Advisory Opinions - Do You Have ‘Parental Rights’?

Episode Date: March 20, 2025

Sarah Isgur and David French discuss Chief Justice John Roberts’ recent rebuke of President Donald Trump and the proper way to criticize a court’s opinion. The Agenda: —Judicial independence and integrity —Orin Kerr and Michael C. Dorf debate —The “confusing” McDonnell Douglas framework —Parental due process rights —Age restrictions on the 2A —Free speech for professors —SCOTUS’ lottery system Advisory Opinions is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings, click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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noise and relive your favorite moments without the distractions. Ready? I was born ready. Welcome to Advisory Opinions, I'm Sarah Isger, that's David French, and it's a circuit takeover day for the most part. We've got the fourth, the 11th. I don't remember who did the Garcetti one, the 11th. The seventh. The seventh, the ninth. Yes. So much fun, David.

Before we start though, let's just do a little news of the day. So in that whole Venezuelan planes can't take off, planes need to turn around, they ignore the order, now they won't tell the judge when the planes took off thing. This led the President of the United States to send out a truth social calling for the impeachment of that judge. And that led to the very rare fine wine of a statement by Chief Justice John Roberts, quote, "'For more than two centuries, it has been established

that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.'" There's a lot packed into there. First of all, one of the criticisms that I've seen from that was like, where was he when Chuck Schumer said, you know, that Kavanaugh and Gorsuch would reap the whirlwind?

And it's like, yeah, he actually put out a statement then. He put out a statement. That was all over MAGA Twitter, but he put out a statement. Yep. But David, one, of course, for more than two centuries, he's referring to the 1805 impeachment of Samuel Chase. You know how much I love this. This was after Samuel Chase presided over the trials of sedition cases, criminal cases for criticizing John Adams. And he was a Supreme Court justice, but also riding circuits slash

overseeing trials. James Callender was one of those defendants. James Callender attacked the sedition acts as violating the first amendment. And Justice Chase, again, not acting as a Supreme Court justice was like, there's no first amendment problem. You criticize John Adams and you're going to jail. And you have to kind of dig into the procedural aspects in, I think that trial was in 1801, I think,

to figure out whether Chase actually did anything wrong. But Jefferson, when he came into office, said that Chase had skirted all these procedural rules to kind of railroad James Callender, who was his paid political operative. He was the one who called Adams her hermaphroditic figure, all of that fun stuff. He would eventually, he was the one who called Adams her hermaphroditic figure, all of that fun stuff. He would eventually, he was the Reynolds paper guy for Hamilton of the musical fame.

Jefferson didn't pay his bill. He turned on Jefferson after this whole episode. He's the one who breaks the Sally Hemings story and that Sally Hemings has a son named Thomas. And then he mysteriously drowns shortly thereafter. Another person who's involved in that, by the way, is Merriwether Lewis of Lewis and Clark. He's the one sent to kind of talk calendar down and be like, hey, we're not paying you right now,

but don't worry, you'll get paid or whatever, whatever. He's also gonna die mysteriously, by the way. Yeah, yeah. Anyway's also going to die mysteriously, by the way. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, back to this. So the Jefferson team puts together a list of all the things Chase did wrong in that trial and some others also related largely to the Cedition Act and files articles of impeachment against him. It goes to trial and Chase, even though the Democratic Republicans control both the House and

the Senate with enough in the Senate that they could reach the two thirds majority needed to remove Chase from the Supreme Court, they don't get it. Some of them say like, not enough. And that is what he's referring to established that we don't remove justices or judges for disagreeing with their decisions. That being said, David, the most interesting part of this to me is the normal appellate review process

exists for that purpose. A, that's just true, right? Like you're arguing about a preliminary hearing and order by a district judge, like, hold on a sec. You've got multiple layers of review that you can seek. It's also a little bit like quit picking on them, come pick on me. I'm like, if you wanna mess with someone, like pick on someone your own size.

