HRC rips NE AG Doug Peterson for leading 10-state attack on trans students

The largest, best-organized and best-funded gay civil rights organization in America called out Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson yesterday for leading a multi-state legal charge against transgender kids.
     So has the Nebraska ACLU. Here's what the Human Rights Campaign's release said:

     Today, HRC denounced Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson for filing a federal lawsuit on behalf of 10 states seeking to block President Barack Obama’s historic guidance to ensure the dignity and equal treatment of transgender students in public and federally-funded schools.
     “It’s a sad day when powerful law enforcement officials come together to harm children by collectively discriminating against them simply because of who they are,” said JoDee Winterhof, senior vice president for policy and political affairs at HRC. “Doug Peterson and his fellow attorneys general -- such as Ken Paxton, who launched a similar attack this week -- should be working to ensure that transgender students can learn in safe, respectful environments, not targeting them for discrimination and bullying. This is shameful.”

     The lawsuit filed by Peterson seeks to rescind the Obama administration’s recent guidance on transgender student rights, and mirrors a similar legal attack led Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on behalf of his state and 10 others.
      HRC earlier this year released a letter signed by national organizations representing almost 5 million educators, pediatricians, counselors and other child welfare providers urging lawmakers to stop their political attacks on transgender youth. These organizations include the American Federation of Teachers, the American Academy of Pediatrics; the American Counseling Association; the National Association of School Psychologists and the National Education Association.

In its print editions, the Omaha World-Herald minimized Peterson's — and Nebraska's — role in the suit not once, twice or thrice, but four times. The lawsuit was filed in Nebraska by the state's own Attorney General.

As printed in the Herald:

This is what the first paragraph of Attorney General Peterson's complaint actually says:

 

New GOP NE AG taps antigay promoter of discredited Regnerus Study who was affiliated with Focus On The Family, for top staff post

From left: Joshua Shassere, Justin Lavene, Suzanne Gage, John Freudenberg, Attorney General Doug Peterson, James Smith, Abigail Stempson, Dave Bydalek and Jay Bartels

     The rumors that just-elected GOP AG Doug Peterson would pack the Nebraska Attorney General's office with right-to-lifers and anti-gay activists seem to have been correct.
     Newly-appointed Chief Deputy Attorney General Bydalek isn't the only ultra right-winger picked by Peterson to serve in his inner circle — Suzanne Gage, his new director of communications, was legislative liaison for Americans United for Life, an anti-abortion legal group.
     Peterson's new chief of staff is Joshua Shassere, most recently executive director of the Catholic Foundation of the Diocese of Lincoln.

     Bydalek was the policy director of Nebraska's most vehemently anti-gay pressure group, the financially secretive Nebraska Family Alliance, associated with CitizenLink and Focus On The Family.
     In 2013, Bydalek shamelessly misrepresented three adoption-reform bills to KETV.   
     In 2014, Bydalek, testifying before the Unicameral's Judiciary Committee against adoption reform in Nebraska, cited the infamous Regnerus Study as evidence against adoption by gay couples, despite the fact that Mark Regnerus' study was:

• engineered and funded by right-wing groups to influence SCOTUS gay marriage deliberations
• discredited by 200 PhDs and MDs
• excoriated by the prestigious American Sociological Association
• called "bullshit" by Darren E. Sherkat, an editor of the very journal that published it, after he was assigned to audit the study following the uproar it caused

Nebraska's new attorney general has gathered a cadre that shares his far-right agenda and has put them on the state's payroll. How right-wing is Peterson himself? Here is some of what he told the Lincoln Journal-Star:

On the problem of finding drug dealers in order to score lethal pharmaceuticals for executions:
"I would be aggressive in trying to find the appropriate lethal drugs to effectively carry out executions. Currently most drug manufacturers are not willing to provide states with the lethal injection drugs..."

The responses below are Peterson's written answers to VoterInformation.org questions during last fall's campaign, for which we have substituted our own snarky introductions. To see the actual questions, go here.

     On ex-alcoholic Glenn Beck's favorite crackpot conspiracy theory:
     "Thank you for bringing Agenda 21 to people's attention."
     On the prudent application of discipline (generally):
     "I believe the death penalty s primary purpose is to serve as a measured punishment..."
     On the prudent application of discipline to some pregnant women who take steps not to be:
     "I do believe it is necessary to have the death penalty used on limited occasions based upon the current enhancement factors that we have in the Nebraska statute."
     On the evils of neighboring Colorado:
     "Two immediate educational needs in fighting the drug problem is making young people aware of the high THC factors in marijuana coming out of Colorado"
      On the snotty states surrounding Nebraska (see map) who think they're better than we are just because they let homos marry:

Peterson: "I do believe that Nebraska’s constitutional amendment defining
marriage as being limited to that between a man and a woman is constitutionally
sound." —Lincoln Journal-Star, 10/3/2014
The above statement is probably nonsense, given that in the overwhelming
majority of the above states surrounding Nebraska, marriage equality was
won when courts struck down recently-enacted bans on same sex marriage.

