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Cristian Farias Profile picture
Cristian Farias
@cristianafarias
Legal journalist and beachgoer. I’ve written about law, justice, and the politics shaping them in lots of places. Edit: @_inquest_. Hablo y pienso en español.
Apr 24 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I've listened to every oral argument by Elizabeth Prelogar as solicitor general, and I can confidently say she sounded legitimately infuriated defending the federal law guaranteeing emergency room care at every U.S. hospital.

This indignation may well be her finest moment. The way she jostled with Justice Samuel Alito over the meaning of the law, which takes up about seven pages of the oral argument transcript, was nothing short of blood-boiling.

At one point, she more or less labeled his hypotheticals "senseless"—and got a big rise out of him ...
May 25, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Five members of the Supreme Court dealt a crushing blow to the Clean Water Act, rewriting the word "adjacent" in the law to mean "adjoining," thus leaving unprotected from pollution, and EPA oversight, vast swaths of wetlands.

supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf…

Justice Elena Kagan: Image The decision is so extreme that they even lost Brett Kavanaugh, who wrote separately to note that "long-regulated adjacent wetlands" are now at the mercy of polluters, "with significant repercussions for water quality and flood control throughout the United States."
Oct 4, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Ketanji Brown Jackson is giving a mini history lesson on the 14th Amendment, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the need to put formerly enslaved Black people on equal footing with white people.

“The entire point of the amendment was to secure rights for the freed former slaves.” The reason this matters is an entrenched belief among the Republican justices that the Constitution is "race neutral." But the history shows that the Congress that came up with the Reconstruction amendments was pretty explicit in wanting to remedy centuries of Black subjugation.
Jan 6, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This makes perfect sense.

The Justice Department is a cesspool that smells like William Barr. If the goal is to clean it up, reassert independence, and bring order to the ranks, Merrick Garland fits the bill.

And now the Senate can confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson to his seat. I, for one, am really looking forward to Judge Jackson giving side eyes to Justin Walker when they’re in conference together.
Nov 26, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Hot damn, Justice Sotomayor:

“Justices of this Court play a deadly game in second-guessing the expert judgment of health officials about the environments in which a contagious virus, now infecting a million Americans each week, spreads most easily.”

supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf… Judge Kagan doesn’t normally join Justice Sotomayor’s blazing dissents, which were often solo or joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

She does so here, which marks a shift for her. The two New Yorkers on the Supreme Court, one Jewish and the other Catholic, find common ground:
Nov 25, 2020 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Michael Flynn may have received a presidential pardon, but that doesn't wipe out the fact of his criminal conviction.

Joe Arpaio, whom Trump also pardoned, tried to get his guilty verdict thrown out but the Ninth Circuit refused. The case was dismissed. cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opin… The Arpaio-Flynn cases are really similar in that both involve Trump cronies who were convicted in federal court—one after trial, the other after a guilty plea.

And both were pardoned before sentencing, short-circuiting the prosecutions. Per the Ninth Circuit, conviction stays.
Nov 24, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Hard to know from this if Seth Rich’s parents would’ve prevailed in their theory that Fox News intentionally caused them emotional distress.

But this case has been ongoing since March 2018—and in discovery for a while. This keeps really embarrassing information from coming out. Like keeping secret the extent to which big Fox News fabulists played a role in disseminating a conspiracy theory that would horrify and deny closure to any family. thehill.com/homenews/media…
Sep 29, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Holy snap.

Judge Sullivan drops gauntlet and asks DOJ to produce all documents related an improper, early communication between Michael Flynn's current attorney, Sidney Powell, and Attorney General William Barr.

She tries to but in, he doesn't let her. Sidney Powell is now up, and she says she doesn't have any records except one letter from a prior attorney.

Judge Sullivan: Have you had discussions with the president about this case?

Powell: "I'm sorry your honor, I can't discuss that." She claims executive privilege.

!!!
Sep 14, 2020 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Been watching this:

In a major equal-protection case, two Republican-appointed judges in the Ninth Circuit rule that Trump's "shithole countries" comment — and other documented racism — can't be tied to his decision to end TPS for those countries.

cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opin… This reverses an injunction that found the opposite:

"While we do not condone the offensive and disparaging nature of the President’s remarks, we find it instructive that these statements occurred primarily in contexts removed from and unrelated to TPS policy or decisions."
Aug 26, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This naturalization ceremony and oath, with new Americans used as props during a political reelection event, is so hard to watch.

