RBG Isn’t Giving Up On The ERA | Bernie’s Big Idea For The Supreme Court
February 11, 2020
NEVER GIVE IT UP NO
|Monday night, speaking at an event at the Georgetown University Law Center, JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG discussed the Equal Rights Amendment. She said that although the deadline for its possible ratification expired long ago, she hopes the effort to add the amendment will begin again. The state of Virginia recently became the 38th state to ratify the amendment, and some are arguing that states have now met the threshold necessary to change the Constitution. But the deadline for ratification was set for 1979, and later extended to 1982. And though both of those deadlines are far behind us now, Ginburg said Monday she’s hopeful the ERA will ultimately become the law of the land. “I would like to show my granddaughters that the equal citizenship stature of men and women is a fundamental human right,” she said. Ariane de Vogue with CNN reports.
READ THE FINE PRINT
|Ian Millhiser with Vox covers a “radical” idea from SENATOR BERNIE SANDERS on how he’d like to see the Supreme Court reformed. While he opposes court-packing, he suggested over the weekend that justices could instead serve at SCOTUS on a rotating basis. Sanders told MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, “A federal judge has a lifetime appointment…[the Constitution] doesn’t say that lifetime appointment has to got be on the Supreme Court — it’s got to be on a federal court.”
CROSS-COUNTRY RIVALRY
|Yesterday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton asked SCOTUS to strike down a 2016 California law that bans state-funded travel to states with discriminatory laws — a list Texas landed on nearly three years ago after the legislature approved a religious-refusal law for adoptions in the state. Emma Platfoff with The Texas Tribune explains that the ban prevents California agencies, public universities and boards from funding work-related trips to Texas. She writes, “Paxton’s action this week is the latest salvo in a long-running rivalry between the country’s largest Republican and Democratic strongholds. California and Texas routinely find themselves at odds in the federal courts, including recently in a case Paxton filed to strike down the Affordable Care Act. It’s also a reprise of Paxton’s role as one of the state’s chief culture warriors. In five years as attorney general, Paxton has elevated his views on religious liberty to the state’s official legal maneuvers.”
ED BOARD OVERTURE
|“The Supreme Court has agreed to hear two cases involving the electoral college, the antiquated system that twice in recent history has installed the loser of the popular vote for president in the White House and could have that perverse result again in 2020. Alas, it’s beyond the power of the court to do away with the electoral vote system, but the justices can prevent it from becoming even less democratic.” That’s the Editorial Board of the Los Angeles Times arguing that the justices should decide states can penalize and remove “faithless electors” — electors who support people other than the candidate who carried the popular vote in their states. “By all means the Supreme Court should rule that states can require electors to honor the popular vote in those states. But even after such a ruling, it will be possible for a candidate who finishes second in the national popular vote to win the presidency, as George W. Bush did in 2000 and President Trump did in 2016. The court can’t prevent such a disservice to democracy. It’s up to the American people to make it clear to their elected representatives that the electoral college is an undemocratic anachronism.”
SCOTUS VIEWS
Our Kids Are Losing One Of Their Best Teachers — Because He’s A ‘Dreamer’
The Washington Post“If you’re a U.S. citizen, news about the ‘dreamers’ — the nearly 700,000 people who were brought to the United States illegally as young children — can seem distant and unimportant. But the price of not protecting them became clear to me recently when one of the most popular teachers at my stepsons’ school announced that he would be leaving in the middle of the year because he needed to prepare for a future in which he could get deported.”
The Supreme Court Is As Complicit As The Senate
Slate“With the Senate’s blessing, the president will continue to corruptly abuse the powers of his office to undermine elections and our rule of law—and, as demonstrated by the Friday Night Massacre, he will do so in even more aggressive and ostentatious ways. With the court’s blessing, the president will expand his racist, xenophobic, and anti-Muslim immigration practices with little limit to what he may try to enact. Neither the Senate nor the Supreme Court has been willing to stand up to the president for abusing the powers of his office for personal benefit or to stoke bigotry for partisan ends. By failing to do so, they have encouraged Trump to abuse his powers even more. It is unclear what, if anything, can stop him now.”