RBG SAYS SCOTUS WORK SAVED HER | North Carolina Throws Out Its Legislative Maps | Gun Rights Advocates Fight Back Against Bump-Stock Ban
September 4, 2019
THE TOUGHEST OF COOKIES
|During a one-hour interview on stage with NPR’s Nina Totenberg, JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG said yesterday to a packed arena that her work at the Supreme Court saved her during her cancer treatments. “I think my work is what saved me because instead of dwelling on my physical discomforts if I have an opinion to write or a brief to read, I know I’ve just got to get it done so I have to get over it,” she said.
HEADS WILL ROLL
|In The Washington Post, Marc A. Thiessen addresses what he refers to as “Senate Democrats’ unprecedented threat against the Supreme Court.” He points to the brief that was filed over New York City’s regulation of gun owners in which Senate Democrats wrote, “The Supreme Court is not well, and the people know it. Perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands it be ‘restructured to reduce the influence of politics.'” Thiessen argues, “Talk about disdain for an independent judiciary! Democrats are not simply criticizing a ruling they disagree with; they are preemptively threatening the court before a case is even taken up. Can you imagine if Trump issued such a preemptive threat? Heads would explode.”
BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD
|A three-judge panel in North Carolina yesterday threw out the state’s legislative maps for being an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander and ordered lawmakers to draw new maps in two weeks. Michael Wines and Richard Fausset with The New York Times report, “The 357-page ruling is the first major decision on partisan maps since the United States Supreme Court ruled in June that even the most extreme gerrymandered maps were beyond its jurisdiction. While the federal Constitution limited the Supreme Court’s authority over partisan maps, CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN G. ROBERTS JR. wrote then, state constitutions could “provide standards and guidance for state courts to apply.'”
BUMP THAT NOISE
|Marcia Coyle with The National Law Journal covers the pending challenge from gun rights advocates to reverse the ban on bump-stock devices. Advocates want SCOTUS to overturn a federal appellate court decision that applied deference to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.