UNBIASED - April 22, 2024: New Title IX Rule, Columbia Goes Virtual Amid Protests, Supreme Court Hears Homeless Encampments Ban Case, House Passes Foreign Aid Bills, and More.

Episode Date: April 22, 2024

1. Weekend Recap: Biden Releases New Title IX Rule (0:41)2. Weekend Recap: House Passes Foreign Aid and Sanctions Bills (6:05)3. Opening Statements Begin in Trump's Hush Money Case (8:24)4. Columbia University Announces Virtual Classes Among Protests and Passover (12:03)5. Supreme Court Hears Homelessness Case: City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson (13:11)Get EXCLUSIVE, unbiased content on Patreon.Watch this episode on YouTube.Follow Jordan on Instagram and TikTok.All sources for this episode can be found here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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call the Conax Ontario helpline at 1-866-531-2600. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Welcome back to Unbiased, your favorite source of unbiased news and legal analysis. Welcome back to Unbiased. Today is Monday, April 22nd. I'm another year older since I last spoke to you. It's also Earth Day, and this is your daily news rundown. Of course, if you love the unbiased approach that this episode provides, you feel more informed after listening, please go ahead and leave my show a review on whatever platform you listen, share the show with your friends. And if you're watching on YouTube, please go ahead and hit that thumbs up button and subscribe to my channel if you haven't already. Thank you so much. Without further ado, let's get into today's stories.

We're going to start with a weekend recap before we get into the news from today. So starting with the Biden administration releasing a new set of rules on Friday, which adds to Title IX, it'll take effect August 1st in time for the upcoming school year, and it effectively gives more protections to LGBTQ students, students that are parents, pregnant students, as well as it sets new standards for sexual misconduct cases. So let's talk about it. First, what is Title IX? Title IX is a decades-old civil rights law. It was first enacted in 1972. It prohibits sex discrimination against people at public schools, colleges, educational agencies, as well as universities that receive federal funding.

It doesn't just offer protection to students, but also employees as well. And over the years, Title IX has been modified and interpreted in various ways. So as an example, under the Obama administration in 2016, the Department of Education published guidance that detailed how Title IX protects transgender students specifically. And guidance is a little bit different than a final rule in that a final rule is binding. So then following that 2016 guidance in 2017, Betsy DeVos comes in as the education secretary and issues additional guidance as to how colleges respond to sexual misconduct. So under this guidance, colleges had more flexibility with the evidentiary standard that they used in sexual misconduct cases and were also given the ability to use

more informal resolutions for these cases, such as mediation. Then in 2020, under the Trump administration and also under DeVos, she was still education secretary, a new final rule is released that said in part that colleges had to hold live hearings to adjudicate sexual misconduct cases. And in those hearings, the accuser and the accused were able to cross-examine each other through an advisor. And the argument for this was that under the Obama administration's guidance, the accused were denied due process. So this was the Trump administration's way of kind of fixing that. Then more recently in 2020, when Biden took office, he signed an executive order, which required the education department to evaluate Trump's Title IX rule.

And by the way, while running, President Biden had pledged to undo Trump's rule, right? So this really isn't a surprise that he issued this final rule. But it was at that point that the Biden administration got to work on its own final rule. So we got a draft rule last year that had to go through a period of public comment before it was ultimately finalized. And that finalized rule is what was just released on Friday. So here are some of the main changes under President Biden's new final rule. For one, the new rule eases the burden of proof in sexual misconduct cases by no longer requiring those live hearings or cross-examinations that were imposed under the Trump administration. So schools can hold live hearings, but they don't have to. And instead of

live hearings, schools can actually opt to hold individual meetings and separate meetings with not only the accuser and the accused, but also witnesses. And in those meetings, they would question all of the parties involved to sort of assess credibility. In addition to that, this new rule gives the accusers a solidified right to, quote, prompt and equitable grievance procedures. So that kind of, you know, this all kind of ties together. And the reason for this change is because the Biden administration has spoken out in the past about the heightened requirements that were in place previously, essentially forcing an accuser to relive the abuse that they went through. And the Biden administration wanted to change that by sort of easing these burdens and easing the way that colleges went about investigating.

The second most notable change is that the rule clarifies what type of sex discrimination is prohibited under Title IX. So the rule specifically says that Title IX prohibits sex discrimination in the form of quid pro quo harassment, hostile environment harassment, sexual assault, dating violence, domestic violence, and stalking. The rule also then clarifies that sex discrimination includes discrimination on the basis of sex stereotypes, sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity. So how would this look in the real world? Maybe a teacher or a professor refuses to call a student by their preferred pronouns, that can now be in violation of Title IX. Whereas previously, Title IX didn't officially include sexual orientation and gender identity

under a final rule. It was just merely guidance. One thing that the Biden administration did not rule on, though, even though it was expected, is whether a transgender or whether transgender and non-binary students can participate on sports teams that align with their preferred gender. You may remember almost a year ago, almost exactly a year ago, the administration released a proposed rule that said schools and colleges could not ban non-binary and transgender students from sports teams. But that proposal was clearly

