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Justice Brown Jackson Will Not Be Silenced

by Anne Laurie| July 10, 20259:40 am| 117 Comments

This post is in: Proud to Be A Democrat, Supreme Court

Two trends have emerged at the Supreme Court in recent weeks: President Donald Trump is on a winning streak and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court’s junior-most justice, is having none of it.

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— CNN (@cnn.com) July 9, 2025 at 4:24 AM

And I believe she will be a shining star in the history books, quite unlike current Chief ‘Just Us’ Roberts…

… That dynamic was on full display yet again Tuesday as the court handed down a significant – if temporary – decision allowing the White House to move forward with plans to dramatically reduce the size of the federal government. Jackson penned a solo dissent and the justice, who recently took up boxing as a way to relieve stress off the bench, pulled no punches.

“For some reason, this court sees fit to step in now and release the president’s wrecking ball at the outset of this litigation,” Jackson wrote. “In my view, this decision is not only truly unfortunate but also hubristic and senseless.”

Jackson’s dissent was the latest striking rebuke of a court she has served on since 2022, when President Joe Biden named her to succeed Justice Stephen Breyer. Her predecessor, for whom she once clerked, had developed a reputation during nearly 28 years on the court of attempting to reach common ground with the conservative bloc.

But in both oral arguments and increasingly in her dissents, Jackson – at 54, one of the youngest justices – has stood out as a jurist who is unafraid to speak clearly about her concerns, dispensing with the kind of opaque prose that sometimes permeates legal writing.

And on Tuesday, it seemed clear, Jackson was concerned most of all with how the court is handling Trump.

“Today, the court exercises neither caution nor scrutiny, especially compared to the reasoned decisions issued by the courts below,” Jackson wrote. “With scant justification, the majority permits the immediate and potentially devastating aggrandizement of one branch (the executive) at the expense of another (Congress), and once again leaves the people paying the price for its reckless emergency-docket determinations.” …

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This is shameful and puts the services that Americans rely on at risk. Thank you Justice Jackson for another powerful dissent. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/08/u…

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— Randi Weingarten (@rweingarten.bsky.social) July 8, 2025 at 6:17 PM

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"What one person (or President) might call bureaucratic bloat is a farmer’s prospect for a healthy crop, a coal miner’s chance to breathe free from black lung, or a preschooler’s opportunity to learn in a safe environment."
Justice Ketanji Jackson

— Fal Rising (@falrising.bsky.social) July 8, 2025 at 9:05 PM

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What's up with Justice Jackson? She started making her mark and speaking out early, and some of her dissents are so pointed Kagan and Sotomayor don’t even join them. The far right is out for her, and even Republican justices are getting snarky.
So what's up? Here’s my take 🧵

— Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (@whitehouse.senate.gov) July 9, 2025 at 11:49 AM

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One of the internal traditions of the Court is “collegiality.” First, you’re there for life, so you may as well get along. Second, issues come and issues go, and an ally in one case is an opponent in another. Third, the Court thinks of itself as a stately institution, hence decorum matters.

All of which is well and good — in ordinary times. It’s akin to members of Congress calling each other “the distinguished gentleman” or the “distinguished gentlelady,” to maintain decorum and avoid events like the caning of Senator Sumner.

But what if we’re not in ordinary times?

What if we are in a time when a billionaire-funded scheme has spent decades trying to pack the Court with billionaire-agreeable justices, so as to “capture” the Court in the sense of “regulatory capture” or “agency capture” — and what if the billionaires have finally succeeded?…

What if we are in a time when favored parties and litigants win victories with statistically astounding regularity? And justices are feted at organizational fund-raising dinners where those statistically-astounding winners convene?

What if we are in a time when novel judicial doctrines, reverse-engineered for happy results for certain special interests, are grown and fertilized in special-interest-funded legal hothouses and then make their way through the Court to become the law of the land?

What if flotillas of secretly-funded amici curiae appear before the Court and sing in conspicuous harmony, and win with conspicuous frequency, and the Court makes little to no effort to enforce its own rules about amicus disclosure about their financing and coordination?

