After legal setback, teen girls fighting courts and woke editors

After legal setback, teen girls fighting courts and woke editors: The battle to stop biological males from competing against female athletes is not over despite a legal setback, vows an attorney representing four female clients who sued their state athletic association.

Faith On Trial, Thursday May 27

Dr. Matthew Bunson, executive editor of EWTN News on the upcoming spring assembly of the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and a possible debate about distributing communion to pro-abortion Catholic politicians. Denise Harle, senior counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom on the Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization concerning a Mississippi law that limits abortions after 15 weeks of gestational age.

This Thursday (5-27) on Faith On Trial

Guests: Dr. Matthew Bunson, executive editor of EWTN News on the upcoming spring assembly of the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and a possible debate about distributing communion to pro-abortion Catholic politicians.

Denise Harle, senior counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom on the Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization concerning a Mississippi law that limits abortions after 15 weeks of gestational age.

Faith On Trial airs this and every Thursday at 10 a.m. Central on Iowa Catholic Radio, 1150 AM; 88.5 & 94.5 FM, and streaming live on our website (www.iowacatholicradio.com) where you can listen to previous programs and download our free and convenient app.  

The Holy Ghost Is Allowed In Courtrooms … And Other Cases Of Note . . .

By Deacon Mike Manno

(The Wanderer) – My December column, the last I wrote for the year before COVID took me out of circulation for about eight weeks, was about a case in which a juror was removed from deliberations in a criminal case involving a former congresswoman, Corrine Brown. It seems that the judge removed the juror for guidance the juror said he was receiving from the Holy Ghost.

As you might recall, during the second day of deliberations, one of the jurors sent a note to the judge expressing concern about the comments a fellow juror had made. The complaining juror was called into chambers and asked for further information. She told the judge that one juror had made a comment that he was praying for guidance and trusted the Holy Ghost who, apparently, told the man that the defendant, Corrine Brown, was not guilty on all of the twenty-two counts in the indictment.

The judge then called the “offending juror” into chambers and questioned him. The juror told the judge that he had told the other jurors “in listening to all the information, taking it all down, I listen for the truth, and I know the truth when the truth is spoken,” and that “I prayed about this, I have looked at the information, and that I receive information as to what I was told to do in relation to what I heard here.”

After a long colloquy with the juror, during which the juror told the judge that he was following the judge’s instructions, and both jurors had stated that all jurors were engaged in good faith deliberations, the government moved to strike the juror, which the judge did. He was replaced by an alternate, jury deliberations continued for another day, when the jury found the defendant guilty on eighteen counts, and not guilty on four.

Brown appealed the decision asking the court for a new trial over the issue of the juror’s disqualification. The trial court and a panel of the Eleventh Circuit rejected the defense argument, but the entire circuit agreed to hear the appeal en banc, that is, with all the judges of the circuit court.

On May 6, 2021, the National Day of Prayer, the full court vacated Brown’s convictions and remanded the case for a new trial, holding that the removal of the juror was improper and violated the defendant’s right under the Sixth Amendment to a unanimous jury verdict.

Circuit Chief Justice William Pryor, writing for the majority, said that a trial judge may remove a juror after deliberations had begun only upon a finding of “good cause,” which exists when it is found that the juror refuses to apply the law or to follow the court’s instructions. “So, for a district judge to find that this standard of proof is satisfied, he must determine ‘with utmost certainty’ that a juror has refused to base his verdict on the law as instructed and the evidence admitted at trial.”

He noted that in the juror’s interview with the court, he never gave any indication that he was refusing to consider the evidence or follow the law. “The district judge was wrong to conclude that [the juror’s] statements that he received guidance in response to prayers were categorically a bridge too far.”

And: “[The juror’s] vernacular that the Holy Spirit ‘told’ him Brown was ‘not guilty on all charges’ was no more disqualifying by itself than a secular juror’s statement that his conscience or gut ‘told’ him the same. Of course, neither a religious nor a secular juror may convict or acquit a defendant using his internal decision-making processes without regard to the evidence. But [the juror] repeatedly explained that he was, in fact, reviewing and deliberating over the evidence.”

Former Solicitor General Paul Clement had written in a brief supporting Brown: “A nation that enshrines religious toleration in its founding document and invokes the religious beliefs of its citizenry to reinforce their public oaths cannot dismiss jurors based on the way they express their religious convictions.”

And Lea Patterson, counsel for First Liberty, released a statement saying: “We are grateful that the court reaffirmed the strong standard required to dismiss a deliberating juror. No American should be disqualified from fulfilling their civic duty as jurors simply because they believe that God answers prayer.”

A couple of other cases with satisfactory results:

In Indianapolis the archdiocese was being sued by a former Catholic high school teacher after he was dismissed for entering into a same-sex union in violation of the terms of his teaching contract and Church teaching. “If the First Amendment means anything, it means the government can’t punish the Catholic Church for asking Catholic educators to support Catholic teaching,” said Luke Goodrich, vice president and senior counsel at Becket, which represented the archdiocese. (See The Wanderer, May 20, 2021, p. 3A.)

The trial court initially ruled that the case against the archdiocese could move forward, but the archdiocese appealed that ruling, citing the school’s handbook that requires teachers to “Support the teachings and traditions of the Roman Catholic Church . . . [and] serve as a role model for Christ-centered lifestyle,” and incorporates a morals clause which states that “teachers, as leaders in a ministry of the Catholic Church . . . must be credible witnesses of the Catholic faith,” and “models of Christian values.”

The Indiana Supreme Court sent the case back to the trial court with instructions to reconsider. The court then threw out the suit, vindicating the Church’s constitutional right to set religious standards for its schools.

In Minnesota the governor, Tim Walz, on May 5 agreed to settle a suit with two Christian churches — Northland Baptist Church and Living Word Christian Center — over COVID restrictions. The churches claimed that the state had placed restrictions on the churches that were more severe than those imposed on other businesses. When the state filed and lost a motion to dismiss the suit, it decided to settle and entered into an agreement that future emergency orders can no longer discriminate against churches on capacity limits. The churches were represented by the Upper Midwest Law Center which described the settlement as a “big win.”

In the pending category, the Milwaukee Archdiocese has sued the state’s Department of Corrections over a policy that prevents clergy from visiting prisoners. The archdiocese complained that for over a year corrections employees such as psychologists, social workers, and outside attorneys have been allowed to visit with prisoners as long as they followed proper health guidelines. However, those protocols do not apply to clergy.

A conservative legal group, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL), filed the suit. “There is no rational connection between the DOC’s policy and its interest in combatting COVID-19 given that the DOC allows social workers and lawyers entrance from outside of facilities, for example, but not clergy,” WILL wrote to the department.

