Our Founding Fathers very carefully crafted the Constitution and Bill of Rights to protect the individual sovereignty of the states. The resulting principles of federalism purposefully guided the jurisprudence of this country for more than 150 years, maintaining fairly clear spheres of federal and state power….

Abortion policy began in the states where the people used the democratic process to voice their moral, religious, and scientific opinions. Roe needlessly wrenched abortion policy from the states and, relying on “penumbras formed by emanations,” seven unelected judges created a brand-new constitutional right to abortion. The response was immediate and lasting and after 48 years, strong opposition to Roe and its progeny remain.

***

Despite creative judicial legislating, it is crystal clear that abortion does not involve war, peace, negotiation, foreign commerce, or taxation. Abortion fits squarely into the states’ sphere of objects that concern the “lives, liberties, and properties of the people.” Not being an enumerated power, the Roe Court did not have the authority to overturn the abortion laws of the states.

Far from creating a national consensus, Roe threw the states into a 48-year contentious legal battle. Even some abortion advocates eschew the injudicious method of federalizing abortion as short-circuiting a naturally evolving jurisprudence under state laws. As federal and state judges attempt to apply this Court’s precedents, a national landscape of inconsistent, inconclusive, and untenable rules have emerged. As a national policy, abortion jurisprudence is, in a word, a mess. Stubbornly holding on to unconstitutional precedent will never have a positive outcome. It is time to return abortion policy to the states where it belongs and where the democratic process can effectively work.

Less than 20 years after Roe, this Court essentially rejected Roe without overturning Roe and set up a new standard which permitted states to restrict abortion within their borders barring an “undue burden” on women. Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 874-75 (1992), another splintered opinion and holding, recognized the states’ interest in protecting prenatal life after viability but fell short of recognizing the preeminence of state power.

The courts have long recognized a “strong presumption in favor of openness as to court records. The burden of overcoming that presumption is borne by the party that seeks to seal them. The burden is a heavy one: ‘Only the most compelling reasons can justify non-disclosure of judicial records.’ Moreover, the greater the public interest in the litigation’s subject matter, the greater the showing necessary to overcome the presumption of access.”
 

Elements within the Executive Branch of the federal government, including Defendants, brought the vast powers, incomprehensible complexity, and crushing bureaucracy of the IRS to bear on groups of citizens whose only wrongdoing was their presumed dissent from the policies or ideology of the Administration. In other words, these citizens were targeted based upon their political viewpoints.
 

The IRS’ use of these criteria as a basis for heightened scrutiny was wrong and should never have occurred. It is improper for the IRS to single out groups for different treatment based on their names or ideological positions. Any entitlement to tax exemption should be based on the activities of the organization and whether they fulfill requirements of the law, not the policy positions adopted by members or the name chosen to reflect those views.
 

They [IRS staff] used names like Tea Party or Patriots and they selected cases simply because the applications had those names in the title. That was wrong, that was absolutely incorrect, insensitive, and inappropriate.

In order to understand racial inequality and slavery, it is first necessary to address whiteness

Take-for-grantedness of whiteness

Blacks are more likely than whites to:

Live below the poverty line

Be victims of homicide (6:1)

Be incarcerated (8:1)

Blacks are less likely than whites to:

Have a college education

Receive recommended medical screening tests

Receive bank approval for a housing mortgage

Own their own homes

Receive a job promotion

Do you think Affirmative Action creates and [sic] environment for “reverse discrimination?” Use CRT to support your answer.

What is the difference between desegregation versus integration? How would you apply a tenant [sic] of CRT to this idea?

Another objective is to “consider how the contemporary issues that relate to race, gender, and sexuality apply to the army and how they impact the army officer. The concepts that will be discussed in this class are essential for future military officers to understand and fully absorb.”
 

