Kagan is such a strong communicator on vaccine mandates.
"This is a pandemic in which nearly a million people have died ... This is the policy that is most geared to stop all this. ... So whatever 'necessary' means, whatever 'grave' means, why isn't this necessary and grave?"
A blunt line of questioning from Sotomayor: "We are now having deaths at an unprecedented amount ... Why shouldn't the federal government—which has already decided to give OSHA the power to regulate workplace safety—have a national rule that will protect workers?"
Kagan: "Who decides? Should it be the agency full of expert policymakers, politically accountable to the president? ... Or courts can decide. Courts are not politically accountable.... Courts have no epidemiological expertise. Why in the world would courts decide this question?"
Kagan, frustrated: "I would think that workplace risk is about the greatest, least controllable risk with respect to COVID that any person has. ... You have to be there ... and you have to be there with a bunch of people you don't know and who might be completely irresponsible."
(Remember: The Ohio Solicitor General is arguing remotely—in opposition to the workplace vaccine-or-test mandate—because he has COVID.)
Both Kavanaugh and Barrett have tossed truly ridiculous softballs to the attorneys challenging Biden's vaccinate-or-test mandate for employers. I think it's exceedingly likely that the Supreme Court will invalidate the mandate. Biggest question is whether it's 5–4 or 6–3.
I mean, just listen to Kavanaugh's absurd softball (it's barely even a question) to the Ohio Solicitor General (arguing remotely because he has COVID). It's pure backlash management.
Chief Justice Roberts just disapprovingly cited Ron Klain's retweet of a reporter who called the employer mandate a "workaround." I think this is pretty much over.
Here's the chief justice alluding to the Klain retweet: "It seems to me that the government is trying to work across the waterfront and is just going agency by agency. I mean, this has been referred to as a 'workaround' and I'm wondering what it is you're trying to work around."
More from Roberts: "It seems to me that the more and more mandates that pop up in different agencies, I wonder if it's not fair for us to look at [mandates] as a general exercise of power by the federal government and then ask the question: Why hasn't Congress had a say in this?"
The chief justice suggests that the OSH Act cannot authorize a vaccinate-or-test mandate because Congress wasn't thinking about COVID when it passed the law 50 years ago. I'd love to see him apply this reasoning to the Federal Arbitration Act!
After insisting that he's not questioning the safety of COVID vaccines, Alito questions the safety of COVID vaccines, citing their "adverse consequences."
"There is a risk. Has OSHA ever imposed any other safety regulation that imposes some extra risk on the employee?"
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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.