Leah, Melissa, and Kate cover some breaking news before recapping last week’s SCOTUS arguments. They also touch on some lower-court opinions and court culture including the Fifth Circuit going buck wild (yet again), KBJ’s Broadway debut, Mitch McConnell’s never-ending hypocrisy, and TikTok’s fate in America.

 

TRANSCRIPT

 

Show Intro Mister Chief Justice, may it please the Court. It’s an old joke but when an argued man argues against two beautiful ladies like this, they’re going to have the last word. She spoke, not elegantly, but with unmistakable clarity. She said. I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.

 

Leah Litman Hello and welcome back to Strict Scrutiny, your podcast about the Supreme Court and the legal culture that surrounds it. We’re your hosts. I’m Leah Litman.

 

Melissa Murray I’m Melissa Murray.

 

Kate Shaw And I’m Kate Shaw. And we’ve got a jam packed episode for you today. First, we have a little strict scrutiny news to let you in on or maybe to remind you of. We will then cover some breaking news and then recap last week’s arguments. We’ll briefly cover recent opinions and resolutions are pending cases, and we will bring it home with a little court culture.

 

Melissa Murray First up, a little Strict Scrutiny tea. As you know, listeners, we are big, big readers. We read a lot of books. But the one book we cannot wait to add to our bookshelves next year is from Strict Scrutiny’s own, Leah Litman. Yes, you heard it right?

 

Kate Shaw Not just readers, also writers.

 

Melissa Murray Yes. One writer.

 

Leah Litman There’s a lot of reading in the writing, but like reading in the drag queen sense so, you know, little, little bow man. Yeah.

 

Kate Shaw Yes.

 

Melissa Murray All to say the is open because our girl Leah is about to be a published author. Simon and Schuster, I know you’ve heard of them. Will publish her book Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories and Bad Vibes on May 13th, 2025. So put it down in your calendars right now so you don’t miss your chance to get your copy.

 

Kate Shaw But don’t just put it down in your calendars. Order. Preorder at least one copy. Ideally, 3 to 5, superfans should consider double digits.

 

Leah Litman That means you, Sam Alito. Or you could send him, right? A grace copy.

 

Melissa Murray Harlan Crow will be sending it to Justice Thomas. I’m pretty confident.

 

Kate Shaw That’s true. You can send your friends, lovers, enemies a copy. All of these things can happen. But do not wait till May. Put your orders in now. So the official Simon and Schuster website has this to say about Leah’s book, quote, With the gravitas of Joan Biskupic and the irreverence of Elie Mystal. Leah Litman brings her signature wit to the question of what’s gone wrong at 1 First Street. In Lawless, she argues that the Supreme Court is no longer practicing law. It is running on vibes. Oh my gosh, I love making Leah, listen to us read this. It’s the best.

 

Leah Litman It’s all very uncomfortable.

 

Melissa Murray The love child of Joan Biskupic and Elie Mystal.

 

Kate Shaw Is this Leah Litman. Or this book at least. Yes, I’m going to finish reading the Simon and Schuster website. So they go on to say, By vibes, Leah means legal ish claims that repackage the politics of conservative grievance and dress them up in robes, major decisions about the language and posture of the law while in fact displaying a commitment to protecting a single minority. The religious conservatives and Republican officials whose views are no longer shared by a majority of the country. So this lovechild, this podcast in book form can be yours starting in May. Would read. Ten out of ten.

 

Melissa Murray This is the Luigi Mangione mugshot of books. Like hot.

 

Leah Litman Is that a compliment?

 

Melissa Murray Yes! Have you seen that mug shot?

 

Leah Litman Like, okay, I understand filling it in with hot.

 

Melissa Murray Not condoning the conduct, but I’ve never seen a glamor mugshot like that. Like this book is on that level.

 

Leah Litman Okay, well I appreciate it.

 

Kate Shaw Hot but not murderous.

 

Leah Litman Right.

 

Kate Shaw Anyway, as I said at the outset, preorders are available now. We will put a link in the show notes, but you can go to the Simon Schuster website. You can go to Bookshop.org. You can go to Amazon.com. There will also be an audiobook. So that will be an option as well.

 

Melissa Murray All right. So that’s our Strict Scrutiny tea. Now for a little breaking news. We always love it when the court makes sure that Leah has enough gas in the tank for a sequel. And so it is with great pleasure that we alert you to some news involving our favorite friend of the pod, one, Samuel Alito, who has been back on his hustle, dissenting from a denial of certiorari in PPOC versus Eau Claire School district. The case involves a challenge to a Wisconsin school district’s guidance for supporting trans students. The policy instructs schools to support students when appropriate or necessary with respect to restroom use, athletic participation and processes to facilitate living in accordance with their gender identity.

 

Leah Litman A group of parents challenged the policy on the grounds that it violated the fundamental right of parents to raise their children in the manner of their choosing. Specifically, the parents argued that the policy encourage students to transition and encourage schools to keep parents in the dark about their children’s gender identities. The school district argued that this characterization of the policy was misleading, noting that while the policy instructs schools to create gender support plans, those plans were part of the student’s permanent school record and therefore always available to parents and guardians. But I just I so appreciate that the week after Sam Alito cannot give two shits about the parents of trans kids, he goes all in on the parents of children. And those parents, they have rights when they don’t want their kids to be transitioning.

 

Melissa Murray You’re getting ahead of yourself. You’re getting ahead of things.

 

Leah Litman It’s just incredible. It’s incredible.

 

Melissa Murray It is. We’re going to get there, though. So all to say that this case was presented for court review and the court declined to do so, and it’s really important understand the procedural posture here. The lower court never got to the substantive questions here about whether or not this policy violated the fundamental rights of parents as protected by the liberty interest and the 14th Amendment because they determined that the parents who brought the challenge lacked standing because the policy had never affected them. They did not have students in the schools who were trans or who were implicated by the policy. And so at this point, I felt like staring in 3 or 3 creative. But I’m glad that some lower courts haven’t forgotten this whole jurisdictional wrinkle that you have to observe. In this case, the Supreme Court hasn’t exactly forgotten those jurisdictional wrinkles because a majority of the justices agreed that standing was still a thing. And they rejected this petition for certiorari on standing grounds. And some justices took that personally.

 

Kate Shaw So Justice Kavanaugh would have granted the petition. And as Leah was just alluding to, so would Justice Alito have. And in fact, Justice Alito wrote a dissent from the denial of cert, which Justice Thomas joined. And it was basically a Fox News inflected rehash of these parents arguments that the schools were encouraging gender transitions and keeping that information from parents. Obviously, tons of tension between this concern and the total lack of concern on display for the parents of actual trans kids in Tennessee.

 

Leah Litman It’s seriously like he just pulls up, chat GPT and asks, How can I be hypocritical? Based on what I said last week this go around? It was just the timing was art.

 

Melissa Murray There are lots of justices here who have things to say that are a little inconsistent. So, for example, one thing that we ought to note here is this fundamental right of parents to raise their children in the manner of their choosing is nowhere explicit in the text of the Constitution. This is one of those unenumerated rights that is viewed as fundamental because it is a kind of human right that precedes the state. The state can’t give it to you because you already have it by virtue of being human. And it’s just really nice to see Justices Alito and Thomas out here supporting at least this species of substantive due process. Liberty doesn’t work for them in the context of abortion or same-sex marriage. But right here, this is where it counts. And I just want to say, maybe that’s a bright spot for us.

 

Leah Litman It’s substantive due process for me.

 

Kate Shaw It’s not consistent.

 

Leah Litman Not for thee.

