Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 71. Sunrise is 5:22 AM and sunset 8:21 PM for 14h 58m 45s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 22% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1961, President Kennedy announces, before a special joint session of the U.S. Congress, his goal to initiate a project to put a “man on the Moon” before the end of the decade.
Many public schools across Wisconsin are considering what can and cannot be taught (or even discussed) about sexual identity. This is, of course, a topic of national discussion. In Wisconsin, a case before the Wisconsin Supreme Court may set the legally-permissible boundaries of discussion (although the debate about what should be the proper policy will surely continue despite the state’s high court ruling). Shawn Johnson reports Wisconsin Supreme Court hears arguments in lawsuit challenging Madison schools’ guidance supporting transgender students:
The Wisconsin Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday in a lawsuit challenging the Madison Metropolitan School District’s policy for supporting transgender students.
While the case deals with big issues, it could hinge on procedural questions, namely whether the conservative group behind the challenge can bring the case with anonymous plaintiffs.
The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty brought the lawsuit in February 2020 challenging MMSD’s “Guidance & Policies to Support Transgender, Non-binary & Gender-Expansive Students.”
The policy, which has been in place since 2018, states that students “will be called by their affirmed name and pronouns regardless of parent/guardian permission to change their name and gender.” The policy also states that school staff “shall not disclose any information that may reveal a student’s gender identity to others, including parents or guardians.”
WILL attorney Luke Berg told justices that this violates the constitutional rights of parents to raise their children the way they think is best, urging the court to block the entire policy.
“Let the parents decide,” Berg told justices. “For some kids, it may be right. For others, it may not. But parents know their kids best.”
But attorney Adam Prinsen, who represents the Gender Equity Association of James Madison Memorial High School, argued the district’s policy didn’t prevent parents from doing anything with their children.
“We’re talking about the school respecting a decision of a child to go by a different name or set of pronouns at school and respecting that confidentiality,” Prinsen said. “The school is not intervening in the home.”
Speculating on how the court will decide is a fool’s game. The decision the court makes, however, will likely serve for Wisconsin as legislation has in other states: as a rule for (or against) speech in public schools.
We’re not Florida, of course. We may find ourselves, however, closer to that state’s policy than we realize.
Twenty Years of Putin Playing the West in 3 Minutes: