U.S. Supreme Court: Post-Ginsburg Edition

:)

Lol @Brad

dear journal.

this is it. truly, a long, dark night of the soul. i feel like may have earned it somehow, this time. maybe i am at partly at fault? i faced the golden boy across my desk in the back corner of my senatorial suite. "do you believe in abortion?" i asked? "excuse me", he parried. "i'm just kidding! who cares! just tell me what i need to hear!", i said. "what do you need to hear, Ms. Collins?" the golden boy asked, and i felt embarrassed at his youthful silliness. "tell me what you think about ABORTION, my dear kavanaugh!" i squeezed out of my dead face. "what do you want me to think..." i nodded along "yes i think that you will be very" "i will be so very" "practical" and "dispassionate" and "impartial" yes!, yes we will!

why did my dolls look back at me that way when i told the story of how it would be? because they feel emotions directly like daggers, they have no shield for them. they are just stupid plastic under the mess, to be thrown away when they're too dirty. i look at the golden boy and feel nothing at all for this disputable handsome mess of brown hair. he liked beer. we all did, in that time. we couldn't retrace the exact blocks to our college friends' houses...we all moved all of the time anyway.

any rate, too tired to worry about this any more. i look denial in the face and i say NO!
susan collins

Keep your farts off my body.

Texas is basically a small Soviet Republic at this point, with neighbors spying on neighbors, hoping to collect a cash bounty, in addition to being an apartheid state for nonwhite voters. What woman or POC could possibly feel safe there? To say nothing of the gun proliferation.

— Joy-Ann (Pro-Democracy) Reid 😷 (@JoyAnnReid) September 2, 2021

You would think companies like Apple would exert pressure by not putting offices in these states, but capitalism.

Lots of companies have put economic pressure on states like Georgia and North Carolina for (relatively) less, haven't they?

Actually, not even relatively less, I should have said relatively similar impositions. Let's see what happens in Texas, but I bet companies respond at least a little if the public pressure is enough.

ugh joy reid

I'm more surprised xyzz let a passing jab at a Soviet republic go unmentioned!

Wait is anything that Ms Reid said NOT true? Idgi

Anyway here's a Twitter thread about why calling for boycotts when Texas haven't (?) called for boycotts might be a bad idea.

Yes because people suddenly being unemployed will surely make the whole situation better you goddamned ghouls. https://t.co/RJAmDjZWDH

— 🚩Shepherd🏴 (@NeolithicSheep) September 2, 2021

You would think companies like Apple would exert pressure by not putting offices in these states, but capitalism.

I've been surprised to see quite a few twitter threads scolding people for stating that companies/productions should pull out of Texas. While I definitely agree that the, "fuck Texas, anyone that lives there deserves this shit" attitude is heinous, I don't really think it's at all bad to believe that one of the consequences of this bullshit should be seeing them take a massive financial hit.

lol missed that thread in the xpost.

I guess. But shit like the big sports pulling their showcase games and series out of other states made a difference in the past.

The "financial hit" will not hurt anyone responsible for this law. It will hurt the least well resourced and least protected people first, hardest, and solely.

banning abortion, snitching on your neighbor, being an apartheid state, and having tons of guns everywhere are american enough without bringing the soviet union into it. there are various "well actually" arguments that can be made about the individual elements of it but mainly i just don't like joy reid or this type of comparison. same as the "this is just like saudi arabia!" things flying around.

xpost - I don't agree with "solely", otherwise you aren't wrong.

But I don't understand how, say, pulling the MLB all-star game out of a city would "solely" hurt the least protected. It's not like they would otherwise completely shut down the stadium and fire all the vendors, they just lose out on the national spotlight for a night. I don't think that's a bad thing.

It’s being talked about the Virginia gubernatorial campaign

Terry McAuliffe, on press call, says "there's a good way that Virginia could go the way of Texas" if he loses. He calls Glenn Youngkin the most anti-abortion R candidate in VA history.

"That's saying something, because I ran against Ken Cuccinelli."

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) September 2, 2021

McAuliffe says the Texas law could help Virginia court companies to uproot and move there. "We should call Dell, we should call American Airlines."

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) September 2, 2021

The "financial hit" will not hurt anyone responsible for this law. It will hurt the least well resourced and least protected people first, hardest, and solely.

But most political capital should not be put on boycotts and instead on political action to pack the Supreme Court, pass federal legislation, and litigate.

political action to pack the Supreme Court, pass federal legislation, and litigate.

Right, but I think people want to know what else they can do since this is largely out of ours hands and depends on the action of seemingly disinterested, conflicted or downright corrupt Dem leadership. People are understandably tired of waiting for the leaders they voted in to do the right thing and want to know what they can do after donating.

yeah, people don't want to feel helpless and want to find actions they personally can take.

protesting of course is one, donating to the right organizations...

Exactly, which is why I think so many are taking to the "overwhelm the reporting system" route, since it feels like something.

a statute can be written to give a person standing, probably a more appropriate phrase is enforcement authority or right of action, because it doesn't require the enforcing person to be harmed. another way it's not like the ADA where (as far as i know) you have to include in your initial pleading that you are the person harmed.