 

Melissa Murray Not for thee. Well

 

Kate Shaw Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. And it but to Leah’s point, it’s you have to slice it even more thinly because it is for some parents and their choices for their kids.

 

Melissa Murray Parents who don’t want their kids to transition.

 

Leah Litman Right.

 

Kate Shaw Or even to be around kids who might be. I mean it is a really narrow slice of liberty that they’re willing to sign on to. But you’re right, it is a kind of liberty not enumerated anywhere in the Constitution. So I suppose we should give them that. But I do think that these writings certainly do suggest that if and when the right set of plaintiffs not like the plaintiffs in Sacramento of the Tennessee case, but the aggrieved parents here only somehow able to manufacture a stronger standing claim materializes, this case will be back at Scotus and we very much know where to at least of the justices will be on this issue. So the court didn’t take this case up, but that does not mean the question is not coming back.

 

Melissa Murray It’s definitely coming back. Yeah. All right. Speaking of coming back, we’re coming back to these new Trump Cabinet picks. Justice Alito wasn’t the only one making a strong bid to be included in Leia’s Lawless sequel. The incoming Trump administration is also going to have a bite at the Apple. Last week, President elect Trump announced that Harmeet Dhillon will be his pick to be the assistant attorney general for civil rights. The Civil Rights Division of DOJ is the one that enforces voting rights, the one that investigates police departments for police brutality and enforces federal anti-discrimination laws. What could go wrong?

 

Leah Litman So Dhillon is well known in Trump world as a lawyer. She was co-chair of Lawyers for Trump, a group that in 2020 filed a number of election challenges on behalf of candidate Donald Trump. She’s especially well-suited to lead the Civil Rights Division, according to Donald Trump, because she has made a name for herself, taking on big tech for censoring our free speech. That’s Capitol free speech karma representing Christians who are prevented from praying together during Covid and suing corporations who use woke policies to discriminate against their workers and, quote, the new civil rights. You heard it here first.

 

Kate Shaw In other breaking news, we wanted to mention Luigi Mangione and the case of the ghost Gun. So we’ve already alluded here to the principal suspect in the killing of the United Health Care CEO, Bryan Thompson. Mangione, the suspect was apprehended last week after a days long manhunt. He was apprehended in an Altoona, Pennsylvania, McDonald’s. And while many individuals, as Melissa referenced earlier, were transfixed by Mangione’s strangely kind of glam-shoty mugshot, sultry it was. And we were transfixed by another development in the case, which is that apparently the gun that Mangione allegedly used in the fatal shooting was a ghost gun made with a 3D printer, which should sound familiar to listeners to this podcast.

 

Melissa Murray Because, you know, currently pending before the United States Supreme Court is a case, Garland versus Van der Storch, which considers whether ghost guns are firearms within the meaning of the federal statute that regulates firearms. Now, after the shooting, I ask you, is that even a question. Are ghost guns, firearms? It seems that they can definitely do firearms things. And all of this to say is that I think we are really looking forward to how the court’s gun nuts are going to contort themselves to figure out a way to exclude ghost guns from the ambit of this statute when this case is finally decided. So watch the space.

 

Leah Litman Although I have to say there is a chance they are going to end up at the right place in this one particular case.

 

Kate Shaw Even without this oral argument, partly because Prelogar was just so virtuosic, it did actually seem as though even though we were pessimistic going in, they were maybe going to allow this regulation to stand.

 

Melissa Murray Here’s the dream team we didn’t see coming. Elizabeth Prelogar and Luigi Mangione changing hearts and minds.

 

Kate Shaw Exam One saw that coming. No one did. One more piece of breaking news, which is that former podcast guest current North Carolina Supreme Court justice and candidate for that court, Alison Riggs, has, after two separate recounts, narrowly defeated her Republican opponent, Jefferson Griffin, who is a court of appeals judge in North Carolina, which means she should remain on the North Carolina Supreme Court.

 

Leah Litman Usually how those elections work.

 

Kate Shaw Typically if you win more votes, which in this case she did, by a very narrow margin. So there have been two separate recount and she has still won by around 700 votes, which really calls to mind, Leah, you reminding listeners how close these elections in North Carolina specifically have been. Right. This really drives at home. So you would think close. But she won, end of story. And yet her opponent seems not to get this, because even though the state Board of Elections has following those two complete recounts ruled against this outlandish set of challenges, he is mounting to disqualify 60,000 votes. He has yet to concede, and he may yet try to take those arguments to the North Carolina Supreme Court, the body he is vying for a seat on. We don’t know as we record this, on Thursday afternoon.

 

Leah Litman You mentioned the challenges being outlandish. The board ruled, among other challenges against Disenfranchizing military and service members who did not provide a voter ID when they cast their ballots.

 

Kate Shaw So this is that’s what he’s asking to do, right? He’s trying to disqualify those votes, among others. It is wild.

 

Leah Litman This is a shameful effort. I hope it fails, but it speaks to the ripple effects of election denialism in this country, which we are going to be feeling for years to come.

 

Kate Shaw Absolutely.

 

Melissa Murray It also speaks to the incredible efforts that were made in North Carolina to turn out the vote, like there were really important local efforts to turn this out in particular counties. And it seems like it paid off, even though the win was a narrow one, it was a win.

 

Leah Litman Yup

 

Kate Shaw It did. And but that’s exactly why this stuff is so pernicious, right? So if people do see how hard everyone worked to turn out enough votes to actually eke out a win for Riggs, and he manages to use these bad faith arguments to somehow get onto the court anyway, it is understandable that people begin to lose faith in democracy. And you know what? Maybe that is the point.

 

Leah Litman Yeah. On that bright note, on to argument recaps. So the court heard arguments in a number of cases last week. First up is seven County Infrastructure Coalition versus Eagle County, Colorado. At issue here is whether the National Environmental Policy Act or NEPA requires an agency to study environmental impacts beyond the immediate effects of the action that the agency has the power to regulate. It seems like a dry issue, but if the amicus activity in the case is any indication, this is a case that corporate interests are attentively watching. Why? Well, because environmental reviews can make it harder to drill, baby, drill and develop real estate projects. If the court rules in favor of the petitioners and weekends NEPA, it would dramatically lower environmental review standards for infrastructure projects on federal land.

 

Melissa Murray If NEPA sounds familiar to you listeners, it’s because just a few days ago, Donald Trump posted the following message on Truth Social, um quote “Any person or company investing $1 billion or more in the United States of America will receive fully expedited approvals and permits including but are no way limited to all environmental approvals.” He then followed this with “Get ready to rock” in all caps and three exclamation points. This obviously raises some real questions. Given it’s conflict with NEPA. But you see the point here. NEPA is a real thorn in the side of those who are really interested in this kind of development work. And the incoming administration is certainly very interested in this. So here we.

 

Kate Shaw God. That Truth Social post. I was just so torn between like one. I couldn’t believe that was not how any of this works and can’t rule out Scotus saying actually maybe that is how this works.

 

Melissa Murray Well I mean. But the foreign investment that’s likely to come from. This seems really problematic and also perhaps violative of other laws that aren’t even named here.

 

Kate Shaw But what if the Supreme Court just doesn’t have a problem with it?

 

Melissa Murray I mean.

 

Leah Litman But those two instants, Kate, I think it is. I want to say more about this later on, but I think it’s important to hold to both both that that’s not how any of this works. And, of course, we can’t rule out the Supreme Court saying that that’s how this works. But for this guy, I’ll put it right. I’ll put a pin in that and come back to I’ll.