What's that Andrew Shepard line from the American president? Sidney Wade's way out of your league. Yeah, I totally saw this as an independent branch of government asserting its own prerogatives and authority as it should. I mean, this is Justice Robert saying, we're the judicial branch, you're not the judicial branch, and you don't impeach members of the judicial branch

just because you disagree with them. And I'm so glad he brought up the appellate process because the answer to all of this is not if you are furious at district court judges and you think that they have so blatantly violated the law, so clearly violated the law that they deserve to be removed from office, well I've got very very good news for you. You're about to file a meritorious appeal. You're about to file an appeal that is going to win.

If your theory of the case is true, that these things are so frivolous, these orders are so lawless, that these judges are essentially out of control. You know, again, you're going into an appellate world, which by the way, in many circuits is dominated by your own appointees. Your own appointees are the critical mass. Good luck, good news. You don't even need good luck. Good news. You're going to win. But without opining on all of the injunctions, there were four major injunctions that were issued yesterday. And we're not going to opine on all those injunctions. But without impine on all those injunctions.

But without impining on all those injunctions, I can tell you that some are more meritorious than others, and the appeals courts are going to uphold some elements and they're going to strike down some elements. And you know what? That's all completely normal. And for the MAGA people saying, how dare a single district court judge now realize that this podcast doesn't like universal injunctions on either side, but for MAGA to sit here and say, how dare a district court judge do this after the last four years saw MAGA lawyers stampeding

to one particular district in Texas all the time for court rulings, including hoping for universal injunctions, is a bit much to take. I mean, guys, we're not goldfish. We have a memory. We know how you handled the last four years, so please spare us the histrionics. You know, speaking of that, by the way, David, there was a Fourth Circuit decision about a preliminary injunction issued by a district court that had stayed all of President Trump's DEI order to non-defendants and non-plaintiffs.

It was like more universal than universal. And you had two appointees by Democratic presidents, as well as one Trump appointee, gnawdogging the heck out of that one. Yeah. And saying like, all three agreed that this had to go into effect. And you had lines, three concurrences, by the way. Yeah. One concurrent saying, DEI is a noble goal, if done legally.

And the other one saying like, look, this injunction just wasn't correct for any number of reasons. And it ends with, finally, my vote should not be understood as agreement with the order's attack on efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. In my view, like Chief Judge Diaz, people of good faith who work to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion deserve praise, not a probrium. I appreciate Chief Judge Diaz's concurrence and share his sentiments. Now, I wanna spend some of this podcast

as we talk about these circuit decisions in particular, when it's appropriate to add in your own opinion on like policy merits, but set that aside. I mean, this is a judge saying, I don't like this order. I think it's bad policy. And it is lawful. I have mixed feelings about the phenomenon of saying, I, as a human being, I, David French, would not agree with this. But I will say this, there is an element of this because you constantly hear questions like when is an originalist judge ever ruled against their

own policy preferences. Right. Well, you and I might think, for example, that maybe if Justice Scalia was writing the Constitution, he might not have put in quite as many procedural protections for criminal defendants. But once they were there, by golly, he upheld them. But I don't know, and there are former Scalia clerks and Scalia scholars who listen to this podcast, but I can't off the top of my head recall Scalia saying, this would not have been my preferred policy, but I'm voting for it anyway. So there is a certain positive effect of saying, this is not what I would do, but it's lawful.

I do think in a way, if done too much, it's a problem. If done just the right amount, it does help establish judicial independence and integrity. And in this case, it helps me make a point on a podcast, which feels pretty important. The most important thing, yeah. By the way, Judge Rushing also had her own separate concurrence. She was the Trump appointee that was on this panel. We must not lose sight of the boundaries of our constitutional role and the imperative of judicial impartiality.

Any individual judge's views on whether certain executive action is good policy is not only irrelevant to fulfilling our duty to adjudicate cases and controversies according to the law, it is an impermissible consideration. A judge's opinion that DEI programs, quote, deserve praise, not appropriate, end quote, should play absolutely no part in deciding this case. Interesting take there, David, because, of course, those judges were saying it didn't play any part, right? They're voting to say that it is most likely to succeed on the merits, therefore, there shouldn't be an injunction at this point. But is she also saying like, it's irrelevant.

