minors

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court justices on Tuesday heard a free-speech challenge to state laws against “conversion therapy” and sounded likely to rule the measures violate the 1st Amendment.

California and more than 20 other states have adopted laws to forbid licensed counselors from urging or encouraging gay or transgender teens to change their sexual orientation or gender identity.

They were adopted in reaction to a history of dangerous and discredited practices, including treatments that induced nausea and vomiting or administered electric shocks.

Lawmakers and medical experts said these efforts to “cure” LGBTQ+ teens were cruel and ineffective and caused lasting harm.

But these “talk therapy” laws have been challenged by a number of Christian counselors who believe they can help young people who want to talk about their feelings and their sexual identity.

The court on Tuesday heard an appeal from Kaley Chiles, a counselor from Colorado Springs, Colo. She says she is an evangelical Christian, but does not seek to “cure” young people of a same-sex attraction or change their gender identity.

But she sued, alleging the state law seeks to “censor” her conversations and threatens her with punishment.

She lost before a federal judge and a U.S. appeals court, both of whom said the state has the authority to regulate the practice of medicine and to prevent substandard healthcare.

But the justices, both conservative and liberal, said the Colorado law appeared to violate the 1st Amendment.

“What’s being regulated here is pure speech,” said Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

Moreover, he said, the state law enforces a double standard. It would punish a licensed counselor who agrees to talk to a teenage client who wants to “overcome same-sex attractions,” but not if she encourages the teen to accept or affirm those attractions.

Justice Elena Kagan said she too saw a potential 1st Amendment violation. And Justice Sonia Sotomayor said there was less evidence that talk therapy alone has caused real harm.

In defense of the law, Colorado state solicitor Shannon Stevenson said the law applies only to licensed counselors. It does not extend to others, including religious ministers.

The practice of medical care “is a heavily regulated area. A doctor doesn’t have a 1st Amendment right to give wrong advice to patients,” she said.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett and others suggested counselors could still face a medical malpractice lawsuit, even if the court rules the state law violates the 1st Amendment.

TUCSON — A federal judge in Arizona temporarily blocked the Trump administration from removing dozens of Guatemalan and Honduran children living in shelters or foster care after coming to the U.S. alone, according to a decision Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Rosemary Márquez in Tucson extended until at least Sept. 26 a temporary restraining issued over the Labor Day weekend. Márquez raised concern over whether the government had arranged for any of the children’s parents or legal guardians in Guatemala to take custody of them.

Laura Belous, attorney for the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, which represents the children, said in court that the minors had expressed no desire to be repatriated to their native Guatemala and Honduras amid concerns they could face neglect, possible child trafficking or hardships associated with individual medical conditions.

Lawyers for the children said that their clients have said they fear going home, and that the government is not following laws designed to protect migrant children.

A legal aid group filed a lawsuit in Arizona on behalf of 57 Guatemalan children and 12 from Honduras between the ages of 3 and 17.

Denise Ann Faulk, an assistant U.S. attorney under the Trump administration, emphasized that the child repatriations were negotiated at high diplomatic levels and would avoid lengthy prohibitions on returning to the U.S.

Nearly all the children were in the custody of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement and living at shelters in the Phoenix and Tucson areas. Similar lawsuits filed in Illinois and Washington seek to stop the government from removing the children.

The Arizona lawsuit demands that the government grant the children their right to present their cases to an immigration judge, to have access to legal counsel and to be placed in the least restrictive setting that is in their best interest.

The Trump administration has argued it is acting in the best interest of the children by trying to reunite them with their families at the behest of the Guatemalan government. After Guatemalan officials toured U.S. detention facilities, the government said that it was “very concerned” and that it would take children who wanted to return voluntarily.

Children began crossing the border alone in large numbers in 2014, peaking at 152,060 in the 2022 fiscal year. July’s arrest tally translates to an annual clip of 5,712 arrests, reflecting how illegal crossings have dropped to their lowest levels in six decades.

Guatemalans accounted for 32% of residents at government-run holding facilities last year, followed by Hondurans, Mexicans and Salvadorans. A 2008 law requires children to appear before an immigration judge with an opportunity to pursue asylum, unless they are from Canada and Mexico. The vast majority are released from shelters to parents, legal guardians or immediate family while their cases wind through court.

The Arizona lawsuit was amended to include 12 children from Honduras who have expressed to an Arizona legal aid group that they do not want to return to Honduras, as well as four additional children from Guatemala who have come into government custody in Arizona since the lawsuit was initially filed Aug. 30.

