Ron DeSantis, who earlier this summer used a line-item veto to remove a $150,000 payment to a small community group that helps the survivors of the Pulse nightclub massacre, is a nasty son-of-a-bitch who almost makes Trump look palatable. I said “almost.”
FOURTH CIRCUIT ADVANCES TRANS RIGHTS
On August 16, a split panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that “gender dysphoria” should be covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act, the 1990 civil rights law that protects those with a physical or mental impairment that “substantially limits one or more major life activities… [those with] a history or record of such an impairment, or a [those who are] perceived by others as having such an impairment.”
The ruling is the first of its kind by one of the twelve federal appellate courts, one rung down from the nine justices, and it came in the case of a Virginia transwoman who was imprisoned in the men’s population.
This is a pretty big deal, and could be appealed either to the full Fourth Circuit or to the Supreme Court. When the ADA was first passed by Congress, it was amended to exclude a range of kinky sounding categories, specifically: “transvestism, transsexualism, pedophilia, exhibitionism, voyeurism, gender identity disorders not resulting from physical impairments, [and] other sexual behavior disorders” (as well as “compulsive gambling, kleptomania, pyromania, or psychoactive substance use disorders resulting from current illegal use of drugs.”
To date, the references to “transsexualism” along with the vague hodgepodge of “gender identity disorders” have been more than enough to block transgender Americans from making a claim under the ADA. But the panel majority wrote that the relatively modern diagnosis of “gender dysphoria” reflected an advance in the medical assessment of some transgender men and women, who by rights should be able to use the law in appropriate contexts. Being transgender is not a disability. But some transgender men and women with gender dysphoria can suffer an impairment that limits their life activities as described by the ADA.
DICK STATE GOES LOW
A few days after I read about the Fourth Circuit ruling, I saw that Florida has now changed its Medicaid rules and no longer will cover gender dysphoria treatments, including transition surgery for transgender patients. And keep in mind as well, that a month or so ago, the Biden administration all but finalized a policy that bans gay and trans discrimination in federally funded health care. How is all this possible all at once?
I feel like I’ve been watching one of our household’s beloved British murder shows, and I stepped out for half an hour. When I return, everything is confusing. Who is the guy in the plaid jacket? Wait, isn’t that the prosecuting lawyer? Why is she teaching at Oxford? What? Her husband is dead? Since when? Wait, I thought the detective was a recovering alcoholic. What is he drinking? Looks like whiskey.
How can Florida just change its Medicaid coverage? Well, for one thing, Florida has never adopted the expansive Medicaid requirements offered under Obamacare because Chief Justice Roberts decided states could opt out of that if they liked… and Florida liked. Further, because states pay up to half of their Medicaid budgets, they can control the terms to some extent. Florida is not in the Fourth Circuit, and even if it was, court rulings don’t translate into immediate policy dictates and this Medicaid decision has nothing to do with the ADA. And as for Biden’s efforts to protect us against bias in health care, the bureaucratic formalities are not complete, and I’m assuming some ailing transgender Floridian who was denied treatment would have to sue the state in federal court in order to enforce administration regulations.
So that explains why nothing seems to make sense. Sort of. The detective fell off the wagon. The prosecutor’s identical twin sister is the professor and her husband died some years ago in a suspicious hit and run, perhaps witnessed by the guy in plaid.
TRIPLE NEGATIVES
In other Florida news, a federal judge has shelved one aspect of the state’s horrendous “Individual Freedom Act,” an Orwellian ban on eight “woke concepts” that don’t pass muster in Ron DeSantis’s limited world. The STOP WOKE Act, as DeSantis likes to call it, not only bans certain discussions in schools, but it extends to private companies that might want to set up employee training sessions, and it was these corporate plaintiffs that asked the court to block Florida from putting a muzzle on state businesses.
One of the eight ideas now forbidden to discuss in public, concept four, says: “Members of one race, color, sex, or national origin cannot and should not attempt to treat others without respect to race, color, sex, or national origin.” I give you this example, because Judge Mark E. Walker calls this concept “even worse” than the previous three, “bordering on unintelligible [and featuring] a rarely seen triple negative, resulting in a cacophony of confusion.” Judge Walker issued a preliminary injunction against state officials, who may not enforce the law against corporations until this particular lawsuit is complete.
I won’t go into the other concepts, just know that Florida is nuts. Ron DeSantis, who earlier this summer used a line-item veto to remove a $150,000 payment to a small community group that helps the survivors of the Pulse nightclub massacre, is a nasty son-of-a-bitch who almost makes Trump look palatable. I said “almost.”
SCANDINAVIAN SCANDALS
I was torn up about Freya the walrus that liked to lounge on people’s cars until she was cruelly murdered by the state in what I thought at first was Finland. I was so alarmed by this tragedy that I could not stomach the news stories and had to quickly scan my eyes past photos of the lovable creature in order to spare myself emotional pain.
Shortly after this horrific incident, I read about how Sanna Marin, the attractive Prime Minister of Finland, was in trouble for wild dancing at a private party, and later for a leaked photograph of two half-naked women kissing at another private party that she hosted. After some of the hoopla died down and after Marin felt obliged to take a public drug test, many people came to her defense and CNN reported women around the world were posting dance videos under the hashtag “solidaritywithsanna.”
“I am human,” the 36-year-old Marin told the press. “And I too sometimes long for joy, light and fun amidst these dark clouds.”
So, I was confused. How, I wondered, could this admirable woman have allowed my favorite walrus to be callously euthanized for no good reason? But it turns out the walrus was killed by the Norwegian authorities, not the Finns! “Freya became a threat to human safety,” explained Olav Lekver of the evil Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries. “She chased people on paddle boards and kayaks.”
But of course she did. Like Sanna Marin, she longed for a little joy and fun, but she paid the ultimate price. I am cancelling Norway.
