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Steven Mazie Profile picture
Steven Mazie
@stevenmazie
I cover SCOTUS @TheEconomist and teach @BHSEC. Brooklynite, @UMich pol science PhD, dad of three, runner. Views here are mine.
12 subscribers
Jun 14 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
This is one of the two big gun cases we've been expecting, and again it's a 6-3 decision along ideological lines.

The ATF under Donald Trump started regulating bump stocks as machine guns after the 2017 Las Vegas massacre.

Today SCOTUS says the govt can't do that. The opinion: supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf…
Apr 25 • 65 tweets • 7 min read
Kav on OLC opinions: clear statement rule for official acts, but none of these statutes in this case have a clear statement.

Kavanaugh seems REALLY INTERESTED IN EXPANDING PRESIDENTIAL POWER Kav: some acts in indictment are private and some are official. Who decides which is which?

Sauer: the district court
Apr 24 • 78 tweets • 9 min read
At 10 am, the Supreme Court hears its second abortion case in as many months. Have a look at my quick @TheEconomist preview and follow me here. I’ll be analyzing the oral argument as it happens espresso.economist.com/face3ee8cd23d4… Here are the lawyers arguing today. The hearing is scheduled for one hour but, with additional questions in the justice-by-justice rounds, will probably take about two hours. Image
Apr 22 • 20 tweets • 3 min read
SCOTUS just now in 8th am homelessness case: Justice Sotomayor, pressing lawyer for Grants Pass, OR, on why "stargazers" or people lying on the beach who fall asleep ("as I tend to do") are not arrested, but homeless people are. Kagan: could you criminalize the status of homelessness?

lawyer: that's not a status

Kagan: yes it is
Mar 28 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
Looking back at the Joint Appendix in FDA v Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, it's remarkable how slippery the anti-mife lawyers are as to whether their objection to "completing an abortion" is (1) killing a live embryo/fetus or also (2) removing dead pregnancy tissue.

🧵 Start w/ @Dahlialithwick and @mjs_DC's excellent piece highlighting Erin Hawley's pivot to (2): she transforms "'complicity' from a shield for religious dissenters to a sword for ideologues desperate to seize control over other people’s lives and bodies" slate.com/news-and-polit…
Mar 26 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Today Erin Hawley said her clients face a "Hobson's choice" due to FDA rules regarding access to mifepristone: the agency "forces them to choose between helping a woman with a life-threatening condition and violating their conscience".

Here's why that's wrong...

A 🧵 What's a Hobson's choice? Wikipedia helps us out: a non-choice choice. When you are given two options and one is obviously better than the other so you don't, in fact, have a choice. Image
Feb 20 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
BREAKING: Supreme Court declines to review decision involving race-conscious diversity-enhancing admissions procedure at Virginia magnet school. Alito and Thomas note their dissent. Image This is a major development. The question after last year’s decision banning race-based affirmative action was whether SCOTUS would go after affirmative action substitutes. Only two justices seem to want to go that route.
Jan 22 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
BREAKING: SCOTUS sides with Biden administration in fight with Texas over access to a strip of the border with Mexico.

It's a 5-4 decision with no opinions. Image Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Barrett joined the three liberal justices to take Biden's side over that of Texas.

Federal agents can now cut the concertina wire that has been holding them back from accessing the border.
Nov 13, 2023 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
BREAKING: the Supreme Court has developed and released a code of conduct for the justices Image Here is a copy drive.google.com/file/d/1F7Ew3D…
Aug 31, 2023 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
Financial disclosures for Justices Alito and Thomas just came out. They are here, courtesy of @FixTheCourt:

Thomas:


Alito:
fixthecourt.com/wp-content/upl…
fixthecourt.com/wp-content/upl… Among Justice Thomas's disclosures are reimbursements for transportation, meals and lodging from Harlan Crow, the GOP megadonor whose many gifts were disclosed in reporting this year by @propublica Image
Jun 30, 2023 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
BREAKING: in a clash between free speech and LGBT-rights case, the Supreme Court sides with a Christian web designer who refuses to make websites for gay weddings. The vote is 6-3. here is the opinion - it is by Justice Gorsuch supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf…
Jun 15, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This is excellent news, folks!! It seemed likely Gorsuch would join the liberals in upholding ICWA. The question was whether there would be fifth vote. Well, there was a 5th...and a 6th and 7th. Roberts AND all three Trump-appointed justices rebuffed the conservative attack.
Jun 15, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
First SCOTUS ruling: Jackson writes Lac du Flambeau Band v. Coughlin, an 8-1 with Gorsuch in dissent. It says Indian nations can be sued under the Bankruptcy Code. supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf… In his solo dissent, Gorsuch notes that "Tribes enjoy a unique status in our law."
Jun 8, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
A word on this HUGE SURPRISE 5-4 (not 6-3) decision: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson may have been the difference. She came to the oral argument with a v forceful defense of the Reconstruction Amendments as anything but race-blind & critiqued abandoning decades of VRA precedent. Along with Kagan and Sotomayor, Jackson made a v persuasive case for not walking further away from the promise of voting rights in the VRA. Quite amazing that her vision—rather than the inverse theory of race from Thomas—apparently won over Roberts & Kavanaugh.
Jun 8, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
BREAKING: Supreme Court votes 6-3 NOT to further erode the Voting Rights Act in Allen v. Milligan. Huge surprise. Kavanaugh and Roberts join the three liberal justices in saving Section 2. Here's the opinion supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf…
May 18, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
NEW: as expected, the Supreme Court dismisses Arizona v Mayorkas, the Title 42 case, as moot. Image Justice Jackson, no fan of this type of vacatur, notes she would have preferred to dismiss the case as improvidently granted.
May 18, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Today as a prelude to discussing Masterpiece Cakeshop and 303 Creative, my class examined this famous line in Obergefell where Kennedy reassures religious people who have "decent and honorable" views against same-sex marriage and says don't worry, you're not being disparaged. Image "I can't believe how easy it is to discriminate against gays and lesbians," one student noted, shaking her head. "There would never be a line about 'decent and honorable' premises opposing interracial marriage."

Indeed: nothing like that in Loving v. Virginia.
May 18, 2023 • 16 tweets • 4 min read
SCOTUS decisions coming now... First decision: A 9-0 in Amgen v. Sanofi, a patent battle over cholesterol-lowering medications argued in March. Sanofi wins, defeating Amgen's claim that the company has violated its patent. supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf…
May 17, 2023 • 29 tweets • 4 min read
The oral argument in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA begins at 1pm central, 2pm eastern (in half an hour) and is being livestreamed here:

5thcircuit.streamguys1.com/enbanc

(Each side has 40 minutes.) The oral argument has begun.

Lawyer for FDA is up. Facing immediate push-back when she says the district court's order was "unprecedented."
May 4, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
There are some interesting discussions going on here about the propriety of various aspects of Justice Thomas's financial relationship with Harlan Crow. There's room for disagreement on the finer points. But... ...the most important question to me is the broader issue of whether SCOTUS needs more robust transparency and enforcable (in some way) ethical guidelines. I think all the recent revelations (involving multiple justices) suggest the answer to that question is yes.
May 3, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
No response from @BasedMikeLee because the law clearly required Justice Thomas to disclose his gifted luxe travel over two decades. The only response is a deflection, claiming that hey, liberal justices are guilty as well. Well, yes! Orders of magnitude divide the examples, but other justices have at times failed to properly disclose.