On my way to Chicago for #DNCConvention and this just popped up in my memories feed. I wrote this op-ed exactly 4 years ago about the Dems missing an opportunity to talk about the courts...

And it still rings true today.

A short 🧵

wapo.st/3Mj1JOk So far, #DNC2024Convention has been amazing. The vibes, as the youth say, are immaculate.

But there’s still room for improvement. The Dems need to talk about the courts.

And they need to do so explicitly and unapologetically.

The Thomas concurrence in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine is ... something. A 🧵

In his concurrence, Thomas takes aim at the Court's third party/associational standing doctrine. What is this doctrine? Generally, a party in federal court can only assert his or her own rights and cannot raise claims about the rights of 3d parties who are not before the court.

Mini 🧵Idaho's lawyer mentions the many Catholic hospitals across the country. He's right. In recent years, many hospitals have been acquired by religiously-affiliated hospitals. It presents a real issue for reproductive care Religiously-affiliated hospitals often do not provide abortion services--but they also don't do tubal ligations, certain forms of contraception, and other forms of reproductive care.

Listening to the EMTALA oral argument and Idaho's lawyer just opened the door to fetal personhood... says that the federal law that requires federally-funded hospitals to provide stabilizing care to patients experiencing emergencies implicates TWO individuals... Listen along here: supremecourt.gov

🧵AZ Supreme Court has determined that a law from 1864 that bans abortion, except where necessary to preserve the pregnant person's life, is enforceable... it makes performing an abortion punishable by 2-5 years in prison

npr.org/2024/04/09/124… Previously, abortion was banned at 15 weeks in AZ--itself a retrenchment from the policies that existed pre-Dobbs.

But look how the Overton Window has shifted. Now a 15-week ban seems reasonable... because this is Gilead.

In honor of his birthday, some of Justice Alito's greatest hits....

https://twitter.com/StrictScrutiny_/status/1774769562631983157

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (sticking it to abortion rights)

Quick thoughts on Trump v. Anderson.

1) This could have been a one-pager....
2) But 5 Justices wanted to go further to answer questions that weren't on the table
3) Something that Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson called them on
4) The SS, EK, KBJ dissent is dripping in snark. 🔥 Wrote quickly because I was running to class... the Dem appointees concurred in the judgment, but did not join the other aspects of the decision's reasoning... which means that this "concurrence" has some BIG D (dissent) energy. Case in point, the opener:

Parenting while Black.

A 🧵 This morning I was dropping off one of my kids at a party. As I left, I saw another parent and child from the class who were also headed to the party.

College Admissions🧵

Just listened to the January 5th ep of @nytimes The Daily, which covered the post-SFFA college admissions landscape. The upshot of the episode was that the Court's decision ended affirmative action but provided little in the way of guidance about how to implement a race-neutral process.

🧵 on Justice Thomas's GoFundMe campaign. I mentioned this a few months ago on @StrictScrutiny_ . Justice Thomas began his career as a judge when he was 42. At that point, most of his career had been in the public sector except for a brief stint at Monsanto.

He was appointed to SCOTUS when he was 43.

A 🧵 about how SCOTUS may use an under-the-radar employment discrimination case to gut workplace DEI initiatives... A little context is in order. Bear with me.

Last summer, the Supreme Court decided SFAA v. Harvard, a decision that many view as dismantling affirmative action in college admissions.

supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf…

Some initial thoughts on Allen v. Milligan.

Media is trumpeting this as a "victory" for the Voting Rights Act. And it is. And I don't want to be a turd in the punchbowl... but this is pretty weak sauce from this Court. First, this doesn't "strengthen" the VRA. It preserves the status quo. And the status quo is that this Court has done an A+ job of hobbling the VRA over the last 10 years.

Lots of media commentary going on about the Prince Harry hacking case and how hard it will be for PH to establish that he was the victim of hacking.

It's true that it's a high bar to establish irrefutable proof that he was hacked, but folks forget... that PH has also claimed that there's a symbiotic relationship between the Palace(s) and the Press, with other royals telling on each other in order to gain favorable press coverage or to minimize the impact of poor press coverage...

Having read the SCOTUS leak report, I have some thoughts: 🧵 1) The report is, for all intents and purposes, an end to the leak "investigation." The investigation yielded no evidence that would establish responsibility for the leak by a "preponderance of the evidence." Also determines that the leak wasn't the result of an external hack.

And here we go! SFFA v. UNC. Brown has already been invoked! DRINK! Listen along here: supremecourt.gov

@UVA, I served as a University Guide, one of the many students charged with giving historical tours of the original Jeffersonian grounds and admissions tours to prospective students. So I read this article with great interest. My response is below in a 🧵
jeffersonindependent.com/the-terrifical… 1. This person went on one tour, which seems like a very small sample size from which to make broader normative judgments about the kind of content that should be included in a tour. But leaving that to the side, let's engage with the premise that UVA student tours are TOO WOKE.

Quick reflection on today's oral argument in Milligan. The outcome of this case seems pre-ordained given the Court's composition and prior stances on voting rights. But it was so heartening to see the Court's liberal minority showing up refusing to give in. The three justices are a minority, but they did not seem hobbled--they seemed ready to fight. And ready to force their colleagues to justify for the record and to the people why the law demands the outcome they will inevitably reach.

Just finished teaching and learned that the Queen passed away peacefully this afternoon at Balmoral.

A 🧵 I should preface this by explaining that, for most of my life, I have followed the British Royal Family with a level of interest that many would find startling. I’ve gotten up at ridiculous hours to watch royal weddings.

.@Peggynoonannyc, just a reminder that school desegregation was not "followed by public acceptance." See also Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1 (1958).

.@nytimes' Linda Greenhouse nails it. Post-Roe, the Court decided a series of key gender equality decisions that expanded protections for women's rights, including abortion. Alito's draft opinion breezily ignores all of these precedents.
nytimes.com/2022/05/05/opi… And this amicus brief that @pennlaw's Serena Mayeri, @YaleLawSch's Reva Siegel, and I filed makes the case for upholding Roe and Casey on sex equality grounds by relying on these post-Roe precedents.

supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/1…

You must read this @washingtonpost op-ed from my @nyulaw colleague, the incomparable Peggy Cooper Davis.

A short 🧵follows:
washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/0… The op-ed builds on Peggy's phenomenal book, Neglected Stories: The Constitution and Family Values, which defended unenumerated rights on the ground that the 14A was a conscious repudiation of slavery and its neglect of family rights and bodily autonomy.