U.S. Supreme Court: Post-Ginsburg Edition

https://x.com/chrisgeidner/status/1768688451816247586?s=46&t=u2ZSlsY3trRV36IPP6jNDQ

Justices deny request to lift injunction barring drag events on Texas college campus. Underlying case on the merits still has not been heard yet

I think you got that reversed. The courts have so far not chosen to grant an injunction against the ban. Requests for injunctions are usually based on a claim that unless the injunction is granted "irreparable harm" will be suffered by those making the request. The courts have apparently decided that the harm done does not rise to meet that standard.

BREAKING: SCOTUS allows West Texas A&M University to continue its campus drag ban. The justices deny students the injunction they have thus far also been denied by Judge Kacsmaryk and the Fifth Circuit.

Sotomayor and Barrett want you to know they are chums:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/15/supreme-court-seems-bitterly-divided-two-justices-say-otherwise/

The justices are yoked together for life terms. Collegiality is just a recognition they are locked in a room together forever.

Doing joint public appearances together is hardly required for collegiality. Anyway, I'm not confused as to why they're doing this: the SC has a massive credibility problem due to it being thoroughly corrupted by the far right, and this is crisis PR.

I understand the intent and it still made me vomit a couple days ago.

lol & otm

I have zero interest in what beamish thinks, but to clarify for rob/tracer/suzy, my issue is really with the undertone of contempt in said poster's posts, implying that people who remain in the US are stupid or delusional. I don't have an issue with emigres per se. I don't know whether I would stay and fight or run if my friends started being murdered, I have no kids and not much to lose by leaving but my wife does, last time we discussed this we were on the "stay and fight" side. I keep this thread unbookmarked for my own sanity and wish death on the SC daily, so I was late responding.

xpost-- yep, you phrased it better Aimless.

This happened today too. Kagan voting with most of the conservatives; Gorsuch joining Jackson and Sotomayor in the dissent

https://www.coloradopolitics.com/kagan-leads-supreme-court-majority-in-tough-on-crime-ruling/article_4b2360de-53b3-567d-9fe8-0c8618129a40.html

Paging Alfred

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/18/supreme-court-murthy-missouri-problems-00147591

Phew. I mean, we don't have a decision yet, but that sounds promising. Glad to hear a little more 1st Amendment grasp from the bench than during the hearings on the Texas/Florida social media laws.

Also, Alito is an idiot as always — “It is treating Facebook and these other platforms like they’re subordinates. Would you do that to the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or the Associated Press or any other big newspaper or wire service?” Dude, have you heard how Donald Trump talks to/about the "big newspapers"?

He believes this twaddle.

I bet his VCR has been blinking "12:00" for 20 years.

"How do I set this thing up to record Tucker on X?"

lol

BREAKING: SCOTUS allows Texas’s SB 4 to go into effect, allowing state criminal enforcement of a state immigration law.

Is this allowing the law to be operative while there is an appeal of a lower court ruling that's pending?

Yes, but even accepting the case when precedent is clear was stupid; but the conservative majority has the upper hand.

TN is considering a law that will REQUIRE local law enforcement to check immigration status on anyone they pick up for any reason, and report them to ICE.

Kind of part of the growing-police-state trend we were talking about in the police brutality thread.

Seems like there would be Fourth Amendment problems with that one.

This court has no respect for precedent. They believe their politics are impeccably correct and whatever does not conform to their view is incorrect, pernicious, and must be forcibly removed from society. Iow they resemble the majority of the Republican party.

will not be surprised to see Governor Abbott defy the Supreme Court if they go against his wishes on this one

Scotus hearing now- Erin Hawley, lawyer and wife of Republican senator Josh Hawley, is making the legal argument that access to the abortion pill by mail should be cut off

Mark Joseph Stern tweets:

Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are clearly eager to revive the Comstock Act as a nationwide ban on medication abortion—and maybe procedural abortion, too. That would subject abortion providers in all 50 states to prosecution and imprisonment. No congressional action needed.

Prelogar's good! My first experience listening to her. She's crisp and assured (I learned she was Kagan's clerk once).

There's a legal standing argument in case too

Amy: "It seems to me, and the data bears this out, that telemedicine increases risk in misjudging gestation, therefore increased bleeding & increased D&C procedures"

SG Prelogar: No, the data does not bear this out

Lots of praise for Prelogar on twitter x.

From the libs and left

Hawley now arguing

Neil Gorsuch expresses undisguised contempt for Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk's nationwide ban on mifepristone, condemning it as part of a "rash" of unlawfully overbroad remedies awarded by unrestrained district courts. Obviously a bad sign for the anti-abortion advocates here.