These are all unseemly things to discuss, indecorous, and not at all “collegial.” But if they are true, should they not be discussed? How much mischief happening in plain view in the courthouse should a justice ignore in the interest of “collegiality”?

Justice Jackson has begun looking at patterns, and noticing what types of parties tend to win, and which tend to lose. She has noticed procedural discrepancies.

She has begun looking at interests, and motives, and connections. She’s begun to point behind the curtain at what “collegiality” obscures…

KBJ comes from the district and circuit courts, where many judges are concerned about the mischief surrounding the Supreme Court. It’s happening in plain view. Judges are not idiots.

Their discretion, decorum and “collegiality” have limits — and should have limits. Truth and candor are also judicial virtues.

Jackson may have come to the Court sharing those obvious concerns. If so, she had a running start on noticing the mischief. She may choose not to look at the Men in Black Neuralyzer and disappear the awareness she brought of the mischief at the Court. Nor should she…

The far right is undeniably twitchy, because the participants know the Scheme better than anyone. The points Jackson has made so far about patterns and preferences and predisposition likely only touch the surface of a far deeper problem.

The Schemers have much more to fear, and they know it.

As best I can tell, KBJ is being true to herself, true to her oath, and true to her native land. That’s my take, anyway. (P.S. Harlan was alone in dissent, too, and that aged well.)

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In her first public appearance since SCOTUS limited federal judges’ ability to block Trump’s actions with nationwide injunctions, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson discussed the rule of law, the state of democracy and the potential implications of the Court’s recent ruling.

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— Democracy Docket (@democracydocket.com) July 8, 2025 at 6:31 PM

Justice Brown Jackson Will Not Be SilencedPost + Comments (117)

Justice Brown Jackson, Already Cementing Her Legacy

by Anne Laurie| July 6, 20254:23 pm| 70 Comments

This post is in: Excellent Links, Post-racial America, Proud to Be A Democrat, Supreme Court

Assuming that we get onto some kind of good timeline in the future I think justice KBJ's volumes of concurrences and dissents will be studied as the important work of a justice with a fervent commitment to democracy and the constitution, a commitment that ACB and the NYT leadership lack

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— Hemry, Local Bartender (@bartenderhemry.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 5:34 PM

The SC(R)OTUS Sinister Six sent Amy ‘Blank Sheet of Paper’ Cunning-Bunny out to complain about that very rude Black lady, and the NYTimes had a nice clean hanky for her — “Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Makes Herself Heard, Prompting a Rebuke” [gift link]:

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote just five majority opinions in the Supreme Court term that ended last month, the fewest of any member of the court. But her voice resonated nonetheless, in an unusually large number of concurring and dissenting opinions, more than 20 in all.

Several of them warned that the court was taking lawless shortcuts, placing a judicial thumb on the scale in favor of President Trump and putting American democracy in peril. She called the majority’s opinion in the blockbuster case involving birthright citizenship, issued on the final day of the term, “an existential threat to the rule of law.”

Justice Jackson, 54, is the court’s newest member, having just concluded her third term. Other justices have said it took them years to find their footing, but Justice Jackson, the first Black woman to serve on the court, quickly emerged as a forceful critic of her conservative colleagues and, lately, their approach to the Trump agenda.

Her opinions, sometimes joined by no other justice, have been the subject of scornful criticism from the right and have raised questions about her relationships with her fellow justices, including the other two members of its liberal wing…

Her slashing critiques sometimes seemed to test her colleagues’ patience, culminating in an uncharacteristic rebuke from Justice Amy Coney Barrett in the case arising from Mr. Trump’s effort to ban birthright citizenship. In that case, the majority sharply limited the power of district court judges to block presidential orders, even if they are patently unconstitutional…

Justice Jackson added her own dissent, speaking only for herself. She said the majority imperiled the rule of law, creating “a zone of lawlessness within which the executive has the prerogative to take or leave the law as it wishes.”

That prompted an extended response from Justice Barrett, the next most junior justice and the author of the majority opinion. It did not stint on condescension.