     "Recently, at a meet and greet event, one of those in attendance asked "\'when is Nebraska going to wake up and allow for same sex marriage? ...based upon my faith in Christ, I told them I did not think it was a matter that Nebraska needed to wake up on. ...I told them I believe in those values and I am not impressed by those states who seem to think they are superior to us simply because they allow same sex marriage.'
     On why civilization would collapse (look at map again, and be very scared) if it acknowledged same sex families:
     "The history of civilization, the knowledge of science, and common sense, all dictate that for a society to sustain itself, the only purposeful recognition by government of a family relationship is that relationship between a man and a woman."
     On the little-known  and pernicious fact that dispensing marriage licenses to same sex couples would bring GOVERNMENT into the most personal part of their lives and cause their SEXUALITY TO BE KNOWN PUBLICLY, also society would collapse, DON'T FORGET THAT:
     "If government thought it was necessary to broaden that definition it would significantly effect a society's ability to sustain itself, and would bring government into the most personal part of an individual s life, their sexuality, and create it as part of their identity to be known publicly."
     On why the Voter Information Project questionnaire is insufficiently spacious to accommodate his frustrations with uppity deviants who think they are worthy of protection:
     "It is ridiculous to suggest that government now has to identify the 42 different recognized sexual orientations, or individually perceived orientation and conclude that they are all worthy of protection. There is not enough room in this questionnaire to explain my frustration with the sexual identity movement groups."
     On never, in 28 years of living in tolerant, liberal Nebraska, having seen or heard about one single gay person ever having been jerked around:
     "I have advised employers on employment law matters for 28 years and not once during that time have I perceived either discrimination based upon sexual identity, or seen a value in identifying it in the work setting."
     Finally, you should not think that he is a crazy extremist or anything:
     "I ve been endorsed by Coach Tom Osborne and former Governor Kay Orr based upon my experience and integrity."

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After forcing dying gay woman to sue for marriage recognition, NE AG Don Peterson wants to make sure she can't recover legal expenses

Even the U.S. Supreme Court has not ended Nebraska Attorney General Don Peterson's scorched earth policy toward LGBTs in the state. He has spent freely to stall gay marriage in Nebraska, forcing a dying woman to sue Nebraska, spent freely to support efforts by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (now under indictment for securities fraud)  to cut off family medical leave for legally marriage gay couples, and now he's spending even more to ensure the folks he forced into suing for their rights cannot recover legal costs after the Ricketts administration's complete failure to stave off what has been obviously inevitable since last year's Windsor decision: equal treatment of LGBTs in the granting of civil marriage licenses.
     From SCOTUS BLOG:

     Couples who sued in many states are now pursuing further orders, including an award of lawyers’ fees.  In response, Nebraska’s lawyers have now gone further than other states have, seeking en banc review of the dispute by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
     A three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit on August 11 rejected Nebraska’s argument that the Nebraska case, Waters v. Ricketts, was now moot and should be dismissed without a final order in the couples’ favor.  The panel said that the Supreme Court had only struck down four states’ bans specifically — not including Nebraska’s — and did not rule on any couples’ right to state benefits that go with marriage.  Like other couples, the seven couples in that state had sued not only to get the chance to marry, but to gain its benefits.
      While noting that state officials had assured the Eighth Circuit that they stopped enforcing that state’s ban as soon as the Supreme Court had ruled, the panel said the state had not yet “repealed or amended” its ban.  “Nebraska’s assurances of compliance…do not moot the case,” it declared...

     Nevertheless, Peterson now wants an en banc review of the three-judge, Eighth Circuit panel's rejection of his arguments, meaning that he wants to waste the time of eight judges, not just three.
     And you'll be footing part of the bill for Peterson's never-say-die, money-is-no-object, radical right wing agenda, Nebraska taxpayers. 

UPDATE: Peterson's en banc request has been denied.
Courtesy of Equality Case Files

Attorney General Doug Peterson: Nebraska's very own Antonin Scalia!

A lot of people saw Friday's Supreme Court decision outlawing state bans on gay marriage for what it was — a ruling on equal protection and due process, but Doug Peterson, an ally of the antigay Nebraska Family Alliance, who hired one of its honchos (Dave Bydalek) as soon as he took office, saw it as an ATTACK ON FREEDOM!
     Peterson should look on the bright side. Now he can stop squandering Nebraskans' taxes on stalling gay marriage and instead throw them down the rathole that is the lawsuit Jon Bruning brought against Colorado for legalizing marijuana. Sadly, phony GOP federalists like Peterson and Bruning don't have unlimited state resources to fund their personal right-wing agendas.

"Sadly, the Court stripped all Americans of our freedom to debate and decide marriage policy through the democratic process. The freedom to democratically address the most pressing social issues of the day is the heart of liberty. The Court took that freedom from the people."

