July 3, the Trump administration announced it would be rolling back Obama-era guidance that asked universities to consider race in admissions as part of diversifying campuses. With that guidance revoked, the government will return to policies developed under the George W. Bush administration that encouraged race-neutral admissions processes.

In 2016, the Supreme Court affirmed the use of race as a factor in college admissions. This was particularly important because, due to a host of systemic barriers, Black and Latinx students remain largely underrepresented at top universities.

July 9, Trump nominated D.C. Appeals Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court seat of soon-to-retire Justice Anthony Kennedy. Numerous reproductive rights, health and justice organizations have opposed the nomination. Kavanaugh’s record demonstrates that he disfavors the Affordable Care Act and has also been hostile to abortion and contraception access.

Kavanaugh’s nomination is supported by right-wing conservatives, and if he is confirmed, his presence on the Court would likely endanger decades of progress in women’s and LGBT rights.

June 29, the Department of Justice (DOJ), led by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, began drafting a proposal that would greatly expand asylum restrictions. The new proposal would bar any immigrants that enter the country outside of a port of entry from applying for asylum. This would heavily impact Central American immigrants who often present themselves to border agents in between official ports of entry. The proposal would also formalize Sessions’s policy of making it almost impossible for domestic and gang violence survivors to successfully make asylum claims. These new rules would be the most restrictive U.S. asylum policies since the 1960s.

July 2, U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg in Washington D.C. ruled that the Trump administration cannot arbitrarily detain immigrants seeking asylum. Generally, once asylees pass an interview establishing that they have a “credible fear” of persecution in their country of origin, they are released and can stay in the country while waiting for their asylum claim to process. However, under Trump, asylees have been held in immigration detention, even after they pass their interviews. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) brought a lawsuit in March 2018 in which Judge Boasberg found that ICE had failed to follow its own procedures of releasing asylees after the interview process.

June 27, a federal judge, Dana Sabraw, gave the Trump administration deadlines to reunify detained immigrant parents with their separated children. The administration had 15 days (July 10) to reunite more than 100 kids under the age of 5 with their parents and 30 days (July 26) to reunite the remaining 3,000 children who had been taken and separated from their parents since the administration began its zero-tolerance policy.

On July 6, the court denied the administration an extension after it petitioned for more time, citing it would be unable to meet the July 10 deadline. Some children’s parents have now already been deported; however, Judge Sabraw required that separated children be reunited with their deported parents as part of his initial ruling, and on July 16, Judge Sabraw ordered a temporary halt to deportations during the reunification process.

July 6, the Associated Press reported that some immigrant enlistees in the U.S. army had been quietly discharged. The recently discharged immigrants had all joined the military as part of the 2009 Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest (MAVNI) program, which sought to enlist immigrants with special, highly-valued skills in return for a fast-tracked route to citizenship. The Pentagon has said that MAVNI requires enlistees to pass a background check and that those who fail are discharged.

In 2016, the MAVNI program ended because security experts found that it created vulnerability to terrorism and espionage. Enlistees were still allowed to apply through 2017, but an updated October 2017 policy required 180 days of service and a successful background check before enlistees would be eligible for the fast-track. However, many of the enlistees are getting “uncharacterized” discharges with no explanation of why they were discharged.

Additionally, on July 19, Lambda Legal and Outserve-SLDN asked a federal court to halt the implementation of the Department of Defense’s (DoD) discriminatory “Deploy or Get Out!” policy announced in February that would discharge service members who cannot be deployed outside the country for more than a year. An earlier, outdated DoD policy prevented service members living with HIV from being deployed overseas; Deploy or Get Out! would make it essentially impossible for people living with HIV to serve in the military at all.

Though the policy is not set to take effect until October, service members living with HIV are already being discharged and or having their duties restricted. There are about 1,200 service members living with HIV that could be impacted by the policy.

In March 2018, the U.S. Census Bureau proposed adding a question about citizenship status to the 2020 census despite concerns from civil rights, voting rights and immigrant rights advocates that the added question will intimidate immigrants from participating in the census. Census results provide critical data that informs how various government programs will be funded. Communities of color are already less likely to be fully represented in census results, and states with large immigrant populations could see further underrepresentation and as a result under resourcing due to the chilling effect of the question.