“We will not dwell on Justice Jackson’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself,” Justice Barrett wrote, in an opinion signed by all five of the other Republican appointees…

Just months ago, Justice Barrett was the target of ugly criticism from the right for minor deviations from Mr. Trump’s legal agenda, with some of his allies calling her “a D.E.I. hire,” suggesting she had been chosen only for her gender. But the president’s supporters were delighted by her criticism of Justice Jackson, with some crowing that their earlier attacks on Justice Barrett had succeeded…

Professor Murray said she suspected that Justice Barrett’s remarks were part of a larger agenda intended to silence a critic. “It was incredibly dismissive,” she said. “And I just wonder if it wasn’t just about this case, but rather about these asides that Justice Jackson has been leavening into her dissents.”…

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Justice Jackson has appeared comfortable expressing herself from the start.

She has been particularly active in filing concurring opinions — ones that agree with the majority’s bottom line but offer additional comments or different reasoning…

She has also been active in dissent. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. did not write his first solo dissent in an argued case until 16 years into his tenure. Justice Jackson issued three such dissents in her first term.

Marin Levy, a law professor at Duke, said Justice Jackson had been doing two things in her dissents.

“The first category concerns standard disagreements on the merits,” Professor Levy said. “The second category feels quite different — I think here we see dissents in which Justice Jackson is trying to raise the alarm. Whether she is writing for the public or a future court, she is making a larger point about what she sees as not just the errors of the majority’s position but the dangers of it as well.”

Justice Jackson, who did not respond to a request for comment, has also been a harsh critic of the court’s use of truncated procedures in ruling on emergency applications.

“This fly-by-night approach to the work of the Supreme Court is not only misguided,” she wrote in April, when the court said that Venezuelan men the administration was seeking to deport to El Salvador had sued in the wrong court. “It is also dangerous.”…

Last year, in a dissent in a public corruption case, Justice Jackson seemed to allude to revelations by ProPublica and others that Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. had failed to disclose luxury travel provided to them by billionaire benefactors, a strikingly critical swipe on a sensitive topic.

“Officials who use their public positions for private gain threaten the integrity of our most important institutions,” she wrote. “Greed makes governments — at every level — less responsive, less efficient and less trustworthy from the perspective of the communities they serve.”

The reason the NYT is like "wow seems like the black justice is being a little EXTRA" and ACB is like "your opinions are trash, shut up" is because on some level they get this and their jealously is driving them mad

— Hemry, Local Bartender (@bartenderhemry.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 5:38 PM

The sharpest critic of the U.S. Supreme Court is its newest justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, who hails from #Florida www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202… via @washingtonpost.com

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— Craig Pittman (@craigtimes.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 2:24 PM

Many people are saying… The Washington Post, “One of the Supreme Court’s sharpest critics sits on it” [gift link]:

Dissenting — again — on the last day of the Supreme Court’s term, in its most high-profile case, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson did not mince words.

She had for months plainly criticized the opinions of her conservative colleagues, trading the staid legalese typical of justices’ decisions for impassioned arguments against what she has described as their acquiescence to President Donald Trump. She returned to that theme again in the final case, ripping the court for limiting nationwide injunctions.

“The majority’s ruling … is … profoundly dangerous, since it gives the Executive the go-ahead to sometimes wield the kind of unchecked, arbitrary power the Founders crafted our Constitution to eradicate,” Jackson wrote…

She wrote more dissents this term than any other justice. Overall, she penned 24 opinions, second only to the prolific Clarence Thomas. Jackson also far exceeded her colleagues in the number of words she spoke during oral arguments. She uttered more than 79,000; Sonia Sotomayor, her liberal colleague, came in a distant second, at 53,000.

In her third term, one legal expert said, she has carved out a space on the left similar to what Thomas has held on the right. Writing frequently, often dissenting, and sometimes willing to depart from her liberal colleagues…

Jackson frequently disagreed with the substance of the conservative majority’s rulings this term but most strikingly offering a sustained, blunt and unsparing critique of how the court went about its work.

Again and again, Jackson accused the conservative bloc of weighing cases in a rushed, reckless and partisan fashion that undermined the high court’s mission to be an arbiter of fair and impartial justice — delivering results for Trump.