Nothing is sacred. Enterprising journalists should be following up today with the new citizens whom the White House used as props and ask them if they knew that this very special day for them would then be repurposed for an openly partisan event on national television by the president’s party.
Aug 14, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Seems to me that actively subverting two things explicitly spelled out in the Constitution — the decennial Census and the Post Office — should be grounds for impeachment of every public official complicit in those schemes.

This isn’t hard, but this Congress seems to think it is. Both things are spelled out in Article I, which sets up the Legislative branch and its powers.

You’d think this is an area where Congress would want to flex its muscles to send a clear message that you don’t mess with this stuff.
Jul 19, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
A reunion many months in the making. You love to see it. Image (This is not an ad. But if @dunkindonuts would like to pay me to promote mask-wearing during coffee runs, I’m open to it.)
Jul 18, 2020 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Here’s John Lewis torching the Supreme Court for gutting the Voting Rights Act of 1965:

“Those justices were never beaten or jailed for trying to register to vote. They have no friends who gave their lives for the right to vote. I want to say to them, Come and walk in my shoes.” Here’s John Lewis, as a witness before the Senate Judiciary Committee, presciently opposing the confirmation of John Roberts:

He is someone "whose record demonstrates a strong desire to reverse the hard-won civil rights gains that so many sacrificed so much to achieve."
Jul 14, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
While we were sleeping:

The Supreme Court’s five conservatives let the Trump administration proceed with the first federal execution in 17 years.

Their order was unsigned. The four liberal justices dissented in two signed opinions. supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf…

Justice Sotomayor: Image The Trump administration went ahead with a federal execution this morning over the objections of the elderly mother of one of the victims.

Her reasons: The Bureau of Prisons doesn’t have a particularly great record handling the coronavirus.

apple.news/AH5GDpK2OQHqox… Image
Jul 8, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The Supreme Court just ruled that two employees who were fired by their Catholic schools can’t sue them under employment discrimination laws because the First Amendment religion clauses bars them from doing so.

Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor dissent.

supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf… The majority said these employees — teachers “with the responsibility of educating and forming students in the faith” — are essentially ministers that can be discriminated against.

One teacher had breast cancer and the other was passed over for a younger one. Both were fired.
Jul 2, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Truly unreal.

It is evident that at least four justices seem determined to keep these grand-jury materials from Congress until well past the November election. The Supreme Court hasn’t yet decided whether Donald Trump can keep his taxes and financial records shielded from Congress and prosecutors.

But imagine for a moment Trump lost one or both of those cases: I wouldn’t be surprised the dissenters are doing this to spite Congress.
Jun 29, 2020 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Justice Elena Kagan understands the realities of how government and administrative law work better than just about anyone else on the Supreme Court.

That’s it. That’s the tweet. Ahhh, whatever, I'm gonna tweet out random quotes from her dissenting opinion in Seila Law:

"(The majority’s reply that a court including Charles Evans Hughes, Louis Brandeis, Benjamin Cardozo, and
Harlan Stone somehow misunderstood [agency] powers ... lacks all plausibility.)"
Jun 26, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Feels like this should be a big story:

In the middle of a pandemic, Texas and other states experiencing a surge in coronavirus cases filed a brief today asking the Supreme Court to invalidate the entire Affordable Care Act.

supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/1… Image And there it is: The Trump administration just did the same.

supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/1…
Jun 25, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The Supreme Court ruled that the Suspension Clause of the Constitution, which allows people to bring challenges to their detention in federal court, doesn't apply to undocumented immigrants.

Justice Samuel Alito has the opinion. This is not good at all. supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf… This is a wonky opinion, so I'll leave you with Justice Sotomayor's dire warning in dissent:

"Today’s decision handcuffs the Judiciary’s ability to perform its constitutional duty to safeguard individual liberty and dismantles a critical component of the separation of powers." Image
Jun 18, 2020 • 17 tweets • 5 min read
BREAKING: DACA SURVIVES. TRUMP BROKE THE LAW IN ENDING DACA.

ROBERTS RULES. supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf… This is a complex decision, so here I go:

First, Supreme Court ruled that the rescission of DACA is reviewable. That's a threshold question that Trump admin really said robbed courts of authority to review it.

SCOTUS said no under the Administrative Procedure Act. The best law.
May 30, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I was sleeping while this happened. Here are the dueling opinions: supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf… Sensibly, Chief Justice Roberts explains that California isn’t treating churches differently from businesses, but merely subjecting them to comparable restrictions “where large groups of people gather in close proximity for extended periods of time.”

That’s key to 1A analysis.