WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is hearing arguments Wednesday in just its second major transgender rights case, which is a challenge to a Tennessee law that bans gender-affirming health care for minors.

The justices’ decision, not expected for several months, could affect similar laws enacted by 25 other states and a range of efforts to regulate the lives of transgender people, including which sports competitions they can join and which bathrooms they can use.

The case is coming before a conservative-dominated court after a presidential election in which Donald Trump and his allies promised to roll back protections for transgender people.

There were dueling rallies outside the court in the hours before the arguments. Speeches and music filled the air on the sidewalk below the court’s marble steps. Advocates of the ban bore signs like “Champion God’s Design” and “Kids Health Matters,” while the other side proclaimed “Fight like a Mother for Trans Rights” and “Freedom to be Ourselves.”

Four years ago, the court ruled in favor of Aimee Stephens, who was fired by a Michigan funeral home after she informed its owner that she was a transgender woman. The court held that transgender people, as well as gay and lesbian people, are protected by a landmark federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in the workplace.

The Biden administration and the families and health care providers who challenged the Tennessee law are urging the justices to apply the same sort of analysis that the majority, made up of liberal and conservative justices, embraced in the case four years ago when it found that “sex plays an unmistakable role” in employers’ decisions to punish transgender people for traits and behavior they otherwise tolerate.

The issue in the Tennessee case is whether the law violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, which requires the government to treat similarly situated people the same.

Tennessee’s law bans puberty blockers and hormone treatments for transgender minors, but not “across the board,” lawyers for the families wrote in their Supreme Court brief. The lead lawyer, Chase Strangio of the American Civil Liberties Union, is the first openly transgender person to argue in front of the justices.

The administration argues there is no way to determine whether “treatments must be withheld from any particular minor” without considering the minor’s sex.

“That is sex discrimination,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in her main court filing.

The state acknowledges that the same treatments that are banned for transgender minors can be prescribed for other reasons. But it rejects the claim that it is discriminating on the basis of sex. Instead, it says lawmakers acted to protect minors from the risks of “life-altering gender-transition procedures.”

The law “draws a line between minors seeking drugs for gender transition and minors seeking drugs for other medical purposes. And boys and girls fall on both sides of that line,” Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti wrote in the state’s Supreme Court brief.

While the challengers invoke the 2020 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County for support, Tennessee relies on the court’s precedent-shattering Dobbs decision in 2022 that ended nationwide protections for abortion and returned the issue to the states.

The two sides battled in their legal filings over the appropriate level of scrutiny the court should apply. It’s more than an academic exercise.

The lowest level is known as rational basis review and almost every law looked at that way is ultimately upheld. Indeed, the federal appeals court in Cincinnati that allowed the Tennessee law to be enforced held that lawmakers acted rationally to regulate medical procedures, well within their authority.

The appeals court reversed a trial court that employed a higher level of review, heightened scrutiny, that applies in cases of sex discrimination. Under this more searching examination, the state must identify an important objective and show that the law helps accomplish it.

If the justices opt for heightened scrutiny, they could return the case to the appeals court to apply it.

Gender-affirming care for youth is supported by every major medical organization, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychiatric Association.

But Tennessee is pointing to health authorities in Sweden, Finland, Norway and the United Kingdom that found the medical treatments “pose significant risks with unproven benefits.”

None of those countries has adopted a ban like the one in Tennessee, and individuals can still obtain treatment, Prelogar wrote in response.

The Williams family of Nashville, Tennessee, are among those challenging the state law. Brian Williams said that because of puberty blockers and hormone treatments, his transgender daughter, L.W., is a “16-year-old planning for her future, making her own music and looking at colleges.”

But because of Tennessee’s ban, she has to travel to another state to receive the health care that “we and her doctors know is right for her.”
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In Zambia, an education and prevention program known as the Total Control of the Epidemic project is focused on ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030. Kathy Short reports from Petauke, Zambia. Camera: Jawadu Sumaili
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WASHINGTON — When the Supreme Court this week wades into the contentious issue of transgender rights, the justices will hear from an attorney with knowledge that runs deep.

Chase Strangio will be the first openly transgender attorney to argue before the nation’s highest court, representing families who say Tennessee’s ban on health care for transgender minors leaves their children terrified about the future.

Arguments in the case come amid heightened pushback to transgender rights, including a presidential campaign where Republican Donald Trumpput his fierce opposition front and center.

Strangio will bring months of intense legal preparation to the case as well as hard-won lessons from his own experience.

“I am able to do my job because I have had this health care that transformed and, frankly, saved my life,” he said. “I am a testament to the fact that we live among everyone.”

