Welcome to the TMS Weekly Dispatch for May 8, 2026—with the latest news and updates from the front line, to keep you in-the-know on all things Thomas More Society. If you missed the last edition, click here.

Here's the latest from the past week:

SUPREME COURT'S LANDMARK MIRABELLI v. BONTA RULING TRIGGERS DOJ INVESTIGATION OF 36 ILLINOIS SCHOOL DISTRICTS: The U.S. Department of Justice's investigation into 36 Illinois public school districts didn't come out of nowhere. It is the direct result of Mirabelli v. Bonta, the landmark Supreme Court case litigated by Thomas More Society that delivered a generational victory for parental rights and put every school district in America on notice.

On March 2, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of parents, finding that California's secret gender transition policies in schools likely violate the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The message to every school district in America was unambiguous: review your policies, notify parents of their rights, and come into compliance. In California, even the state's own School Boards Association recommended staff be retrained, and that new compliance guidance be issued.

“No school district in Illinois or anywhere in America can claim they weren't warned,” said Peter Breen, TMS Executive Vice President and Head of Litigation. “When we won Mirabelli v. Bonta at the Supreme Court, that ruling made clear in no uncertain terms that parents have a fundamental constitutional right to know what is happening with their own children at school. These districts had two months to act. The DOJ investigation is the direct consequence of their inaction.”

Read the full press release here.

SUPREME COURT'S CHILES RULING MEANS AG JAMES' CENSORSHIP CAMPAIGN MUST END, NEW TMS BRIEF ARGUES: Thomas More Society attorneys filed a supplemental brief on May 6 in Letitia James v. Heartbeat International, the lawsuit in which New York Attorney General Letitia James seeks to prohibit pro-life pregnancy centers from sharing information about Abortion Pill Reversal (APR). The brief, submitted at the court's request following April 15 oral argument, argues that the U.S. Supreme Court's recent 8-1 decision in Chiles v. Salazar controls the outcome of the case and requires dismissal of the case brought by the AG.

In Chiles, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that the First Amendment does not permit the government to punish speech based on a claimed “medical consensus” in the context of legitimate medico-scientific debate.

As the Supreme Court wrote in Chiles: “Medical consensus, too, is not static; it evolves and always has. A prevailing standard of care may reflect what most practitioners believe today, but it cannot mark the outer boundary of what they may say tomorrow.” (Supplemental Memo, pp. 4)

The brief further notes that, over more than two years of litigation, the Attorney General has never followed the procedure required under New York law to seek discovery in opposition to an anti-SLAPP motion and has identified no “essential facts” she cannot prove without it. The Attorney General has also failed to identify a single demonstrably false statement by the defendants, relying instead on a contested “medical consensus” that Chiles now makes constitutionally insufficient as a basis for restricting speech.

Read the full supplemental brief here.

TMS EVP AND GENERAL COUNSEL ANDREW BATH: "PARDONS AREN'T ENOUGH. THE FACE ACT MUST GO.": Writing in The Federalist, Thomas More Society Executive VP and General Counsel Andrew Bath makes the case for full repeal of the FACE Act.

Drawing on the DOJ Weaponization Working Group's nearly 900-page report and the stories of TMS clients like Paul Vaughn and Mark Houck, Bath argues that pardons and personnel changes cannot fix what is a structural problem: a federal statute that federalizes local conduct, invites selective prosecution, and rests on increasingly shaky constitutional footing after Dobbs. "A future administration could re-weaponize the FACE Act on day one," Bath writes. "Personnel changes don't fix structural problems."

Read the full op-ed in The Federalist, here.

WORLD MAGAZINE SPOTLIGHTS APR LEGAL BATTLES ON THE TMS DOCKET: In WORLD, a profile of the coast-to-coast legal battle over Abortion Pill Reversal—including the California case where Thomas More Society attorneys are defending Heartbeat International and RealOptions against Attorney General Rob Bonta's attempt to silence information about APR.

“These are the latest salvos in an effort by the other side to use deceptive practices and false advertising laws to restrict pregnancy center speech,” Breen told WORLD’s Lauren Canterberry.

The piece highlights the real women and real babies behind the legal fight: RealOptions CEO Tasha Keirns reports 44 babies born after their mothers chose APR at her Bay Area pregnancy centers, with another seven mothers still pregnant—results consistent with peer-reviewed studies showing pregnancy continuation rates of 64–68%.

Read the full feature here.