|| OK, who had Neil Gorsuch, crusader for gay rights on their bingo card? |>
yeah, wow. Did one of his close family members come out of the closet since 2017?
I was expecting the decision to go the other way, but when I saw which way it went, Gorsuch was my first guess. I'm not quite sure why, maybe I'd read this old article? My lawyer friend who clerked in Gorsuch's circuit when he was nominated thought he was more likely than other Republicans to make this kind of decision, so that's also why it may not have been a huge surprise.
It remains extremely weird to me that Kennedy was so psyched to be replaced by Kavanaugh who seems so dedicated to erasing Kennedy's legacy.
It does make sense that if either Gorsuch or Kavanaugh was going to flip on this, it would have been Gorsuch, who likes to pound on literal readings where it lets him be gratuitously cruel, and so could have been truly swayed by "treating people differently for activity that would be okay if their biological sex were different is by definition "on the basis of sex".
Flglmn's cynical thought is that this is amassing capital with Democratic pols to spend on lawlessness this November. (I thought, building on that, John Roberts flipping on ACA was similarly timed, June before an election.)
5.2: I do kind of believe the conspiratorial theory that he was swayed by his son's employment with Deutsche Bank.
Also in the positives, they rejected a challenge to California's sanctuary law.
So, in order to do that, they've hijacked the CARES ACT federal funding to subsidize the state government, instead of letting it provide additional funding for schools.
In the state's defense, state and local tax revenue is in the shitter this year and so they are facing massive budgetary black holes that Congress has expressly refused to do anything about, in the hopes that state and local governments will be drowned in a bathtub.
I thought, building on that, John Roberts flipping on ACA was similarly timed, June before an election
Doesn't "June before an election" describe roughly half of Supreme Court decision dates?
Unless you also count state elections.
11: I am boycotting any effort to use nuance to leaven liberal rage. My feeling is that any conceivable amount of Left-oriented anger is insufficient to the times, as long as it is aimed at the Right.
Regarding Gorsuch, is it possible that he saw Roberts going the "wrong" way on this one, and decided to take a stand on legislative literalism that he figures will serve him later on?
I can't assimilate the concept of a guy like Gorsuch acting on any legal principle that contradicts his political desires. Or Roberts, for that matter, but it is conceivable to me that Roberts doesn't hate LGBTQ folks all that much.
I haven't studied the opinion or anything, but it seems to me that Gorsuch could have very easily -- without stretching normal rightwing SCOTUS standards -- reconciled the opposite vote with his principled textualism.
15 last -- Yeah, everyone's a textualist.
I tend not to buy pretty much any one of the 11th dimensional chess speculations you hear. Yes the justices live in a context, and in a culture, but there's no such thing as getting enough points for ruling X that you can get away with ruling Y. And the timing is nearly always the same: the big deal cases come at the end of the term because justices spend more time writing and re-writing the opinions.
(Hey, that Appalachian Trail case was also decided today. What is a national scenic trail -- it it land, or is it an easement?)
(7-2 for incorporeal hereditament.)
Hey! I happened to be in the right place to see a statue come down! It was only a tiny piece of this moment, but I'm glad I happened to be there.
Sutter Health took down the John Sutter statue after it was repeatedly vandalized and people were starting to organize to get it down. They didn't wait for the protest tomorrow night; took it out today with no notice or announcements. I like to imagine the executive board asking each other, 'does anyone here care enough to keep this statue?' I strongly doubt anyone did. In pre-woke Sacramento, referencing Sutter was the blandest possible way to evoke local history. Anyway, they're not a city or a park or anything with an elaborate process, so down it came.
It's probably not a coincidence that SpongeBob came out yesterday.