Judge Márquez said she found it “frightening” that U.S. officials may not have coordinated with the children’s parents. She also expressed concern that the government was denying the children access to review by an experienced immigration judge, and noted that legal representatives for the children were notified of preparations for child departures with little notice, late at night.

“On a practical matter, it just seems that a lot of these things that [the Office of Refugee Resettlement] has taken upon themselves to do — such as screening and making judicial determinations that should be made by an immigration judge with expertise and time to meet with a lawyer and meet with a child — is just surpassed by saying ‘we’re reuniting them’” with parents, Márquez said in court as she pressed Faulk for more information.

Billeaud and Lee write for the Associated Press.

District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan’s emergency order follows a legal complaint brought on behalf of 10 children.

A United States judge has blocked the administration of US President Donald Trump from deporting unaccompanied Guatemalan children for at least the next two weeks, in the government’s ongoing hardline anti-immigration push.

The order, which was issued on Sunday in response to a complaint filed by a pro-immigrant advocacy group, came as some Guatemalan children were reportedly already put onto planes at a Texas airport and huddled inside.

District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan’s emergency decree followed a petition from the National Immigration Law Center in relation to 10 children aged between 10 and 17.

After initially preventing the deportation of the group, Sooknanan, who is based in Washington, DC, widened the order to include all Guatemalan children who had reached the US without a parent or guardian.

Sooknanan also brought forward a hearing about the issue on Sunday due to reports that some of the children were in the process of being removed from the US during the country’s Labor Day holiday weekend.

“I do not want there to be any ambiguity,” the judge said on Sunday, noting that her decision applied broadly to unaccompanied Guatemalan minors.

The flurry of legal activity came days after reports in the US media that the Trump administration was preparing to start child deportations to Guatemala this weekend, following an agreement with the Central American country.

Such a move would constitute a “clear violation of the unambiguous protections that Congress has provided them as vulnerable children”, according to the National Immigration Law Center’s legal challenge.

Although the children should be under the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the US government was set on “illegally transferring them to Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody to put them on flights to Guatemala, where they may face abuse, neglect, persecution, or torture”, the complaint added.

On Friday, Guatemala’s Foreign Minister Carlos Martinez confirmed that his country was willing to receive hundreds of children who were in the US.

Since the start of his second presidential term in January, Trump has attempted to start deporting refugees and immigrants en masse.

His administration’s anti-immigration actions, which have included sending hundreds of people to a notorious prison in El Salvador, have been beset by legal difficulties.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the most high-profile face of the Trump administration’s crackdown and a Salvadoran man legally residing in the US state of Maryland, was mistakenly deported in March. He was severely beaten and subjected to psychological torture in prison there, his lawyers say.

Abrego Garcia now wishes to seek asylum in the US. His lawyers told a judge in recent days that he fears further persecution and torture should the Trump administration succeed in deporting him to Uganda, as it plans to do.

Nigeria’s Lost Children – The Crisis of Out-of-Sch | RSS.com

On The Crisis Room, we’re following insecurity trends across Nigeria.

According to UNICEF, Nigeria has the highest number of out-of-school children in the world, an estimated 20 million. That’s one in every ten children globally.

Many of them roam the streets of towns and major cities without guardianship or structured education. And behind those numbers are cycles of neglect, forced labour, trafficking, and recruitment into armed groups.

It’s a very quiet crisis, but one with consequences that could worsen insecurity, poverty, and instability for generations.

Today, we’ll hear from experts and advocates on how Nigeria got here and what it will take to break the cycle.

Hosts: Salma and Salim

Guests: Aliyu Dahiru, Dr Labo, Philip Dimka, Mohammed Sabo Keana,

Audio producer: Anthony Asemota

Executive producer: Ahmad Salkida

Aug. 13 (UPI) — A federal appeals court has ruled that Arkansas may enforce its ban on minors receiving gender-affirming care, overturning a lower court’s decision that found the law unconstitutional.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit issued its ruling Tuesday, stating the lower court erred in June 2023 when it struck down Arkansas’ Save Adolescents From Experimentation Act for violating the First Amendment and both the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and Due Process Clause.

It said the lower court’s ruling was incongruent with a recent Supreme Court decision that upheld Tennessee’s gender-affirming care ban for minors.

“Because the district court rested its permanent injunction on incorrect conclusions of law, it abused its discretion,” the appeals court ruled.

Arkansas’ Republican attorney general, Tim Griffin, celebrated the ruling.