As the U.S. sets a record for illegal immigrant apprehensions along the southern border, a first-of-its- kind shelter opens in Tijuana, Mexico to accommodate a steady flow of Muslim migrants heading north via Latin America. A couple of years ago a San Diego-based group called Latina Muslim Foundation began raising funds to build the shelter “in response to the growing number of Muslim migrants south of the border,” according to a local news report. The 8,000-square-foot facility, which opened over the weekend, can accommodate “up to 150 asylum-seekers,” and will offer Muslim migrants housing, medical care, halal meals and legal services as they wait to enter the U.S. in the famously violent Mexican city that borders California.

Judicial Watch has for years reported on the increasing number of Muslim migrants—including from terrorist nations—entering the U.S. through the Mexican border and the timing of this influx could not be worse, during a record-breaking month for the U.S. Border Patrol. The latest agency figures show that more illegal immigrants—222,656—were apprehended at the southwest border in May than in any other month in history. The previous one-month record was set in March 2000, when the frontline Homeland Security agency reported 223,305 apprehensions. Additionally, federal agents have processed more than 1.5 million illegal immigrants this fiscal year. With three months till the end of the fiscal year, at the current rate the figure is sure to surpass the 2021 record of 1.7 million.

A quarter of the illegal alien encounters reported in May involved repeat offenders previously caught by federal agents this year, the latest government stats reveal. The breakdown shows that Mexicans account for the largest number of illegal border crossers in May, about 77,000, followed by Cubans (25,348), Guatemalans (21,382), Hondurans (19,491), Colombians (19,040), Nicaraguans (18,944), Haitians (10,418), Salvadorans (8,955), Brazilians (5,118), Venezuelans (5,078), Russians (3,394) and Ecuadoreans (3,045). This batch of records does not offer a breakdown that includes Muslims, but it has long been reported that the number is on the rise. Earlier this year an Arab news outlet reported that thousands of Muslims from the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa try to reach the U.S.-Mexico border every month. In the story the head of a religious immigrant organization in Brazil estimates that 20% of all people welcomed on their U.S.-bound journey in 2020 were Muslim.

In the last few years, a growing number of illegal aliens from terrorist nations—including Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh—have tried to enter the U.S. through Mexico, making the increase in Muslim asylum seekers and the effort to accommodate them in bordering Tijuana quite troublesome. In recent years, an alarming number of migrants from Bangladesh, a recruiting ground for terrorist groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Al-Qaeda Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), have been caught by federal agents along the U.S.-Mexico border. At the start of this fiscal year, which began in September, the Border Patrol encountered tens of thousands of illegal immigrants from dozens of countries, including Africa and the Middle East. In the first month alone the Border Patrol’s Del Rio Sector in Texas recorded 28,111 illegal aliens from more than 50 countries. They include Syria, Lebanon, Eritrea, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, a central Asian nation that borders Afghanistan, which is controlled by the Taliban after the abrupt exit of U.S. troops.

It is worth noting that Mexico is a hotbed of Islamic terrorism that is concentrated in the American border region. As part of an ongoing investigation into the national security threats along the southern border, Judicial Watch has reported that Islamic jihadists are training in southern border towns near American cities and have joined forces with Mexican drug cartels to infiltrate the United States. Years ago, a high-ranking Homeland Security official confirmed to Judicial Watch that Mexican drug traffickers help Islamic terrorists stationed in Mexico cross into the U.S. to explore targets for future attacks. Among the jihadists that traveled back and forth through the southern border was a Kuwaiti named Shaykh Mahmood Omar Khabir, an ISIS operative who lives in the Mexican state of Chihuahua not far from El Paso. Another was a Saudi Al Qaeda operative, Adnan G. El Shurkrjumah, wanted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) during his undetected cross-border jaunts.

Equal protection under the law is the foundation of the fight against discrimination. Here, famously, is the U.S Constitution on the issue:

“No State shall…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
 

–14th Amendment

And here is the Constitution of the State of California:

“A person may not be…denied equal protection of the laws.”

