FIX THE COURT FILES SUIT WITH DOJ | Our Post-Roe World | CA Unions Brace For A SCOTUS Loss
October 24, 2017
EASE ON DOWN THE ROAD TO SCOTUS
|Joan Biskupic with CNN reports on the case of a pregnant immigrant teenager trying to get an abortion that “may be heading toward a point of no return.” In other words, her time to get the procedure dwindles with every passing day and the case is surely destined for the U.S. Supreme Court. Biskupic notes that this first major abortion battle of the Trump era “reinforces PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S recent moves to curtail reproductive rights and take up religiously tinged conservative causes.”
NO HE WON'T BACK DOWN
|You may remember last month JUSTICE STEPHEN BREYER was confronted by a reporter with a camera at a Washington-area airport who asked the justice about his favorite books and movies. It was mostly an amusing interaction it seemed (turns out Breyer loves “The Big Sick” too), but maybe not so much for his security detail. Jessica Gresko and Mark Sherman with The Associated Press remind us of this incident in their report on a new lawsuit filed by GABE ROTH of Fix the Court. Monday, Roth filed suit against the Department of Justice for failing to fulfill a 16-month-old Freedom of information Act request that sought U.S. Marshals Service guidelines for accompanying and protecting Supreme Court justices when they travel outside of Washington, as well we records related to the justices’ summer travel and to JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA’S February 2016 trip to Texas.
ED BOARD OVERTURE
|“J.D. — SHORT FOR JANE DOE — is a 17-year-old immigrant living in a Texas shelter for undocumented minors. She is also pregnant and seeking an abortion. The federal government refuses to allow her to end her pregnancy.” That’s the Editorial Board of The Washington Post weighing in on the major abortion dispute coming out of Texas. WaPo points to PRESIDENT TRUMP’S antiabortion appointee leading the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, E. SCOTT LLOYD, as the source of this strife over the young woman’s health and safety. “Mr. Lloyd’s behavior toward J.D. is not just unconstitutional. It is also a grotesque abuse of government power over a vulnerable young woman far from her home. The government should not need a court order to do what is obviously right. It should allow J.D. access to the medical care to which she is legally entitled, immediately.”
OUR POST-ROE WORLD
|Mark Joseph Stern with Slate reports on the front lines of the battle to save a woman’s right to choose. He says it’s populated with women like the 17-year-old immigrant detainee — women being denied a constitutional right because of their status. He writes, “Doe’s struggle to assert control over her reproductive capacities is bolstered by the fact that, for now, women in the United States have a constitutional right to abortion access. But that right is not guaranteed to last. Should President Donald Trump replace a single pro-choice justice with an abortion foe, there is a good chance the new conservative majority will overturn Roe v. Wade. The demise of Roe would carry dramatic consequences, some of which we can foresee and some of which we can’t. One thing we do know is that if Roe goes, there will be thousands more Jane Does—detained women who would be denied access to abortion by their government. It is these detainees, then, who are on the front line of the abortion battle. That’s because it is their pregnancies that the state can most easily control.”
HOW DOES IT FEEL
|Debbie Munn is the mother of CHARLIE CRAIG, plaintiff in the Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission case coming before SCOTUS this term. She writes in TIME about how it felt having someone refuse to make a cake for her son’s wedding. “We went into that store happy. We left broken.” But she doesn’t stop there. Beyond the initial shock of the experience, she notes, “This case is not about a cake. It’s not about artistic expression. It’s about discrimination.”
CAKED WITH MEANING
|Monday, CHARLIE CRAIG and DAVID MULLINS filed their first brief to the Supreme Court on the merits of their cake case, warning that creating a loophole for religious people to sidestep Colorado’s antidiscrimination law could have far-reaching consequences that diminish rights of other minorities. Dominic Holden with Buzzfeed reports the filing marks the first time the couple has fleshed out the merits of their arguments to SCOTUS in their case which began five years ago in Denver.
BRACE YOURSELF, WINTER IS COMING
|Adam Ashton with the Sacramento Bee reports California unions are bracing themselves for a loss at the U.S. Supreme Court because “everything is at stake” in the upcoming case, Janus vs. AFSCME. Unions anticipate newbie JUSTICE NEIL GORSUCH will tip the case against their side just a year after the court deadlocked on a similar case against the California Teachers Association.
SCOTUS VIEWS
The Trump Administration is Holding a Teenager Hostage Over Abortion
The Washington Post“People of goodwill are entitled to believe that abortion is the taking of a human life, and work to prevent it. But government officials of goodwill must recognize that the Supreme Court has decided and reaffirmed that the Constitution protects a woman’s right to make that decision for herself. They don’t have to pay for abortions, and they can institute policies that encourage women to choose childbirth over abortion. They just can’t stop them from exercising their constitutional rights.”
OTHER NEWS
Tech's Duel with Law Enforcement Won't Be Settled by the High Court's Review of the Microsoft Data Case
Fast Company“Regardless of which way the Supreme Court comes down on the issue, lawyers will still be arguing about how old laws should apply to more complex digital property disputes in the 21st century. SCOTUS will be giving guidance on how to apply one law. But others can be used as a basis for obtaining a search warrant.”
The National-Security-Law Expert Who Blocked Trump's Travel Ban
The Atlantic“The late Justice Antonin Scalia once compared a constitutional doctrine he disliked to ‘some ghoul in a late night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad, after being repeatedly killed and buried.’ Donald Trump’s travel ban—and the court challenges to it—also refuse to die.”