Commentary
Our children are our future, and—to state matters bluntly—our future is in danger. Mental illness is on the rise among children, with suicidal ideations
increasing by 40 percent in the past 15 years. While
divorce rates are decreasing slightly, so are actual marriage rates, leading to broken and undefined families in which children lack the structure and role models they need to thrive.
Nelson Mandela famously noted: “Safety and security don’t just happen; they are the result of collective consensus and public investment. We owe our children, the most vulnerable citizens in our society, a life free of violence and fear.”
American adults appear to be failing. However, we have an opportunity to fix this, and we have an obvious glimpse of how we can protect the most vulnerable members of our society in the current U.S. Supreme Court term.
There are six different cases that deal with a wide range of issues affecting our children. Two of them concern state laws that are aimed at protecting the natural development and maturation of children. Four other cases petition the court to deal with safety, dignity, and choice under the umbrella of our education system.
On June 24, the Supreme Court made waves when it granted a petition to hear
United States v. Skrmetti. This high-stakes case deals with whether the state of Tennessee has the legal authority to protect children from experimental drugs and procedures to make children appear as the opposite sex.
The issue of gender dysphoria is a particularly emotional discussion, but activist groups and professionals with large financial interests continue to push these harmful practices, even when science stands strongly against their arguments. Even the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, which purports to set the medical standards for treating gender dysphoria, has
admitted that the overwhelming majority of pre-pubertal children experiencing gender dysphoria naturally develop out of it as they mature—provided that no one intervenes.
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), where I serve as vice president of appellate advocacy, is filing a friend-of-the-court brief in support of Tennessee. States are right to pass laws to keep doctors from harming children. This case could bring us one step closer to that goal.
A week after the Supreme Court granted the petition in
Skrmetti, it agreed to hear another controversial case in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton. In this case, a coalition dubbing itself as defenders of “free speech”—and represented by the
ACLU—is fighting a Texas law that they say is “
burdening adults’ access to protected speech.” But the law that the coalition is fighting merely requires age verification to view pornography online.
It’s well established that the government can restrict the provision of explicit content to children. Pornography, once available only through printed materials and seedy back-alley theaters, is now available to anyone, including children, with a few taps on a device in their pocket. The results are devastating, as an addictive substance that
rewires the brain is in the hands of easily impressionable and developing minds,
resulting in stunted sexual ideals, greater proclivity toward harassment, unrealistic relational standards, and depression.
Pornography is a billion-dollar industry that doesn’t seem to mind who accesses and produces content as long as the traffic keeps flowing—
or until they get caught. Texas’s law is a reasonable step to protect children from the harms of pornography. Yet adults (who wouldn’t even be stopped by the law) are fighting that simple age-verification step. ADF plans to file a brief supporting Texas in its quest to protect children from harmful materials.
The high court is also considering whether to hear two other cases dealing with one issue: whether states can ensure that sports teams are assigned based on sex. When it was passed in 1972, Title IX helped to ensure that women had access to fair and safe competition by designating separate sports for girls in school.
B.P.J. v. West Virginia State Board of Education deals with a West Virginia law, while
Hecox v. Little is about a similar Idaho law. Both laws ensure that women’s sports remain only for women, not allowing males—who have natural athletic advantages—access to women’s sports teams, endangering women’s safety and opportunities. The U.S. courts of appeals for the fourth and ninth circuits have paused the enforcement of the laws, allowing males to
skew the results in athletic competition while those cases proceed. ADF is serving as co-counsel with West Virginia and Idaho, and the Supreme Court has a chance to grant review and confirm states’ ability to pass laws that prevent women and girls from harm.
In
Drummond v. Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board, the Oklahoma attorney general sued the state charter school board for allowing St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School to receive benefits available to other charter schools, simply because St. Isidore is a religious institution.
The Supreme Court has
ruled multiple
times that government officials may not exclude religious organizations from generally available programs simply because of their religious status or activity. Excluding religious schools from the charter program disserves children, does not advance any of the state’s goals for the program, and violates the Constitution. ADF is currently petitioning the Supreme Court to review an Oklahoma Supreme Court decision that denies this equal opportunity to religious charter schools.
Finally, in
L.M. v. Town of Middleborough, the court has an opportunity to correct a lower court’s ruling that jeopardizes students’ free speech rights at school. In
L.M., a young man is challenging his school district for allegedly suppressing his speech by ordering him to remove T-shirts that expressed messages contrary to officials’ preferred viewpoints.
After being bombarded with messages from his middle school that sex and gender are fluid and subjectively professed, not based on biology, Liam Morrison attended class wearing a T-shirt that read, “There are only two genders.” He declined school officials’ instruction to remove the shirt, so they forced him to go home. Later, Liam came to class wearing a shirt that read, “There are [censored] genders” in peaceful protest of the school’s allegedly suppressing his speech. For this, he was sent to the principal’s office. ADF is asking the Supreme Court to review a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit that we believe denies Liam’s free speech rights.
In sum, there’s much at stake for our children’s future in this Supreme Court term. We cannot instill violence and fear—whether that’s against a child’s body, mental health, or constitutional rights—and expect a safe, secure, and flourishing society. Our children deserve better.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