Nebraska's antigay AG, Don Peterson, files notice of appeal within minutes to stop decision overruling state's gay marriage ban

Nebraska Attorney General Don Peterson

Senior U.S. District Judge Joseph Bataillon, who in 2006 was the first Judge in the U.S. to strike down a gay marriage ban (Nebraska's, but he was overruled by the Eighth U.S. District Court of Appeals), has ruled the state's ban on same sex marriage unconstitutional, but has given the state a week to file an appeal. Attorney General Don Peterson asked him not to make his order immediate, to avoid what he called "chaos" and Bataillon complied.

Robynn Tysver writes in the Omaha World-Herald:

     Today’s decision means there is now a good chance Nebraska will be one of the last states in the nation to allow same-sex couples to wed.
     ...The 8th Circuit may fold the Nebraska case into a May 11 hearing on same-sex marriages scheduled to be heard in Omaha. Federal judges in three other states — Missouri, South Dakota and Arkansas — have all ruled their respective gay marriage bans unconstitutional. The 8th Circuit has consolidated those cases into one.
     In the end, it may all comes down to timing: will the 8th Circuit act before the U.S. Supreme Court settles the issue once and for all?

      Nebraska Attorney General Don Peterson has already filed a notice of appeal, even though Bataillon's ruling is minutes-old. Here it is.
     Judge Bataillon's order is here. His injunction is here.

NE AG Doug Peterson is VERY offended at being called a bigot stalling gay marriage on taxpayer's dime

Religious right winger and Agenda 21 conspiracy theorist nutbag Doug Peterson (Nebraska's new attorney general!) wants you to know that the push for gay marriage isn't really about the survivor of a male couple having to pay tens of thousands of dollars in inheritance taxes for stuff he had already paid for before his partner of 28 years died.
     It's not really about two gay women (one of whom has stage IV cancer) who are raising children and now have to worry about custody rights (and inheritance taxes) for the survivor, and about the very real threat that she might have to sell the house and move herself and the kids elsewhere.
     No, it's not about them at all! It's really all about Attorney General Doug Peterson's hurt feelings when he is called a homophobic bigot for stalling gay marriage in Nebraska and billing taxpayers for his recalcitrant religious agenda when 37 other states are already marrying gay couples or will shortly.
     From KETV's video, below:

I'm a little bit concerned in our society now that there is somewhat of an intolerance for those who kick gay families to the curb support traditional families. Being called narrow-minded. Being called bigoted. That's unfair.

Those readers who are wondering exactly how much Doug Peterson is spending to delay gay marriage in the Cornhusker State might do well to heed a recent tweet from the ACLU informing curious Nebraskans that they need only make a request under Nebraska’s public records law to find out. 

NE ACLU files another brief in response to AG Don Peterson's attempt to stall gay marriage cases

Free-spending ultra right-wing Nebraska Attorney General Don Peterson first tried to stay proceedings in Nebraska's gay marriage suit until June, when the the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule on marriage equality in four cases outside Nebraska's Eighth U.S. Court of Appeals District.
     Judge Joseph F. Bataillon denied the Nebraska Attorney General's office stalling tactic, ruling that AG Peterson and his staff have "not made a sufficient showing that a delay in the outcome is necessary" and, therefore, said delay is "not warranted."
     Below, the ACLU refutes arguments advanced by AG Doug Peterson's office against its motion for a preliminary injunction while the case proceeds.
     AKSARBENT recommends that if you're reading this, you tweet @GovRicketts to find out how much the state is spending to delay gay marriage in Nebraska, which is now surrounded by gay marriage states.

   8:14-cv-00356 #49 by Equality Case Files

Dean of NE legislature slams AG, Gov. for GOP coverup of Kintner sex video on state laptop

Chambers, with his poodle, on a reelection billboard after his
term limit timeout. Governor Rickett's poodle, Bill Kintner,
may be on the way to the pound.

The longest-serving member of the Nebraska Unicameral, Ernie Chambers, has vowed to initiate an impeachment vote against GOP firebrand Bill Kinter, a state senator from the Omaha suburb of Papillion, now embroiled in a sex-video-on-a-government-computer scandal.
     That, if successful, would need 25 votes. Chambers is writing the impeachment resolution now and will introduce it if Kintner doesn't resign between now and the start of the next session of Nebraska's Unicameral. If the impeachment resolution fails, Chambers will seek a vote to expel Kintner, which takes 30 votes. From the Omaha World-Herald:

NE AG Doug Peterson has been far too busy suing Colorado
over its pot laws and everybody else over gay marriage and
transgender access to bathrooms to worry much about the
sleazy abuse of state property by a conservative
fellow Republican

     Chambers criticized both Gov. Ricketts and Attorney General Doug Peterson for failing to act decisively in the year since evidence of this scandal emerged. He said Ricketts should have demanded to know whether Kintner had misused state resources and insisted that he resign if there was evidence of such misuse.
     “I believe there was a determination on the part of the governor and the attorney general which, in my opinion, seems to smack of the Republicans circling the wagons to protect a very loud member of their party,” he said.
     Pushing for Kintner’s resignation would not breach the separation of powers because it would not amount to disciplining a senator, Chambers said.
     Kintner, a Republican, is a key ally of Ricketts. Kintner also is married to Lauren Kintner, who leads Ricketts’ policy research office.

