MASSIVE Win for Women's Free Speech in the US

[Delphinium20]

While the US certainly leads in free speech, many feminists have lately worried about the erosion of this constitutional right in light of trans activism.

A recent 9th Circuit Court victory upheld women's rights to free speech, that women in certain states* now have the constitutional right to freely express that women are female, and men are not women.

Other notable wins for women with this court ruling:

That the First Amendment allows women to express their recognition that womanhood is not a subjective identity.

“the inclusion of men who identify as women in feminine spaces will undermine the hard-earned progress made by women in society."

Protects women’s right to be a discrete class under the law

Paves the way to a future where single-sex spaces may one day be recognized as a constitutional right.

*California, Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho, Arizona, Alaska, Hawaii, and multiple US territories

womensliberationfront.org/news/victory-ninth-circuit-upholds-womens-free-speech-decision

I'm sure most Portland types are already busy crying, having meltdowns, posting on social media about how "unsafe" and "exhausted" they feel, and all the usual stuff. Yawn, whatevs.

So glad that there are some successes. Yay for Kara Dansky!

Anyone else go straight from 'wow, that's great news' straight into '2023, fuck this is depressing that this is even news'.

I'm glad these cases are being won, but the pit of my stomach still feels like I'm on an airplane during turbulence.

And it's early so this is the best gif choice until I awaken properly.

It's a positive start .

Try being a Lesbian and getting excited that that in 2023 Bindel, Stock and Navratilova founded the Lesbian Project where men are excluded....

And that the first responses to the announcement of said project were from angry blokes demanding to know how the project intended to be useful to and serve them.

I needed a very large drink that night.

How does this not apply across the whole of the USA, but is limited to certain states? The First Amendment applies to the whole USA.

It does, but this particular ruling was in the 9th Circuit Court so only affects the states within its jurisdiction.

It's a ruling that under the freedom of speech/association clause organizations that can claim that inclusion of a particular group would violate their expressive purpose are allowed to discriminate. It is under the same precedent that allowed a St. Patrick's Day parade to exclude LGBTQ+ groups and the Boy Scouts to remove a Scout Leader who was openly gay.

It's a court case that impacts just that circuit court's jurisdiction, so not the Supreme Court. However, a circuit court Taft not only ruled against a case but refuses to look again at it means that case will have a near impossible ability to get it heard again or before the Supreme Court.

Yes. It does. But lower court rulings test our constitution all the time, so this ruling upholds how I and many others believe the First Amendment should be interpreted.

Very good news! I was wondering why the woke state was listed until I read further. I'm assuming it was down to where the circuit judges worked/oversaw rather than each individual state agreeing to it. In which case I can see that particular state choking on the horror of having to comply.

Wow I am in Washington State, home of Seattle and the cities in the West of the state are as woke as they come. However, just like everywhere, I wouldn’t say the politicians reflect the views of the general population. Still amazed though as WA state rushed through Gender Ideology law in 2015.

Someone up thread asked “why this mixed bag of states?” If you check an Atlas you will see they are all states in the West, and Hawaii is a state of islands west of the continent. The circuit courts are divided into large geographic chunks.

What was the reason lgbtq people would spoil a st Patrick’s day parade? They might not all wear green?

I'm guessing that it was a Catholic religious thing?

@Codlingmoths St Patrick’s day is a Catholic celebration, no one would be excluded but also many communities wouldn’t want people marching under banners that were directly against Catholic teaching. This isn’t the case in every community and it can depend on who is hosting and funding the event. This is in reference to the USA. For some people they will just be wearing green and drinking green beer and it’s not an issue as the religious roots have been subsumed.

Our Lady of Guadalupe is also a huge event in many parts of the USA and the same issue would apply.

The group organizing the parade did not want to endorse a pro-gay message.

The first amendment provides broad protections to expressive organizations and so in this instance the pageant organizers are able to violate public accommodations anti-discrimination law in order to protect their freedom of speech just as if a group wished to organize a pageant that only included individuals of a particular race they would be allowed to do so if their group had an expressive purpose related to that exclusion. Expressive purpose is defined very broadly--the group organizing the parade, for example, was not primarily an anti-gay organization but the court determined they could not be compelled to endorse a message they did not support. Or the Boy Scouts had no explicit language about sexuality, but the court determined that simply being out was a. message the Boy Scouts were entitled to say they did not endorse because of their code requiring scouts to be "morally straight."

Very strange to construe this as "women have the first amendment right"--everyone as an individual has the first amendment right to freedom of speech and this is not a substantial modification of existing precedent.

Excellent news. Well done WoLF and Kara Dansky.