“I applaud the court’s decision recognizing that Arkansas has a compelling interest in protecting the physical and psychological health of children and am pleased that children in Arkansas will be protected from risky, experimental procedures with lifelong consequences,” he said in a statement.

Gender-affirming care includes a range of therapies, from psychological, behavioral and medical interventions with surgeries for minors being exceedingly rare. The medical practice has been endorsed by every medical association.

Despite the evidence and the support of the medical community, Republicans and conservatives, often with the use of misinformation, have been targeting gender-affirming care amid a larger push threatening the rights of the LGBTQ community.

Arkansas passed the SAVE Act in 2021, but then-Gov. Asa Hutchinson vetoed it that same year, calling the ban a “product of the cultural war in America” that would interfere with the doctor-patient relationship. The GOP-majority legislature then overrode his veto, making Arkansas the first state to pass a bill banning gender-affirming care for minors in the United States.

Four transgender minors and their parents then challenged the law, saying it violated their rights, resulting in the 2023 ruling overturning the ban, which marked a victory in the fight for LGBTQ healthcare until Tuesday.

“This is a tragically unjust result for transgender Arkansans, their doctors and their families,” Holly Dickson, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, said in a statement.

“As we and our clients consider our next steps, we want transgender Arkansans to know they are far from alone and we remain as determined as ever to secure their right to safety, dignity and equal access to the healthcare they need.”

The ruling comes as Republicans seeking to restrict transgender healthcare have gained a support in the White House with President Donald Trump who has implemented several federal policies that align with their efforts.

On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order making it federal policy that there are only two genders, male and female, both of which were determined at “conception.” He has also banned transgender Americans from the military and has sought to bar transgender athletes from competing on teams and in competitions that align with their gender identity.

Twenty-six states and the territory of Puerto Rico have banned gender-affirming care for minors, according to the Movement Advancement Project.

Two Palestinian teenage boys have been killed by Israeli forces in the town of al-Khader, south of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, according to the Wafa news agency, in the latest deadly violence in the territory continuing in tandem with Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

The bodies of 15-year-old Ahmad Ali Asaad Ashira al-Salah and 17-year-old Muhammad Khaled Alian Issa, who were killed at dawn, were withheld by the Israeli army, the report said, adding that two more children were also injured in the gunfire.

The deadly incident came as Israeli forces arrested at least 25 Palestinians in multiple raids across the occupied West Bank, according to Wafa.

The arrests include 10 Palestinians in the town of Beit Ummar, north of Hebron; two in the town of Idhna, west of Hebron; three in the town of Dura al-Qari, north of Ramallah; one in the city of Ramallah; five in the village of al-Mazraa ash-Sharqiya, east of Ramallah; and four in the city of Nablus.

‘Making Palestinian lives impossible’

Since the start of the war on Gaza, Israeli violence in the occupied West Bank has escalated dramatically, with near-daily reports of mass arrests, killings and Israeli settler attacks, often supported by Israeli soldiers. Settlers have been rampaging with impunity, attacking and killing Palestinian civilians and burning their properties and olive groves.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), at least 948 Palestinians have been killed in the territory by Israeli soldiers since October 7, 2023. Of that figure, at least 204 are children.

Meanwhile, from the beginning of 2024 until the end of June 2025, more than 2,200 Israeli settler attacks were reported, resulting in more than 5,200 Palestinian injuries, according to OCHA figures. In that same period, nearly 36,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced across the occupied West Bank due to Israeli military operations, settler violence or home demolitions carried out by the Israeli government.

The Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank is part of the Israeli government’s strategy for preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state, according to Amjad Abu El Ezz, a lecturer of international relations at the Arab American University.

The increased number of killings, and the destruction of Palestinian homes and vehicles by Israeli settlers in coordination with the Israeli army, aim to encourage Palestinians to leave their land, Abu El Ezz told Al Jazeera from Ramallah.

Israel is weakening the governing Palestinian Authority, “making Palestinian lives impossible”, while at the same time “building Israeli facts on the ground” to prevent the Palestinians from building their own state, he added.

“We are talking about more than 700,000 Israeli settlers. They have weapons, they are acting as an army in parallel to the Israeli army,” Abu El Ezz said.

On Wednesday, Israel’s parliament approved a symbolic measure calling for the annexation of the occupied West Bank.

Knesset lawmakers voted 71-13 in favour of the motion on Wednesday, a non-binding vote which calls for “applying Israeli sovereignty to Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley” – the Israeli terms for the area.

The motion, advanced by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, is declarative and has no direct legal implications, though it could place the issue of annexation on the agenda of future debates in the parliament.