The state “must act now to restore the rights of Wisconsin’s inmates to freely exercise their religion,” the letter argued.

This one is just getting started. We’ll watch for developments.

(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com, and listen to him every Thursday at 10 a.m. Central Time, on Faith On Trial, on IowaCatholicRadio.com.)

 

Former Satanist tells his story

Last night at my parish, St. Augustin, Mr. Zachary King, former High Wizard of the Church of Satin, spoke about his life as a Satanist and his conversion to the Catholic Church. The tape was running for some time before the program bagan, so slide the "time" bar forward to 20 to begin.

Religion Clause: 9th Circuit: Denial of Invocation Spot To Satanic ...

Religion Clause: 9th Circuit: Denial of Invocation Spot To Satanic ...:  In The Satanic Temple, Inc. v. City of Scottsdale ,  (9th Cir., May 19, 2021), the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed an Arizona fe...

Faith On Trial program this week (5-20-21): All about Mary with Msgr. Arthur B. Calkins

Special edition of Faith On Trial this Thursday (5-20)

This week for the Marian Month of May our guest is Msgr. Arthur B. Calkins a veteran of 21 years in Vatican service developing dogma, and dealing with all things Mary. Don’t miss this special programing, Thursday, May 20, 10 a.m. (Central) on Iowa Catholic Radio 1150 AM; 88.5 & 94.5 FM and streaming on our website, IowaCatholicRadio.com, where you can listen to programs you may have missed. This is a one-time special edition of the Mariology of the Catholic Church.

You can order a copy of Msgr. Calkins’ book, Totus Tuus: Pope Saint John Paul II’ Program of Marian Consecrations and Entrustments, as well as many of our other author-guests, by clicking the link in the right hand column of this page. 

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition: Ontario euthanasia deaths increase, inspite of COV...

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition: Ontario euthanasia deaths increase, inspite of COV...: Alex Schadenberg Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition The April 2021 (MAiD) euthanasia data for Ontario indicates that even t...

Deacon Mike's homily for the Ascension

Ascension Sunday – May 16, 2021 Cycle B

Readings: Acts 1:1-11; Ephesians 1:17-23; Mark 16:15-20

Good morning …

            Today we celebrate the feast of Ascension, formally Ascension Thursday – once a holy day of obligation, but today most dioceses have transferred the celebration of the Ascension from last Thursday to today. In those dioceses the Ascension was celebrated on Thursday, today’s readings would be the Seventh Sunday after Easter. And in the traditional Latin Mass, this is the Sunday after the Ascension. So depending on where you attend Mass this weekend, the reading could differ.

            But no matter what readings you hear, the theme all centers around the message Jesus left for his followers.

            Even without the readings I think we all know what the Ascension was, I know I was taught about it by the good nuns at St. Theresia’s just a few short years ago. I know I miss those old nuns – we never quite appreciated them at the time – BVMs, remember: Black Veiled Monsters. They always came armed, with a yardstick or something to intimidate us with, but oh how they are missed today. They made sure you learned that old Baltimore Catechism and I don’t really remember them using those yardsticks, apparently their only use was to send a message.

            Anyway, the story is simple: Jesus goes to the mountain with his disciples where he gives them a final blessing and a final charge: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the good news to the whole of creation.” He also makes them a final promise: He will send the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to accompany them, to give them the “spirit of truth” to testify for him.

            But he also has a final warning for them. A warning he’s been repeating for some time: You don’t belong to this world. If you did the world would love you, but because you don’t it will hate you, as it hated me first.

            Then he goes off to the Father and while the disciples are still looking up two angles appear asking, “Why are you just looking at the sky?” In other words, Get off your duff and get ready for the Advocate to prepare you and go to work.

            Now that’s pretty simple. In fact, it’s a very nice story. But it comes to us with some baggage, some things that should concern us. While we know the end of the story – God will prevail – we find ourselves at this point in history confused as to what point in the story we are reaching.

            I don’t know if you know it, but I’ve written two murder mysteries. In the first on I killed a nun, I think something in my childhood might have suggested that to me … but I digress. The point is, I know how stories are told, the protagonist always faces ups and downs, expected but often unexpected challenges which threaten his goals.

            Now we all know in a murder mystery the killer will always be uncovered, we just don’t know how or when. The same occurs in real life, and it should not be any surprise that it occurs in our spiritual lives as well. We know the end, but where are we in the story?

            It seems that we just might be in the part where the world really does hate us and where good men, for whatever reason, do not know Jesus, do not know or understand his teaching.

            There was a time, not too long ago, when Catholics were unique among Christians. Oh we had funny rituals, we didn’t eat meat on Friday and, for many, we were gently forced-fed our religion. It may have seemed quaint or funny, but it was respected. And our brothers and sisters in faith knew and practiced it. Mass attendance in as short time ago as the 1950s hovered around 70 percent. Now we’re lucky if we reach 30 percent – in fact some surveys indicate we’re losing a percent a year, and that is considered a conservative estimate.

            Our people, our brothers and sisters in Jesus, have all too often found themselves unsure of what this thing we call Catholicism is. Too often people would introduce themselves as having grown-up Catholic but for some reason have fallen away from the faith. Many still have family members who are devout but they themselves have lost their connection with the Church. 

            When we visit they will often ask questions. I don’t know how many times I’ve been asked a question about our beliefs and traditions that the Catholic person asking me should already know.

            It kind of reminds me of the old story about the young priest who was sent by his bishop into a village that had never had a priest. To get a feel of the community, the young priest asked people what they thought was the greatest Catholic feast. He got several answers that made no sense until he found an old man sitting alone in a park. He asked him the same question.

            “Easter,” the man replied.

            “And why Easter?” the priest asked.

            “Because, that is when the stone was rolled back and Jesus stepped out of the tomb … and if he sees his shadow …”

            Well, that’s kind of what we see. People, Catholics, who should know better are confusing the story of our salvation with stories that have no relevance to our faith. Too many are accepting the world in all its decadent glory.  

            Now, of course, there is a reason for this. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you what it is. There are many suggestions about what went so wrong that we lost so many of our brothers and sisters to a theological ambivalence. Some say Vatican II is to blame, others say it was the loss of so many of those beautiful black veiled sisters who had dedicated their lives to teaching the faith. Liberal catechesis and the rejection of Paul VI’s encyclical on birth control, Humanae Vitae, and if you look long enough you’ll find dozens of other theories that the wags on Facebook promote. 

            But I don’t know what it is, I have some theories, but nothing you could bet the farm on. What I do know is that something has happened in the last 50 years that has loosened the glue that had attached many to the faith we love. And I do know that we must, if we wish to follow Christ’s final charge, do something about it.     

