Another step toward accountability for Trump

Trump pleads not guilty in the case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Also: A federal appeals court protects trans students, but signals that a SCOTUS case is likely.

In what is becoming a regular occurrence, Donald J. Trump was in court on Thursday, pleading not guilty to new criminal charges he is facing.

These latest charges, of course, relate to Trump’s efforts to remain in power after losing the 2020 presidential election — a sentence that, in and of itself, makes clear the surreal and perilous moment in which we live.

Thursday was not the most pivotal day for Donald Trump. He pleaded not guilty, and left the courthouse.

Lest we forget, though, many others — charged with far less serious crimes than, effectively, acting to try and end democracy in America — don’t have the ability to go home after being charged with crimes. Some die awaiting trial, as happened just this week in Atlanta’s Fulton County Jail and Portland’s downtown jail. The continuing deaths at New York City’s Rikers Island jail have it on the precipice of a takeover in a longstanding federal case.

But, for Donald Trump, he left the courthouse after his arraignment and went on to complain to reporters about how “sad” this all is for America. Although not his intended point, the reality behind this sadness is that Trump — and his sycophants — are sad that he is facing any accountability whatsoever for his acts. (And that they might as well.)

And while Donald Trump did not go to jail on Thursday, he very well could end up facing a prison sentence if convicted on the charges he pleaded not guilty to on Thursday. That reality would place the United States in an unprecedented situation, with technical questions about his security, practical questions about the 2024 election, and existential questions about what happens if he were to be the Republican nominee and win the general election.

These are all tough questions, but, ultimately, we don’t have a democracy if we don’t seek to hold people accountable for efforts to end that democracy.

For now, though, that accountability is at least starting to take form, as the D.C. case against Trump took another step forward on Thursday.

Gender-affirming student restroom use upheld in Indiana cases

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit this week affirmed a six-year-old ruling in support of transgender students’ rights under federal law to use a bathroom in accordance with their gender identity in a case involving two Indiana schools.

Judge Diane Wood, a Clinton appointee, wrote the Tuesday ruling, strongly reaffirming the circuit’s unanimous 2017 opinion in Whitaker v. Kenosha School District, a case out of Wisconsin. Wood had also sat on that panel, although she did not write in the Wisconsin case’s decision.

Regarding Wood’s opinion in the Indiana cases, I just want to highlight two areas.

First, Wood repeatedly noted that in all three instances — the two Indiana schools and the Wisconsin case — students were not the problem. Neither the trans students involved in the various cases nor their classmates had any issue with the trans students using the restroom appropriate for their gender identity. It was, in every case, adults who caused the problem.

As Wood wrote of the first Indiana case:

No students raised any issues or questioned A.C.’s presence, but a staff member reported him. The school responded by telling A.C. that he would be disciplined if he continued using the boys’ bathrooms.

And, of the second case, which involves trans twins:

The twins used the boys’ bathrooms at North Vigo at the beginning of the 2021–2022 school year; no students raised concerns about their presence there. School employees, however, informally reprimanded B.E. and S.E. and told them not to use the boys’ bathrooms again.

Second, Wood challenged efforts by the school districts and others to argue that language in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2020 Bostock v. Clayton County decision about what that decision did not cover should be read to mean that the Supreme Court thought those other scenarios would come out differently.

Not so fast, Wood countered. She first noted that Bostock’s conclusion — that the definition of sex in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (the employment nondiscrimination provision) includes sexual orientation and gender identity — “strengthens” the Seventh Circuit’s 2017 decision about student restroom access for trans students under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Then, she addressed this claimed narrow reading of Bostock:

The ruling in the Indiana cases, as with Whitaker, was unanimous. That is not surprising given that it was, essentially, a re-run of Whitaker.

However, a concurring opinion from Judge Frank Easterbrook, a Reagan appointee, did serve as a potential warning sign on the path ahead for these cases.

As Wood noted, “[T]here is already a circuit split on the issues raised in this appeal” — referencing divergent cases from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (reaching a similar conclusion as had the Seventh Circuit) and U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit (reaching an opposite conclusion). Of that split, Easterbrook wrote, “A conflict among the circuits will exist no matter what happens in the current suits. The Supreme Court or Congress could produce a nationally uniform approach; we cannot.”

Easterbrook didn’t leave it at that, though. While he wrote that he was “no more disposed than [his] colleagues to overrule Whitaker,” Easterbrook wrote separately because he doesn’t ultimately agree with Wood and Judge John Lee about the outcome, instead stating that he “think[s]” the Eleventh Circuit ruling “better understands how Title IX applies to transgender students.”

That said, while he might have questions about the definition of “sex” in Title IX, Easterbook also wrote what could be seen as a sort of “why are adults being such assholes about this?” line in his concurrence: “Classifying as ‘boys’ youngsters who are socially boys (even if not genetically male) is an act of kindness without serious costs to third parties.”

For now, though, three trans students in Indiana have been told that their schools are required to treat them with such basic respect under federal law.