She summed up the sentiment baldly in a dissent in a case clearing the way for Trump to strip temporary protections from migrants: “The Court has plainly botched this assessment today.”

Melissa Murray, a New York University law professor, said Jackson is not so much embracing a new role as she is growing more comfortable being the justice who showed up on day one, jumping into oral arguments during her first case and grilling attorneys. Her first opinion was a dissent.

“I think this term, we have seen her take a more forthright approach in the way her colleagues are facilitating the administration,” Murray said. “I don’t know that she goes so far as to say they are in the bag for the administration, but she does come close.”…

Her role is particularly notable because she is the court’s most junior justice. Jackson, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, is the first Black woman to serve on the high court.

“She’s found her footing maybe faster than other justices historically,” said Morgan Ratner, a lawyer who worked as a law clerk to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and to Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh during his tenure on the D.C. Circuit.

She also is responding to the limits of power that come with being on the court’s minority, said Michele Goodwin, a Georgetown University law professor. As a result, Goodwin said, Jackson is writing on two tracks, one legal and the other rhetorical.

“She realizes the balls and strikes on the court, and what she’s doing is writing … forward for a different day,” Goodwin said….

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is increasingly willing to condemn the actions of the conservative majority, even when that means breaking with her Liberal colleagues
By Ruth Marcus
www.newyorker.com/news/the-led…

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— Mia Farrow (@miafarrow.bsky.social) June 29, 2025 at 1:05 PM

The New Yorker, on “Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Declaration of Independence”:

… New Justices tend to hang back; Jackson, now in her third term, spoke up from the start. In her first eight oral arguments, she spoke eleven thousand words, twice as many as the next most loquacious Justice, Sotomayor. That tendency has persisted—The Hill found that Jackson spoke seventy-five thousand words this term, fifty per cent more than Sotomayor—and it isn’t the only measure of Jackson’s assertiveness. As the Times Supreme Court correspondent Adam Liptak noted at the conclusion of Jackson’s first term on the Court, Chief Justice John Roberts “did not write his first solo dissent in an argued case until 16 years into his tenure. Justice Jackson issued three such dissents in her first term.” Jackson’s conduct this term—in her work on the Court and her comments outside it—is not different so much as it is more so: more alarmed at the direction the Court and the country are heading, and more willing than ever to go it alone in expressing that distress…

Jackson’s independence from her liberal colleagues was on display in April, when the majority ruled that a challenge to President Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to remove Venezuelan migrants to a Salvadoran prison had been brought in the wrong court. Sotomayor’s dissent, joined by Kagan, Jackson, and, in part, by the conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, was unsparing. She described the Trump Administration’s effort to “hustle” the Venezuelans out of the country before they could obtain due process as “an extraordinary threat to the rule of law.” The Court’s seeming indulgence of that behavior, she added, was “indefensible.” Jackson went further, in her own dissent. She assailed the majority’s “fly-by-night approach” of deciding cases on an emergency basis, without full briefing or oral argument—and compared the opinion with Korematsu v. United States, the discredited 1944 ruling upholding the internment of Japanese Americans. “At least when the Court went off base in the past, it left a record so posterity could see how it went wrong,” Jackson wrote. “With more and more of our most significant rulings taking place in the shadows of our emergency docket, today’s Court leaves less and less of a trace. But make no mistake: We are just as wrong now as we have been in the past, with similarly devastating consequences. It just seems we are now less willing to face it.”

Speaking last month at a judicial conference, Jackson seized the opportunity to call out “the elephant in the room, which is the relentless attacks and disregard and disparagement that judges around the country, and perhaps many of you, are now facing on a daily basis.” …

Even the anodyne USA Today!

In a Supreme Court term that handed Trump and conservatives, big wins, Ketanji Brown Jackson – the newest justice – has emerged as fierce voice of dissent.

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— USA TODAY (@usatoday.com) July 5, 2025 at 5:00 AM

1/ Whether or not Friday's SCOTUS ruling has the practical effect of denying birthright citizenship to children born on US soil, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson used her dissent to issue a strong warning that this decision has altered our system of gov't—& sooner or later, may destroy it.

