This dissent from Judge Lawrence VanDyke, a Trump nominee, is pretty shocking. In addition to repeatedly dismissing the threat of mass shootings, he accuses his colleagues of failing to empathize with gun-owners because they're protected by U.S. marshals. cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opin…
VanDyke's dismissive reference to security for his colleagues' " upper-middleclass home[s]" is especially startling in light of the attack on Judge Esther Salas just last year. Her husband and son were shot to death—due, in part, to lack of security. npr.org/2020/11/20/936…
VanDyke also mocks Judge Andrew Hurwitz for pointing out that a fellow judge was killed in a mass shooting, writing that Hurwitz's "personal anecdotes" and "exaggeration of risks" demonstrates that he cannot analyze the Second Amendment in an "objective and detached manner."
VanDyke accuses his more liberal colleagues of judging in bad faith, writing: "The majority of our court distrusts gun owners and thinks the Second Amendment is a vestigial organ of their living constitution." The civility really shines through ... cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opin…
VanDyke says his colleagues are willing to accept deaths from traffic violence because they like and use cars, but aren't willing to accept deaths from mass shootings because they don't like or use guns. cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opin…
As @petersagal points out, Judge Hurwitz's response is very powerful—much more thoughtful and eloquent than VanDyke's polemic—and worth reading in full. cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opin…
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Note that the Florida constitution already provides explicit protections for the "right to privacy." For decades, the Florida Supreme Court held that this guarantee protected access to abortion. The conservative majority just overturned all those precedents.
Sorry, the six-week ban will take effect in one month, not immediately.
The Supreme Court's third and final opinion of the day is in Pulsifer v. U.S. In a 6–3 opinion, Justice Kagan reads the First Step Act's safety-valve provision narrowly, to prevent many defendants from obtaining relief. Gorsuch, Jackson, Sotomayor dissent. supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf…
Today's decision in Pulsifer will be a grave disappointment to many, many individuals seeking relief under the First Step Act from harsh mandatory minimum sentences. It shrinks the law's safety valve by reading the word "and" to mean, in effect, "or." Unfortunate in my view.
In his dissent, Gorsuch explains how the majority effectively rewrites this provision of the First Step Act to make relief far more difficult to obtain. It really does require verbal gymnastics to get there. But six justices did. supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf…
The five-justice majority's opinion in the Trump ballot removal case has a lot of ambiguous language that leaves many questions unresolved. How you read that language, of course, determines how far you think the majority goes to dismantle the insurrection clause. It's debatable!
I tend to think the three liberals are correct that "the majority attempts to insulate all alleged insurrectionists from future challenges to their holding federal office."
Reading the opinion that way, you easily see how it forecloses any enforcement of the insurrection clause.
But if you want to read the majority opinion more generously—in a way that contradicts what the three liberals claim it says—you certainly can. Such is the nature of ambiguous judicial language.
I agree with @gtconway3d that in some key ways, the opinions just don't line up.
If you double click where it says "JJ." at the top, then copy and paste it, that line reads: SOTOMAYOR , J., concurring in part and dissenting in part.
And if you do a control-F search for "SOTOMAYOR , J., concurring in part and dissenting in part," it highlights that same line.
It looks like the liberals' opinion was originally styled as a partial dissent written by Justice Sotomayor, but got changed to a concurrence in the judgment authored jointly by all three liberals. supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf…
I see that the copy-paste approach doesn't work on every computer, but the control-F approach should.
🚨The Supreme Court overturns the Colorado decision removing Trump from the ballot, holding that only Congress can enforce the 14th Amendment's insurrection clause against federal candidates. supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf…
Despite the unanimous outcome, the reasoning is deeply fractured. The three liberal justices are furious that the majority went too far, attempting "to insulate all alleged insurrectionists from future challenges to their holding federal office." supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf…
To summarize:
All justices agree on reversing the Colorado Supreme Court.
Five justices say only Congress can enforce the insurrection clause.
The three liberals say Colorado can't go it alone, but reject the majority's sweeping holding.
The Alabama Supreme Court ruling that embryos are legally children is worse than a lot of coverage implies. The majority and the chief justice suggest that EVEN IF the Alabama legislature attempts to re-legalize IVF, the state constitution will forbid it. slate.com/news-and-polit…
Instead, the Alabama Supreme Court—and, more explicitly, Chief Justice Parker—laid out an altered version of IVF to protect the dignity of "extrauterine children" (i.e., embryos).
For IVF to remain legal in Alabama, doctors will have to violate the standards of care and subject patients to inferior treatment opposed by all legitimate health care providers.