The Palestinian Mujahideen Movement has called the Israeli parliament’s non-binding vote on the annexation of the occupied West Bank a “dangerous escalation”.

In a statement on Telegram, the group said the move was a “clear disregard for the international community” and a way for Israel to implement “its criminal plans targeting the land of Palestine and its people”.

The West Bank, along with the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, has been under Israeli occupation since 1967. Since then, Israeli settlements have expanded exponentially, despite being illegal under international law and, in the case of settlement outposts, Israeli law.

July 22 (UPI) — The Justice Department has dismissed a Biden-era lawsuit challenging Tennessee’s law banning gender-affirming care for minors, as the Trump administration continues to attack the rights and medical care of transgender Americans.

Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that her department’s Civil Rights Division dismissed the lawsuit in a statement Monday that said the Justice Department “does not believe challenging Tennessee’s law serves the public interest.”

Gender-affirming care includes a range of therapies, including psychological, behavioral and medical interventions, with surgeries for minors being exceedingly rare. According to a recent Harvard study, cisgender minors and adults were far more likely to undergo analogous gender-affirming surgeries than their transgender counterparts.

Every major American medical association supports gender-affirming care for both adults and minors, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association, the largest national medical association.

Despite the support of the medical community and evidence of its efficacy, gender-affirming care and this marginalized community continue to be targeted by conservatives and Republicans with legislation.

Tennessee enacted Senate Bill 1 in March 2023 to prohibit healthcare professionals from prescribing puberty blockers or hormones to minors to treat gender dysphoria, which attracted a lawsuit from the Justice Department under President Joe Biden, arguing the law violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, as all other minors continued to have access to the same procedures and treatments.

The conservative movement targeting the healthcare of transgender minors has since gained a supporter in the White House with the re-election of President Donald Trump.

Since returning to power, Trump has implemented an agenda targeting transgender Americans, including directing the federal government to recognize only two sexes determined at “conception,” restricting gender-affirming care for youth and banning transgender Americans from the military.

Last month, the conservative-leaning Supreme Court ruled 6-3 against the Biden administration’s complaint to overturn the Tennessee law. The ruling fell along ideological lines, with the conservative justices voting for the law to stand. The liberal justices dissented.

“By retreating from meaningful review exactly where it matters most, the Court abandons transgender children and their families to political whims,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in her dissent.

“Tennessee’s ban applies no matter what a minor’s parents and doctors think, with no regard for the severity of the minor’s mental health conditions or the extent to which treatment is medically necessary for an individual child.”

Bondi on Monday said the Supreme Court made “the right decision.” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said that by dismissing the lawsuit, they “undid one of the injustices the Biden administration inflicted upon the country.”

July 3 (UPI) — Two minors were charged Thursday in connection with a shooting at a shopping center in Georgia.

Police in Savannah have confirmed two juveniles have been charged with possession of a firearm under the age of 18, but no arrests have been made.

Chatham County District Attorney Shalena Cook Jones said in a press conference Thursday that she “is sending a specific message to each and every person involved in the shooting yesterday. We will find you, we will see you, we will prosecute you, to the fullest extent of the law.”

Gunfire broke out Wednesday at the Oglethorpe Mall around 5:45 p.m. The mall announced on its website Thursday that it will remain closed for the day, although select stores may be open. A related police investigation remains active at the mall.

The two people charged in the case are among three who have been hospitalized with non-life-threatening gunshot wounds. Seven people were injured in total as a result of the incident.

Chatham Area Transit Authority bus service had been suspended to the mall but announced at approximately 11 a.m. EDT Thursday that service has been restored.

Terrance “T.A.” Dixon, once a hype man to rapper Fat Joe, has sued his former employer for $20 million, making some allegations that might blend right in at Sean “Diddy” Combs’ RICO and sex-trafficking trial.

The federal lawsuit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York and reviewed by The Times, alleges that the rapper underpaid Dixon, cut him out of promised pay for contributing to album tracks, defrauded authorities about his income, ditched Dixon in foreign countries without money or transportation home and is running a criminal organization built on intimidation and violence.

The lawsuit alleges that Fat Joe forced the hype man — a sort of backing vocalist who pumps up the audience — into approximately 4,000 sex acts with women in front of him and his crew.