The proposed rule is now open for public comment until August 7, 2018. The comment submission form can be found here and tips for submitting public comments can be found in a helpful toolkit here.

July 11, the House Appropriations Committee approved an amendment introduced by Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.), that would allow tax-payer funded adoption agencies to deny adoptions into LGBT families. More specifically, the amendment would prevent federal and state funding from being stripped from agencies that base adoption denials on religious beliefs. Additionally, the amendment would allow the HHS Secretary to withhold 15% of federal funding from states that punish adoption agencies that raise religious objections to justify adoption denials.

Ten states currently have such religious objection protections in place for child welfare agencies. Some of those laws are currently being debated in the courts. On July 18, U.S. District Judge Petrese B. Tucker held that the Philadelphia-based Catholic Social Services Agency has no constitutional right to deny placement of children with LGBT families based on religious beliefs.

July 18, The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a hold on the implementation of the Trump administration’s ban on transgender enlistees in the military. This means transgender servicemembers can continue to enlist while the lawsuit challenging the ban is still ongoing. The ban was first announced in a tweet from Trump in June 2017, and a hold on the ban has been in place since December 2017. The administration has been attempting to end the hold since April 2018.

July 30, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the creation of a “Religious Liberty Task Force” at the DOJ that will order federal agencies to broadly interpret “religious liberty” when enforcing federal laws. The purpose of the task force, Sessions announced at a speech at the department’s Religious Liberty Summit, will be protecting religious groups from persecution and to address a “dangerous movement…challenging and eroding our great tradition of religious freedom.” 

However, advocates fear that the task force charged with carrying out guidelines released in a DOJ memo in May of 2017 will only further exacerbate and enshrine the administration’s sanctioning of discrimination against LGBT individuals. The task force will be lead by Associate Attorney General Jesse Panuccio and Assistant Attorney General Beth Williams. As an attorney, Pannuccio defended supporters of Proposition 8, the 2008 California ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage for almost 5 years.

July 7, The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) risk adjustment transfers for 2017 may be delayed. Risk adjustment is a federal program that transfers earnings from insurers that enroll a “healthier-than-average” group of consumers to those that enroll people who have more health conditions than average. Risk adjustment payments help prevent insurers from attempting to deny coverage to people with chronic illnesses and pre-existing conditions.

Additionally, on July 10, the administration announced that CMS will only allow $10 million in funding (representing an 84% funding reduction in the past two years) for the ACA’s Patient Navigator program. The program helped educate and assist people who needed to enroll for ACA insurance coverage.

Contra Costa County to End ICE Contract Detaining Immigrants in Local Jail

July 10, Contra Costa County in California announced that it would be ending its government contract with ICE to detain immigrants in the Richmond detention facility. The Contra Costa County sheriff, David Livingston cited that the decision came, in part, after numerous public protests and demonstrations had become a strain on the department. The facility had also been the subject of complaints about inhumane treatment in the past. Despite advocates’ calls for ICE to release the immigrants, current detainees will be transferred to other facilities. A similar controversial contract with ICE in Sacramento County also ended last month.

June 29, the Iowa Supreme Court reaffirmed the fundamental right to an abortion by striking down a 2017 state law that imposed a mandatory 72-hour waiting period for people seeking abortions. The decision is being viewed as a positive sign that the court will also likely strike down the state’s 6-week abortion ban, which passed in May.

On June 1, the 6-week ban was temporarily halted by a state court, preventing it from taking effect on July 1, while a lawsuit challenging the ban is ongoing.

July 18, an anti-sanctuary state ballot measure collected enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot in Oregon. The states of Oregon, Illinois and California, in addition to several cities and counties, have been designated by the Justice Department as sanctuary jurisdictions that limit or preclude cooperation with federal immigration officials.

The measure would repeal a 1987 statute that prohibits state law enforcement from arresting someone just for violating federal immigration law. If passed, state law enforcement agencies would be allowed to verify the status of anyone arrested for a criminal offense and work in collaboration with federal immigration agencies. The effort to add the measure was led by Oregonians for Immigration Reform, recognized by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-immigrant hate group.