Strangio grew up outside of Boston and came out as trans when he was in law school. Now 42, he’s an American Civil Liberties Union attorney whose legal career has included representing former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, challenging a ban on transgender people serving in the military and helping win an LGBTQ+ worker-discrimination case at the Supreme Court. He’s also the father of a 12-year-old, the son of a father who supports Trump, and has a close relationship with his Army-veteran brother.

He’s also an advocate, speaking out as a series of U.S. states banned gender-affirming health care for transgender minors. The laws are part of a wave of restrictions on school sports participation and bathroom usage around the country. After the first openly transgender person was elected to Congress, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson declared support for restricting bathroom use to sex assigned at birth.

Tennessee, meanwhile, will argue before the Supreme Court that treatments like puberty blockers and hormones carry risks for young people and that its law protects them from making treatment decisions prematurely.

“Tennessee, like many other states, acted to ensure that minors do not receive these treatments until they can fully understand the lifelong consequences or until the science is developed to the point that Tennessee might take a different view of their efficacy,” state attorneys wrote in court filings.

Arguing for Tennessee is state Solicitor General Matt Rice. He served in 2019 as a clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas, who dissented from the transgender worker-discrimination case Strangio worked on that term. The state attorney general’s office did not make Rice available for an interview ahead of arguments, but his background also includes a couple of years as a minor league baseball player for the Tampa Bay Rays before he earned his law degree from the University of California, Berkeley.

The Biden administration is supporting the challenge to Tennessee’s law, but the federal government’s position is expected to change after Trump takes office in January. 

Strangio said he’ll nevertheless keep advocating for transgender youth to access health care that wasn’t available when he was young.

“Many of us think about our childhood and young adulthood as lost years, when we were just simply disembodied from our core,” he said. Major medical groups, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, oppose the bans and have endorsed such care, saying it’s safe when administered properly. 

Strangio also pointed out that many medical interventions for young people, like gastric bypass surgeries for weight loss, carry some risk and it makes sense to inform families and let them decide.

“There is harm that is compounded when we are forcing young people to be denied care that their doctors and their parents and they themselves all agree they need,” he said.

The Supreme Court is expected to decide the case by the summer.
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Washington — President Joe Biden on Sunday had the AIDS Memorial Quilt spread on the White House South Lawn for the first time in observance of World AIDS Day.

Gathered with the president and his wife, Jill, were survivors, family members and advocates to memorialize the lives lost to the epidemic. The president emphasized the federal government’s support for the 1.2 million people in the United States living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which can lead to AIDS.

“This movement is fully woven into the fabric and history of America,” Biden said. “For all the lives lost, for all those that are still alive, look at what you’ve already done to change the hearts and minds, to save lives across the country and around the world. That’s the power of this movement.”

There were 124 sections of the quilt on the lawn to commemorate people who died due to AIDS-related illnesses. Conceived in 1985, the quilt made its first public appearance in 1987. There was also a red ribbon, a symbol of support and awareness for those with HIV and AIDS, draped across the South Portico of the White House.

There are 40 million people around the world with HIV, according to the White House.

Introducing Biden was Jeanne White-Ginder, whose son, Ryan White, contracted AIDS through a tainted blood transfusion at the age of 13 and died in 1990 at the age of 18. She said her son’s experience taught America that “we needed to fight AIDS and not the people who have it.”

The Ryan White CARE Act became law in 1990, and White-Grinder recalled being at the U.S. Capitol to speak for the measure and met Biden when he was a senator from Delaware.

The president also saluted Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert until leaving the government in 2022, Fauci was in attendance at the event as he worked to treat AIDS, though he’s known by much of the country for his efforts to address the coronavirus pandemic that made him a target of criticism by many Republican lawmakers.

The Biden administration has sought to make investments to stop the epidemic, and the stigmas attached to people with HIV. Among other steps, it has worked to expand access to PrEP, or the pre-exposure prophylaxis, which at-risk populations use to prevent HIV infections.
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The Hague — The top United Nations court will take up the largest case in its history Monday, when it opens two weeks of hearings into what countries worldwide are legally required to do to combat climate change and help vulnerable nations fight its devastating impact.

After years of lobbying by island nations who fear they could simply disappear under rising sea waters, the U.N. General Assembly asked the International Court of Justice last year for an opinion on “the obligations of States in respect of climate change.”

“We want the court to confirm that the conduct that has wrecked the climate is unlawful,” Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh, who is leading the legal team for the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, told The Associated Press.

In the decade up to 2023, sea levels have risen by a global average of around 4.3 centimeters (1.7 inches), with parts of the Pacific rising higher still. The world has also warmed 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times because of the burning of fossil fuels.

Vanuatu is one of a group of small states pushing for international legal intervention in the climate crisis.

“We live on the front lines of climate change impact. We are witnesses to the destruction of our lands, our livelihoods, our culture and our human rights,” Vanuatu’s climate change envoy Ralph Regenvanu told reporters ahead of the hearing.

