Last week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that policies targeting transgender people are sex-based discrimination that must meet heightened scrutiny to be constitutional. In this episode of Boom! Lawyered, Imani Gandy and Jessica Mason Pieklo evaluate this important—but qualified—win for transgender rights and what it means for those rights in the future.
The fight over the Trump administration’s questionable efforts to add a citizenship question to the census has reached the Supreme Court, and a decision looms. In this episode of Boom! Lawyered, Jessica Mason Pieklo and Imani Gandy explain the case and how a bad decision could cement inequality for generations.
Jessica Mason Pieklo sits down with Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum to discuss the challenges facing progressive attorneys general in the era of Trump and how they are fighting back against his administration.
This week, the Supreme Court ruled that a provision of an Indiana law mandating the burial or cremation of fetal remains could take effect. At the same time, it blocked a separate provision of the Indiana law banning abortions based on the race, sex, or disability of a fetus. In this episode of Boom! Lawyered, Imani Gandy and Jessica Mason Pieklo explain Tuesday’s decision, Justice Clarence Thomas’s opinion equating modern-day family planning with eugenics, and signals from the Court’s conservatives that access to birth control is in their crosshairs.
Conservative lawmakers are passing total and near-total abortion bans with the explicit hope that they will be used to overturn Roe v. Wade. But how would that work, exactly? In this episode of Boom! Lawyered, Jessica Mason Pieklo and Imani Gandy explain the arguments that would fuel a legal challenge to Roe and how a bad decision could then be used to attack state laws protecting abortion rights.
Franchise Board of California v. Hyatt may not be the most important case of the Supreme Court term, but the fallout from the Court's decision to overturn decades of precedent could have major ramifications for Roe v. Wade. In fact, Justice Stephen Breyer sounded the alarm himself in his dissenting opinion. In this episode of Boom! Lawyered, Imani Gandy and Jessica Mason Pieklo explain what happened and what it could mean for abortion rights, marriage equality, and more.
The near total ban on abortion recently passed in Georgia contrasts sharply with the landmark decision in Kansas declaring abortion to be a natural right. In the latest episode of Boom! Lawyered, hosts Jessica Mason Pieklo and Imani Gandy explore which of those paths other states are likely to follow and the number-one reason there's still hope for abortion rights in the United States.
The Supreme Court announced this week that it will hear three cases that could determine what, if any, protections LGBTQ employees have from job discrimination. In this episode of Boom! Lawyered, Jessica Mason Pieklo and Imani Gandy explain what it means that the Court agreed to hear all three cases together and how the effects of a bad ruling could extend into housing and health-care discrimination.
In the latest episode of Boom! Lawyered, Imani Gandy and Jessica Mason Pieklo discuss the case of Jamal Knox, a young rapper who was convicted for terroristic threats and witness intimidation based on the lyrics of his music. When are words “true threats,” and when are they protected free speech? And why do most court cases on speech seem to be decided in whichever direction benefits white Christian patriarchy?
The Supreme Court will soon decide whether to take a case that would give school districts the ability to affirmatively discriminate against transgender students. Boom! Lawyered hosts Jessica Mason Pieklo and Imani Gandy explain how a bad decision in this case could enshrine the bogus concept of "reverse discrimination" into law, putting even more rights—and lives—at risk.
