Disability rights advocates rally at the Missouri State Capitol to protest the state’s participation in a lawsuit that began as an effort to block protections for transgender people but ended in a rollback of protections for people with disabilities. Missouri eventually withdrew from the suit, but five Republican-led states did not. (Photo by Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent) A court battle that began when conservative-led states sued to block protections for transgender people has ended in a rollback of protections for people with disabilities — a result disability advocates have feared for months. At the end of August, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services joined the handful of conservative-led states suing it, and asked a court to strike language from a federal disability-rights regulation that directed states to prioritize serving disabled people in their communities rather than in nursing homes or institutions. Last week the judge did so, ending the case, Texas v...
A new poll from The 19th and YouGov sheds light on how young men and women are shaped by certain historical moments and tend to diverge on issues of gender and reproductive rights. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images) Editor’s note: This story is part of Gen Z at the Ballot Box, a collaboration between States Newsroom and The 19th . Brenna Vandergeest was a teenager when her grandmother told her about Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court case that ended the federal right to an abortion . She said it lit a fire in her, one that has shaped her politics. “I think that really flipped a switch in my head because knowing as a woman that rights that had been protected for years and years have now been overturned — it really made me upset,” Vandergeest said. “It really drove my view on reproductive rights because I do believe that only a woman should have a say over her body, and it shouldn’t be up to the government.” Now a senior at Neumann...