            We hear a lot about evangelizing the world. I think perhaps we should also take another look – a look inside – and see how many of our brothers and sisters in Christ need to be re-evangelized. How many need what some might call fraternal correction – gentle, not harsh.

            That is our mission. That is what we are required to do. Those were the last words of Christ to his disciples – to us, we are, after all, nothing, if we are not his disciples.

            And he’s sending the Spirit to aid us, to envelop us, to give us the courage and strength to do so.

            Next week we celebrate his coming at Pentecost. When the Holy Spirit came at the first Pentecost, the hearts and souls of the original apostles were engulfed in his love and enflamed to carry out Christ’s great command: to go and to baptize all nations.

            We celebrate that great event next Sunday, when he came to the apostles. He also came to us in our own baptism. So let us take a little time to prepare ourselves to meet him again as we look forward to next Sunday. Let us renew that flame whose light might have dimmed a bit. Let us take some time this week before the Blessed Sacrament to welcome him back into our hearts so that we can become the new building blocks for the Church.

            We have 24 hour adoration in our chapel. So let’s take the time this week to welcome him back, to prepare ourselves to accept Christ’s great command: to evangelize the world, starting with our own friends and families.

-- Deacon Mike Manno St. Augustin Parish Des Moines, Iowa

Sooo, The Supreme Court… Anybody Want To Start Over?

By Deacon Mike Manno

(The Wanderer) – Okay, you might ask, so what’s with the Supreme Court?
Well, it’s taken a beating lately and under the leadership of Chief Justice John Roberts it has done nothing to distinguish itself. Now don’t get me wrong, I think the court has been doing a nice job in protecting our religious liberties and many other issues close to the heart of Christians in general and Catholics in particular. But on some of the big, and I mean really big, issues, it has let us down, mostly by its inaction.

Case in point: Just last month the court refused to allow a case to be brought against the state of California by the state of Texas over a 2016 California law that banned official travel to Texas and several other states that failed to meet specific standards regarding discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression.

Besides Texas, the states that were affected were Alabama, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Tennessee. According to the then-attorney general of California, Xavier Becerra, now the Biden administration’s secretary of Health and Human Services, 11 states were on the ban because of laws or practices designed to protect religious liberty. North Carolina was on the list because it enacted a law requiring state agencies to maintain separate-sex bathrooms, and my home state, Iowa, was on the ban because it wouldn’t provide Medicaid coverage for gender-reassignment surgery.

In February of 2020 the attorney general of Texas filed suit in the Supreme Court against California over the travel ban. In its filing with the Supreme Court, Texas produced the legislative record of the California law which was replete with anti-Christian and anti-religious references including a sponsor’s complaint that called religious beliefs the “old ways” and that “religion has been used again and again as a tool to justify discrimination.”

That led to Texas’ argument that the California ban was “grounded in animus towards religion,” and “The California Legislature expressly found that other states rely on ‘religious freedom’ as a ‘justification for discrimination’.” In addition to religious animus, Texas alleged violations of the Privileges and Immunities, Interstate Commerce, and Equal Protection clauses of the U.S. Constitution.

“[T]he express aim of California’s travel ban is to punish the citizens and businesses of the target states to pressure those states ‘to change their laws’ to provide fewer protections for religious freedom,” Texas wrote to the court, adding, “As intended, the direct and indirect effects of the travel ban are, respectively, to harm the businesses in the targeted states and to deprive the targeted states of associated tax revenue.”
Ultimately 19 states filed briefs in support of Texas.

Now, a little bit of procedure to fill in some of the missing points here. Under the Constitution, the Supreme Court has only appellate jurisdiction on the vast array of cases that are presented to it. However, under Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution, the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction in a limited number of cases including ones where a state is a party, and appellate jurisdiction in all other cases.

In simple language that means that the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court is limited to reviewing cases that have been decided elsewhere and cannot act as a trial court — that is, hearing the case for the first time, which is known as original jurisdiction. Just as an aside, the benchmark 1803 case of Marbury v. Madison, from which the concept of judicial review of legislative action has grown, involved the question of the court’s original vs. appellate jurisdiction.

Here, Texas was invoking the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction — its limited ability to hear the case as a trial court. It was, after all, one state suing another state over infringements against its sovereignty: Where else would you go in such a situation?
That’s when the Supreme Court dropped its bombshell; without explanation the court refused to accept Texas’ application for leave to file its case. Zip, done, nada. Texas, just live with it!

Two of the justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, to their credit, dissented. Justice Alito compared the decision to a hypothetical case of a federal judge who refused to hear a diversity suit — one between citizens of two different states — because he had more important things to do (which might indicate the topic of discussion in chambers). “We would reverse in the blink of an eye,” Alito wrote. “We might also wag a finger at the lower courts and remind them that a federal court’s obligation to hear and decide cases within its jurisdiction is ‘virtually unflagging’.”

He continued, “The State of Texas wishes to sue the State of California and invokes our ‘original and exclusive jurisdiction of all controversies between two or more States.’ Can we justify our refusal to entertain Texas’ suit on essentially the same ground that we would reject out of hand in the hypothetical diversity case just described, that is, on the ground that our original jurisdiction no longer seems as important as it was when the Constitution was adopted, and that a proliferation of original cases would crowd out more important matters on our appellate docket?…

“We have no more right to decline the exercise of jurisdiction which is given, than to usurp that which is not given. The one or the other would be treason to the Constitution. . . . The practice of refusing to permit the filing of a complaint in cases that fall within our original jurisdiction is questionable, and that is especially true when, as in this case, our original jurisdictional is exclusive.

“The principal reason provided — that entertaining all suits between two states would crowd out consideration of more important matters on our appellate docket — rests on a dubious factual premise and, in any event, is essentially indistinguishable from the justification given by the imaginary district court judge with a distaste for diversity cases.

And the suggestion in Louisiana v. Texas (cite omitted) that we should hesitate to entertain suits between two states because they are of a ‘delicate and grave’ character seems exactly backwards. It is precisely because these disputes have a ‘delicate and grave’ character that they were placed exclusively in our hands….

“Unlike the regional courts of appeals, the federal district courts, and the state courts, we are not tied to any region or state and were therefore entrusted with the responsibility of adjudicating cases where the suspicion of local bias may run high. The present case is just such a suit.”

So where does that leave Texas? For starters, without a forum to have its day in court. But it left California happy. Attorney General Rob Bonta said the court’s decision was “a win for California and it’s a win for our commitment to respecting LGBTQ+ rights. Bottom line: Texas can’t dictate how the State of California uses its own resources.”
But it seems to me that Bonta has it backwards; the case was about California trying to dictate policy to other states.