 

Kate Shaw Come back to it. The stakes of this case were so high for deregulation kind of generally that among the Miki who submitted an amicus brief in this case was a company owned by oil baron Philip Anschutz. So why is that relevant? Well, because Anschutz and his company have very close ties to EPA super fan Neil Gorsuch. And in October, Accountable dot U.S. issued a report detailing Gorsuch his connections to Anschutz, including the fact that Gorsuch served as outside counsel to his company and that an in-house lawyer at the company recommended Gorsuch for his seat on the 10th Circuit. Gorsuch also apparently owned land with the director and an employee of the company. And to be fully transparent as a judge on the 10th Circuit, Justice Gorsuch recused himself from cases involving Anschutz, his company. So in the wake of this recent report from Accountable U.S., he did so again. So he did not participate in the oral argument, nor will he participate in the decision in this case. As the report noted, the court’s resolution of this case could have major financial benefits for Anschutz, whose companies have a number of drilling projects that require environmental review. So it’s actually a really good and important thing that Neil recused here.

 

Leah Litman Yeah. And so this is the pin I wanted to come back to because we’re detailing this. It’s a bright spot in an otherwise bleak landscape. I mean, Gorsuch didn’t recuse until Accountable put out this information and the report. And I think it underscores that it is important and will occasionally have benefits to stay focused on the core, to continue beating the drum about their excesses, to say that’s not how any of this works. While not ruling out the possibility that they are going to do the bad, terrible, horrible, no good, very bad thing, but at least if you are maintaining that’s not how this works, that’s not how this supposed to work. Right? They have to own the costs of fucking it up. And I think this is we are seeing this play out in the birthright citizenship context where the text is perfectly clear. People born in the United States are citizens. There’s also a federal statute that says the same thing. Of course, we cannot rule out the possibility that the Supreme Court is going to blow that all up. But neither should we be saying, well, they just can do whatever they want. Like law is just politics. No, no, no, no, no, no. Right. Like, it’s fine to acknowledge how law is political, but that cannot boil down to and these guys are just going to do and can do whatever they want. Like law has to mean something. And it does. Like here they are elsewhere.

 

Kate Shaw I totally agree with all that. I am going to say on birthright citizenship. I would not rule out that one, two, or three of them might do something. Yeah, catastrophic. But. I actually don’t think there’s much of a chance that there’s more than that to ignore the clear text and consistent practice of the 14th Amendment. So I at least feel not super nervous there. But I think you’re right. We probably shouldn’t rule out any possibility.

 

Melissa Murray Are you are you not nervous because there’s a history and tradition of respecting the 14th Amendment? Is that why?

 

Kate Shaw Well, I’m because I think the Constitution means more than what these jokers say. And, yes, that that sort of taking a capacious look at the history and tradition of the 14th Amendment, I actually do think that respecting.

 

Melissa Murray Because they’ve done that how many times? Taken.

 

Kate Shaw That they’ve done what how many times?

 

Melissa Murray Taken a capacious look at the history and tradition?

 

Kate Shaw Well, because they don’t doesn’t mean we don’t.

 

Leah Litman Well, they were just doing so in that Eau Claire case. Right. They were super into liberty of the the 14th amendment there.

 

Kate Shaw Enormous implications.

 

Melissa Murray It’s true.

 

Leah Litman Can’t rule it out.

 

Melissa Murray Yeah. Yeah. Basically, we just got to get some parents to talk about the fundamental rights to raise their children as citizens.

 

Kate Shaw I’m sure those parents, they’re going to be right.

 

Leah Litman They got to be the right parents.

 

Melissa Murray True true.

 

Leah Litman You know what I mean? White parents.

 

Melissa Murray Nice ones. Anyway, this is a case that pits agency review of environmental impacts against corporate interests. So like, really a trifecta of Mother Earth, the EPA and corporate interests. Seriously? Where do you all think this is heading?

 

Leah Litman So it seemed like all of the justices thought the environmental study in this particular case was sufficient. And the question is how broadly they are going to write an opinion about what agencies don’t have to do right or entities don’t have to do as part of NEPA. But as to those interests in the case, it seemed to pit two things the Republican justices hate against one another. On one hand, the environment, not so big. Fans of planet Earth. On the other hand, they don’t like agencies. And so here, if they rule against the environment, they have to say that what the agency did is enough. And so it seems like they’re going to give agencies a pass and tell courts to be reasonable when reviewing agency decisions, when agencies are assessing environmental impacts.

 

Kate Shaw Or at least some agency. Right. So one possibility, I thought, was that because the agency involved in this case, even though it’s an environmental case, is actually not the EPA here, the key federal agency is the Surface Transportation Board or STB. Maybe the court is okay with handing that agency a win this time, especially if they can identify another villain here, which was like the D.C. Circuit with its excessive concerns about the environment. So I just kind of had this thought like the Surface Transportation Board is like somehow a more MAGA coated agency. And so siding with them rather than the enviros at the EPA is something that maybe this court could stomach.

 

Leah Litman Okay.

 

Melissa Murray So I’ll just say one thing. These environmental reviews, like I think they can be incredibly important, especially for large scale projects that can have a major impact on the environment. But they’re also, I think, really unpopular even in localities like. So, you know, if you live in a place like Berkeley, for example, environmental review can really hammer up basic things like improvements to a shopping center or a parking lot and stuff like that. And so.

 

Leah Litman Or housing projects.

 

Melissa Murray Yeah. And so. I think this one. It’s really interesting you saw flavor of this in the oral argument, just sort of the idea that this actually the fact of environmental reviews, the need for environmental reviews and so many of them actually makes it hard for government to work efficiently. And that was a really interesting strain that didn’t necessarily cohere to sort of broader deregulatory talking points.

 

Leah Litman Well, also, there’s no question that I think courts have taken NEPA to unreasonable actions. So we previously highlighted the district court decision that purported to invalidate a piece of Biden’s immigration policy because they hadn’t considered the environmental impacts of increases in unauthorized migration. And again, no question NEPA has been abused. But I think we still want a reasonable decision, right, that preserves some environmental assessments. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Melissa Murray All right. The next case we’ll take up is Kousisis versus United States. And at issue here is what does it mean to defraud someone of property under federal law? Do you defraud someone of property? Only when there is a traditional property interest like money at stake? Or can you defraud someone when you’re just lying about complying with a non economic term in a contract? So for in this case, there was a contract which required subcontractors to be a particular kind of business. If the contractor selects a subcontractor that doesn’t adhere to those qualifications, are they defrauding you within the meaning of the federal law? So a number of the justices here seemed really fixated on the question of whether there is a kind of value in expecting certain services or certain type of services and ultimately not getting them even if there is no actual economic loss or impact to the individual. Here’s a clip of Justice Sotomayor, who’s pressing. Jeff Fisher, the lawyer for Kousisis, says on this point.

 

Clip I’m sorry, counsel. Let’s assume the example that I contract to have a certified plumber fix whatever. All right. And I don’t use a certified plumber. I just use a handyman. But the toilet is fixed under your theory. Even if I didn’t use a certified plumber because the toilet was fixed. I got that money from. I got value under the contract. No, I don’t think so. Justice Sotomayor there, the fraud would be promising services that were more valuable and had a certified plumber presumably charge more per hour. But I don’t understand what the difference between that in this case is. The services the government contracted for was to have a particular type of vendor sell me something, but a particular. Well, that’s not precisely right. I think what happened with the contract here was with Alpha Construction and Alpha Construction then got to choose its own subsidiaries. But someone who was certified, so someone who had a certain composition. But I think that so so I think you’re right about the word certified in a sense. But the certification and your plumber hypothetical deals with somebody who has greater expertise or experience and therefore charges more. So that’s how I make it. If I want someone of a particular quality, when I hire a portrait artist, I want that person. I can get a portrait artist from anybody. Here the government wanted a particular person to provide the service that’s unique, what they wanted.

