🏳️🌈🏺Court in review part 2
🏳️🌈🏺 2-Gay in History 🏺🏳️🌈
2025 Year in Review — Post 2
As numerous laws and administration actions limit our rights, the court is defined by inaction.
• Supreme Court declines multiple LGBTQ emergency appeals
→ Lower-court rulings take effect without national review. Harm allowed to spread by default
[SCOTUS denials | e.g. L.W. v. Skrmetti, emergency appeal; Doe v. Thornbury]
•Supreme Court of the United States increasingly resolves LGBTQ cases through silence rather than opinion
→ constitutional rights left in limbo
[Shadow docket pattern | e.g. trans care stays, drag injunction denials]
• Federal courts defer to executive agencies on “biological sex” definitions
→ passport gender markers denied
[Orr v Trump. Bostock-limiting lower-court rulings]
• Courts uphold “parental rights”
→ Student privacy, pronoun usage & safety treated as discretionary interests.
[Education cases | Parents Defending Education v. DOE ]
• Challenges to drag restrictions fail on procedural grounds.
→ Courts avoid speech questions while bans continues in states
[Drag litigation | Friends of George’s v. Tennessee]
• Religious-liberty claims expand through narrow rulings
→ Service denial normalized in housing, adoption, and services for LGBTQ people
[Free Exercise cases | post-303 Creative litigation]
• Marriage equality remains formally intact
→ Kim Davis appeal denied, right persist without remedies especially for gay divorce
[clerk & benefits disputes]
• Trans healthcare bans advance through fragmented rulings
→ Courts defer to legislatures on “medical uncertainty,” ignoring medical consensus
[L.W. v. Skrmetti merits track; Eknes-Tucker progeny]
• Trans military ban survives early challenges
→ “National security” invoked to block scrutiny, many service members inactive awaiting appeals
[Military deference | Doe v. Trump renewed litigation ]
• Asylum claims based on sexual orientation & gender identity face higher evidentiary bars
→ Courts accept skepticism without redefining asylum law, allowing administrative denials
[Immigration appeals | LGBTQ credible-fear denials]