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— Fiona "Fi" Webster 🌎🌍🌏 (@fiona-webster22.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 10:45 AM

2/ “Disaster looms,” Jackson wrote. If a court cannot command the executive to follow the law, then there exists “a zone of lawlessness within which the Executive has the prerogative to take or leave the law as it wishes, …

3/ & where individuals who would otherwise be entitled to the law’s protection become subject to the Executive’s whims instead.”

“I have no doubt that, if judges must allow the Executive to act unlawfully in some circumstances, as the Court concludes today, executive lawlessness will flourish, …

4/ & from there, it is not difficult to predict how this all ends,” she wrote.

“Eventually, executive power will become completely uncontainable, & our beloved constitutional Republic will be no more.”

I’m not sure why Justice Jackson’s “unusually large number of concurring and dissenting opinions” are said to have “prompted a rebuke,’ especially one “that did not stint on condescension.” Comey Barrett’s “rebuke” was a choice, an act of agency.
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/05/u…

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— Larry Glickman (@larryglickman.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 6:43 AM

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KBJ joined a Court whose six-person majority has made a number of dubious and dangerous opinions. Her opinions have underlined that threat. If she had joined the Court at a different time in its history, these warnings would not have been necessary. But at this moment of democratic crisis, they are.

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— Larry Glickman (@larryglickman.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 6:54 AM

The claim that her opinions have tested “her colleagues’ patience” strikes me as a form of what I have called “elite victimization.” The Court’s majority has made a series of radically extremist decisions—taking away a Constitutional right, offering Trump seemingly unlimited immunity etc.

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— Larry Glickman (@larryglickman.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 7:03 AM

Um. What about Earl Warren, who wrote what is arguably the most important opinion of the twentieth century less than a year after he joined the Court as Chief Justice?

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— Larry Glickman (@larryglickman.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 7:10 AM

Earl Warren, recently appointed as Chief Justice, with no judicial experience beforehand, also got “the hang of things” pretty quickly when he shepherded through the unanimous Brown v. Board opinion.

— Larry Glickman (@larryglickman.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 8:22 AM

The right’s judicial hero, Antonin Scalia, would routinely insult other justices, especially Sandra Day O’Connor, and write totally unhinged opinions.

— Phil Klinkner (@pklinkne.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 12:45 PM

No, you see, when a woman stands up to her colleagues she’s “kinda being a bitch,” but whenever a man pulls the absolutely outrageous BS Clarence Thomas pulls its “constitutionalism.”

— Brendan Davey (@brendandavey.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 8:11 AM

Literally the most qualified.

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— Ms. Architeuthis (@msarchiteuthis.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 11:29 AM

White women clutch their pearls. Justice Brown-Jackson proudly wears her cowrie shells. May she prevail…

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— DBerl0909 (@dberl.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 12:34 PM

Justice Brown Jackson, Already Cementing Her LegacyPost + Comments (70)

Repub Venality Open Thread: Chief ‘Just Us’ Roberts Is A Very Bad Man

by Anne Laurie| June 30, 20252:24 pm| 63 Comments

This post is in: Excellent Links, Supreme Court Corruption

“Chief Justice John Roberts is maddeningly silent on the biggest issue in America: President Donald Trump’s growing lawlessness.”
New, at Law Dork:

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— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner.bsky.social) June 30, 2025 at 8:32 AM

My google-fu is not strong enough to retrieve my 2005 opinings here, but I think I have achieved a solid record: John Roberts is a bad justice whose pathetic bletherings will not outweigh his endless machinations in favor of the current Felon-in-Chief and all his Republican fellows. I’m not personally convinced Roberts is worse than Judge Taney… but at least Taney had the excuse that he couldn’t know his ‘Dread Scott compromise’ would nearly destroy the United States along with countless individual lives. ‘Just Us’ Roberts doesn’t care about the predictable consequences, as long as he believes he’s got the power and the resources to live out his remaining days in a secure 1950s-style suburban bubble.

Chris Geidner, at Law Dork — “John Roberts puts off deciding where he stands on fascism”:

… Roberts — who will have been chief justice of the United States, not just of the Supreme Court, for 20 years this fall — spent Saturday telling Americans that criticism of judges that rise to the level of “threats” are “unacceptable” because they can lead to “serious threats of violence and murder of judges just simply for doing their work.”