Unfortunately we’ll never know if Texas and the nineteen states that supported it were right or not. We’ll never know if California’s actions violated the Equal Protection Clause, or the Interstate Commerce Clause, or the Privileges and Immunities Clause of our Constitution. We’ll never know those things because the Roberts Court continues its stubborn refusal to consider those cases which strike at the heart of federalism and the mechanics of our constitutional government, such as those pre- and post-election cases — especially from Pennsylvania — that were rejected out of hand and didn’t even offer us the illusion of an objective look.

We deserve more. Right or wrong the court is obligated to hear, deliberate, and render decisions in cases like these. That is their sworn duty. In that they have failed.

(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com, and listen to him every Thursday at 10 a.m. Central, on Faith On Trial, on IowaCatholicRadio.com.)

This week’s Faith On Trial program:

Matt Zerrusen, president of Newman Student Housing Fund; Mike Gonzales, Sr. Fellow @ Heritage Foundation, author: The Plot to Change America; How Identity Politics is dividing the Land of the Free. (Scroll down the right column to order the book.)

Beware The Anti-Racism Agenda

By Catholic League president Bill Donohue

The Catholic Church regards racism to be "intrinsically evil" and supports policies to check it. It must be noted, however, that today there is no shortage of educators, reporters, activists, and lawmakers who claim to oppose racism while harboring an agenda that sometimes promotes it.

They do so mostly for ideological reasons, though those in the diversity and grievance industry also profit from it monetarily. Critical race theory, which is an inherently racist prescription—it judges people on the basis of their skin color, not their individual traits—is a textbook example of promoting racism in the name of fighting it.

In my lifetime, never have non-whites been treated more fairly than they are today, yet there is an avalanche of news stories that say just the opposite. While objective conditions have definitely improved, the perception that we are a racist nation is widespread. How can this be?

When Senator Tim Scott, an African American, recently said that "America is not a racist country," he was ridiculed, maligned, and insulted. Why the anger? Because he challenged, to great effect, the raging narrative in elite quarters that America is irredeemably racist.

Vice President Kamala Harris was asked to comment on what Scott said. "No, I don't think America is a racist country," she said, but we need to "speak truth about the history of racism." Previously, she went further than that when she declared, "America has a long history of systemic racism." 

President Biden is concerned about racism as well, claiming that "white supremacists" constitute the "most lethal terrorist threat." He took his cues from the FBI which is preoccupied with white supremacists.

Ask most Americans who qualifies as a white supremacist and the likely answer is someone who belongs to the Ku Klux Klan. But the Klan has actually been in decline. So who are these people who pose the "most lethal terrorist threat"?

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is the go-to site that journalists use to access information about white supremacy and hate crimes. It is a left-wing activist organization that claims to monitor such offenses.

Last month it sounded very much like President Biden when its president and CEO, Margaret Huang, said, "We're facing a crisis of far-right extremism and deep threats to our democracy." From whom? She identified the mob storming the Capitol in January as being "led by white supremacists and other far-right extremists."

Huang provided no evidence to support her remarks; she simply asserted that white supremacists were the principal culprits. It apparently never occurred to her that these men and women were mostly angry pro-Trump supporters who felt disabused by electoral politics and political correctness, concerns that have nothing to do with feelings of racial superiority. Veterans and former police officers appear to have been overrepresented. If they are white supremacists, we need to see the empirical evidence.

In fact, the SPLC does a lousy job defining who these white supremacists are. Its lengthy report, "The Year in Hate and Extremism 2020," says an awful lot about white supremacists but is noticeably short on identifying exactly who they are.

For example, it says they track "extremist flyers," reporting that they found 4,900 "flyering incidents." The worst offenders, it said, were those who promoted the "white nationalist ideology," a train of thought it left undefined. It did not say who these white nationalists were or whether they were responsible for any violence. It did say that the Klan is no longer "a significant generator of white supremacist terror," largely because it "saw its count dwindle to 25 groups in 2020." So who are the new Klansmen?

SPLC has racism on the brain. In its report, it expresses dismay over the fact that "only 38 percent of respondents" in a survey believed that "systemic racism" accounts for a disparity in health outcomes between whites and non-whites, "even as COVID-19 ravages communities of color."

It did not say whether white supremacists were to blame for this condition, but it did say that it was unnerved to learn that the majority of Americans thought that Black Lives Matter (BLM) violence in 2020 was a bigger problem than police violence against blacks. With good reason: BLM killed 25 people, assaulted the police, burned down entire neighborhoods, and engaged in widespread looting. In 2019, police shot and killed 999 people: 452 were white and 252 were black; 26 of the whites and 12 of the blacks were unarmed.

For the record, SPLC regards as "far right" extremists anyone who thinks that boys who "transition" to girls should not be allowed to compete against girls in sports and shower with them. Perhaps they are the new Klansmen.

Real racism and extremism, as the Catholic Church understands it, must be opposed and defeated. It does not help this noble cause when prominent Americans and non-profit organizations are bent on finding racism under every rock.

Faith On Trial for this Thursday (5-13-21)

Building faith communities on college campuses – Matt Zerrusan, president of the student housing fund and chief of innovative discipleship at Newman Ministries, and

Identity politics and how they are shaping religious liberty in the U. S. – Mike Gonzalez, senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and author of The Plot to Change America: How Identity Politics is Dividing the Land of the Free.

 

Faith On Trial airs every Thursday morning at 10 a.m. (Central Time) on Iowa Catholic Radio, 1150 AM; 88.5 & 94.5 FM, and streaming live from IowaCatholicRadio.com where you can also find podcasts of earlier programs.

Calling on Moderate Democrats | The Stream

Calling on Moderate Democrats | The Stream: Where are the moderate Democrats as Biden governs as a radical? Where are they when it comes to the border disaster?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Stupidity

 

Biden Declares War On Catholic Hospitals

By Catholic League president Bill Donohue

On May 10, the Biden administration announced that it would force doctors who can perform sex transition surgery to do so, regardless of their religious objections. This is a declaration of war on Catholic doctors and hospitals. It will also be contested in the federal courts.

Predictably, the media are billing this Health and Human Services decision, which applies Title IX of civil rights law to the rights of transgender persons, as an anti-discrimination measure, not as an attack on religious liberty. Title IX bars discrimination based on sex, but says nothing about transgender persons.

The Obama administration was the first to argue that Title IX should apply to transgender persons; the Trump administration disagreed; the Biden administration agrees with the Obama administration. In a May 10 news story by the Associated Press (AP) on this subject, it said that the Obama administration "relied on a broad understanding of sex shaped by a person's inner sense of being male, female, neither or a combination."

Paradoxically, this AP interpretation is both accurate and inaccurate at the same time.