Excuses for doing nothing abound:

• Governor Ricketts says he was prohibited by law from discussing an ongoing investigation by the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission (NDAC) . However, the chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, Vince Powers, an attorney, says Ricketts was perfectly free to discuss the underlying facts of the case but chose not to inform the public for a year. During that time, Kintner worked hard to advance the governor's political agenda in the Unicameral.
• Sen. Bob Krist, the Legislature's Executive Board chairman, said when he discovered that a woman was trying to sell a sexually explicit video she said involved Kintner, he and Speaker Galen Hadley decided  Ricketts' office should handle it because Kintner's wife works for the governor. (Lauren Kintner has been diagnosed with ovarian cancer.)
• Nebraska AG Doug Peterson, also a conservative Republican, has offered no explanation for his relative inaction and dead silence for over a year.
• The World-Herald says the Nebraska State Patrol completed its investigation in October of 2015 and and turned over the results to the Attorney General’s Office, which "reviewed" the information and quietly referred the matter to the (NADC)  in November. Since then, the NADC has met four times (Dec ’15, Jan ’16, April ’16 and June ’16) and taken no action in the matter
• The Nebraska State Patrol seems to have been running interference for Senator Kintner. Sen. Krist said a state IT worker sought him out because he felt he had been interrogated by Kintner and the patrol about the Legislature’s security system on senator email accounts.

  

  Ricketts appointee, Nebraska
  State Patrol Col. Brad Rice

       Krist said he met with Patrol Col. Brad Rice after the incident, and Rice agreed that the State Patrol breached protocol, and that the IT worker should’ve been represented by legal counsel.     
       This week, Krist told the World-Herald that "he asked the State Patrol to keep him informed of its findings, and when he inquired about the investigation two to three months ago, the State Patrol told him the investigation was ongoing and that it couldn’t talk to him about it." But in the same article, the World-Herald noted that the State Patrol "completed its investigation in October 2015."

• A "junior senator" (rumored to be Lincoln's Adam Morfeld) told Krist about an online solicitation he received to buy the compromising video of Bill Kintner. Krist advised him to take his information to the State Patrol, which Morfeld allegedly did, saying nothing to the public

As NE AG Don Peterson and the Nebraska Family Alliance target trans people, a new ad defends them

As Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson, pursues his personal, scorched-earth, antiLGBT agenda on the taxpayer's dime, a new ad will air during the GOP and Dem conventions. Peterson hired the policy director of the Nebraska Family Alliance and made him Nebraska's Chief Deputy Attorney General.
     Bydalek is quite a piece of work.
     In 2014, he testified before the Unicameral's Judiciary Committee against adoption reform in Nebraska, citing the infamous Regnerus Study as evidence against adoption by gay couples, despite the fact that Mark Regnerus' study was:

• engineered and funded by right-wing groups to influence SCOTUS gay marriage deliberations
• discredited by 200 PhDs and MDs
• excoriated by the prestigious American Sociological Association
• called "bullshit" by Darren E. Sherkat, an editor of the very journal that published it, after he was assigned to audit the study following the uproar it caused

From the YouTube description:
     This groundbreaking new ad depicts the challenges faced by transgender people in accessing public restrooms—and highlights the lack of state and federal nondiscrimination protections for transgender people. The ad will have its national TV debut on FOX News Channel next Thursday, July 21, during the final night of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio. It will air nationwide again on MSNBC during the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia one week later.
     FairnessUSA is a joint project of the Freedom for All Americans Education Fund, the Movement Advancement Project (which created the ad), the National Center for Transgender Equality, and the Equality Ohio Education Fund, with support from the Equality Federation Institute, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, and the National Center for Lesbian Rights. Find out more at http://FairnessUSA.org

NE AG Don Peterson on gay marriage ruling: 'I don't think we can dictate our laws based upon the emotional arguments of a certain class of people'

While the headline quote (6:51 in video) may have been Peterson's most offensive, as it casually dismissed the legal, social and monetary damage directly visited by the state's gay marriage ban on the 50,000 (conservatively reckoned) gay people who call Nebraska home, his most cringe-worthy assertions (at 9:47 about law-unto-themselves county clerks) seem to have been lifted from the Roy Moore Alabama  Cookbook of Jurisprudence & Civil Disobedience, and might even be interpreted as a subtle invitation to Nebraska county clerks to engage in obstructionism, should proceedings in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals not go Peterson's way and gay marriage were to become a reality in Nebraska sooner rather than later:

Well, I think each county clerk has to speak with their county attorney and take counsel. We in the Attorney General's office are not in a position to advise county clerks. They have to rely upon the counsel of their county attorneys. The other thing that's somewhat difficult about it, if you want to get into the weeds... Rule 65 of the federal rules, basically [says] that an injunction applies to those parties identified in the lawsuit and in this particular case, certainly they have not identified all 93 county court clerks, so there's a question of whether or not the court's injunction, ah temporary injunction, would apply to those not identified as clerks.