― criminally negligible (harbl), Thursday, 2 September 2021 22:47 (yesterday) link

There is some vague legal precedent for the idea of private enforcement in various statutes and caselaw, e.g. references to "private attorneys general" in class action caselaw, but, again, you have to have been harmed to survive a motion to dismiss, and typically also to then serve as class representative. There are whistleblower actions where, e.g., an employee of a medical clinic committing medicare fraud could bring the action, and there are rewards for the whistleblower, but, again, the whistleblower has a connection to the action, even if they aren't the party directly harmed. Having a hard time thinking of a statute where you don't have to be in the "zone of interests" of the statute you're enforcing (this came up as past SCOTUS language when I was trying to figure this out)

yeah i don't think there is anything in the u.s. constitution that would limit that kind of thing, and there is good reason for the qui tam/whistleblower phenomenon because by the nature of the issue the government wouldn't know about it without the whistleblower. here the state has said they have a government interest in not having abortions occur after there is a heartbeat, but they are not exercising the right to enforce a law meant to protect that interest because it would be unconstitutional for them to do that. there is plenty of law saying the state cannot employ non-government actors to violate the 4th or 5th amendment, but i don't think substantive enforcement of a criminal law by a private person has ever come up. of course this is civil, not criminal, but it's obvious they are just putting the private citizen in the government's place, and even in non-criminal law enforcement like speeding tickets and immigration offenses the government would have to follow the constitution. the 4th amendment analogy is not irrelevant here because griswold, roe v. wade, et al. derive the privacy right in part from the 4th and other bill of rights amendments. there would be no reason for the state to completely give up its right to prosecute e.g., speeding on a public highway, because it has an interest in doing that and can do so lawfully. if it decided it was going to delegate that right to a speed camera company, it can't first enact a statute saying speeding laws are only enforceable against one group, or deprive the alleged speeder of the right to a trial, or do anything else unconstitutional.

Yeah I think you're spot on that there's a due process issue. They're basically "deputizing" people to enforce the law, and therefore the same due process concerns should apply to the way it would be enforced. I wonder if there were ever cases regarding the forming of posses and that sort of thing.

There may also be questions about standing and right of action that pertain to the Texas state constitution and Texas law, just have no knowledge of that.

You just spent more time, with more real analysis, than the SC is going to ever give this law.

I wish some big NGO or foundation (Gates, you listening?) would step forward and offer to cover all judgements & legal fees in TX until this blatantly unconstitutional law eventually gets tossed... i.e. "just keep doing what you're doing, keep offering services, and we'll get your back."

even though it rewards scumsucking parasites

until this blatantly unconstitutional law eventually gets tossed

I worry that this could be 50 years given the current political situation.

When Californians get the right to start suing people for shooting deer, it'll get tossed

I wish some big NGO or foundation (Gates, you listening?)…

The Gates foundation doesn't have an angle here, no abortion provider unions to crush.

i guess it’s just fundamentally absurd to imagine a mega-billionaire who’d actually want Good Things and would be willing to crash his wealth to do it

You don't get an invite to Little Saint James through good works.

meanwhile Musk probably just Zoomin w Greg Abbot on the reg.

***doomer alert pls scroll past***

any billionaires that are willing to get nakedly ‘polticial’ in any real sense are going to go full-on fash prob in my lifetime

politicious

Supercalifragilisticextrapoliticious

Here’s a depressing thought - by the time someone gets a “procedurally proper” challenge to this law before the Supreme Court, a lot of abortion infrastructure in Texas and states that pass similar laws will be gone anyway, because they’re shut down in the meantime.

i have another depressing one: this statute has an extremely bizarre and detailed statement of legislative intent and severability which explains that even if a court finds it's illegal in one case, the legislature intends for it to remain standing for all the *other* cases where it *doesn't* create an undue burden. and even the individual WORDS and PHRASES of the bill are intended to be severable. so these fascists want to keep a zombie abortion ban going for as long as they can no matter how many cases they lose.

good morning!

so these fascists want to keep a zombie abortion ban going for as long as they can no matter how many cases they lose.

i'm sorry, can't read this post because i'm too busy keeping up with the "election fraud" cases that keep going no matter how obvious it is that it's wrong

yup

"flood the zone with shit" has expanded beyond its original bounds of media

TBF, the election fraud lawyers have been sanctioned, and there's a pretty good chance they'll also be disbarred, so there are potential consequences for such an approach.

how much money did they make along the way?

as far as i can tell, that's an awesome way to retire. just make a bunch of money, say "fuck you" to everyone you know, and go buy some island and do rich people things

so Sidney, what do you do?

what did i do? back on the mainland? i was a...a paralegal

hi, the name's Rudy! don't mind that pus coming out of those pores, it's perfectly normal! back on the mainland i started my own successful chain of putt-putt complexes along the I-70 corridor!

Hey here's another chilling thought - so-called "election fraud" would make a perfect subject matter for another texas-style bounty law.