 

Leah Litman And what she’s saying is that Penn Department of Transportation, the government agency, valued working with businesses that were certified as disadvantaged business enterprises. And the petitioner because, he says said that they were subcontracting with a disadvantaged business enterprise, but in fact channeled the work to its own subsidiary. According to the federal government, that was fraud. Even if the work was performed and there was no economic harm to the Department of Transportation. Justice Sotomayor suggesting that the question of whether there was fraud. Turns maybe on materiality. You know, did you get what you paid for? You wanted not whether there was an economic injury as a result of the deception.

 

Melissa Murray And there was an interesting moment where it seemed like there was a kind of odd gender schism on the bench with all of the female justices seemingly interested in this question of the materiality of the harm, like can you be injured or deprived of something, even if the contractor gave you something of equal economic value, if it wasn’t what you actually wanted? So here’s a rundown of Justice Barrett, Justice Jackson and Justice Kagan getting in on this point.

 

Clip Mr. Fisher, what about this uniqueness thing? Let me kind. Of bring you back. You mentioned to Justice Sotomayor that uniqueness matters. What about your Grover Cleveland example. The one about if you contract for a painting of your grandfather and you wind up with one say, of Grover Cleveland? That’s not exactly what you wanted, but let’s say it’s of equal value. So you’ve suffered no economic loss. So why in or would that qualify as an injury?Babysitter? What about the family? What about the family that says, I it’s very important to me to have a christian babysitter. We are devout. We want this. This is a characteristic that we’re telling everybody. This is what we’re looking for. And someone comes and they purport to have this characteristic, but they don’t. Ultimately, I think that’s egregious behavior. But it’s not property fraud. If the if the if the babysitter is otherwise fully qualified and performs the services. Now, there may well be a very serious civil suit. If you’re dealing with the government in that kind of situation, there can be a 1001 prosecution or maybe a 371 charge. So I’m not saying these things are okay and I’m not saying the law doesn’t provide a remedy. But what I am saying is that this is an age old. This is an age old problem when it comes to fraud. But I think what you’re trying to get out into a contract and you think you’re going to get you pay for gold bars that are worth $1 million and instead you get lots of coal that’s worth $1 million. Have you is that have you been defrauded? So I don’t think you’ve been defrauded under the property fraud statutes. You may have been defrauded if you were dealing with the government under Section 371, which doesn’t have an injury required, but you really have totally not gotten what you wanted. I mean, you’re creating a world where because I have a dollar’s worth of loss, it falls within the statute. But rather than a dollar’s worth of loss, I’ve gotten something that I have no use for that I never wanted that I made clear I never wanted or had use for it happens to be the same in a market. Place out there, but it sure isn’t the same for me. I think that this is a terrible deal that I’ve gotten and it’s not the one that I signed up for. So let me see.

 

Kate Shaw All right. So predictions. I thought it was actually kind of hard to read where the court was on this question. It sounded like Sotomayor and Jackson were more skeptical of the defendant’s position. Only Gorsuch seemed clearly on the government side. But maybe because this is a fraud case that doesn’t involve a political official, a majority might be open to ruling for the prosecutors, slash the federal government because it wouldn’t spark the same joy as it would to rule against the federal government in a political corruption case. Maybe.

 

Leah Litman So an additional wrinkle came out in the case. It seems like this might be another case where the question or issue the court thinks it’s taking up might not be presented at all. So the federal government said it introduced evidence that the Department of Transportation was willing to pay more for contracts with a term requiring certain businesses to be included, the disadvantaged business enterprises. So there was an economic loss to the Department of Transportation. And as the federal government notes, you know, they urged the Supreme Court to deny certiorari in this case on that basis. So it’s possible this case could be headed as a few others have been to some kind of non-decision, saying the issue wasn’t presented or maybe even dismissal as improvidently granted. I think it’s unlikely here, but, you know, I can’t rule it out.

 

Kate Shaw It’s possible and it’s wild. They’re already taking so few cases and they are just like dispensing with so many of them, or at least a couple of them, and seem on the path to potentially others. They just want to do as little as possible. And as we’ve said before, I think we’re okay with that.

 

Melissa Murray Well, it is interesting, though, that the federal government made this case and explained that they had presented this evidence and said, look, do not grant cert on this case. And they’re like, no, we’re good. We got it. We got this. Yeah.

 

Kate Shaw Yeah.

 

Melissa Murray No notes.

 

Leah Litman Can’t tell me shit.

 

Kate Shaw Until the argument. And then you’re like.

 

Melissa Murray God damn it. Like, why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you persuade me? Federal government.

 

Kate Shaw So we’ve got some other cases to cover. The next one is Feliciano versus DOT. And at issue in this case is whether reservists get, quote, differential pay when they are called to service slash up from reserves during an emergency. But where the work that they perform is not actually related to the emergency. So differential pay means that in addition to regular reservist salary, they also get paid the difference between the reserve, a salary and the salary of their regular job. So the statute at issue says that reservists will get differential pay during an emergency. The petitioner argues that the emergency designation is temporal, but not substantive. That is, it just reflects the circumstances in which the reservist is called up. So they get called up in an emergency. They get the emergency pay. By contrast, the federal government maintains that the emergency designation also has a substantive connection to the actual work performed.

 

Melissa Murray And at oral argument, the advocate for the petitioner really double down on this argument that the plain language of the statute means that emergency is only a temporal designation. It’s not a substantive designation. And this raised some eyebrows from some of the justices. So let’s roll the tape.

 

Clip Well, again, we win on the language of the statute. So, I mean, it’s it’s if if we aren’t speculating and we’re just going to return to ground and go to the language, there’s just no way to read this statute in the way that the that the government wants to read doesn’t during have I mean I appreciate during has a temporal meaning. But even in your introduction you said it virtually always means temporal. Aren’t there circumstances in which it could be construed reasonably as a substantive connection?

 

Melissa Murray With this in mind, the justices had a lot of questions about the legislative history of the statute and specifically the fact that in enacting the statute, Congress explicitly rejected proposals to extend differential pay to anyone who had been called up, suggesting that maybe this was a substantive designation.

 

Leah Litman Yeah, And the justices also noted that, of course, the statute doesn’t say anyone called up, but instead referred to categories of emergencies. Some justices also pointed out that, you know, there has been a national emergency in effect since 1979 related to Iranian sanctions and that it’s unlikely, you know, we will soon be in a period without emergencies. And that means petitioners interpretation would mean reservists get differential pay all the time since there would always be a national emergency in effect. So here is Justice Alito on this point.

 

Clip Your thinking is that Congress said, well, you know, we realize that there have been national emergencies now for decades and decades and decades. But if we look ahead, we foresee the time when there will be peace throughout the world and nothing threatening. And the lion or the wolf is going to lie down with the lamb and there isn’t going to be a national emergency. So that’s why we’ve put in, what is it, eight specific provisions that would be superfluous if your interpretation were exempted.

 

Leah Litman I have to say I found this interjection a little chilling. Like what sort of national emergencies is Sam Alito envisioning in the future? Creating in the future or some combination thereof.

 

Melissa Murray Like Nosferatu conjuring him up.

 

Kate Shaw Lion or the wolf? Yeah. Yeah.