It accurately conveys what both the Obama and Biden administrations believe: being male or female is a subjective judgment, one that allows a man or a woman to deny that they are a man or a woman, or any sex at all, for that matter. Which means they could be an acorn. It is inaccurate because it is a fiction: one's "inner sense" of what sex one belongs to may be inaccurate. What matters is reality, not tales from "The Twilight Zone."

This assault on common sense and religious liberty began in 2015 when the Obama administration issued a mandate requiring doctors and hospitals to provide for transgender surgeries. They made no exemption for those who had religious objections.

The Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Health and Human Services announced new regulations that interpreted Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) as meaning that "sex" would be redefined to include such things as "gender identity," thus inventing rights for transgender persons.

According to Ryan T. Anderson and Roger Severino, "Under these guidelines, if a covered physician administers treatments or perform surgeries that can further gender transitions, that physician must provide them for gender transitions on the same terms, and insurance must cover it, regardless of the independent judgment of the physician" (italics in the original). It also denied religious exemptions.

Interestingly, doctors who worked for the Obama administration at the time said, "Based on a thorough review of the clinical evidence...there is not enough evidence to determine whether gender reassignment surgery improves health outcomes for [patients] with gender dysphoria."

On President Trump's last full day in office, January 19, a federal court struck down the transgender mandate forcing doctors to perform transgender surgeries. Last month, the Biden administration filed an appeal; it wants to deny religious exemptions. Now it is jumping the gun: Health and Human Services chief Xavier Becerra's policy statement is seeking to do just that.

Pope Francis has observed that "biological sex and the socio-cultural role of sex (gender) can be distinguished but not separated." The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops affirms what the Holy Father has said. It also opposes requiring religious organizations "to cover 'transition' procedures in their employee health insurance plans...."

It must be noted that Catholic hospitals do not deny routine health care to transgender persons. There is a difference between denying transgender persons treatment for Covid and forcing a Catholic doctor to make anatomical changes on the sexually confused.

The Biden administration's war on Catholic hospitals is one of many policies it has promoted that endanger religious liberty. That they are being shoved down on our throats by a man who professes to be a "devout Catholic" is all the more nauseating.

More Nuns Seek Supreme Court Protection

By Deacon Mike Manno

(The Wanderer) - Several orders of nuns, both Catholic and Anglican, as well as a couple of Catholic dioceses, along with several other Christian churches and faith-based social justice ministries, are asking the Supreme Court to protect them from an insidious state rule in New York that will compel them to provide abortion coverage in their employees’ health-care packages.

Shades of the Little Sisters of the Poor, who successfully challenged Obama-era regulations that forced them to provide contraceptive coverage in their health insurance. Three times the court ruled in favor of the Little Sisters holding that the government could not force the Little Sisters to do so.

Ironically, in 2017 after the Little Sisters scored two of their Supreme Court victories, the superintendent of the New York department of financial services, Linda A. Lacewell, promulgated a regulation mandating that employer health-care plans cover abortions. The regulations, as originally proposed, contained a religious exemption. But after public pressure, Lacewell backtracked on the religious protection, limiting the exception only to religious employers whose work is, basically, with only members of their sect and who employ persons who share the religious beliefs of the employer.

Thus numerous religious organizations such as the Carmelite Sisters, who run a nursing home for the elderly and dying, and the First Bible Baptist Church, which serves the community through youth and deaf ministries (just to name two of the plaintiffs), who do not limit their ministry to just members of their own body, nor do they restrict hiring to members of their faith, do not qualify for the rule’s religious exemption.

According to the petition filed with the Supreme Court:

“The Superintendent abandoned the broader exemption after ‘request[s]’ by ‘hundreds of commenters.’ In the Superintendent’s view, ‘[n]either State nor Federal law require[d]’ any exemption. And the exemption she chose was analogous to existing state law.’ The Superintendent stated that she rejected the initially proposed religious exemption because ‘the interests of ensuring access to reproductive care, fostering equality between the sexes, providing women with better health care, and the disproportionate impact of a lack of access to reproductive health services on women in low income families weighs far more heavily than the interest of business corporations to assert religious beliefs’.”

In other words, the abortion lobby got to her. As a result she narrowed the exemption to protect only religious entities whose purpose is to inculcate religious values who primarily serve and hire co-religionists. The regulation imposes fines for employers who fail to provide abortion coverage: $2,700 per employee. In the case of the Carmelite Sisters, with over 200 employees of their nursing homes, those fines would reach over half million dollars a year.

So after losing their case in the New York courts, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, and several private law firms, are appealing the matter to the Supreme Court on behalf of the religious plaintiffs.

“Our faith tells us that every life is precious from the moment of conception to the final breath. That’s why we spend our lives praying and serving to lift others’ burdens,” said Mother Miriam of the Sisterhood of Saint Mary, the oldest religious order founded in America in the Anglican tradition.

“New York has told us that if we want to hold our beliefs about the sanctity of life, we have to stop serving non-Anglicans. We cannot compromise on our religious beliefs, or in our service to people of all faiths or no faith at all. That’s why we need relief from the Supreme Court.”

In their petition asking the court to hear the case (Writ of Certiorari), the religious groups, which include the Catholic Dioceses of Albany and Ogdensburg, and Catholic Charities of Brooklyn, write:

“Needless to say, this regulation imposes enormous burdens on the countless religious entities opposed to abortion as a matter of longstanding and deep-seated religious conviction.”

The petition claims that the rulings against them in the lower courts stem from an improper finding in an earlier case which held that applying a neutral law of “general applicability” to a case does not require the reviewing court to subject the matter to “strict scrutiny,” which imposes upon the government the burden to show a compelling governmental interest using the least restrictive means possible, lest the law be found in violation of the challenging party’s First Amendment protections.

After a short history of how other courts and circuits have interpreted prior cases, the petition makes the claim that since there was a modified exception for certain religious institutions, the law is not, therefore, one of general applicability. Quoting recent case law, plaintiffs argue “that a regulation is not generally applicable if it has ‘any’ exception.”

Further, “That the abortion mandate undermines New York’s interest in ensuring comprehensive coverage by exempting some religious organizations but not others should thus be more than sufficient to trigger strict scrutiny.”

Additionally, petitioners argued, “Exempting only certain religious organizations while imposing burdens on other necessarily triggers strict scrutiny. No state can pass laws that prefer one religion over another. Imposing burdens on some religious entities while exempting others flouts the constitutional prohibition of denominational preferences.”

And they argued, “[T]hat the Abortion Mandate violates the Free Exercise Clause because it substantially burdens and discriminates among and against certain religious entities without justification. The Abortion Mandate was promulgated with the explicit intention of exempting some employers, while, at the same time, excluding other employers from the exemption. And the exemption ‘treats similarly situated individuals and organizations differently based solely on religious viewpoint’.”