A death in the family

This weekend AKSARBENT attended a memorial in the Omaha area for a friend claimed by cancer. At the right you see his bereft daughter and son consoling the man's companion, a stroke victim who will now have to depend on others for assistance.
     Along with our sadness, we felt an unexpected measure of anger and contempt for politicians who repeatedly raid the public purse to pursue an agenda of making life difficult in ingeniously nasty ways for whomever they happen to feel morally superior to — and collaterally, their relatives, like the ones pictured here.
     One of these types is the current attorney general of Nebraska, Donald Peterson, who we have excoriated in this blog before.

     The same Donald Peterson who filed a motion putting the State of Nebraska on record urging serious judicial consideration of the junk social science research of Mark Regnerus, author of a widely discredited study funded and/or publicized by several right-wing organizations lobbying against marriage equality.
     The same Donald Peterson who is spending Nebraska tax revenue to help the attorney general of Texas block (for as long as he can get away with it) Family and Medical Leave for gay Texas couples legally married elsewhere.
     We left the memorial more determined than ever never to caste a vote for someone who is making a career out of using his staff to kick the stool out from under people who have enough to contend with already and then cynically and laughably complaining about the alleged intolerance and incivility of people repulsed by the calculating animus of himself and his ilk.

Federal Judge in Omaha rules Westboro Baptist must stay 500, not 300, feet from dead people

Shirley Phelps-Roper, of the Westboro Baptist Church, sued Nebraska's governor, attorney general, and Omaha's police chief, saying that a Nebraska law unfairly targets her group and that the cops often allow counter protesters, like the so-called Patriot Guard, closer to the deceased than she can now get, on account of Nebraska's new law expanding the buffer zone around funerals to 500 from 300 feet.

     In her order, Chief U.S. District Judge Laurie Smith Camp said the 500-foot buffer doesn't deprive protestors of the opportunity to reach their target audience and also permits law enforcement to manage the logistical concerns of large crowds...

     In a news release, a spokeswoman for Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson said the state defended the law because Nebraska has a substantial interest in protecting the peace and privacy of people paying their respects to the dead.

     "Nebraska’s Funeral Picketing Law does not restrict Westboro Baptist Church from expressing its protest message by ample, alternative methods, which methods should not include disrupting funerals," the release said.

.

The judge's decision comes just more than a year after both sides made their cases during a week-long trial.

In a news release, a spokeswoman for Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson said the state defended the law because Nebraska has a substantial interest in protecting the peace and privacy of people paying their respects to the dead.

A federal judge on Wednesday upheld the constitutionality of Nebraska's law that creates a 500-foot buffer zone around funerals from pickets and rejected claims by Westboro Baptist Church members that the law violated their free speech rights.

In a 34-page ruling, Chief U.S. District Judge Laurie Smith Camp said the law is narrowly tailored and provides ample alternative channels for the controversial church to share its message.

Plaintiff Shirley Phelps-Roper and her fellow church members argued the law unfairly targets the group and said police often allow counter protesters including the Patriot Guard to get closer.

Members of the Wichita, Kansas, church routinely protest at funerals nationwide, including those of servicemen and women who die in combat, saying the Lord is punishing America for allowing homosexuality. In Nebraska, the group has picketed 46 funerals since 2005.

Phelps-Roper's attorney, Margie Phelps, said they'll appeal.

Smith Camp's ruling is necessary, Phelps said, so they can take their case to the appellate level, where they believe laws like Nebraska's will be struck down to "put some restraint on some out-of-control legislators across the country."

Phelps-Roper sued Nebraska's governor and attorney general, as well as Omaha's police chief, in 2011 after the Legislature expanded the picketing buffer zone from 300 feet to 500 feet.

In her order, Smith Camp said the 500-foot buffer doesn't deprive protestors of the opportunity to reach their target audience and also permits law enforcement to manage the logistical concerns of large crowds.

The judge's decision comes just more than a year after both sides made their cases during a week-long trial.

In a news release, a spokeswoman for Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson said the state defended the law because Nebraska has a substantial interest in protecting the peace and privacy of people paying their respects to the dead.

"Nebraska’s Funeral Picketing Law does not restrict Westboro Baptist Church from expressing its protest message by ample, alternative methods, which methods should not include disrupting funerals," the release said.