 

Melissa Murray Well, he wasn’t the only one who was a little doomsday here. So, Justice Kagan and I think this is the first time they’ve ever actually been on the same page this entire term. She was right there with him about the oddity of the petitioner’s interpretation, given the prevalence of emergency declaration. So here she is.

 

Clip I mean, but to that point, really, what does Congress believe? There are 43 national emergencies now. Every time we have a sanctions program in place. We declare a national emergency. I mean, this is just a sort of feature of modern life. There are politicians who go on morning news programs and say we are going to, you know, end the authorization for the use of military force that we are going to end. They don’t necessarily say pending national emergencies, but I think that that’s a fair implication. We are always one election away from ending all pending national emergencies. They could change the we’re not going to have any sanctions programs. We’re not going to have any hurricanes. We’re not going to I mean, it’s just seems like a world which couldn’t possibly exist.

 

Melissa Murray I don’t know, predictions? Feels like he’s going to lose.

 

Leah Litman You know, I’m not sure. But another wrinkle that came up again in this case is there was a question about whether the petitioner would prevail under the government’s interpretation. That is whether the legal issue or question matters to the case, because this petitioner was escorting military vessels in and out of the harbor, which seems like it could be related to the emergency. And the FAA, you know, the agency has its own regulations, you know, apart from the statute that might award compensation, even if the Federal Circuit’s interpretation about what is generally required under the statute would not. And again, you would think these would be the sort of things they would check before granting a case. And yet this also seems to have escaped their notice.

 

Melissa Murray That’s what happens when you run on bribes.

 

Kate Shaw For more details, pick up your copies of Leah’s book.

 

Melissa Murray Preorder.

 

Leah Litman The concept of law is just going to increasingly be fading into the background as these guys just continue to finger paint their way through the U.S. code and the Constitution.

 

Melissa Murray And these cert petitions it seems.

 

Leah Litman Right? Yes.

 

Melissa Murray Okay.

 

Kate Shaw All right. So moving on to the next case, Dewberry group versus dewberry engineers. And at issue here is another pretty narrow question. This one related to trademark litigation.

 

Melissa Murray I have to say, of course, this is a trademark case because like just reading it, I was like, which dewberry is it? Which Dewberry did what? And I think that’s why it’s a trademark problem.

 

Kate Shaw You’re confused.

 

Melissa Murray Yeah.

 

Kate Shaw Yeah.

 

Melissa Murray Exactly.

 

Kate Shaw Form and content. So and specifically whether under the Lanham Act an award of profit disgorgement can require the defendant to disgorge profits of a legally distinct entity. So the Lanham Act requires as a remedy for trademark infringement the disgorgement of, quote, the defendants profits. Here are the infringers who are the dewberry group argue that the language suggest that a plaintiff should sue and thereby make into defendants all of the entities from which it hopes to recover damages. In this case, all of the damages awarded were profits earned by other entities, none of which were actually a defendant to the suit. And in addition to the question of whether that was proper, there are also some looming questions about how to calculate the profits. Do they include only money required under a contract or also the fair market value of the contract?

 

Leah Litman Now, petitioner doesn’t dispute that you might be able to attribute or assign one entity’s earnings or profits to another in calculating how much an entity owes by way of disgorgement. But on the specific legal question, you know, Justice Barrett characterized the case as having, quote, vehement agreement on the narrow question about whether you can just lump separate corporate entities profits together and essentially treat them as one, but that there was a lot of disagreement about how and when a court could still say this one company’s profits don’t capture the full economic realities of what they gained. So lots to say, right on those more difficult questions. But one thing that stood out for me during this argument was Neil Gorsuch woke up on the wrong side of the fucking bed that morning because he was a big jerk. So take a listen here.

 

Clip I agree with you that there are many ways to skin the cat. You can sue these people, you can pierce the veil. You’ve got all kinds of equitable theories. You just had a great list of them a second ago. But as I understand it, the fourth Circuit below did none of those things. And you all actually agree with that and you agree that on the question presented, the Fourth Circuit aired, is that right? No, Your Honor, with the solicitor general’s wrong. There isn’t total agreement here today. There is total. So if I can answer that two ways, there is a total and pick one, maybe I can combine them into one answer. Give me your best. There is total agreement.

 

Melissa Murray I think he could really use a helix mattress.

 

Leah Litman It is just like sometimes there is more than one thing to say in response to your dumb question. Yeah, right. Sometimes you’re wrong for multiple reasons. And if the point of an argument right is to get at right, like what’s going on, sometimes there’s more to say.

 

Melissa Murray Sometimes you’re doubly wrong. Triplely wrong. Quadrouply wrong.

 

Leah Litman Yes, you need to get it all out there. But he just doesn’t want to hear it.

 

Melissa Murray I think if he got a good night’s sleep. He would be just more receptive to the possibility of those different kinds of wrongs anyway. All right. That was the week in oral arguments. We also got some opinions sort of from the court. So let’s do some opinion recaps. First up, bar for versus my caucus. In a unanimous opinion that was authored by Justice Jackson, the court held that revoking a visa based on a determination that there was a sham marriage is the kind of discretionary decision that the federal courts cannot review because it falls within the discretion of an agency. And again, this is even though courts can review the sham marriage determination if the visa is initially denied. On that basis. So in this narrow context, it’s not subject to federal court review. 9 to 0. Justice Jackson with the pen.

 

Leah Litman A lot of the cast members of 90 day fiancé are going to be in for a yeah, unpleasant surprise.

 

Kate Shaw The mens we’re not happy with our pronunciation of the next case the first time we when we previewed it. So we’ll get it right this time. Nvidia Corp versus Omen J or Fonder AB But Nvidia is the next case we got kind of. But basically in what seems to be a trend, the court didn’t actually issue a decision in the Nvidia case. Rather, they dismissed the securities fraud dispute and the crux of the suit, just as a reminder, since people were so distracted by my mispronunciation, they probably can’t even remember what the case was about. But it’s about a shareholder’s claim that Nvidia did not disclose the extent to which sales to crypto miners rather than gaming companies put the value of their shares at risk. The question presented to the court was whether the complaint was sufficiently specific to make out an allegation of fraud under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, and the lower court said the complaint actually did meet the PSLRA’s heightened pleading standard.

 

Melissa Murray Based on the oral argument, it’s probably not surprising that the court chose to dismiss the case on the ground that certiorari had been improvidently granted. You’ll recall it did the same thing in Facebook versus Amalgamated Bank, another shareholder suit. But in the Nvidia case, throughout that oral argument, a number of the justices commented that the dispute was really, really fact specific, maybe two fact specific for them to decide. And again, perhaps this was something you might have considered before accepting the case for review. But that’s just me, a busy working mom with not a lot of time for bullshit. So here we are. Anyway, the case will go back to the trial court and the investors will attempt to prove their case against in video.

 

Leah Litman I love the idea that it’s like, this is too facts specific. Too many facts for us to like parse through.

 

Melissa Murray Well, I mean, you remember Kennedy versus Bremerton School District where the facts were just so, so specific, we couldn’t get them right.

 

Leah Litman Okay. Silver lining is maybe they’ve recognize they’re just not good at facts. And so they won’t actually engage with any cases that turn on the facts.

 

Melissa Murray Do the law. Not that we are law finders, no fact finder. It’s we find the lost law that no one’s ever heard of and we surface that.

 

Leah Litman Yeah. So it’s not just the Supreme Court that has decided not to do its job or not to decide things. The Fifth Circuit also decided to get in on the quiet quitting schtick. The Fifth Circuit decided to rather ostentatiously refused to decide a case that they had agreed to take up as an en banc court. So the mess here is just incredible.