–Article One

But in California, left-wing lawmakers dominating the state legislature launched assaults on equal protection, passing two measures that mandated quotas for corporate boards. Senate Bill 826 required every publicly held corporation to have at least one director “who self-identifies her gender as a woman.” Assembly Bill 979 required corporations to have between one and three directors from “underrepresented communities,” defined as “Black, African American, Hispanic, Latino, Pacific Islander, Native American, Native Hawaiian, or Alaska Native, or [those who self-identify] as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender.”

Many California taxpayers were alarmed by the new laws. This was not an arcane fight over corporate board membership: bedrock constitutional principles were at stake, and other quota laws seemed sure to follow. Whatever happened to picking people based on qualifications such as relevant work and life experience? And as Judicial Watch attorneys would later note in two separate court cases: laws that explicitly distinguish between individuals on the grounds of racial, ethnic, or gender status, or sexual preference, are directly prohibited by the equal protection clause.

Judicial Watch joined with three California taxpayers—Robin Crest, Earl De Vires, and Judy De Vires—to fight the laws. Judicial Watch attorneys argued that the laws were unconstitutional—blatant violations of the equal protection clause of the California Constitution—and any use of taxpayer funds to enforce compliance was illegal.

Assembly Bill 979—the move to enforce racial, ethnic, and LGBTQ quotas—was rife with “stereotypes,” Judicial Watch noted. The law demeaned individuals, shunting aside “their very worth as citizens” and evaluating them according to criteria “barred to the government by history and the Constitution.” In October 2020, Judicial Watch sued to overturn the law.

“California’s government has a penchant for quotas that are brazenly unconstitutional,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton at the time. “Gender quotas and now new quotas for numerous other groups for corporate boards are slaps in the face to the core American value of equal protection under the law.”

Challenging Senate Bill 826 in a separate court proceeding, Judicial Watch attorneys noted that the law was a clear violation of California’s equal protection clause. Lawyers for the state argued that not only were the gender quotas a legitimate means of remedying discrimination, but women on boards improved corporate performance as well. Judicial Watch shot down the improved performance claim, presenting expert witness testimony that the studies of improved board performance relied on by the state were, at best, deficient and unreliable.

The courts sided with Judicial Watch.

Setting aside Assembly Bill 979, Judge Terry A. Green wrote in a 24-page opinion that the law “violates the Equal Protection Clause of the California Constitution on its face.” In a sharp rebuke, he castigated the state legislature for not protecting “the right of individuals to equal treatment.”

Judge Green wrote: “The difficulty is that the Legislature is thinking in group terms. But the California Constitution protects the right of individuals to equal treatment. Before the Legislature may require that members of one group be given certain board seats, it must first try to create neutral conditions under which qualified individuals from any group may succeed. That attempt was not made in this case.”

Judge Maureen Duffy-Lewis was equally uncompromising in her rejection of the gender quota law, Senate Bill 826, determining it “violates the Equal Protection Clause of the California Constitution.”

In her verdict, Judge Duffy-Lewis denounced the legislation. Senate Bill 826’s goal “was not to boost California’s economy, not to improve opportunities for women in the workplace … not to protect California taxpayers, public employees, pensions and retirees” — all claims made by the state at trial. It’s goal “was to achieve general equity or parity … the Legislature’s actual purpose was gender-balancing, not remedying discrimination.”

In fact, there was no discrimination. Corporations have voluntarily engaged in good-faith efforts for years to put more qualified woman and minorities on their boards. “There is no compelling governmental interest in remedying discrimination in the board selection process,” Judge Duffy-Lewis noted, “because neither the Legislature nor Defendant could identify any specific, purposeful, intentional and unlawful discrimination to be remedied.”

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton saluted the two court victories and pointed to the big issues at stake. “The radical Left’s unprecedented attacks on anti-discrimination law has suffered another stinging defeat,” he said. “Thankfully, California courts have upheld the core American value of equal protection under the law. Judicial Watch’s taxpayer clients are heroes for standing up for civil rights against the Left’s pernicious efforts to undo anti-discrimination protections. Judicial Watch’s legal team has helped protect the civil rights of every American with these successful lawsuits.”