So why are you saying it? This is totally beside the point. Anyway, this gets me, David, to this debate in judicature at Duke University in which they had a point counterpoint between friend of the pod, Professor Orin Kerr, and Michael Dorff, who's like not a friend of the pod, Professor Orin Kerr, and Michael Dorff, who's like not a friend of the pod, but he could be, you know, like I don't want to like say he's not

a friend of the pod. Michael Dorff, you're great, Professor Dorff. Okay, and this the topic of it was criticizing the court, how opinionated should opinions be? So the first question they were asked to answer, is a lower court judicial opinion an acceptable vehicle through which to criticize Supreme Court precedent? And Professor Kerr was taking the no position. I don't mean he was taking it. He believes the no position. He says, I propose a simple rule for lower court judges to follow. If you want to criticize Supreme Court decisions, you should do it someplace other than in legal

opinion. You can publish an op-ed or you can write a law review article. But don't publish your criticism of the Supreme Court as an opinion issued by your court, even just as a separate opinion only in your own name. That's the best approach in my view because judicial opinions are special documents. Opinions are government rulings, exercising government power. They received respect not because they're wise or well-reasoned. Some opinions are and some opinions aren't. Rather, judicial opinions receive respect because they are legally operative documents issued by judges with the power to issue them. Their legitimacy rests on legal formalities that empower those opinions to be law instead of just opinion, such as the formal appointment

of the judges and a case or controversy that gives the judges the authority to rule. Okay, Professor Dorff. Judges write reasoned opinions in part to legislate the power they exercise over disappointed litigants. An explanation may not persuade, but if well crafted, it can mollify. Courts also speak to the broader public, and for roughly the same reason. A precedent-setting ruling that controversially construes or invalidates a law requires some justification. The parties and the people are the external audience for judicial opinions. Judges also write for are the external audience for judicial opinions. Judges also write for an internal audience that includes other judges. Higher courts

write opinions that set forth the law for lower courts to follow in later cases. But in a well-functioning judicial hierarchy, information flows both ways. Lower court judges have knowledge and views that can and should usefully inform judges on higher courts. And then he talks about a private sector analogy of an auto manufacturing company. David, I thought this was the perfect debate to have for the circuit decisions that we're about to talk about. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And you know, like I just said,

I find this stuff really fun and fascinating. And where I land is exactly what I said just a moment ago about, you know, injecting your own opinion. The default should be no. But every now and then, I think there's some real value. But I got to say, and I've seen some of this debate play out online on Twitter and other places, should judges disagree with the Supreme Court or disagree with higher courts? If they're going to do that, A, should they do it publicly and B, where should they do it? So some folks say, yeah, no, don't do it at all.

I think that's the wrong call. The others folks say, yeah, but do it in a law review article, not a judicial opinion. My own view is I like these concurrences. I'm pro-concerns. But we're podcasters. Of course we do. I know. Of course we do.

I know, but I think there's a public value in it. I do think that, you know, that there is a trend, I believe, which I think is positive and healthy, that judges are writing more with an eye that the idea that there might be more than just the litigants reading this case, including you know, this has always been the case for the Supreme Court. I mean, high school students read it, read certain Supreme Court cases, college students read Supreme Court

cases. And so Supreme Court is always known, but circuit judges typically write for the litigants. But I think that's changing. And I think that's a good thing. It's a good thing. And I think that demonstration or the open thought process and debate, I think that's all positive. I don't sense that it's really impairing judicial collegiality. That's always been hit or miss. But I think as far as helping the public understand what judges think and why they reach the decisions they reach, I think it's very positive. It also provides litigants with more information about individual judges when you're prepping for oral argument.

The plethora of concurrences. I'm good with it. I like it. Okay, so here's the problem. I think Professor Kerr is absolutely right, and I don't like that as a policy matter, if that makes sense. Right. Like, I like the concurrences. I like reading them. Yeah. And I think he like that as a policy matter, if that makes sense. Right. Like, I like the concurrences. I like reading them. Yeah. And I think he's right about this.

