An Alabama man will likely spend significant time in prison after he repeatedly forced a child to perform sexual acts on him in exchange for allowing her to play video games on her console system.

Dustin Lamar Peoples, 43, was found guilty by a jury in Blount County this week on one count each of sexual abuse of a child under the age of 12 and sodomy in the first degree. The former is a Class B felony, while the latter is a Class A felony in the Yellowhammer State.

Content warning: child sexual abuse.

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LGBTQ Legal Issues

9th Circuit allows 2 transgender girls to play on sports teams that align with their gender identity

By Debra Cassens Weiss

September 12, 2024, 11:07 am CDT

A federal appeals court on Monday ruled that two transgender girls in Arizona should be allowed to play on school sports teams that are consistent with their gender identity.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at San Francisco said the transgender plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claim that the ban violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

The appeals court banned enforcement of Arizona’s Save Women’s Sports Act against the girls while litigation continues. The law bans those who are identified as men at birth from playing on women’s interscholastic or intramural sports teams from kindergarten through graduate school.

The author of the Sept. 9 opinion is Judge Morgan Christen, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.

On its face, the law discriminates based on transgender status, the appeals court said. As applied to the girls, the law does not survive strict scrutiny, the 9th Circuit concluded.

“The act’s transgender ban applies not only to all transgender women and girls in Arizona, regardless of circulating testosterone levels or other medically accepted indicia of competitive advantage, but also to all sports, regardless of the physical contact involved, the type or level of competition or the age or grade of the participants,” Christen wrote. “Heightened scrutiny does not require narrow tailoring, but it does require a substantial relationship between the ends sought and the discriminatory means chosen to achieve them.”

The girls had not gone through male puberty, were taking puberty-blocking medication and were undergoing hormone therapy. The opinion says their ages are 11 and 15, while Courthouse News Service said they are 12 and 16.

The 9th Circuit upheld district court findings that before puberty, there are no significant differences in athletic performance between boys and girls, and that transgender girls who receive puberty-blocking medication do not have an athletic advantage over other girls.

The appellants were Arizona’s superintendent of public instruction and several state lawmakers. They had argued that the district court wrongly treated as insignificant small differences in athletic ability between boys and girls before puberty.

But the appeals court said the appellants overlooked findings that small differences identified in some studies “have not been shown to be attributable to biological rather than sociological factors.”

The girls were represented by the National Center for Lesbian Rights, a nonprofit public interest law firm, according to a Sept. 9 press release.

Rachel Berg, a lawyer with the group, told Tuscon.com that the ruling applies only to the plaintiffs, but it is crucial for others in the same situation.

“The 9th Circuit recognized that the law is unconstitutional because it’s a categorical ban on all transgender girls from playing on school sports teams,” Berg said. “It does so regardless of their individual circumstances. The 9th Circuit recognized that just because somebody is transgender tells you nothing about whether they have an athletic advantage.”

Tom Horne, the Arizona schools chief, told Tucscon.com that the 9th Circuit “is very left wing,” and the appellants will have to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court if they want to win.

The Associated Press also has coverage of the decision.

The case is Doe v. Horne.

See also:

Transgender girl can stay on team, for now, after SCOTUS denial; action comes as US proposes new Title IX rule

A California mother of a boy with autism said she “felt sick” when her former neighbor sued to have the child’s “disgusting” backyard playing declared a nuisance. The mom is now fighting back with a lawsuit of her own.

Serena Arvayo lived with her son, Ezekiel, known as “Zeek,” along with her father and his wife in a San Jose apartment owned by Marc Goubert. But Arvayo said she had to move out and away from family, because their next door neighbor began harassing them about Zeek’s backyard playing.

Zeek is an 11-year old boy who has autism and is nonverbal, but can produce sounds known as “vocal stimming.” According to his mother, Zeek also has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as well as sensory challenges and communication difficulties. As a result, Zeek requires 24-hour supervision.

In a March 1 court filing, Arvayo detailed a disturbing interaction in May of 2022 between herself and her neighbor, identified as “Janine” Chu Lu.

Arvayo said that as she and Ezekiel were about to go to the park, Lu approached them, introduced herself, and “began to list out her complaints with Ezekiel.”

According to Arvayo, Lu asked Arvayo not to allow Zeek to play in the backyard or to let him go outdoors for even brief periods of time.

“Shocked, Serena began to explain that Ezekiel was a young child who suffered from a severe form of autism and was completely nonverbal,” the filing recounted. “As such, the noises Janine was complaining about were Ezekiel’s attempt to communicate emotions and were uncontrollable.”

The Arvayo family alleged that “[i]nstead of being understanding, Janine asked Serena, directly in front of Ezekiel, if there was a cure for his condition.”

The claim continued to say that, “Janine’s offensive and callous comments were deeply hurtful, offensive, and upsetting to Serena and Ezekiel given that they were said for the sole purpose of causing humiliation and shame and targeted towards his disability.”

Arvayo said she exchanged phone numbers with her complaining neighbor and invited her to call if there were ever a specific problem requiring attention. According to the filing, instead of calling Arvayo directly, Lu opted to message the landlord just days later to report that Ezekiel was “playing in the background by himself and making strange noises, and no adults [were] with him.”

“It is so disgusting!” Lu allegedly added in her message.

The cross-complaint said that during the same month, Arvayo and Ezekiel had no choice but to move out of the apartment in order to preserve their emotional well-being. Their move resulted in increased expenses for all involved, they said.

Arvayo said now that and her son are living separately from their other relatives, they only visit Ezekiel’s grandparents occasionally on weekends for a few hours at a time. However, according to the mother, relations between her family and Lu got worse last December when Lu filed a lawsuit asking the court to award her monetary damages for Zeek’s “nuisance” behavior.