Antigay NE AG 'leads' 10 states in second suit over Obama transgender school guidelines

Doug Peterson, elected in 2014, has unstintingly spent state funds to oppose every LGBT equality measure he could obstruct.
     Even after the U.S. Supreme Court overruled prohibitions against gay marriage, Peterson went back to court to prevent a dying woman from recovering legal costs in her suit to require Nebraska to recognize her same sex marriage.
     Peterson's statement:

     "Today, Nebraska, along with nine states, filed an action in Nebraska federal court challenging the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Justice's recent mandate changing current Title IX law regarding how schools assign students to showers, locker rooms, and restroom facilities.
     Current state law and federal regulations allow schools to maintain separate facilities based upon sex.
     The recent action by these two federal agencies to require showers, locker rooms, and bathrooms be open to both sexes based solely on the student's choice, circumvents this established law by ignoring the appropriate legislative process necessary to change such a law.
     It also supersedes local school districts' authority to address student issues on an individualized, professional and private basis.
     When a federal agency takes such unilateral action in an attempt to change the meaning of established law, it leaves state and local authorities with no other option than to pursue legal clarity in federal court in order to enforce the rule of law.
     Nebraska was also joined by the following states: Arkansas, Kansas, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Wyoming."

     From the New York Daily News:

      The Nebraska lawsuit hinges on the terms "sex" and "gender identity," saying federal law uses only the term "sex."
      "Neither the text nor the legislative history of Title IX supports an interpretation of the term "sex" as meaning anything other than one's sex as determined by anatomy and genetics," the lawsuit says.

     Buzzfeed's Chris Geidner says the Nebraska-initiated lawsuit is very similar to the claims raised in a Texas-led suit over the same issue, "often repeating the same exact [sic] language."
     Below is the complaint in its entirety, filed in federal district court today in Nebraska:

Title IX Complaint by Clickon Detroit on Scribd

Busted: Millionaire GOP NE Gov.'s sponsorship of death penalty restoration not disclosed in initiative

TD Ameritrade scion Pete Ricketts, now Nebraska's GOP governor, didn't like the fact that the Nebraska Unicameral overrode his veto of its removal of the state's death penalty, so he spent $200,000 (and his father kicked in another $100,000) to a paid petition drive to put the law on hold and reinstate Nebraska's death penalty on the next election's ballot as a constitutional amendment.
     Now his organization, Nebraskans for the Death Penalty, faces a lawsuit seeking to negate the signature drive because the organization played fast and loose with requirements of Nebraska's initiative statute, which requires that there be a sworn list of every sponsor.
     Nebraskans for the Death Penalty calls the just-filed lawsuit by Nebraskans for Public Safety (a opposing group) over the violation "frivolous" and a "technicality," despite the fact that in 2003 the Nebraska Supreme Court quashed an initiative which would have legalized video keno games for exactly such "frivolous" reasons.
     The World-Herald  notes that Ricketts is also alleged in the lawsuit to have violated his oath of office by seeking to overturn a state law, rather than working to uphold it.

     “The governor’s sponsorship of the referendum would show formally that rather than prepare to support, enforce and execute this duly passed law, he has instead aligned himself, his political allies and persons directly controlled and organized by him and sponsored this referendum,” stated the lawsuit, filed in Lancaster County District Court.
     “He has with his personal and family fortune largely financed the attempt to do away with a law he disfavors.”
    The lawsuit said the governor told state lawmakers that if they didn’t uphold his veto of the death penalty repeal, a referendum would be launched.

     Ricketts was unavailable for comment as he is absent from the state again on a "trade mission" to China and Japan, shortly after returning from a similar jaunt through Europe.
     Here's the press release from Nebraskans For Public Safety:

Nebraskans for Public Safety files lawsuit challenging death penalty referendum

September 17, 2015 - For Immediate Release   
Contact: Alan Peterson, General Counsel, Nebraskans for Public Safety, 402-416-3633 alanepeterson@gmail.com NEBRASKANS FOR PUBLIC SAFETY FILES LAWSUIT CHALLENGING DEATH PENALTY REFERENDUM
LINCOLN, Neb – Nebraskans for Public Safety filed suit in Lancaster County District Court today challenging the legal sufficiency of the death penalty referendum petition. The suit was filed on behalf of Lincoln residents and longtime death penalty opponents Christy and Richard Hargesheimer who are taxpayers concerned about the petition process. The named defendants are Secretary of State John Gale in his official capacity, Aimee Melton, Bob Evnen, Judy Glasburner, and Nebraskans for the Death Penalty, Inc. Click here to view a copy of the initial filing: http://nebraskansforpublicsafety.org/uploads/Complaint_FILE_STAMPED.pdf
     The legal team representing the Hargesheimers include some of Nebraska’s leading and experienced attorneys: Alan Peterson, Jerry Soucie, Amy Miller, and Christopher Eickholt.
     “All Nebraskans support our robust tradition of direct democracy-including referendum campaigns. However, all Nebraskans also want a fair process where everyone plays by the rules. In the case of the death penalty referendum it is clear that Governor Ricketts and his supporters failed to do their due diligence and appeared to have cut corners. That undermines the integrity of the referendum process and that has legal consequences,” said Alan Peterson, lead counsel.
     “We look forward to having our day in court and defending a fair process for everyone. Nebraskans know the death penalty is broken beyond repair and belongs in our past. Powerful interests like the Governor are not entitled to their own set of rules to pursue their own political objectives. We are looking forward to having these issues decided outside of the political arena and before an impartial judiciary,” said Christy Hargesheimer.
     Nebraskans for Public Safety is a campaign committee organized to oppose the death penalty referendum. It is a statewide coalition conducting public education on smart alternatives to the death penalty -- such as life in prison without parole -- that put public safety first. Members include fiscal conservatives, faith leaders, victims’ families, and traditional death penalty opponents. Visit our website or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