“When New York instituted its abortion mandate, the Little Sisters of the Poor were already two Supreme Court victories into their battle against the contraceptive mandate. Now they’ve won for a third time, sending the clear message that the government can’t make nuns do its dirty work,” said Lori Windham, senior counsel at Becket.

“New York’s failure to learn from the Little Sisters’ saga that you can’t make nuns pay for abortions is beyond reason. The court needs to step in and teach New York that lesson.”

As I always caution in these cases, the Supreme Court has not agreed to hear this case yet, so the only petition filed at this point is an argument as to why the court should accept it. If it is accepted, the argument will turn on how the court should rule, and that could take a year or more before the case is finally submitted. So stay calm and pray the court accepts the case and grants the relief requested.

(You can contact Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every Thursday at 10 a.m. CT on Faith On Trial at IowaCatholicRadio.com.) 

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Why Did Biden Nix God In Prayer Address?

 By Catholic League president Bill Donohue

President Biden raised more than eyebrows when he omitted any mention of God in his National Day of Prayer proclamation. What he did was unprecedented: No previous president has failed to mention God since the day it was created in 1952 by a joint resolution of Congress and signed into law by President Harry Truman.

When asked about Biden's omission, Rev. Franklin Graham was generous in his remarks. "It was probably a staff person that wrote it and maybe not even ran it by him—because I don't think Joe Biden would have approved that one." Maybe.

Even if Graham is right, that doesn't settle the issue. Why would a speechwriter nix God from a presidential speech about prayer?

It is no secret that the Democratic Party is home to secularists. Those who have no religious affiliation, as well as agnostics and atheists, have laid anchor in the Party, many of whom are openly hostile to religion and people of faith. It is not a leap to conclude that this mentality colored Biden's prepared remarks.

Last summer, Secular Democrats of America was welcomed at the Democratic National Convention. They were given three panels to voice their concerns, and they did not hold back in lambasting Christian conservatives. At another session, held on August 18, 2020, hundreds of secular Democrats tuned in to an event hosted by this group. It featured congressmen, state lawmakers and activists: they focused on what they said were constitutional threats made by some Christians.

Last fall, Humanists for Biden was established, an offshoot of Secular Democrats of America. It was headed by a professor who calls himself a chaplain, even though he is an atheist and the term chaplain refers to a clergyman.

In December, Secular Democrats of America submitted a 28-page report to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris outlining their animus against religious liberty. They essentially want to secularize religious institutions, gutting most religious exemptions. Their demonization of white Christians was perhaps the most odious aspect of the report.

Militant secularists have long hated the National Day of Prayer. In 2003, the American Humanist Association established a National Day of Reason; even the secular-minded media ignore it. Cribbing off the National Day of Prayer, which is celebrated on the first Thursday in May, the atheists chose the same day to mark their event. Looks like it didn't accomplish too much this year—there were no events. "There is no specific location where this holiday is celebrated," it said.

In 2010, Freedom From Religion Foundation, a Christian-bashing atheist organization, argued in court that the National Day of Prayer was unconstitutional. It won in a district court but lost on appeal. A federal appeals court ruled that the organization lacked standing, adding that it’s "feeling of alienation" was not sufficient grounds to file suit. "Hurt feelings differ from legal injury," the court said.

The National Day of Prayer Task Force organizes this annual event; it is privately funded. Those who are averse to prayer are free to ignore it. But those who choose to participate are expected to pay tribute to God, which is why what President Biden did was inexplicable at best and objectionable at worst.

To the extent that Biden's remarks reflect the sentiments of those who are running the White House, this does not speak well for him or his administration. More important, it doesn't bode well for the country

Kudos to archbishop for challenging fellow Catholics on abortion

Kudos to archbishop for challenging fellow Catholics on abortion: A Catholic pro-life leader is setting the record straight on abortion – and applauding an archbishop for taking a stand that challenges pro-abortion politicians who claim the Catholic faith.

Our program, Faith On Trial May 6

This week we examine the first 100 days of the Biden administration in the areas of live, human dignity, family, and religious liberty with two experts from the Family Research Council, Connor Semelsberger and Mary Beth Waddell.

Action alert from the USCCB

 

On April 15, 2021, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published a proposed rule on the Title X family planning program that would reverse the Trump Administration’s 2019 Title X Rule (also known as the “Protect Life Rule”).  

On May 4th, the USCCB along with the Southern Baptists Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the Catholic Medical Association, the National Association of Catholic Nurses-USA, and The National Catholic Bioethics Center submitted joint comments pointing out several problems, including that the proposed rule would reintegrate abortion into what Congress intended to be a pre-pregnancy family planning program.

HHS needs to hear from us that this proposed rule is terrible policy and must be changed! 

The deadline for submitting your comments is May 17, 2021.

CLICK HERE TO SEND YOUR COMMENTS TO HHS

PLEASE SHARE THIS ALERT WITH ALL YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY!

Find background information on Title X of the Public Health Service Act here.

California Bill Is Anti-Catholic And Anti-Poor

By Catholic League president Bill Donohue

The California State Senate is moving at full speed to pass the Equitable and Inclusive UC Healthcare Act. This legislation seeks to break existing partnerships between the University of California and hospitals, particularly Catholic ones, that refuse to provide elective abortions, sex reassignment surgeries and sterilizations.

For all the talk of "inclusive care" and "a full range of healthcare services," in reality this bill would leave tens of thousands without access to the high quality healthcare Catholic hospitals provide.

If the Equitable and Inclusive UC Healthcare Act were to become law, UCLA would have to break its contract with Dignity Health that operates several specialty clinics, including a cancer treatment center and a pediatric trauma center. Other partnerships UCLA has with Catholic hospitals including a cleft palate treatment center, a post-transplant care unit, and a pediatric and neonatal surgery facility would also have to come to an end.

Elsewhere in the Golden State, UC Davis would have to terminate its joint run cancer treatment center with Mercy Medical Center in Merced, while St. Mary's Medical Center could no longer administer San Francisco's only inpatient adolescent psychiatry program with UC San Francisco.

Ultimately, all of these would leave patients without access to life-saving treatments. "It's only going to take away [health care] from the poor and vulnerable," said Lori Dangberg, vice-president of the Alliance of Catholic Health Care. To further this point, Dr. Carrie Byington, executive vice-president of UC Health, said that "low-income and rural communities and people of color" would bear the brunt of the reduced access to care that could be "life threatening [in some instances] and exacerbate health disparities."

Regardless of the people that would be left without healthcare, Equality California, NARAL Pro-Choice California and the ACLU of California continue to promote this legislation. So driven by secular madness to force Catholics out of the medical field, these groups do not care how many people lose the service they need.