 

Melissa Murray It’s messy. Very, very messy.

 

Leah Litman It is. And I’m here for it. The en banc fifth circuit chose to affirm the decision of a district court in a case that had taken en banc and for which it heard oral argument in May 2023. And it did so without issuing an opinion in the case. The order said only quote, The en banc court heard oral argument in this matter in May 2023. That was more than 18 months ago. Moreover, the parties in this case have already endured multiple appeals and remands back to the district court over the course of nine years. Another remand would mean that the appellate proceedings in this matter will have delayed resolution of this case by over a decade. Justice delayed is justice denied. Had we known that it would take a year and a half after en banc oral argument to issue an opinion we would not have granted en banc rehearing. We accordingly affirm. End quote. And that’s the extent of the order.

 

Kate Shaw Okay, so the most important thing about this order is the insane infighting on display in this effort writings. But just for one second to tell you that there was a case here which was about whether plaintiffs could sue and seek civil penalties under the Clean Water Act. But what is the most interesting is no specifics about that legal question. But the fact that in addition to this text of the order that Lisa just read, the case generated this flurry of separate opinions in which the justices really seem.

 

Leah Litman The judges.

 

Melissa Murray Judges.

 

Leah Litman Do not give them promotions.

 

Melissa Murray How sick are you? Like are you okay. How much?

 

Kate Shaw Yeah, a lot of DayQuil I’m in a lot of DayQuil. That’s my excuse. Yeah. Whew. Judges, not justices, The judges of that court, although we did call them the Supreme Court of the Fifth Circuit last week. That might be why I just inadvertently gave them that promotion.

 

Melissa Murray Don’t blame this on us.

 

Leah Litman They’ve decided to take on some of the powers that the Supreme Court has here. So we’ll get to that.

 

Kate Shaw They sure do. Yeah, they they sure did. Anyway, so for now, just judges on the Fifth Circuit seem to air some of the court’s really dirty laundry, accusing one another of preventing the court from reaching a decision. So there is a separate writing by count them, Judge Oldham, Chief Judge Elrod, Judge Richman, Judge Jones, Judge Davis and Judge Ho.

 

Melissa Murray So basically they took eight months. They have nothing to show for it. And so they have decided to stick with the district court opinion and then just for fun, offered us a 150 plus pages of irreverent sniping at one another. And the tldr of all of this seems to be that the fifth Circuit en banc split 8 to 8 over the question of reversing and affirming. And there was one judge, the ninth judge, who happens to be one Jim Ho, who apparently refused to make a decision and instead decided insisted really on doing his own thing such that the court was deadlocked and couldn’t get a majority to do anything.

 

Leah Litman I love it.

 

Melissa Murray This is the same Judge Ho who seems to always be auditioning to be Justice Thomas’s replacement on the Supreme Court. And so I don’t know if he’s going to get the votes of his colleagues when America’s Next Top Supreme Court justice comes to the Lone Star State. But I mean, Judge Oldham’s, separate writing can only be described as pissy, right? He’s real pissed. It accuses the court of making up a procedural maneuver that doesn’t exist. This would be dismissing en banc review as improvidently granted, slash ordered or vacating a rehearing order as improvidently granted. I guess a vague. He accuses the court of announcing a quote, new shot clock for disembarking a case that’s the first time disembarking has been used. And Judge Oldham underscored all of this by insisting that he emphatically dissented, just in case you were not sure. He also adds that, quote, The majority’s per curiam opinion is bad, but Judge Davis’s concurrence is worse. Meow. Bowl of milk. Table two.

 

Leah Litman This is seriously like Untucked of Drag race. Like you’re not getting the full story unless.

 

Melissa Murray This is. This is a reunion. Real Housewives of New Orleans.

 

Leah Litman I know.

 

Leah Litman Well, he saw what Judge Jones did at the National Federalist Society’s convention. He’s like.

 

Melissa Murray He’s like hold my beer.

 

Leah Litman I want to be a housewife too. Right?

 

Melissa Murray I’ve got big Nene Leakes, energy, and you’re going to see it.

 

Kate Shaw Because we’re not even done with Oldham, right?

 

Melissa Murray We’re not done.

 

Kate Shaw No. So so Oldham, after saying that the per curiam opinion is bad and Judge Davis has concurrence is worse precedes then to go after Judge Ho and says that over a period of several years Judge Ho cast four separate votes that would have led to different results in this case, some affirming, some vacating, some reinstating the district court decision in the course of refusing to decide the case as an en banc court. Some not. I mean, this is, of course, in the dictionary under impartial, principled, consistent judging. All Oldham included a chart showing the different votes that Judge Ho cast in this case.

 

Leah Litman Yeah, And you know, not to be outdone, Judge Ho responds by suggesting that maybe the court shouldn’t take big corporate cases en banc, but only political ones. So he writes, quote, I’d focus our limited resources on advancing the rule of law where we need it the most, protecting our national borders and protecting our constitutional rights. And quote this from.

 

Melissa Murray The invading hordes. Remember.

 

Leah Litman This man could not try harder for that Supreme Court seat like it would be impossible. He is already doing so much.

 

Melissa Murray It is very Meredith Gray. Like pick me, choose me.

 

Leah Litman Yes.

 

Melissa Murray Nominate me.

 

Leah Litman Yes. And Judge Oldham is over it. Judge Jones is also over it and pretty much comes out and says this entire thing is Jim Ho’s doing. She writes, quote, It is most unfortunate that because of one judge’s refusal to vote, this court has taken no position on this issue and quote, the issue being what the plaintiffs had standing and like could seek the penalties. In this case, it’s just ten bucks.

 

Melissa Murray She had all of his draft opinions in a file and she brandished them during conference and accused him of undermining the.

 

Leah Litman She should have included a video of that right in her dissent. That was the missing item.

 

Melissa Murray I appreciate that. She’s an equal opportunity destroyer. It’s not just progressives like Steve Vladeck. She’ll she’ll eat her own.

 

Leah Litman Enough hatred to go around. But just stepping back, you know, it is, of course, a judge’s job to reach a decision in a case refusing to do so that is not judicial or judicious. And sometimes reaching a decision requires compromise. And of course, that is something that these Fifth Circuit judges are temperamentally incapable of doing. And here it just puts into stark relief how this temperament, like this approach, is fundamentally at odds. With the position of being.

 

Melissa Murray You know. You know what, Leah? You’re not being generous enough here. This is a species of judicial restraint. We are restraining from reaching a conclusion. This is modesty.

 

Leah Litman This is the passive virtues. I see you deciding not to decide.

 

Melissa Murray I mean.

 

Leah Litman Love it.

 

Melissa Murray Judicial minimalism.

 

Leah Litman Min-i-min-i-Minimalism

 

Kate Shaw You know what’s minimalism. Just raising your hand and saying, let’s talk about the Constitution and the border in a totally fucking unrelated case. That is modesty.

 

Melissa Murray Minimalism.

 

Leah Litman Also, like imagine the post argument deliberations and the en banc court. Right? Like one judge, I affirm. I reverse, I vacate, I affirm, I reverse judge Gitmo. I refuse. I refuse to cast a vote. Like what does that even look like or sound alike?

 

Melissa Murray I think you just did.

 

Kate Shaw Not how any of this works, not how any of this works.

 

Melissa Murray Sounds like how you. It just sounded.

 

Leah Litman Yeah.

 

Kate Shaw Although it’s hard to top that, let’s turn to some additional court culture and culture in other courts specifically. So starting with the TikTok case, the D.C. Circuit issued, what do you know, an opinion in a case in a.

