without comment, as is typical. Three conservative justices – Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch – said they would have heard the case.
Mercy San Juan Medical Center near Sacramento declined to allow the procedure to be performed at its facility saying it was an “elective sterilization” that violated the hospital’s ethical and religious obligations.
The patient, Evan Minton, got the surgery three days later at a different hospital. He sued under a California law that bars discrimination. A trial court agreed with the hospital that a three-day delay in the procedure did not involve a denial of “full and equal” access to health care under California law. An appeals court reversed that decision.
The high court’s decision not to step in is the latest win recently for transgender rights groups at the court. In June, the justices declined to weigh in on a different case involving transgender rights. In that case, the justices rejected a Virginia school board’s appeal to reinstate its transgender bathroom ban. Transgender rights groups and a former high school student had fought in court for six years to overturn the ban.
Other Monday happenings:
The Supreme Court rejected an appeal from a former business partner of presidential son Hunter Biden who was seeking to overturn his criminal conviction for securities fraud.
The justices left in place a federal appeals court ruling that reinstated the fraud conviction of Devon Archer. A lower court judge had earlier set aside a jury verdict that found Archer guilty of fraud and ordered a new trial.
Biden was not involved in the effort to defraud the Oglala Sioux Indian tribe in a scheme that involved the sale of bonds, but participants in the fraud invoked his name to enhance their credentials, according to court records.
Archer was convicted in 2018. His conviction was overturned later that year before the court of appeals in New
York reinstated it in 2020.
Biden and Archer had been business partners, and both served on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma.
The Supreme Court won’t hear a lawsuit challenging the makeup of the Ohio Elections Commission.
The high court turned away the case Monday. Ohio’s seven-member commission has three Democrats, three Republicans and one member chosen by the other members who is not affiliated with a political party.
The Libertarian Party of Ohio and Harold Thomas, a member of the Libertarian Party, sued over the composition of the commission. They said it violated their rights by making members of smaller political parties ineligible for service on the commission. Lower courts had ruled against them.
The Supreme Court is telling a lower court to take another look at a case in which the lower court upheld a New York regulation requiring health insurance plans to cover abortions. The regulation exempts certain religious organizations.
In a brief order Monday the high court vacated the lower court’s ruling and sent the case back to be reconsidered in light of a case the Supreme Court decided earlier this year involving religious freedom issues. It is not uncommon for the high court to order a lower court to revisit a case when an intervening Supreme Court decision could affect a lower court’s thinking on the issue.
Three justices – Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch – said the high court should have heard the case rather than sending it back.
New York says its 2017 regulation made explicit what had previously been implicit: that health insurance policies issued in the state must cover “medically necessary abortion services.” Challengers to the regulation say religious groups whose “purpose” is to promote religious values and who employ and serve primarily people of the same religion are exempt. But they say the regulation requires religious organizations to cover abortions if they have a broader religious mission or “if they employ or serve people regardless of their faith.”
A group of religious organizations sued, arguing that the mandate violates the Constitution by imposing “severe burdens on their religious exercise.” Two lower courts had sided with the state.