While it is bad enough to support this perfidious bill knowing that it would prevent tens of thousands of people from accessing treatment, it is even worse to be its author. Considering its adverse impact on so many Californians, a reasonable person wonders about the priorities of someone who could propose legislation that would deny healthcare to those in need. That distinct privilege belongs to California State Senator Scott Wiener.

Wiener is a regular at the Folsom Street Fair. It is a Catholic-bashing gay event where nudity is featured. When he is not tweeting pictures of himself promenading about the Fair barechested in a leather vest and sampling the BDSM paraphernalia, he tweets out personal attacks against Catholics and routinely attacks the teachings of the Church.

In 2019, Wiener commented on the Covington Catholic students, calling them "those jackass MAGA kids." He went on to assert the erroneous claims they were harassing a Native American elder while chanting "build the wall."

Earlier this year, Wiener objected to the Vatican's ruling on blessing same sex unions. He offered his own teachings for the Church saying, "what's 'sinful' is a Church that continues to dehumanize [and] stigmatize an entire community....The Catholic Church leadership needs to enter the modern world."

Another staple for him on Twitter is showing support for the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a protest and street performance organization that insults nuns and that uses drag and Catholic imagery to attack Church teachings. In April, he tweeted out pictures of a mural celebrating their efforts to assault Catholicism.   

Beyond the attacks found on his Twitter page, as a state legislator, Wiener has a platform to act upon his disdain for Catholics, and sponsor bills that undermine the Church.

From his public comments to his public policy, Wiener has a long record of bashing Catholics and promoting policies that work against the Church. The Equitable and Inclusive UC Healthcare Act is just another attack on Catholicism from an ardent enemy of the Faith.

It is a sad commentary on our society when those who harbor an animus against Catholicism do not care who they hurt, including the poor. So much for diversity and equity.

This week (5-6) on Faith On Trial

This week we’re going to examine the first 100 days of the Biden administration in the areas of live, human dignity, family, and religious liberty with two experts from the Family Research Council, Connor Semelsberger and Mary Beth Waddell.

This week, sitting in for Gina Noll will be Julie Nelson from Iowa Catholic Radio’s Catholic Women Now.

 

Our program airs Thursdays at 10 a.m. Central Time on Iowa Catholic Radio, 1150 AM; 88.5 & 94.5 FM and it streams live on our web page IowaCatholicRadio.com where you can also listen to earlier programs. Join us this Thursday for Faith On Trial.

Ethics Of Fetal Research Under Biden

By Catholic League president Bill Donohue

Two years ago, a jury awarded $58 million in damages to ten plaintiffs after finding that the Phoenix-based Biological Resource Center had deceived families into donating the body of a deceased family member. The families thought the body would be used for medical research. Instead, the bodies were dismembered and sold for profit.

FBI agents raided the facility in 2014 and found chopped up bodies in buckets, including feet, shoulders, legs, and spines. Freezers were packed with penises. They even found a torso with a different head sewn on, reminiscent of "Frankenstein." The owner of the human chop shop, Stephen Gore, was convicted of deceiving the families who donated the body; he also broke the law by deceiving the buyers who were sold body parts with infectious diseases.

How could something like this happen? It's actually not hard to understand. When we objectify human beings, treating them as inanimate objects, such practices logically follow.

The Catholic Church has a long and proud record of opposing attempts to dehumanize men, women, and children, ranging from denouncing pagan practices such as infanticide to Nazi eugenics. Their latest salvo is a shot at the Biden administration for lifting limits on human fetal research that were placed by the Trump administration.

Archbishop Joseph Naumann, chairman of the bishops' conference on Pro-Life Activities, released a statement on April 21 that was superb. "The bodies of children killed by abortion deserve the same respect as that of any other person. Our government has no right to treat innocent abortion victims as a commodity that can be scavenged for body parts to be used for research. It is unethical to promote and subsidize research that can lead to legitimizing the violence of abortion."

White House press secretary Jan Psaki was asked about this statement on April 27. She said the White House "respectfully disagrees," explaining that "it's important to invest in science and look for opportunities to cure diseases."

As expected, Psaki never acknowledged the humanity of the unborn child. She can't. If she did, the Biden administration's extreme pro-abortion agenda would implode.

It's easy to ignore the humanity of the unborn if we call fetal tissue "material." That was the choice of words selected by Planned Parenthood in the 1970s. In the 1980s, Newsweek described the dismembered body of an unborn baby extracted in a D&E abortion as "fetal material being pulled from a woman's vagina." In the same decade, Rachel Conrad Wahlberg, an abortion-rights advocate, contended that the unborn do not have an independent existence. Referring to the pregnant woman, she said, "It is hers. It is her possession (italic in the original)."

The same mindset marked the Dred Scott decision that legalized slavery. In the Supreme Court decision of 1857, the court affirmed public opinion by noting that black people were "articles of property and merchandise." Nearly 400 blacks were used as guinea pigs in the infamous Tuskegee experiment that began in 1932. For 40 years, rural sharecroppers who took part in the experiment never knew they had syphilis, nor were treated for it. They were not seen as human beings with rights equal to that of others.

After World War I, prisoners in San Quentin received transplanted sex organs from rams, goats, and boors. Tuberculosis treatments were tested on other prisoners. Inmates of Stateville Correctional Center in Illinois were exposed to malaria in the hope that a cure could be found. The drug companies had a field day experimenting on the incarcerated, and did so without controversy right up until the 1970s.

Not only were prisoners seen as subhuman, so were mentally retarded children. From the mid-1950s to 1970, those housed at Willowbrook State School in Staten Island, New York were infected with hepatitis so that doctors could track the spread of the viral infection. More than 700 children were infected to see how they responded to a drug treatment. 

After what Jews went through at the hands of Nazi physician Josef Mengele—he performed painful and often deadly experiments on twins—it led to the establishment of the Nuremberg Code, a guideline for conducting research on humans. The first stricture insists that the subject must provide consent before the research can begin.

A child in his mother's womb can never give consent.

Archbishop Naumann got it right when he said "it is deeply offensive to millions of Americans for our tax dollars to be used for research that collaborates with an industry built on the taking of innocent lives." Worse, this morally indefensible decision was rendered by our "devout Catholic" president.

 

Does Harvard (And Academia) Discriminate Against Asians?

By Deacon Mike Manno

(The Wanderer) - To answer the question above, a lot of Asians not only think so, but also believe that Asians are being discriminated at all levels of education and many put the blame on Critical Race Theory (CRT) and affirmative action, provoking lawsuits against the offending schools. The gist of the litigation is that Harvard, Yale, other colleges, and elite schools have been using illegitimate racial quotas to cap the number of Asians granted entry.