Okay, so here's why. One, there is a difference between, for instance, when you're on a circuit and you're deciding a case and you're saying, I am bound by circuit precedent. I don't think the circuit precedent is right. I hope we take this en banc and flip it. But like, I'm not deciding this based on the merits. I am bound by precedent, I think is a totally valid thing to say,

because you're actually explaining why you reached the conclusion that you reached. I think similarly, you should of course say, I am bound by Supreme Court precedent in this case. If I were on the Supreme Court, I might've reached a different decision or whatever. And perhaps this means I'm making a distinction out of nothing, because at the point you're saying

that you need to explain it, and maybe then you're criticizing the Supreme Court decision. By the way, this is not going to be a point about criticizing the Supreme Court and somehow that's bad. But we have largely turned into quasi-law review articles in these concurrences. And for the same reason that the proliferation of concurrences at the Supreme Court has arguably been bad for the credibility and legitimacy of the judiciary, I would argue at the circuit levels, it would have the same effect, which is this. And again, a relatively minor one. When a court speaks with one voice unanimously, there's a lot of then weight given to that

decision. When it's five-four, there's a lot less weight. It puts focus on the individual justices, for instance, and makes people think like, well, if we change the personnel, that outcome could be different. And so therefore it becomes a lot more about personalities and personnel, confirmation battles, all of that, right? Concurrences are somewhere in between that.

They're basically highlighting each judge has their own judicial philosophy. So personnel really matters. So we should be spending a whole lot of time on judicial philosophy, on personalities, on confirmation hearings, and you end up with kind of the same problem at a lesser level, totally acknowledged. So the concurrences in the circuit courts, I love them. I really enjoy reading them. I think they explain a lot of in the circuit courts, I love them. I really enjoy reading them. I think they explain a lot of what the judges think, but is it putting too much focus on the judges

and their judicial philosophy and not enough on sort of that black robe idea, right? They used to wear wigs too, but same idea. You're not yourself, you are embodying, you know, the black robe, the lack of personal. So let me just really put your principles to the test, Sarah. I hold them so loosely. You're actually saying to us, to everybody, you want Judge Newsome to write less. Let's just...

You know that's exactly what I'm thinking about here and how much I'm hoping. I know. I know. I know. No, I don't. I don't. That's the problem. I want him to write I know, I know. I know, I know. No, I don't. I don't. That's the problem. Okay. Yeah. I want him to write more always forever.

There's no concurrence too long, Judge Newsom. Do I think it's good for the judiciary? I don't know. Professor Kerr made some good points. With that, David, we're going to talk a lot about Judge Newsom for the rest of this podcast. First up, Judge Newsom, a couple years ago, wrote, you guessed it, a concurrence criticizing the McDonnell Douglas framework. If you're not a lawyer, you have no idea what I'm talking about. But this is for Title VII disparate treatment

claims for employment discrimination, as in you didn't get a promotion and you think you didn't get the promotion because of your race, for instance. The Supreme Court in 1973, at an actual trial, laid out this quote unquote burden shifting framework in which I will walk you through how it works. First, the plaintiff must carry the initial burden of establishing a prima facie case of racial discrimination. So like the barest of requirements here, like have some fact that makes it seem like you could have been discriminated on the basis of race. A plaintiff can make this showing with evidence that one, he belongs to a racial minority, two, he applied and was qualified for a job for which the employer was seeking applicants. Three, despite his qualifications, he was rejected. And four, after his rejection,

the position remained open and the employer continued to seek applicants from persons of complaintants' qualifications. If he succeeds in that, then the burden shifts to the defendant, the employer in this case, to articulate some legitimate non-discriminatory reason for the employee's rejection, like, no, it's not because you're black, it's because we hate you. And then it shifts back to the employee or potential employee. The plaintiff must have an opportunity to show that the employer's stated reason for rejecting him was in fact pretextual. Okay, this has spawned the most confusion maybe of any doctrine in the lower courts, David.

And it led to Judge Newsom writing a concurrence saying, hey guys, have you looked around? Have you seen how many different ways this is getting applied? First of all, we're a long past this getting applied in trial. It's now at summary judgment. Oh, yeah. And the waiting system feels all wrong. You're basically making these poor employees prove their entire case at summary judgment. They don't even get to trial anymore.

None of these cases really ever go to trial. As a result, a petition for certiorari was denied at the Supreme Court last week. And you had a dissent from the denial of cert from Justice Thomas with whom Justice Gorsuch joins in it, they cite then Judge Kavanaugh agreeing with this. And it really makes one wonder, David, one, why weren't there four votes to take this?