never finalized. It did not make it into this final rule that was released on Friday. Now, a senior administration official did say that the process is still ongoing, but it's very possible that the administration wanted to hold off on this particular issue during an election year. So that's what's going on with Title IX. Now on Saturday, the House passed four foreign aid bills, which provide assistance for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, and impose sanctions on Iran and do a couple of things with Russia and TikTok, which we'll talk about. The vote for Ukraine's assistance was 311 to 112. The vote for Israel's assistance was 366 to 58. The vote for Taiwan's assistance was 385 to 34. And the vote on the sanctions bill was 360 to 58. As you can tell

by those numbers, Taiwan had the most support. Israel and the foreign adversary bill weren't far behind. And then the Ukraine bill had the least amount of support, but still considered to be relatively bipartisan. From here, the legislation will be combined into one amendment sent to the Senate, which will hold a vote tomorrow. The Senate is expected to pass it, and President Biden is expected to sign it into law. And again, for those that may have missed my episode last week, where I spoke a little bit about this foreign aid package. The assistance for Ukraine is $60 billion. For Israel, it's $26 billion. And Taiwan will get a little more than $8 billion. Now, that fourth bill, which I have called a foreign adversary bill, what it does is it gives ByteDance,

TikTok's parent company, nine months to sell TikTok to a non-foreign adversary entity. It also places sanctions on ports and refineries that receive and process Iranian oil. It places sanctions on anyone involved in activity covered under the UN missile embargo in Iran. It further restricts the export of goods and technology of U.S. origin to Iran. And it also empowers the executive branch of the federal government to seize and transfer frozen Russian assets held in the United States to Ukraine. So that's what the foreign adversary bill is all about. Now, one thing I do want to clear up before we move on to the next story is that last week I said this bill gives ByteDance a year to sell TikTok. The reason I said that is because if this bill is signed into law, and at some point over the next nine months, ByteDance shows some sort of progress towards a

sale, President Biden can then actually extend the deadline for ByteDance to sell by another three months, which would put the official sale deadline at a year from enactment. So now that we have recapped the weekend, let's move on to some news from today. Opening statements started today in Trump's hush money trial, which means that the trial is now officially underway following jury selection last week. Technically, the trial was underway last week, but jury selection took up the whole week. So today started opening statements and witness testimony and all of that. Now, if you do want to hear more

about each of the 12 jurors that are seated for this trial, I did post a video to Patreon on Friday giving a little biography about each juror. Obviously not their names or anything, but I talked a little bit about each one and then also when alternate jurors come into play under state law as well.

So you can find the link to that video in this episode description, or just head to patreon.com, search Jordan is my lawyer, and my page should come up. So prior to opening statements today, Judge Merchant ruled on one outstanding matter, which was which of Trump's cases, past cases, past actions can come in during testimony. So before calling in the jury, Judge Merchant ruled that if Trump takes the stand in this case, prosecutors are allowed to question him about the recent civil fraud verdict out of New York. Prosecutors can also ask him about the two violations of Judge Engeron's gag order. They can ask about the E. Jean Carroll verdicts, and they can also ask

about the settlement Trump reached with the New York Attorney General that led to the dissolution of the Donald J. Trump Foundation. On the flip side, Judge Merchant ruled that prosecutors cannot ask Trump about the 2022 Trump Organization tax fraud conviction or a previous ruling where a judge sanctioned Trump for filing a frivolous lawsuit against Hillary Clinton. So the prosecution had asked to bring up all of those things, and Judge Merchant ruled accordingly today. So from here, here's how the trial works at a glance. Opening statements by each party are done first. Those happened today. After opening statements, the prosecution calls its witnesses. Each of the prosecution's witnesses can be

cross-examined by the defense. And then once the prosecution has called all of its witnesses, the defense will put on their own witnesses. Those witnesses can then be cross-examined by the prosecution. And once the defense exhausts its witness list, the parties will make their closing statements and the jury will start deliberating. So that's what we can expect moving forward. So the prosecutor started opening statements this morning by saying in part, quote, this case is about a criminal conspiracy and a cover up. The defendant, Donald Trump, orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election.

Then he covered up that criminal conspiracy by lying in his New York business records over and over and over again. End quote. The defense, on the other hand, opened by saying in part, quote, President Trump is innocent. President Trump did not commit any crimes. The 34 counts, ladies and gentlemen, are really just pieces of paper. You'll learn that President Trump has nothing to do with any of the 34 pieces of paper, except that he signed the checks. I have a spoiler alert. There's nothing wrong with trying to influence an election. It's called democracy. End quote. So as I said, following opening statements, the prosecution's witnesses will start taking the stand. The first and only witness called today

before the jury was sent home around noon was David Pecker, who was previously the chairman of American Media, which publishes the National Enquirer. So trial will continue on tomorrow. And the reason they're leaving early is because of Passover. The judge had said from the beginning that the schedule would work around the Passover holiday. Speaking of Passover, Columbia University's president said in a statement today that all classes will be virtual today as Passover begins. This announcement comes after five days of on-campus protests against the war in Gaza, calls for the university to divest from corporations that profit from the war,