And all of this is leading many to call for an end to affirmative action and Critical Race Theory in academic admissions.

A suit against Harvard, which is now on the Supreme Court pending list, claims the school, by manipulating evaluation criteria for applicants, disfavors Asian students. According to the Harvard suit, back in December of 2012 a report in The New York Times alleged that the school had an Asian student quota. The school responded by asking its Office of Institutional Research (OIR) to investigate. The Internal OIR report found “evidence that Asians are disadvantaged in the admissions process” and placed the blame on Harvard’s use of a personal rating to evaluate a prospective student. It also reported that being an Asian applicant “negatively correlated” with admission.

To place this in perspective, the Harvard admission process uses race at every stage, including recruitment. There, Black and Hispanic high school students with a PSAT score of 1100 and up are invited to apply, but Asian applicants must score 1350 or above, higher than all other racial groups, including whites. There comes a point when those tentatively approved for admission are placed on a “lop list” list to winnow the field.

Those who are placed on that list are then evaluated using four data points: legacy status, recruited athletic status, financial aid eligibility, and race. Race was to be considered by creating a “personal rating” score for each applicant by evaluating them four areas: leadership, self-confidence, likability, and kindness. Black and Hispanic applicants are then awarded racial preferences, but Asian applicants are not. It was in this process that Asians scored the lowest.

In November of 2014, Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. (SFFA), filed a federal suit in Massachusetts on behalf of its members and Asian students who were denied admission. Students for Fair Admissions, according to its webpage, “is a nonprofit membership group of more than 20,000 students, parents, and others who believe that racial classifications and preferences in college admissions are unfair, unnecessary, and unconstitutional. . . . A student’s race and ethnicity should not be factors that either harm or help that student to gain admission to a competitive university.”

According to the SFFA’s Supreme Court appeal, at the district court, “Harvard’s admissions data revealed astonishing racial disparities in admissions rates among similarly qualified applicants.” Yet in September of 2019 the district court ruled Harvard’s use of race was consistent with applicable Supreme Court precedents, the leading one being a 2003 case Grutter v. Bollinger, in which the Supreme Court, in a case over racial preferences at the University of Michigan Law School, ruled 5-4 that an admission process that favors “underrepresented minority groups” is constitutional. On appeal the First Circuit affirmed.

The petition for review (writ of certiorari) was filed February 25 and as of this writing 20 amicus briefs have been filed on the issue of certiorari.

In its petition, SFFA asks that the court overturn its ruling Grutter. That holding, “that schools can use race in admissions to pursue student body diversity is plainly wrong,” and “Harvard’s admissions program does not comply with (the) court’s precedents.” At Harvard, the petition states, “race is not ‘plus’ that is always ‘beneficial’; it’s a minus for Asian Americans.”

In arguing that the Grutter decision should be overturned, the certiorari petition argues that it is “grievously wrong” since the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment “contains no exceptions: it protects ‘any person’ from the denials of ‘the equal protection of the laws’” and that “free governments demand the abolition of all distinctions founded on color and race. . . . Grutter’s diversity rationale is not only uncompelling; it flouts basic equal-protection principles.

“If a university wants to admit students with certain experiences (say, overcoming discrimination), then it can evaluate whether individual applicants have that experience. It cannot simply use race as a proxy for certain experiences or views.”

It also argues that Grutter has “spawned significant negative consequences” in that it “sustains admission programs that intentionally discriminate against historically oppressed minorities. Jewish students were the first victims of holistic admissions, and Asian Americans are the main victims today.”

This is not the only suit SFFA has filed. Edward Blum, president of SFFA, said in a press release, “Yale, Harvard, the University of North Carolina, the University of Texas, and many dozens of other highly competitive colleges and universities employ admissions practices that are discriminatory, unnecessary, and unconstitutional. Students applying to undergraduate and post-graduate programs should be judged on their individual talents, character, academic skills, extracurricular achievements, and socio-economic background but not the color of their skin.”

Of course, this is not new to the Asian-American community which is facing the bulk of academic discrimination.

In Fairfax County, Va., for example, Asian-American parents are taking action against a local high school. Former Wall Street Journal reporter and parent, Asra Q. Nomani, is part of a movement which is confronting the elite Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology for lowering its rigorist standards for admission to the detriment of Asian students. She writes:

“To understand what’s behind this conflict, look no further than the controversial ideology of critical race theory, which praises or blames members of a particular race solely because they happen to be that race and seeks to interpret all forms of perceived injustice through a racial lens. This ideology has swept through America’s educational system at every level and is erasing our different narratives as Asian-Americans from different backgrounds and — to our shock — marginalizing our children and us.

“The ugly truth about critical race theory is that it inevitably seeks to fight racial hierarchies by instituting new forms of racial hierarchies. And Asian-American parents are increasingly taking notice. . . . County school officials set out to correct the supposedly problematic over-representation of Asian American students at TJ by watering down the strict admission standards.”

And in an echo of the SFFA case against Harvard, she adds, “Although the new process states it will ‘use only race-neutral methods,’ in practice this subjective set of standards allows them to pick and choose the students they prefer to achieve their desired racial balance and keep out too many Asian-American students.”

Similar cases are now proceeding against schools in New York City, Boston, and Washington State. Whether this movement will be able to curb race-based admissions programs is yet to be seen. One of the problems the Asian community faces, according to Nomani, is that as Asians have overcome discrimination and achieved upward mobility, “we are now white by adjacency.” She points to recent Black Lives Matter rioters who assaulted a rally supporting merit-based education.

“Education is the main area where CRT attacked us,” she wrote. “CRT, naturally, demands automatic preferences for blacks in admissions to selective institutions and programs. That is unacceptable to us: Such racial preferences come at the expense of our children, at the expense of academic standards, and at the expense of basic fairness.”

She continued in reference to the Harvard suit: “Despite never having met the applicants, Harvard admissions officers somehow conclude that Asian applicants lack integrity and courage — directly contradicting evaluations from interviewers who met the applicants, and from teachers who’ve known the applicants for months if not years. If smearing Asians this way isn’t hate speech, then what is? Call it diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

If blocking affirmative action in admissions is something in which you are interested, this might be your time. But as I always caution, if you are relying on the legal system, it will take time, and even then, the Supreme Court has not even agreed to review the case, much less overrule the Grutter precedent.

Time will tell.

Update: Just after the above column was submitted, Senate Democrats voted down an amendment from Senate Republicans to a hate crimes bill which would have barred federal funding for any institution of higher education that discriminates against Asian-Americans in recruitment, applicant review, or admissions. The vote was 49 Republicans for and 48 Democrats against. It needed 60 votes to pass.

(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every Thursday morning at 10 CT on Faith On Trial on IowaCatholicRadio.com).