Because you would think that the, you know, Kagan Sotomayor crew would wanna make it easier on employees to bring these kind of employment discrimination cases so they want to get rid of the McDonnell Douglas framework that has been erected as a barrier to getting to trial. You have Thomas and Gorsuch, first of all, I just counted to four, you have them citing Kavanaugh so unless he's changed his mind, you'd think he's in there. I don't know. And like, again, as Judge Newsom

was pointing out in his most texty textualist way, this has nothing to do with the actual text of Title VII and in fact may violate Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56. Rule 56, by the way, requires that a claim survive summary judgment so long as the plaintiff proffers enough evidence to allow a reasonable fact finder to decide the case in his favor. A pretty low bar. As long as you have some evidence, we don't get into this like, well, what's the employer's pushback going to be? And do you have something to overcome that pushback?

And so Newsom's point was like, this looks like it's violating that rule and McDonnell Douglas shouldn't be able to erect a barrier higher than Rule 56. He cited so many times in this dissent from the denial by Justice Thomas joined by Justice Gorsuch. It's really a love letter to Judge Newsom. And if not that, a thank you note for writing a concurrence, disagreeing with the Supreme Court decision. So, at least two justices don't agree with Professor Kerr. Right, yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, and the McDonnell Douglas issue is fascinating.

It's one of these niche issues that has real consequences in public life. It's sort of like, whatever percentage of Americans are familiar with the term qualified immunity, divide that by 1,000, and you have the percentage of Americans are familiar with the term qualified immunity, divide that by 1000 and you have the number of Americans familiar with McDonald Douglas framework. But the McDonald Douglas framework is actually really consequential in employment law and it is in practice and the way it works out, it is very, very defendant friendly. You're going to make the plaintiff basically make their case

and then you're gonna have an opportunity even before trial to essentially rebut the plaintiff's case with your own, coming forward with your own evidence, which in many ways when you're looking at it like that, you think a jury needs to kind of be here, right? Doesn't a jury need to get involved? Yeah, and so we have talked about this before and the Newsome critique and I'm with him.

I'm with him on it. And I am also quite surprised that you did not get four justices signing on here. Yeah, and normally I'd be like, well, maybe they're waiting for a different vehicle. This one seemed like a pretty good vehicle. It was a guy who argued that he had been discriminated against because of his religion, and he directly

challenged McDonnell Douglas. So maybe we'll get a cleaner vehicle for some other reason now that this dissent is out there with other potential plaintiffs knowing on appeal to directly challenge the McDonnell Douglas framework, then that'll work out soon enough. But David, this is example now number two of the reverse, right? We have the Fourth Circuit of judges writing their opinions in their concurrences. Here we have the justices responding to one of those concurrences with an opinion about a Supreme Court precedent. If only we had some more from Judge Newsom to discuss.

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For details, visit your Toronto area Ford store or ford.ca. Well, Sarah, let's just do that. Let's stick with Judge Newsome. Let's stick with the 11th Circuit. And we had a case coming out of the 11th Circuit that was really interesting and somewhat confusing. So the facts of the case are not that confusing, although they are very interesting. Essentially what you had are parents who allege that a school board and its officials violated their parental due process rights when, and I'm reading from the opinion, officials met with and permitted the little John's 13-year-old child to express the child's gender identity at school.

And they developed a gender identity related student support plan for and with the child without the parent's involvement and contrary to the parent's wishes. And so the question is, does that violate parents' rights? And if it does violate parents' rights, if it does potentially violate parents' rights, what is the legal framework for deciding this? And Sarah, this is where things get a little bit strange,

legally, and we get into a concept that makes kind of no sense in the English language. If you're just listening to the phrase and it's substantive due process, how can you have a substantive process? You might ask really Really good question. But the question is, okay, if you have parents' rights, which are not enumerated in the Constitution, but have for decades and decades been held to be implied

as one of the unenumerated rights that the Constitution protects, if you have a parents' rights issue, what is your standard for evaluating it? What are your tiers of scrutiny, so to speak? And essentially what the 11th Circuit said is, and what a majority said in this case, is they upheld, they sided with the school against the parents. So they ruled for the school and against the parents, so they ruled for the school and against the parents, and essentially what they said, and hang with me for just a second,

is that the parental right assertion is rooted in substantive due process. There are two kinds of substantive due process. One is called executive and one is legislative. If you're evaluating a legislative act, then you might be getting into things like tiers of scrutiny, such as strict scrutiny, intermediate scrutiny, et cetera.

