Monday, June 15
Hello, welcome to The Daily Moth! It is Monday, June 15. Here are two top news briefs.
On Friday evening in Atlanta, a 27-year-old Black man named Rayshard Brooks was fatally shot by police officers. It revived protests in the Atlanta area and led to the resignation of the Atlanta police chief.
According to reports, Brooks was asleep in a car and it was blocking a Wendy’s fast-food drive-through. Someone called 911. A police officer showed up, woke Brooks up, and told him to drive to a parking spot. A second officer arrived. Both questioned him and gave him a Breathalyzer test, where he tested just over the legal limit. News reports said the conversation was cordial, but it quickly deteriorated when the officers tried to handcuff him. Videos from bodycams and the restaurant shows that when the officers tried to arrest Brooks, he attempted to run away. The officers then tackled him, and they struggled on the pavement. Both officers pulled out their tasers, and Brooks was able to grab one of the tasers, which was yellow in color. He then ran away while holding a taser. An officer chased him. Brooks turned around and seemed to fire the taser, but missed, and the officer then pulled out his firearm and discharged it three times. Two bullets hit Brooks’ back. The officers did not administer aid for two minutes. An ambulance arrived five minutes later. Brooks died at a hospital after surgery. He was a father. An autopsy showed Brooks died from two gunshot wounds to his back.
The officers’ names are Devin Brosnan and Garrett Rolfe. Rolfe was fired. It is not known if there will be criminal charges filed against them — an announcement will be made this week. There could be a murder charge.
There were protests on Saturday night. The Wendy’s restaurant was burned and a highway was blocked for several hours. News images show the restaurant completely burned on the inside and riot police moving in to disperse protesters.
Today Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said her heart broke to watch body camera video because she heard Brooks tell the officers he wanted to go home for her daughter’s birthday. The mayor said she was equally mad and sad as the protesters who called for justice. She signed administrative orders to require some steps towards police reform.
Brooks’ wife, Tomika Miller, said in a speech yesterday that police took her husband away and destroyed her family. She said no justice will ever get that back and that this is another black family being broken.
So, this is yet another painful moment in America with yet another fatal police-involved death of Black individual in a situation that escalated horribly. George Floyd died three weeks ago. Both situations started out with minor, nonviolent infractions of the law. A USAToday analysis had one retired police officer from California explain that the Atlanta officers could have simply ran after Brooks and called for more backup instead of opting to shoot him.
The second news brief — the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 today that LGBTQ+ individuals are included in protection from workplace discrimination from the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VII of the Act says employers cannot discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
There was division among U.S. states on whether “sex” applied to gay or transgender individuals and about half of U.S. states did not have laws that protected gay or transgender individuals from discrimination. That means in certain states, one could be fired just because they were gay. Now with this Supreme Court ruling, it is decided for all that they are protected.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, who President Donald Trump appointed, wrote a majority opinion that said “an employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex.” So he considered this discrimination. He also said, “Those who adopted the Civil Rights Act might not have anticipated their work would lead to this particular result, but the limits of the drafters’ imagination supply no reason to ignore the law’s demands.” So he was saying it was not the point of what they intended, but what the law demands.
This is the fifth major LGBTQ rights decision by the Supreme Court. The latest one was in 2015 when state laws banning gay marriage were struck down, allowing gay marriage for all.
See you tomorrow and stay with the light!
https://www.axios.com/a-supreme-court-surprise-3361bb75-c24f-45d3-bfaf-fd2ee0e82b64.html