 

Melissa Murray Maximalism.

 

Kate Shaw Right. About the law that could end TikTok access in the United States. Essentially, this law passed by Congress says that TikTok, which is owned by a Chinese company by dance, will shut down by law in the United States by January 19th if it does not find a U.S. buyer. Before then.

 

Melissa Murray The law was passed, the government says, out of national security concerns because China has access to all of the data shared by Americans on TikTok and using that data, it can manipulate the content in a way that poses a threat to national security. We should note that some legislators said that the ban was based on hostility to certain content and views What one Republican representative called propaganda and other Republican representative suggested was content leading younger people to be too pro-Palestinian anyway under the First Amendment. If the law is aimed at suppressing certain content or views, it should get rigorous searching judicial scrutiny. If instead it’s not aimed at suppressing content or viewpoints, but is simply about national security, then the review is more deferential. This is why so many people are framing this in terms of national security.

 

Leah Litman And even if they do frame it in terms of national security, though, there still seem to be some holes in the government’s case for the law. So the government doesn’t have evidence showing any Chinese content manipulation in the United States, for example. And even if they did, it’s unclear if the First Amendment would or should permit censoring content based on the idea that that content could corrupt people’s minds or unduly sway them or change their views. And just, you know, also stepping back. TikTok is primarily an app for dance videos, and they’re going to have to pry those surprising videos from my dead cold hands because watching Taylor Swift’s surprise songs on TikTok has literally been a way of like microdosing a will to live for me. And they they can’t take that away from me. But the D.C. Circuit unanimously rejected Tiktok’s challenge to the law. I think TikTok is likely to ask the Supreme Court to put the law on hold while litigation is ongoing. And we will see what the Supreme Court does.

 

Melissa Murray We do have a bit of good, if entirely unexpected, news on Fresh from her successful book tour. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has crossed another milestone from her bucket list. She recently made her Broadway debut. That’s right. No longer content to answer the door during conferences. The most junior justice recently took her place among the scholars of the Great White Way on Saturday, December 14th. Jackson appeared for One Night only in and Juliet, a jukebox musical that offers a different slant on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. She also participated in a talkback with the audience following the performance. Did any of you see this?

 

Kate Shaw No, not her. But I have seen the musical. It is delightful. It’s a totally delightful show.

 

Melissa Murray It is a delightful? I wish I could see this with her. I was out on Saturday night, but this sounded fun. I wish you’d let us know.

 

Kate Shaw If you read her memoir. You know, she actually is quite a singer. So this is something that, you know, I get some of the details. I don’t think it was a singing. I don’t think it was a singing role. I think it was a non-speaking role where she just like did something on stage. But I don’t know what. Anyway, well, this is just for her and time and in the audience.

 

Melissa Murray Do you remember when Justice Ginsburg appeared in the opera?

 

Leah Litman Yes.

 

Melissa Murray In DC.

 

Kate Shaw But it wasn’t Broadway.

 

Melissa Murray Broadway’s different, I think. I think that’s right. But good. Good for her. I love that she’s breaking out. It doesn’t have to just confine herself to answering the door. Like she can do other things. And I love that for her. I hope Dr. Patrick Jackson presented her with an enormous bouquet of flowers.

 

Kate Shaw You know he did.

 

Melissa Murray Yes, of course he did. Husbands everywhere take note.

 

Kate Shaw So in less auspicious news, a Trump judge in the district of North Dakota blocked the Biden administration’s rule that allowed DOCA recipients to get health insurance on the ACA marketplace. This is a ruling that applies to 19 states. So not only are these judges throwing into question the actual status of DOCA and of course, the incoming administration will, you know, at best throw it into further question. But screwing with people’s health insurance in the meantime, like the sadism really knows no bounds.

 

Leah Litman Also, under the less auspicious category we had, some listeners ask us to flag this development, which is something to add to our Cancel Culture Watch, which is all the things about how left wing political correctness has gotten out of control. So this incident comes out of Louisiana, where the Louisiana governor has called on Louisiana State University to punish a law professor for statements. The professor. Are made in the classroom about the 2024 election. The governor went so far as to share a video of the professor on social media and sent a formal letter to LSU calling on officials to punish the professor. Once again, left wing political correctness and censorship just too much. But I think this is a frightening indication of something you alluded to maybe a few episodes ago, which is, you know, the Republican Party is treating the academy as the opposition party and punching bag since they are always the victim. Right. They need to identify somebody who is supposedly victimizing them. And as they are about to have all the power in the federal government, you know, they are turning to media academy and others as the victimizers.

 

Melissa Murray All right. Here’s some better news. In a unanimous decision, the Montana Supreme Court kept gender affirming medical care available to minors on current terms, while litigation over Montana’s ban on such care is pending in the state court system. This is a ruling that upheld a preliminary injunction that barred the enforcement of the ban, whose constitutionality has been challenged. So we have already mentioned that President elect Trump has tapped Harmeet Dhillon to be the head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. There’s obviously been a lot of discussion about the administration’s picks from Matt Gaetz, whose nomination has failed, to Pete Hegseth, whose nomination has not failed despite some really interesting emails from his mom and some really interesting profiles by reporters like Jane Mayer. He seems to be on track to getting confirmed as secretary of defense. So, you know, there’s that. We’ve also had the selection of Capitol Hill to head the FBI. And there was news last week of Christopher Wray stepping down voluntarily before he can be fired by Donald Trump in order to install cash. Patel In that seat. I don’t know what more to say about all of this. It is literally like watching.

 

Kate Shaw A car wreck. Yeah, but also Patel installed. But Patel has to be confirmed by the Senate as well. Right? Like there are ways to get him installed in other positions via recess.

 

Melissa Murray Yeah, you’re right. I’m assuming the Senate is going to roll over. Why would I assume? I don’t know.

 

Leah Litman Because when it rains, it pours. We also have some newsy culture items related to judicial ethics. So the judicial ethicist expert has weighed in. I’m, of course, talking about Mitch McConnell, who has some opinions. So two district court judges have withdrawn their announcements and plans to retire and take senior status, likely because of the change in administration and the fact that their successors weren’t confirmed. And Senator McConnell doesn’t want anyone else to do that, especially the court of appeals judges whom the Biden administration, or at least the Senate Democrats agreed not to confirm successors for. So on the Senate floor, McConnell called the any decision to change plans, quote, partizan. It also apparently, quote, undermines the integrity of the judiciary. It exposes bold, democratic blue, where there should only be black robes and quote, said the guy who ensured that the only thing under black robes would be maga red and who was reportedly calling around to judges urging them to retire during the first Trump administration. And obviously this is galling and hypocritical. But I think one thing to underscore about it is it is part of a trend of what I think some people are calling like gangster government. I mean, I would be concerned that McConnell is potentially drumming up hostility toward these judges. You know, if he is going to go so far as to publicly name and shame them for a change of plans, you know, we have seen absolutely horrific episodes of attacks, physical attacks on judges and their families. And I think, you know, this strategy needs to be evaluated in that light.

 

Melissa Murray Well, I mean, everyone changes their plans. And yes, Senate Judiciary Committee was going to have a hearing for Merrick Garland and then it changed its plans and said, we’re just going to wait until after the election and let the people inform.

 

Leah Litman The Senate Judiciary Committee was going to look into the accusations against Brett Kavanaugh. Then they changed their plan. They changed their mind.

 

Melissa Murray I mean, it happens. Like I mean, yeah.

 

Kate Shaw Plans change.

