If you woke up this morning thinking about Jussie Smollett, the Texas abortion law, California gun rights, and California vaccine mandates, then this is the podcast for you. David and Sarah dive into a legal issue that might overturn Smollet’s conviction, analyze the Supreme Court’s decision to permit a very narrow facial challenge to S.B. 8, discuss Gavin Newsom’s swing-and-miss, and wrap up the main portion of the pod with a discussion of vaccine mandates in San Diego schools.
Show Notes:
-Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson
-9th Circuit vaccine mandate ruling
The correct point that a hate speech SB8-type bill in CA would have gotten the Court conservatives’ attention better illustrates how much this actually was, in fact, about abortion.
Because ultimately everyone should hope that they will eventually act when some state temporarily deprives enough people of a sufficiently “important” right. Unless the Court has decided that the constitution can be neutered by “this one weird trick!” and unpopular minorities are simply helpless as states chip away at their rights, absent congressional intervention. It would seem to me to be a complete abdication of duty to hide behind a made-up doctrine like Ex Parte Young as the country tears itself apart with more and more malicious SB8 clones.
When it came down to it, the 5 justices who upheld the law simply weren’t bothered that women in Texas functionally lost the right to an abortion, because they disfavor that right anyways, and plan to soon get rid of it.
Its just inconceivable that they would have had the same reluctance to act if say, the bounty was on people who attend a catholic mass. And maybe they’d say, well, freedom of religion is a paramount right, it’s different. And maybe that’s correct. But when it comes down to it, a ruling either way on such a law (or the hate speech one) will be horrifying - either the justices really are simple hypocrites, or they are content to sit back and watch as the constitution is degraded beyond recognition.
I expect future historians will view this seemingly arcane and procedural ruling as an important step in the dissolution of the country. And maybe its not the Court’s job to try and save us from destroying ourselves if we wish. Hopefully I’m wrong.
I know you two were somewhat joking at the beginning, but I wanted to make clear that while we love emergency pods, the AO listener community does NOT want either of you to think that you have to drop important family commitments just to drop us a podcast. We are happy to wait until Monday or whenever you schedule the next episode. Please, if you have dinner plans, or if you have a graduation to go to, or if you’re sick, or if you have any other non-work commitment, just do that. Don’t worry about us. We will be fine. Just wanted to make that clear. I’d rather not see the Dispatch team burn itself out.