Accordingly, “political people” criticizing the courts must “keep that in mind,” Roberts said at a judicial conference organized by judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

Roberts is right that violent threats — and, obviously, actions — are unacceptable…

And yet, the day before Roberts’s speech, he quietly joined the Supreme Court’s purportedly procedural opinion opening the door, at least for now, to one of the most lawless actions of the Trump administration in its Miller-led efforts: Trump’s January 20 executive order purporting to end birthright citizenship.

Roberts does not see that threat of violence.

Roberts, again quietly, also joined the Supreme Court’s similar action at the start of the week, too, blocking a district court order that merely required the Trump administration to provide basic due process to people subject to deportation when the Trump administration was seeking to send them to a random country — the so-called “third country removals” that have included efforts to send people to Libya and South Sudan, two places on the State Department’s “do not travel” advisory list due to the risk of “crime, kidnapping, and armed conflict.”

Roberts did not see that threat of violence.

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Roberts, despite his role as Chief Justice of the United States, has failed to act for the United States in this moment — looking less like the conservative institutionalist that he sought to present himself as for the first 15 years of his time on the court and more like a Republican senator who might say behind closed doors that he disagrees with President Donald Trump’s methods but then votes right along with the most MAGA senator.

And, on June 27 in particular, we have only Roberts’s votes to go on. He wrote nothing on the last day of opinions this term….

He wrote nothing. He apparently saw no threat of violence in allowing the federal government to “develop[] and issu[e] public guidance about the Executive’s plans to implement” an unconstitutional executive order that would tell Americans how the government plans to bar people born in America from being Americans…

The Bulwark‘s reporting on that execrable opionon — “The Supreme Court Just Made America a Dangerous Place”:

… The Court’s ruling is composed of two main parts.

The first is its declaration that it is possible that the president can contradict the plain-text reading of the Constitution by issuing an executive order doing away with birthright citizenship.

The second is that lower courts can no longer issue nationwide injunctions against blatantly unconstitutional policies imposed by the executive. Injunctions must now be created on a patchwork basis.

I want to impress upon you how dangerous this is. SCOTUS has empowered the president to impose whatever he likes—irrespective of its constitutionality—and then prevented judicial overview except at the localized level. Meaning that we will now have two sets of laws. One that operates in Red America and one that Operates in Blue America.

Separate, but unequal. A house divided against itself….

His children are now old enough to understand exactly how they were acquired (and for what purpose), and I cannot say worse than I hope they will be able to escape the ignominy of their upbringing.

A very predictable man…

Roberts ruled that the Declaration of Independence, Constitutional convention, Federalist papers, Washington, Adams, and T. Roosevelt were all wrong about the presidency, while Nixon and Trump were right.
How could he have thought that'd be well received?https://t.co/UmvrKHftly

— Nicholas Grossman (@NGrossman81) September 15, 2024

Repub Venality Open Thread: Chief ‘Just Us’ Roberts Is A Very Bad ManPost + Comments (63)

SCOTUS (Mis)Education Open Thread: Every Parent A Cleric

by Anne Laurie| June 28, 20259:43 am| 181 Comments

This post is in: Education, Open Threads, Republican Stupidity, Supreme Court Corruption

Wow that’s broad. Incredibly broad.
www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p…

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— Raffi Melkonian (@rmfifthcircuit.bsky.social) June 27, 2025 at 11:04 AM

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Mister, we could use a man like Ronald Reagan agaaain…

the percentage of white children in school was around 80% in 1980. today it is right around 45%, give or take.
as the supreme court attempts to uphold that this is a white man’s republic it is going to smash headlong into reality, and the results are going to be catastrophic.

— not an art thief (@famousartthief.bsky.social) June 27, 2025 at 10:49 AM

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Worth pointing out that only one of the Republican appointees attended public schools, and I’m guessing none of their kids have.

