U.S. Supreme Court: Post-Ginsburg Edition

An environmental lawyer I follow on bluesky just concluded her thread re today’s oral argument with this:

Okay argument finally done after almost two hours. Impossible to say whether I'm cranky because my blood sugar is low or because it's not looking good for the ol' Clean Water Act

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-allows-virginia-purge-noncitizens-voter-rolls-ahead-elec-rcna177673

So while Virginia does allow same day registration and provisional ballots for those who may have improperly knocked off Virginia registration list because they missed checking a box, they will have to know that they can do this and hope Virginia election officials suggest it and help. Republican governor Youngkin’s win on this with the 6 members majority will just encourage more Republican governors to mess with registration and other election matters close to election time

Who may have been

Seeing some calls for 70 year-old Justice Sotomayor who has diabetes issues to resign now under Biden, but the problem is that Manchin might not support a successor and Tulsi Gabbard (who is becoming a Republican ) won't either.

Meanwhile at the lower court level we have to hope that Biden and Senator Durbin can get more Dem judges approved through the lame duck period (and that might require Manchin & Gabbard votes also). MCconnell as you may recalled shoved Fed Society Trump butt kisser Aileen Cannon onto a District court job in the lame duck period between Trump's loss to Biden and Biden taking the presidency.

when you say gabbard, are you talking about sinema?

Oops ! Yes

Machine and Sienna aren’t agreeing to anything that will cost them a buck in the future

And Biden hasn't nominated enough folks, and accounted for time vetting, voting and debating . Durbin moving slow too, plus I think the blue check rule still in place for District court slots (Senators get a sign off -- good luck getting that from Republican ones )

Vacancies in the Federal Judiciary

118th Congress

Last updated on11/09/2024

Total Vacancies:47

Total Nominees Pending:17

https://www.uscourts.gov/judges-judgeships/judicial-vacancies/current-judicial-vacancies

chevron strike-down silver lining - harder for RFK jr to make the fda do what he wants?

i seriously doubt RFK will be running the FDA or if he is, it won't be for long

I really, really hope clearer heads prevail re: RFK Jr., but Trump did say he would let him "run wild"

don't look forward to the underground drug networks that will have to be created if he does just so people can get vaccinated

Trump is urging Republicans to somehow block any more judges from being appointed by Biden and confirmed by the Senate to the 47 vacancies.

Eileen Cannon was confirmed by a lameduck Republican McConnell Senate in November 2020—by a bipartisan vote of 56-21, with the support of 10 Democrats (23 senators were absent or otherwise didn’t vote in that post-election, lame-duck session)—Cannon began her judicial service that month. She was only 39 years old.

Then once Trump gets in for his 2nd time --

waiting in the wings are dozens of Republican-nominated judges who in January would be eligible to retire on full pay but were most likely delaying doing so until there was a Republican president who could appoint their successors.

There are 83 such judges, according to Russell Wheeler, a scholar at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution who tracks judicial nominations.

Once Trump takes office, he will probably be able to fill most of those slots.

GOP won't pursue Supreme Court ethics rules

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-will-name-conservative-judges-may-even-pick-majority-supreme-cou-rcna179130

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/4992094-gorsuch-invokes-pnut-the-squirrel-in-federalist-society-dinner-keynote/

It’s bad enough that Gorsuch did multiple Fox News interviews for his book and is referencing Fox News stories at his Federalist Society keynote address, but did retired justice Breyer have to go to the Federalist Society Event and talk and normalize those folks . I recall Breyer had a dumb op-ed awhile back though offering this same mush so I guess I should not be surprised

https://ballsandstrikes.org/legal-culture/tom-goldstein-trump-prosecutions-supreme-court/

A response to the SCOTUS blog lawyer head who just wrote a NY Times opinion piece saying that all the cases against Trump whether in state court or federal court, should be dropped because Trump got elected again

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/03/us/supreme-court-ethics-rules.html

Interesting insider information article that confirms how most of us likely felt each justice would view things.

James Burnham, a former clerk to Justice Gorsuch, published an essay with warnings similar to the ones that his former boss had made in private. Ethics enforcement could “destabilize a legal system that has long protected us all,” he added in an interview.

Guy doesn't realize how his privileged Republican take can be read.

"us"

wish his sinus node would be destabilized

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/12/04/supreme-court-transgender-rights-case/#link-3KEP264JE5AGVE76V53CA7PSLM

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. used the phrase “a girl who wants to live like a boy” at one point

Alito also used to be alive

The wisdom of spectators:

“I care about gender-nonconforming kids just like me,” Turner said. “I’m a gay man, and I was a very feminine boy. When I was in second grade, I cried about wishing I was a girl because I wanted to have a purse. And thank goodness I wasn’t told that I was in the wrong body. I was told that you can have a purse — boys can be feminine, girls can be masculine, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

“I relate to the kids that are experiencing gender dysphoria, and I think that they’re frequently gay or lesbian, or they will grow up to be, and they’d be better off without medicalizing,” he said.