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) March 26, 2024

I only listened to the last section of the arguments, but it sounded to me like several justices thought standing was a pretty big problem here.

But of course Alito is desperate to find standing

re other issue

Elie Mystal of the Nation-- part of his tweet

Hawley is arguing that the FDA doesn't require enough reporting about harms from the abortion pill, which is why her organization doesn't have any evidence of harms.

Yeah, she tied herself in knots trying to explain why asking the courts to second-guess the FDA's expertise was not in fact asking the courts to second-guess the FDA's expertise.

lol @ Sam jus'-askin'-questions Alito wondering if the FDA has ever made mistakes.

Law Professor Leah Litman and Stern both think federal government will win on the legal standing argument

https://x.com/LeahLitman/status/1772651475946123364?s=20

Adam Litvak:

A majority of the justices seemed persuaded that the plaintiffs had not shown they had suffered the sort of injury that gave them standing to sue. Based on the questioning, the decision may be lopsided in favor of allowing broad access to the pill, with only Justices Alito and Thomas as likely dissenters.

And:

The three justices appointed by former President Trump — all part of the conservative majority — asked questions suggesting that they would support a ruling for the F.D.A. so long as doctors with objections to providing abortions are not forced to participate in the procedure.

I guess they realized what an administrative nightmare this decision would produce -- and on which thety and their successors would have to rule on for decades.

https://bsky.app/profile/wallace.bsky.social/post/3komabw3on624

Oh, here's the text of that. (Not up on my Bluesky post sharing yet.)

ALITO: Counsel, do you think it should be illegal to provide healthcare to women?
COUNSEL: Well, I...
ALITO: A dozen eggs now costs over ten dollars, isn't that true?
COUNSEL: ...
ALITO: What are you doing about the border crisis? Shoplifting is out of control! Vaccines cause cancer.

Yeah right wing lower court judges are openly contemptuous of principles like standing in order to get the results they want. I feel like that if courts are going to abolish the appearance of propriety and adhering to long established principles then we have no obligation to follow their orders. They’re breaking the whole edifice by which their rulings have any credibility, and thence their power. How many divisions does the Fifth Circuit have? Let them enforce.

lol

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted a mismatch between what the anti-abortion doctors claimed they have experienced and the remedy they are seeking, with Justice Neil M. Gorsuch later raising a similar point. The doctors assert that it offends their moral beliefs to care for patients who have taken abortion pills, but they are asking the court to impose restrictions on the pill that would drastically limit its availability for all patients. Justice Jackson and Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar both noted that the plaintiffs’ objections could be satisfied by a right they already have: federal conscience protections that allow them to opt out of providing care they morally object to.

Didn't the doctors also argue as part of their standing that women having abortions denies them the joy of delivering those babies?

Just a total crackpot case from the get-go, I'm glad it looks like it will lose but I take no comfort in this kind of shit even getting to SCOTUS.

And one of the 5th Circuit judges (a Trump appointee) even bought that line!

“Unborn babies are a source of profound joy for those who view them,” he wrote. “Expectant parents eagerly share ultrasound photos with loved ones. Friends and family cheer at the sight of an unborn child. Doctors delight in working with their unborn patients — and experience an aesthetic injury when they are aborted.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/16/abortion-pill-restrictions-00111499

Fewer pregnant women means fewer people giving up their seats on buses to pregnant women which leads to an overall decline in societal courtesy which leads to more shootings on buses which leads to fewer people willing to ride buses which leads to more carbon emissions which leads to global warming.

checkmate libs.

hey I like to jack it to aborted babies. why don't you care about my aesthetic joy?

NEW: Top Democrats won’t join calls for Sotomayor to retire.

But in interviews with NBC, they’re voicing fears of a RBG redux.

“We should learn a lesson. And it’s not like there’s any mystery here about what the lesson should be.”

w/ @lawrencehurley:https://t.co/ZuERTMYgSz

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) April 3, 2024

we're scared but we aren't going to doing anything about it

I definitely think everyone should learn from RBG, but Sotomayor's 69 with diabetes rather than 80 with cancer, bit of a difference. I wouldn't object if she chose to step down, but actuarially she ought to live at least another four years.

I wish she'd resign.

One plus would be the confirmation hearing could highlight (via evasively answered questions) all the bad and unpopular shit the conservative majority has done and will continue to do.

I mean you know if Sotomayor resigned the GOP would block any Supreme Court nomination until there was a Republican president, right? And Manchin would help them until Republicans retake the Senate this November