The 54-year-old rapper, born Joseph Antonio Cartagena, is also accused of having sexual relationships with girls who were 15 and 16. The allegations go back to when the rapper was in his late 30s, the lawsuit says. Fat Joe’s song “She’s My Mama,” which has graphically sexual lyrics, was based on what is alleged to have happened with him and one of the girls in real life, the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit states that Dixon’s role over about 16 years was more than that of the usual hype man. He “consistently” had duties that included co-writing lyrics, structuring hooks, recording background vocals, performing at more than 200 live shows as Fat Joe’s primary onstage counterpart and managing travel logistics, including equipment transport, security and emergency arrangements. The complaint alleges that Dixon also acted as Joe’s bodyguard and handler during tours.

According to the filing, Dixon wrote or co-wrote tracks including “Congratulations,” “Money Over Bitches,” “Ice Cream,” “Cupcake,” “Blackout,” “Dirty Diana,” “Porn Star,” “Okay Okay,”“No Problems,” a version of “All the Way Up,” “300 Brolic,” “All I Do Is Win (Remix verse),” “Red Café (Remix),” “Winding on Me,” “Cocababy” and “Get It for Life.”

The complaint alleges that Dixon was not properly paid for his efforts, even though he says he was promised certain ownership percentages and documented credit on songs that Fat Joe released commercially. Dixon, who left Fat Joe’s team in 2020, was unable to obtain certain evidence of wrongdoing until a person named as “Accountant Doe” came forward last year with information, the lawsuit says.

Fat Joe “exercised sole control over contracts, budgets, tour management, licensing, and credit attribution and intentionally omitted Plaintiff’s name from liner notes, publishing registrations, and royalty structures, despite Plaintiff’s direct contributions to these works’ creative and commercial success,” the complaint says.

Joe Tacopina, an attorney for Fat Joe, called the lawsuit “a blatant attack of retaliation” and labeled the allegations “complete fabrications” that his client denies in a statement to Variety. Retaliation referred to the slander lawsuit that the rapper filed against Dixon in April after the former hype man accused him on social media of flying a 16-year-old across state lines for sex.

Dixon’s attorney, Tyrone Blackburn, is also representing producer Lil Rod (Rodney Jones) in his $30-million federal lawsuit filed last year against Sean “Diddy” Combs and others in Combs’ orbit, in which Lil Rod alleged sexual harassment and sexual assault. A judge tossed out a majority of Lil Rod’s allegations against Combs in late March.

Both lawsuits include trigger warnings in bright red type ahead of the allegations — something not often seen in such documents.

“Fat Joe is Sean Combs minus the Tusi [pink cocaine],” Blackburn said in a statement to the Independent. “He learned nothing from his 2013 federal conviction,” the attorney added, referencing Fat Joe’s four-month sentence and $15,000 fine in a plea deal for failure to file a tax return in multiple years on more than $3.3 million in income.

In addition to Fat Joe, defendants in the new lawsuit include Peter “Pistol Pete” Torres, Richard “Rich Player” Jospitre, Erica Juliana Moreira and several companies —including Roc Nation — that are affiliated with the rapper. Dixon is asking for a jury trial.

SACRAMENTO — Assembly Democrats walked back opposition to a controversial bill that would increase the penalty for soliciting a minor aged 16 or 17, a change that comes after they faced a barrage of criticism from Republicans and a rebuke from Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The new amendments to the legislation, AB 379, would allow prosecutors to file felony charges against adults who solicit sex from a 16- or 17-year-old. If the accused is three years older than the minor, they can be charged with a felony. If the offender is within three years of the minor, the charge is a misdemeanor.

The bill will now include a state grant program to help streamline prosecution in human trafficking and sex trafficking cases, and a support fund for survivors, partially funded by increased fines for businesses that ignore or aid in human trafficking.

Current law allows the offense of soliciting a minor under 16 for sex to be punishable as a misdemeanor or a felony on the first offense and as a felony on subsequent offenses.

Assemblymember Maggy Krell (D-Sacramento), authored AB 379 to extend the same punishment to those who solicited 16- and 17- year-olds. Last week, the Democratic-led Assembly approved an amendment that removed that provision, which Krell opposed.

On Tuesday, Krell released a statement supporting the Democratic leadership’s new changes.

“I’m looking at this from a prosecutor’s standpoint — this bill strengthens California law and gives us the felony hammer to prosecute the creeps that are preying on teenagers,” she said in a statement.

Krell temporarily allied herself with Republicans last week when she was given two options — amend the bill without the increased felony charges, or let it die in committee. Democrats defended the amendment despite comments from Newsom, who said that anyone who solicits a minor should be charged with a felony.

The bill, in its amended form, is still under consideration in the Assembly.