 

Melissa Murray Plans change. All right. You know whose plans don’t change? The Koch brothers. Their plans stay the same, it seems. And according to recent reporting from The Washington Post, just in juvenile, John Swain and Anne Marimow, the Koch brothers had some real plans to overturn the Chevron doctrine, and they succeeded. So as you know from our own coverage, the Koch brothers network has been very interested in deregulation for some time. And as we have intimated on this podcast, it seemed like there were lots of. Those associations between the effort to overrule Chevron and the interest in deregulation that the Koch brothers network has spearheaded over the years. So the reporting here was not really surprising to us as this trio turned up. There are a lot of close associations between this network and the effort to deregulate lots of ties between various pockets of the conservative legal movement and the multi-pronged effort to overrule Chevron and then to extend the ruling in Loper, bright and relentless, to thwart even more governmental regulation of corporate interests. But one thing that was actually notable about the reporting is that those seeking greater deregulation in the future have relied on amicus briefs filed by those seeking to preserve Chevron, which detailed the many regulations that would be vulnerable if Chevron fell. And they have used those amicus briefs to craft a roadmap for future challenges that would extend the logic of Loper bright and relentless, which I mean, again, raises, I think, some real strategy questions for the left. If these arguments aren’t even going to get any purchase with these justices, but they are instead going to seed future efforts to expand this deregulatory interest. Maybe we just sort a close up shop on those kinds of briefs. The other thing that I wanted to note about this reporting was they also made explicit note of Justice Thomas’s curious 180 degree turn on Chevron, which is to say that he was for it at one point and then he was against it. And while the reporters don’t draw any conclusions as to why Justice Thomas had this about face, they do note that his change in his views of Chevron came some time after he started hanging out at the Bohemian Grove with the Koch brothers and their network of friends. And again, I just want to underscore, it’s not unconstitutional to have friends. It is unconstitutional to regulate.

 

Kate Shaw And change your mind.

 

Melissa Murray Yes. Yes. And change your mind.

 

Leah Litman Unless you’re changing your mind about Chevron.

 

Melissa Murray Just about the regulation. That’s fine. The judges.

 

Leah Litman Some liberties, some parental rights.

 

Melissa Murray If your son tells you to change your mind, it’s especially constitutional. Yes. And unless your friends are liberal, right, then it’s not. No. Yeah.

 

Kate Shaw The thing you said a minute ago, the most about amicus briefs as roadmaps for future challenges, I feel like dissents present the same problem. Yes, I like and and I think we’ve talked about this before. They’re just really hard tactical questions presenting the court’s liberals in the next couple of years, which is do you speak the truth about the actual implications of some of the court’s really big decisions and provide roadmaps for actually full implementation? Or do you hold your Fire you know.

 

Melissa Murray Podcast too.

 

Kate Shaw About about us? Yeah. All right. Well, we all we’re all going to be.

 

Melissa Murray Are we helping the right? I don’t know.

 

Kate Shaw Similar questions.

 

Melissa Murray We should put some different Easter eggs in there for em.

 

Kate Shaw A New Year’s resolution. We will get those. We’ll get we’ll get to work on those.

 

Melissa Murray You know what would be great. Just the ticket. You know what you should do? Yeah, that’s what we should do.

 

Kate Shaw Yeah. Yeah. Because we know they’re all listening, right? Okay. We wanted to highlight a case to watch out of the eighth Circuit. That court granted rehearing en banc in a case about whether mandatory equity training violates the First and 14th Amendments. The panel had concluded correctly that it did not. But, you know, the court taking the case en banc could be ominous unless they decide to go the way the Fifth Circuit, in which case doesn’t matter. But this case could be one of the sort of opening or, you know, latest salvos in the new frontier in the fight against delay initiatives, equity, diversity. So we’re gonna keep an eye on it as the court takes it up en banc.

 

Leah Litman And I think related to that case was another Justices Alito and Thomas, dissent from the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear a case about some admissions policies at Boston schools. So Boston City schools admitted a percentage of students based on GPAs and test scores. And then at the next step, considered students zip codes and tried to admit students from areas with lower median household incomes. You’ll note there was no mention of race there. That is race neutral. But the city schools were thinking about racial equity and trying to achieve diversity. So naturally these guys think it’s illegal. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case, but they’re writing as well as Justice Gorsuch is, which I’ll note in a second, is a warning sign of what might come and the possibility that the Supreme Court will police race neutral efforts to achieve diversity. So Justice Gorsuch wrote a statement about the case. So not a dissent from the denial, certiorari, but a statement.

 

Melissa Murray Making new stuff up.

 

Leah Litman In which he noted that Boston had changed its policies and that’s why the court didn’t review the case.

 

Melissa Murray You can never change your mind.

 

Leah Litman Well, those policies were no longer in effect, But, you know, it’s possible they might be looking for another school and another policy to get their grubby little fingers all over. Hard to rule out.

 

Melissa Murray Well, this is very much in the flavor of that Thomas Jefferson High School case that they denied cert on too. The bottom line is, is even thinking about diversity unconstitutional?

 

Leah Litman The real thought control. Thought police. We are about to find out.

 

Melissa Murray Also related, it seems that the fifth Circuit actually can issue a decision and can do so en banc. But it seems that that en banc decision making is really confined to circumstances where they’re dealing with. So in this particular bonk decision, the Fifth Circuit held that the SEC is not permitted to approve Nasdaq’s diversity disclosure rules. So there you are. Minimalism maximalism.

 

Leah Litman Why not both?

 

Melissa Murray Anyway. Finally, the Supreme Court is starting an online lottery today for public seating for oral arguments. They’re starting it as a pilot program that will begin with the February 2025 arguments. It will begin as a hybrid system with some public seats being available via the lottery and some being available through the traditional in-person line. So if you want a front row seat to this disaster theater, just go to Supreme court.gov and check out the courtroom seating link and that will get you to the online ticketing page. I guarantee there’s going to be some kind of Ticketmaster meltdown in the manner of the Eras tour.

 

Kate Shaw With the wait. Like with the tens of millions of Taylor Swift -esque fans just vying to get in to see them dig some cases I mean if they take up the TikTok case, I think there will be a lot of interest. Like there are things that will definitely generate, but I just don’t get the sense I haven’t been there in a long time, but I don’t get the sense that, like, the lines around the block are.

 

Leah Litman Well, there are the opposite cases in which people camp out, you know, like overnight. And of course, that’s what this is designed to address. But yeah, right. As a matter of course, it’s not like there are hordes of people lining up to hear, you know, about Lanham act, profit, discouragements.

 

Melissa Murray I mean, I think that’s only because nobody can tell who the Dewberry in question is. I’m going to call one of you Dewberry from now on.

 

Leah Litman Better than dingleberry.

 

Kate Shaw Both Dewberry.

 

Melissa Murray Dewberry.

 

Kate Shaw That’s true.

 

Melissa Murray Dewberry engineers, Dewberry group.

 

Kate Shaw [AD]

 

Leah Litman Strict Scrutiny is a Crooked Media production hosted and executive produced by me, Leah Litman, Melissa Murray and Kate Shaw, produced and edited by Melody Rowell. Michael Goldsmith is our associate producer. Audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landes. Music by Eddie Cooper. Production Support from Madeline Herringer and Ari Schwartz. Matt DeGroot is our head of production. Thanks to our digital team Phoebe Bradford and Joe Matusky. Subscribe to Strict Scrutiny on YouTube. To catch full episodes, you can find us at YouTube.com. Forward Slash ad Strict Scrutiny Podcast. If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to strict scrutiny in your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode. And if you want to help other people find the show, please rate and review us. It really helps.