Any decision by the court would be non-binding advice and unable to directly force wealthy nations into action to help struggling countries. Yet it would be more than just a powerful symbol since it could serve as the basis for other legal actions, including domestic lawsuits.

On Sunday, ahead of the hearing, advocacy groups will bring together environmental organizations from around the world. Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change — who first developed the idea of requesting an advisory opinion — together with World Youth for Climate Justice plan an afternoon of speeches, music and discussions.

From Monday, the Hague-based court will hear from 99 countries and more than a dozen intergovernmental organizations over two weeks. It’s the largest lineup in the institution’s nearly 80-year history.

Last month at the United Nations’ annual climate meeting, countries cobbled together an agreement on how rich countries can support poor countries in the face of climate disasters. Wealthy countries have agreed to pool together at least $300 billion a year by 2035 but the total is short of the $1.3 trillion that experts, and threatened nations, said is needed.

“For our generation and for the Pacific Islands, the climate crisis is an existential threat. It is a matter of survival, and the world’s biggest economies are not taking this crisis seriously. We need the ICJ to protect the rights of people at the front lines,” Vishal Prasad, of Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change, told reporters in a briefing.

Fifteen judges from around the world will seek to answer two questions: What are countries obliged to do under international law to protect the climate and environment from human-caused greenhouse gas emissions? And what are the legal consequences for governments where their acts, or lack of action, have significantly harmed the climate and environment?

The second question refers to “small island developing States” likely to be hardest hit by climate change and to “members of “the present and future generations affected by the adverse effects of climate change.”

The judges were even briefed on the science behind rising global temperatures by the U.N.’s climate change body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ahead of the hearings.

The case at the ICJ follows a number of rulings around the world ordering governments to do more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In May, a U.N. tribunal on maritime law said that carbon emissions qualify as marine pollution, and countries must take steps to adapt to and mitigate their adverse effects.

That ruling came a month after Europe’s highest human rights court said that countries must better protect their people from the consequences of climate change, in a landmark judgment that could have implications across the continent.

The ICJ’s host country of The Netherlands made history when a court ruled in 2015 that protection from the potentially devastating effects of climate change is a human right and that the government has a duty to protect its citizens. The judgment was upheld in 2019 by the Dutch Supreme Court.
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BUSAN, SOUTH KOREA — Countries negotiating a global treaty to curb plastic pollution failed to reach agreement on Monday with over 100 nations wanting to cap production while a handful of oil producers were prepared only to target plastic waste. 

The fifth U.N. Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee meeting to yield a legally binding global treaty in Busan, South Korea, was meant to be the final one. 

However, countries remained far apart on the basic scope of a treaty, and could agree only to postpone key decisions to a future meeting. 

“While I saw points of convergence in many areas, positions remain divergent in some others,” said Luis Vayas Valdivieso, the chair of the meeting. 

The most divisive issues included capping plastic production, managing plastic products and chemicals of concern, and financing to help developing countries implement the treaty. 

An option proposed by Panama, backed by over 100 countries, would have created a path for a global plastic production reduction target, while another proposal did not include production caps. 

The fault lines were apparent in a revised document released on Sunday by Valdivieso, which could have formed the basis of a treaty, but remained riddled with options on the most sensitive issues. 

“A treaty that… only relies on voluntary measures would not be acceptable,” said Juliet Kabera, director general of Rwanda’s Environment Management Authority. 

“It is time we take it seriously and negotiate a treaty that is fit for purpose and not built to fail.” 

A small number of petrochemical-producing nations, such as Saudi Arabia, have strongly opposed efforts to reduce plastic production and have tried to use procedural tactics to delay negotiations. 

“There was never any consensus,” said Saudi Arabian delegate Abdulrahman Al Gwaiz. “There are a couple of articles that somehow seem to make it (into the document) despite our continued insistence that they are not within the scope.” 

China, the United States, India, South Korea and Saudi Arabia were the top five primary polymer producing nations in 2023, according to data provider Eunomia. 

Entrenched divisions 

Had such divisions been overcome, the treaty would have been one of the most significant deals relating to environmental protection since the 2015 Paris Agreement. 

The postponement comes just days after the turbulent conclusion of the COP29 summit in Baku, Azerbaijan. 

At Baku, countries set a new global target for mobilizing $300 billion annually in climate finance, a deal deemed woefully insufficient by small island states and many developing countries. 

The climate talks were also slowed down by procedural maneuvers by Saudi Arabia – which objected to the inclusion of language that reaffirmed a previous commitment to transition away from fossil fuels. 

Some negotiators said a few countries held the proceedings hostage, avoiding compromises needed by using the U.N.’s consensus process. 

Senegal’s National Delegate Cheikh Ndiaye Sylla called it “a big mistake” to exclude voting during the entire negotiations, an agreement made last year during the second round of talks in Paris. 