NE judge slaps down antigay GOP AG, says Doug Peterson's request "defies common sense"

     Lancaster County District Judge John Colborn clarified an earlier ruling striking down the state's 1995 ban on gays and lesbian foster parents and in so doing has sharply rebuked Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson, who has repeatedly squandered tax dollars by pursuing various legal maneuvers to forestall gay marriage.
     Peterson unconvincingly argued that Colborn had erred in overruling the state's LGBT ban, since the state discreetly stopped enforcing the prohibition in 2012.
     Colborn's amended order said it “defies common sense” for a government agency to adopt a new policy without rescinding or replacing a previous policy that was at odds with the new one.

Voter Supression: Top NE Republicans mute on law broken by Trump Commission seeking NE voter data

Article here

     So far, John Gale, Nebraska's lame duck Secretary of State, Nebraska's Attorney General, Doug Peterson and Gale's would-be successor, Bob Evnen, all Republicans, have been uniformly mute on the fact that Kris Kobach, the principal architect of voter suppression in the USA, apparently broke federal law in requesting details on every Nebraska registered voter (the same kind of data Russia tried to hack last year) on behalf of Donald Trump's so-called "Voter Integrity Commission" chaired by Mike Pence and run by Kobach.
     From The Hill:

     Under the Paperwork Reduction Act, information requests from agencies and other federal entities are supposed to first be submitted to the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA).
     This 1980 law requires federal agencies to seek public input, including through a comment period, before a request for information. A 1995 amendment extended OIRA’s authority to include not only requests for information for the government, but also requests for information to the public.

Via CNN

     The law also requires that agencies justify their requests for public information, specify how it will be used and provide assurances that data will be protected. The law also obliges the agencies to estimate how many hours it will take entities to respond.
     It does not appear that the commission submitted its request to OIRA before sending a letter to states asking for voter information.
     Experts say the failure to do so would be significant, since states would be under no obligation to respond to requests that violate federal law.
     “If the commission gets heavy-handed with them, it seems to me that the states are within their right to say, 'No, we don’t have to respond because you didn’t go through [OIRA],'” said Susan Dudley, a former OIRA administrator who is now director of the Regulatory Studies Center at George Washington University.
     The commission did not immediately respond to questions about whether it had submitted its request through OIRA.

     And that's not all. Yesterday, according to CNN, "The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law called on the Justice Department to investigate whether Kobach violated the Hatch Act, a 1939 law intended to keep federal employees from directly supporting candidates, accusing him of using his role on the presidential commission to promote his campaign and solicit contributions."
     Kobach's voter supression machinations have resulted in four ACLU lawsuits, so far, and he has lost every one.

Blind, deaf and mute on vote suppression masquerading as "ballot integrity": GOP Secretary of State
candidate Bob Evnen, GOP Secretary of State John Gale and Attorney General Doug Peterson

     The Washington Post has reported that  "Kobach was fined $1,000 on Friday by a federal magistrate judge for “patently misleading representations” he made to the court about the contents of a document he was photographed taking into a November meeting with then President-elect Donald Trump."
     Six Nebraska state senators have written a letter to John Gale requesting that he reject the "request." They are Sens. Kate Bolz, Adam Morfeld, Matt Hansen and Anna Wishart of Lincoln; and Sens. Sara Howard and John McCollister of Omaha.
     Even though the Secretaries of State of 45 states have weighed in on Trump, Nebraska's GOP Secretary of State (John Gale) has said, nothing, the GOP candidate running to replace him (Bob Evnen) has been mute, and Nebraska's GOP Attorney General (Doug Peterson) is similarly paralyzed.
     Tweets about this issue have accused the office of Nebraska's Secretary of State of demanding names and phone numbers of callers before addressing (or, more specifically, not answering) their questions. We called, and found this to be true.

@janekleeb @ketv @WOWT6News @3NewsNowOmaha @nebraskadems @Adam_Morfeld @aclu #ComradeTrump@NESecJGale is taking names and phone numbers... pic.twitter.com/NIcaGmhkUe

— AKSARBENT blog (@aksarbent) July 5, 2017

Watching this will only make you even more disgusted with NE AG Donald Peterson's anti-marriage equality stalling tactics on your dime

The world is rapidly leaving stubborn bigots like Peterson and the like-minded heterosexual supremacists with whom he has packed the NE AG's office. But the GOP keeps propelling them into office, and they keep spending your money on legal stalling tactics to further their Quixotic anti-marriage equality agenda, which has now failed in 37 states, including every one surrounding Nebraska.