and calls for the university to sever academic ties to Israeli universities and programs. The protest started on Wednesday of last week as Colombia's president testified before the House Committee on Education and Workforce about anti-Semitism on Colombia's campus. Since then, Jewish students on campus say they've been living in fear, and they believe that many of the chants by these protesters are anti-Semitic. Since Wednesday, more than 100 people have been arrested, both on and around Columbia's campus in Upper Manhattan, and as of today, students were still camping out in protest on one of the campus lawns. It is not clear how long classes will remain virtual,

but the school is currently trying to figure out what to do, and the Jewish holiday of Passover lasts seven days. So we will see how long this sort of virtual class schedule lasts. As today's final story, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in City of Grants Pass, Oregon versus Johnson today. This case is being called the most important homelessness case before the Supreme Court in decades, and it deals with how some cities address their homelessness problem. So the question for the court in this case is whether ordinances that ban camping on public property can be applied to homeless people, or whether applying said bans to homeless people constitutes cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment, given their involuntary homeless status.

Now, this is a question that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has grappled with for years. And the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, just for clarification purposes, has jurisdiction over California, Oregon, Washington State, Nevada, Montana, Idaho, and Arizona. So all of its decisions affect those states. But more recently, in 2018, the Ninth Circuit heard a case called Martin v. City of Boise. And in that case, the Ninth Circuit held that the Eighth Amendment bars the imposition of criminal penalties for sleeping outside by people who are homeless and don't have access to shelter. Shortly after that ruling, three homeless individuals from Grants Pass, Oregon,

went to court to challenge the ordinance in their city. And what happened is the district court ruled in favor of the homeless and issued an injunction against the city of Grants Pass only as to the ordinance banning sleeping with a blanket on the street. In other words, the district court said that the city could ban the use of tents in public parks, it could ban public defecation, it could ban, you know, it could ban public urination, it could even limit the amount of bedding material used per individual, but it could not punish a homeless person for sleeping with a blanket on public property because that is necessary to survive cold nights when shelter is unavailable. That

violates the Eighth Amendment. That is what the district court said. So the city appealed, and on appeal, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's injunction. And that's when the city of Grants Pass took this case to the Supreme Court, and here we are. So the issue before the justices is really the question of whether sleeping with a blanket on public property can be banned, because bigger issue of homeless encampments just to sort of solve it, but we'll get into that in a little bit. Before I tell you what the arguments are on both sides, what the Eighth Amendment says is this. It says, Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual

punishments inflicted. In relying on the text of the Eighth Amendment, the city, who wants to be able to enforce these public camping bans on the homeless people, argued that the Eighth Amendment cannot reasonably apply to the enforcement of camping bans on the homeless. And they say, one, the cruel and unusual punishments clause prohibits methods of punishment that inflict unnecessary pain and have since become outdated methods of punishment. Furthermore, excessive fines are those that go well beyond the scope of what a reasonable monetary fine would be. But here the city says there's nothing cruel and unusual about or excessive about a small fine for violating commonplace

restrictions or a short time in jail for failing to pay the reasonable fine. In other words, the city says modest punishments like fines and short jail sentences are not cruel and unusual so as to warrant application of the Eighth Amendment. Part two of the city's argument is that without the ability to act, without the ability to punish the homeless for camping out on public properties through fines and jail sentences, these encampments have led to increased crime, fires, diseases, environmental harm, record levels of drug overdoses and deaths on public streets, and that if the Supreme Court sides with the Ninth Circuit, it will, quote, further hamstring cities at the worst possible time, end quote. The homeless, on the other hand, argue that because there are no homeless

shelters in Grants Pass, most of the city's involuntary homeless residents have no choice but to sleep outside. So the city's ban effectively means that homeless people cannot live in Grants Pass without being punished. And consequently, the city's ordinance effectively criminalizes the existence of homeless people in the city. Robinson, where the Supreme Court was asked whether a defendant's conviction for merely having an addiction to narcotics was a violation under the Eighth Amendment. And the court said yes. And the court held that the Eighth Amendment prohibits punishing people for having involuntary status. So in this case, the homeless people argue the same thing. They say they're being punished simply for their involuntary status of being homeless. And as the Supreme Court has held, that is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. So in oral arguments today,

the justices were really focused on the sleeping with a blanket prohibition because, as I said, that's really the only issue left to litigate in this case. But when it comes time to make a decision, the justices can be as narrow or as broad as they'd like. With that said, I think this case will go in the homeless individual's favor. That's just the way it seemed at oral arguments. And again, you know, whether the court decides to go further and say what a local ordinance or a state law can and cannot ban when it comes to homeless people, we'll have to see. But based on what I heard at oral arguments, it does seem likely that the majority of justices will say that a ban on sleeping on public property is unconstitutional. It's a big week for the Supreme Court because don't forget, the justices are also hearing oral arguments in Trump's presidential immunity case on Thursday,

so stay tuned for my update on that. And today, the justices said that they would take up what's been called the ghost guns case in their fall term. So what that means is that the court will decide whether a 2022 ATF rule, which requires background checks and serialization for sales of weapons kits, is constitutional. That is what I have for you today. Thank you so much for being here. Have a great night and I will talk to you tomorrow.