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— Dana Houle (@danahoule.bsky.social) June 27, 2025 at 1:15 PM

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It also creates bureaucratic problems for schools. Where do kids go when teachers explain that slavery is bad but Phundie Phylis’s snowflakes leave the class? Who watches them? And how will Phundie Phylis know when her kids should be pulled? Do teachers need to send out daily instruction plans? /2

— Dana Houle (@danahoule.bsky.social) June 27, 2025 at 1:04 PM

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SCOTUS (Mis)Education Open Thread: Every Parent A ClericPost + Comments (181)

Deconstruction Continues

by Rose Judson| June 27, 202511:36 am| 165 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Supreme Court, Bitter Despair is the New Black

We’re getting a combo platter of shit from the Supreme Court today on its last day of term. The challenge to preventative care provisions in Obamacare failed. The nationwide injunction against Trump’s executive order redefining birthright citizenship was struck down. Deconstruction is still in progress:

This is an assault on the Reconstruction Amendments by a Neo-Confederate Court wedded to the far-right argument that those amendments were illegitimate and destroyed the original intent of the Founders, which was to create a white man’s country

— Adam Serwer (@adamserwer.bsky.social) June 27, 2025 at 3:35 PM

SCOTUSBlog has a live thread here. There’s a Bluesky thread by lawyer Matt Cameron which has some informed hot-takery on where this leaves us, but it is only viewable to those who have a BSky account. If you have one, click here to read. If not, this is the meat of the thread, for me:

Deconstruction Continues

Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, which challenged Texas’s Internet age-verification law, is also out (FSC lost), and if you want to read Clarence Thomas’s decision, it is here. This case has been assumed to mainly impact porn sites, but as this January 2025 article at The Verge notes, (archive.is link here if you hit the paywall) it also has grim implications for an awful lot of internet content:

Numerous states have passed age verification rules for online porn, and FSC v. Paxton could directly impact whether they stand up to legal challenges. But its impact could go beyond porn. Both TikTok v. Garland and this case deal with whether the government’s interests — national security for TikTok, protecting kids in FSC — should override free speech concerns. “We’ve got two major cases in five days dealing with whether or not traditional First Amendment law still applies to internet content in the same way,” Terry says.

And several state and federal lawmakers have demanded stronger age verification for social media, sometimes alongside a proposed ban on minors using it. Opening the door to porn verification wouldn’t guarantee those efforts would succeed, but Hans says it could make legislators far more likely to try. “I think that if the Supreme Court said that some form of age verification could be constitutional, that if you’re the state in other situations, they’re going to say, well, extend that reasoning to other substantive areas of internet regulation,” he says.

There was also a Louisiana redistricting case before the court, but they have kicked it down the road to next term. I’ll let the great Tom Tomorrow play us off:

Mostly open thread. If any of you are reading good analysis, please do link in the comments – I’ll check back in 20-30 minutes to update the main post with any useful stuff.

Deconstruction ContinuesPost + Comments (165)

Saturday Morning Open Thread: A Ray of Hope

by Anne Laurie| May 17, 20258:14 am| 127 Comments

This post is in: Activist Judges!, Immigration, Supreme Court

BREAKING: The Supreme Court holds that the Trump administration violated the due process rights of Venezuelan migrants last month in its rushed effort to expel them to El Salvador in the middle of the night (which SCOTUS blocked). Alito and Thomas dissent. www.documentcloud.org/documents/25…

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjsdc.bsky.social) May 16, 2025 at 3:51 PM

I expected this, but I expected 5-4.
Gorsuch and Kav being in the majority here is unexpected and I think indicates how much of a longshot a lot of Trump's admins actions are in SCOTUS.
This is such a rebuke I almost expect them to drive us into a nullification crisis over it.

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— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) May 16, 2025 at 4:10 PM

Also this, there is pretty clear evidence now that even Gorsuch and Kav are unwilling to give the government the benefit of the doubt that they will act in good faith.