U of Texas finds no scientific misconduct in Regnerus gay parenting study; board member/investigator at journal that published study: 'It's bullshit'

Mark Regnerus

Ralph K.M. Harwitz reports that Robert A. Peterson, a University of Texas research integrity officer in the Office of the Vice President for Research, found no falsification of data, plagiarism or other serious ethical breaches constituting scientific misconduct after consulting with a four-member advisory panel of senior UT faculty members.

However, Peterson said the question of whether Regnerus' study has serious flaws is one best left to debate among scholars, future research and an expected release by Regnerus of the data underlying his research. He went on to cite university policy that says "ordinary errors, good faith differences in interpretations or judgments of data, scholarly or political disagreements, good faith personal or professional opinions, or private moral or ethical behavior or views are not misconduct."

     ...An internal draft audit by Social Science Research, the journal that published the study, found "serious flaws" in the peer review process and concluded that the journal never should have published his report.

     The allegations of scientific misconduct were leveled by freelance writer Scott Rosensweig, who uses the byline Scott Rose, in a letter to UT President Bill Powers. That prompted the university's inquiry....

     ...Rosensweig disputed UT's review, contending that some peer reviewers of Regnerus' study were also paid study consultants, "a most serious matter."

Princeton Professor Robert George, founder of the
National Organization for Marriage and board member
of the Family Research Council, also has positions of
authority in the Bradley Foundation, which gave a known
minimum grant of $90,000 for the Regnerus study, and the
Witherspoon Institute, which gave a known minimum
$55,000 "planning grant." Full funding for the study
was $785,000. The questionable study has been jumped
on by right-wing political organizations like NOM, and
may have been concocted as a 2012 political tool, to be
touted in states with Marriage Equality votes.
If so, IRS regulations were violated.

Yesterday, Scott Rosensweig, of the New Civil Rights Movement, published a blistering indictment of the study:

...a Golinski-case amicus brief analyzing the Regnerus study as scientifically invalid was jointly filed by 1) the American Psychological Association; 2) the California Psychological Association; 3) the American Psychiatric Association; 4) the National Association of Social Workers; and 5) its California Chapter; 6) the American Medical Association; 7) the American Academy of Pediatrics; and 8) the American Psychoanalytic Association.

     ...Separately, over 200 Ph.D.s and M.D.s sent a letter to the journal Social Science Research, which published the fraudulent Regnerus study, complaining of its lack of intellectual integrity and its suspiciously rushed publication schedule.

 In July, Tom Bartlett, of The Chronicle of Higher Education, wrote:

Like Regnerus, the editor of Social Science Research, James D. Wright, has been at the receiving end of an outpouring of anger over the paper. At the suggestion of another scholar, Wright, a professor of sociology at the University of Central Florida, assigned a member of the journal’s editorial board—Darren E. Sherkat, a professor of sociology at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale—to examine how the paper was handled.

     Sherkat was given access to all the reviews and correspondence connected with the paper, and was told the identities of the reviewers. According to Sherkat, Regnerus’s paper should never have been published. His assessment of it, in an interview, was concise: “It’s bullshit,” he said.

New AG not impressed by those gay marriage states who feel so superior to Nebraska

Republican Don Peterson was just elected Attorney General of the Cornhusker State after the term-limit-outing (no homo) of Nebraska's last AG homophobe, Jon "Hollywood's Bitch" Bruning, who followed homophobic AG Don Stenberg, who Bruning once prepostrously tried to insinuate was a pedophile.
     Amazingly the quote below was not an off-the-cuff remark but one of several written responses to voterinformation.org and not even the most outrageous pronouncement.
     Peterson has wasted no time in packing the senior positions of the Nebraska Attorney General's office with like-minded anti-choice, anti-gay zealots.
 

Nebraska Gov. denounces 'activist' gay marriage ruling; his sister, wealthy co-owner of Chicago Cubs really IS a gay activist

Peter and Laura Ricketts

Peter Ricketts, the TD Ameritrade scion and newly-elected Nebraska governor, plans to spend more of your taxes stalling gay marriage.
     If you'd like to find out how much he and his antigay attorney general, Doug Peterson are squandering to delay gay marriage in Nebraska, there's a way to do that.
     Oh, Ricketts' sister, part owner of the Chicago Cubs, unlike the judge Ricketts slammed, really is a gay activist.

“Today, a judge took steps to overturn a constitutional amendment approved by 70% of Nebraskans that defines marriage as between one man and one woman,” said Governor Pete Ricketts.
     The definition of marriage is an issue for the people of Nebraska, and an activist judge should not substitute his personal political preferences for the will of the people. I will continue to work with Attorney General Doug Peterson to uphold Nebraska’s Constitution and the will of the people of our great state.”