Plastic production is on track to triple by 2050, and microplastics have been found in air, fresh produce and even human breast milk. 

Chemicals of concern in plastics include more than 3,200 found according to a 2023 U.N. Environment Program report, which said women and children were particularly susceptible to their toxicity. 

Despite the postponement, several negotiators expressed urgency to get back to talks. 

“Every day of delay is a day against humanity. Postponing negotiations does not postpone the crisis,” said Panama’s delegation head, Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez, on Sunday. 

“When we reconvene, the stakes will be higher.” 

 
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The way the dinosaurs relinquished their long dominance is well known. An asteroid struck Earth 66 million years ago, triggering a horrific mass extinction. But the way the dinosaurs — modest creatures initially — came to supremacy is less well understood.

New research that relied heavily on fossilized feces and vomit — evidence of who is eating what and who is eating whom – provides new clarity on how dinosaurs bested the competition during the Triassic Period. The study focused on a region in Poland with extensive fossils from this pivotal time.

First appearing roughly 230 million years ago, dinosaurs were at first overshadowed by other animals including large crocodile relatives — both terrestrial and semi-aquatic — and various plant-eaters including elephant-sized ones related to mammals and four-legged armored reptiles. By about 200 million years ago, dinosaurs reigned, their main competitors extinct.

“We approached the rise of dinosaurs in a completely novel way. We analyzed feeding evidence to deduce the ecological role of dinosaurs across their first 30 million years of evolution,” said paleontologist Martin Qvarnström of Uppsala University in Sweden, lead author of the study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

The earliest dinosaurs and close relatives were opportunists, eating foods including bugs, fish and insects. Subsequently, larger and more specialized dinosaur predators evolved along with herbivorous dinosaurs apparently better adapted than competitors to exploit new plants that arose when the climate became more humid.

Feces fossils are called coprolites. Vomit fossils are called regurgitates. Together they are called bromalites. So why study this stuff? By examining undigested food — plants and prey — in bromalites, researchers can discern feeding patterns of various species and reconstruct an ecosystem’s food webs.

Hundreds of bromalites were examined, primarily coprolites.

“We studied over 100 kilograms of fossilized feces,” said study senior author Grzegorz Niedźwiedzki, a paleontologist and geologist at Uppsala University and the Polish Geological Institute.

How can researchers tell who left the feces or vomit? Skeletal fossils and footprints showed what animals were present at a given time. And the researchers deduced who produced a given coprolite based on factors including its size and shape, the type of undigested food and the nature of the digestive systems of living relatives of these extinct animals.

Take, for example, the 6-meter four-legged meat-eater Polonosuchus, a type of reptile called a rauisuchian that was related to crocs and was an apex predator alongside the early dinosaurs.

“We know that today’s crocodiles and alligators digest food for a long time and thoroughly. In their feces, undigested bones are very rarely found. Such coprolites — large, sausage-shaped, with highly digested mass — we found in a site where bones of Polonosuchus were also found,” Niedźwiedzki said.

“In contrast, in sites where there were bones and tracks of predatory dinosaurs, we found coprolites containing a lot of undigested remains. Some of them are full of pieces of bones, fish remains, and there are also teeth. You can see that all this passed through the digestive tract quickly and was not digested in the crocodile way,” Niedźwiedzki added.

Early members of the dinosaur evolutionary lineage were omnivorous, like 2-meter Silesaurus.

“The first dinosaur relative in the area, Silesaurus, was an opportunistic little thing that ate bugs, fish and plants. Some of the insects were amazingly well preserved,” Qvarnström said.

Big herbivorous and carnivorous dinosaurs began appearing late in the Triassic, which ended 201 million years ago.

Environmental changes linked to Earth’s increased volcanic activity precipitated a wider range of plants that ever-larger herbivorous dinosaurs exploited. This proliferation of big plant-eating dinosaurs encouraged the evolution of larger carnivorous dinosaurs.

The large non-dinosaur meat-eaters disappeared before the start of the subsequent Jurassic Period, completing the transition to dinosaur dominion. By 200 million years ago, meat-eating dinosaurs 8 meters long were present, alongside plant-eating dinosaurs 10 meters long.

Smok, a 6-meter strong-jawed carnivorous dinosaur relative, lived about 210 million years ago. Coprolites showed Smok’s predilection for bone-crushing, obtaining nutritious marrow in a feeding trait associated with much later dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus.

The coprolites of herbivorous dinosaurs offered surprises.

“Another interesting and very mysterious discovery was the finding of geochemical signals in the coprolites from burnt plant remains, as well as pieces of charcoal. Did the dinosaurs eat charcoal from burnt plants? Ferns, whose remains are in coprolites, may be toxic, and the charcoal may have neutralized these toxins,” Niedzwiedzki added.
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