Are people really told by professionals that they’re in the wrong body? Because I’m inclined to believe that opinion is put forward by the patient experiencing gender dysphoria.

This is almost certainly going to be upheld. I think it's time to reconsider the "gender-affirming care is primarily a medical issue" approach (as opposed to a minority rights /sex-based discrimination issue) as, from what I'm reading, that's the logic the conservatives are using to uphold the TN law

I really think the Conservative mind sees everything as a money-making scam, because projection, as well as their inability to think outside of a moneymaking framework. So therefore doctors who specialize in gender-affirming care are pushing kids into it for $$$

but the law explicitly allows puberty blockers, hormone treatments, and cosmetic surgeries for minors so long as they aren't used for gender affirmation

The Tennessee law is fine with boys getting puberty blockers if will help them affirm their manhood, but not with girls getting them for psychological and mental health reasons.

Justice Jackson apparently did make the minority rights and equal rights argument

The conservative majority don’t want to consider trans people a minority deserving of protection against discrimination

Macho boys are a minority deserving protection.

Exactly . The Supreme Court majority knows better than a bunch of lib doctors who deserves protection

Waiting for Red States to pass the "Laughing at Dead CEOs" act next

https://i.imgur.com/Fn4jhba.gif

Alito/Thomas/Kavanaugh all dying in same car accident, Biden squeezes all three replacements through before January. Manifesting it

Interesting dream. Alas , Manchin & Sinema would have to sign off. I see that Schumer made a deal a little while ago with Republicans to let 4 court of appeals slots to sit empty until Trump comes in in exchange for Republicans not blocking some lower level District Court judge slots. Apparently Schumer didn’t think he had the votes to get Dem selected judges in those higher slots

Dems bringing a knife wet noodle to a gun fight as usual.

Dems Supreme Court judicial ethics report issued

Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose two additional trips from a billionaire patron that had not previously come to light, Senate Democrats revealed on Saturday after conducting a 20-month investigation into ethics practices at the Supreme Court.

The findings were part of a 93-page report released by Democratic staff members of the Judiciary Committee along with about 800 pages of documents. It said the two trips, both of which had been previously unknown to the public, took place in 2021 and were provided by Harlan Crow, a real estate magnate in Texas and a frequent patron of Justice Thomas’s.

One trip took place that July by private jet from Nebraska to Saranac, N.Y., where Justice Thomas stayed at Mr. Crow’s upstate retreat for five days. The other came in October, when Mr. Crow hosted Justice Thomas overnight in New York on his yacht after flying him from the District of Columbia to New Jersey for the dedication of a statue.

From The NY Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/21/us/politics/clarence-thomas-trips-disclosure-investigation.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

So I am watching the Kennedy Center Honors now on network tv and after showing honoree Bonny Raitt I think, they cut away to the crowd and I see Justice Roberts; and then after Dave Chappelle does a routine in tribute to the Apollo Theatre , then suddenly show f'in Brett Kavanaugh there . Ugh

They probably get free tickets, too.

luv 2 be friends w supreme court justices and fly them on my planes

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/biden-made-the-judiciary-more-diversebut-not-more-liberal-d3cf7679

Paywalled article I haven’t been able to read . Sub heading saying Biden appointments largely took the place of other like minded appointees, seems to suggest that article is saying Biden appointments replaced retiring Dem judges

That's fine. Better this outcome than Trump filling them.

Paywalled article I haven’t been able to read

you probably already know, but you can just copy paste that link into https://archive.ph, and then it gives you a link like this which you (and others)) can read: https://archive.ph/hqLwI

potentially ethically not cool for all the people/journalists/bloggers who don't have any money and are trying to paywall to support their business, but in the case of the wall street journal, imo, fuck them

https://wapo.st/4fUKkYO

Durbin still to be top ranked Dem in Republican led Judiciary committee. This opinion piece argues that Durbin wasn’t aggressive enough while Dems had power and didn’t communicate to the public well enough, so that his Dem Rhode Island colleague Sheldon Whitehouse should have been chosen instead. But alas Schumer cares more about seniority norms than about sending strong messages to the public

The strong message of Sheldon Whitehouse

The strong message of Whitehouse

https://a.co/d/etpvo8t

Justice Alito confirmed President-elect Trump called him, telling ABC News, “one of my former law clerks asked me to take a call from President-elect Trump regarding his qualifications to serve in a government position.  I agreed to discuss this matter with President-elect Trump,… https://t.co/xZzDyYItz5

— Jonathan Karl (@jonkarl) January 8, 2025

Alito and Trump just happened to talk about a former clerk getting a job in Trump administration around the same time Trump was filing a motion to block his NY sentencing hearing, and filing in the 11th Circuit to block release of classified docs report

I often call Alito about helping with traffic tickets, he's a real resource for the American people