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— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) May 16, 2025 at 4:23 PM

Notably, SCOTUS is saying here, in direct response to Trumps "We won't have a country" rant, is that "no, you have to give all of them trials."
The Habeas petition crap is not my favorite, but the court saying "They have to be able to know they can contact counsel, contact counsel

— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) May 16, 2025 at 4:19 PM

He's big mad but he's not talking like he's going to defy them

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— Chatham Harrison dba TRUMP DELENDUS EST (@chathamharrison.bsky.social) May 16, 2025 at 5:21 PM

Saturday Morning Open Thread: A Ray of HopePost + Comments (127)

Saturday Morning Open Thread: Everything Is Unsatisfactory

by Anne Laurie| January 11, 20258:09 am| 140 Comments

This post is in: H5N1 Bird Flu, Open Threads, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You, Supreme Court Corruption, Trumpery, World's Best Healthcare (If You Can Afford It)

(Clay Bennett via GoComics.com)

Egg prices continue to climb amid the bird flu outbreak https://t.co/eEbLNM1mYF

— Christy Green (@lachristygreen) January 11, 2025

My personal hobbyhorse… “Egg prices continue to climb amid the bird flu outbreak” [gift link]:

Photos of bare grocery refrigerator cases and tales of egg prices gone wild have been rampant on social media this winter.

The scenes aren’t manufactured drama. The U.S. Department of Agriculture noted last week that some grocery stores have been limiting the number of cartons customers can buy and hanging signs announcing shortages where cartons of eggs would normally be stacked.

The bird flu outbreak behind the shortages began affecting U.S. chickens in 2022, and prices are still rising. Adding to consumers’ woes, experts say that prices now could rise in Michigan and Colorado as the states join others requiring all eggs to come from chickens raised without cages. Here’s how much — and why — you might be shelling out more than ever.

How much are eggs?
Prices differ widely, of course, depending on geographic area and individual retailers. But nationwide, the consumer price index puts the cost at $3.65 for a dozen regular large white eggs in November (the latest available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics)…

Why are they so expensive?
Experts say it’s a classic case of supply and demand. According to the USDA, nearly 40 million commercial egg-laying hens across the country were lost last year to the H5N1 strain of the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) and fires. The losses were especially high in December, the agency noted, which coincided with the usual peak holiday demand for eggs, leading to “record-high wholesale and retail prices.”

And on the demand side, it’s not just the rise in holiday sales: The volume of eggs sold at retail has been up year over year for 21 consecutive months, according to the American Egg Board, which attributes Americans’ appetite to a number of factors, including the emphasis many people are placing on protein in their diets…

Will they get cheaper?
Don’t expect a price drop anytime soon, experts say. The latest projections from the USDA suggest that egg prices are expected to climb even higher in 2025, given the continued bird flu threat. USDA economist Megan Sweitzer said the agency is predicting another price increase this year, of 11.4, assuming the avian flu remains a problem. “We’re still seeing egg-laying flocks being affected by the avian influenza,” she said in a radio interview posted last month on the USDA’s website…

The Supreme Court will review Obamacare's no-cost coverage for some preventive care services including cancer screenings, heart statins and HIV drugs https://t.co/iCfzKt0HyV

— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) January 10, 2025

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Saturday Morning Open Thread: Everything Is UnsatisfactoryPost + Comments (140)

Jay on Sweet Dreams (Open Thread) (Jul 10, 2025 @ 4:18pm)

Miss Bianca on Sweet Dreams (Open Thread) (Jul 10, 2025 @ 4:17pm)

Archon on Justice Brown Jackson Will Not Be Silenced (Jul 10, 2025 @ 4:16pm)

dmsilev on Sweet Dreams (Open Thread) (Jul 10, 2025 @ 4:14pm)

Dorothy A. Winsor on Sweet Dreams (Open Thread) (Jul 10, 2025 @ 4:14pm)

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

“In this country American means white. everybody else has to hyphenate.”

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

Their shamelessness is their super power.

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Petty moves from a petty man.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

There are times when telling just part of the truth is effectively a lie.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Justice Brown Jackson Will Not Be Silenced

Justice Brown Jackson, Already Cementing Her Legacy

Repub Venality Open Thread: Chief ‘Just Us’ Roberts Is A Very Bad Man

SCOTUS (Mis)Education Open Thread: Every Parent A Cleric

Deconstruction Continues

Saturday Morning Open Thread: A Ray of Hope

Saturday Morning Open Thread: Everything Is Unsatisfactory