But if you're dealing with an executive act, then you're talking about an entirely different standard, entirely, or entirely different standard, let's not be redundant, entirely different standard, entirely. You're dealing with an entirely different standard, entirely. You're dealing with an entirely different standard that is does this conduct, quote, shock the conscience? Does it shock the conscience?

And so what this is typically applied to in a substantive due process case is have like law enforcement has the government done something to you physically as the sort of paradigmatic substantive due process cases, and it really does seem like this, is that somebody in the government, like a police officer, just does something to you physically that's so gross and terrible that we're going to kind of declare it unconstitutional because it shocks the conscience.

And that's the substantive due process executive standard. And so the question was, in this 11th Circuit case, were they dealing with a legislative act or an executive act? And the court held that they were dealing with an executive act. And so therefore the right standard was, does this decision to withhold the information about gender identity shock the conscience. And they said no. And if that is, if they are applying the actual shock the conscience standard as case law has developed, they're right. They're right.

Um, it is not something that shocks the conscience as, uh, you know, under, under precedent. But the question is, is that the right standard here? And that gets to Judge Newsom's concurrence that begins with substantive due process is hard. And that this is an arena of law, Sarah, that is in serious need of reform, very serious need of reform, very serious need of reform. And I think that this is an example where I think concurrences are really helpful

and how they're articulating how this is a mess. This is a mess. It's not just hard, it's too hard. And I was at a kind of a dinner conversation with Vanderbilt students last night. And one of them asked me about unenumerated rights. What do I see happening in unenumerated rights as we go forward? She was concerned about whether Obergefell would be overturned. I said, I don't believe so. She was concerned that Griswold would be overturned. I said, I don't believe so. I said, there is an area where I do think

you're going to see, and you're gonna have to see over the next few years, some real judicial movement. And that is in the area of parental rights. That parental rights, they're going to have to be clarified because this shocks the conscience kind of analysis here just isn't appropriate for the dispute. The dispute here really is over the application of a policy. And so it's very difficult to sort of,

from my standpoint, to say, why is this just an executive act when you're talking about an application of a policy. That was a long intro, Sarah. That was a long intro. But one last thing before I stop filibustering, isn't it fascinating the way times have changed because two years ago, a big 11th Circuit case about trans rights would be first, above the fold or if it'd be front page news around the country.

Now it's like a footnote to a footnote to the news while everything is happening in the opening weeks of the Trump administration. So it is fascinating how cultural war issues gain and lose salience. Okay. But David, do you think, so this was 169 pages of opinions, which is a lot, even if for a Supreme Court case, that would have been a lot. And the majority of it, I think like 93 pages, is the concurrence from Rosenbaum attacking the concurrence from Newsom and just the two of them going at it about substantive due process.

And I'll just, I'll read you from Newsom's concurrence right here, because I know he's such a fun writer. I can't help myself. I love it. I think I know what you're gonna read. Please go, please proceed. This case proves the truth of a colleague's recent observation that quote,

"'Substantive due process is hard.' Hard indeed. To be clear though, substantive due process is hard in Hard indeed. To be clear, though, substantive due process is hard in large part because it, and with it, the doctrine that courts have cobbled together to implement it, is incoherent. And it's incoherent in large part because it's made up. Enough is enough. Substantive due process isn't worth the candle. It's doing more harm than good, and we, by which I suppose I really mean my bosses at the Supreme Court, should ditch it.

But here's my question to you, David. When's the last time the Supreme Court based a ruling on substantive due process? Yeah, it's... I can't remember the last time, to be honest. I think Chevron has been cited favorably since substantive due process has been. And substantive due process, of course, has this really bad historical pedigree at the Supreme Court and among sort of legally people, or at least it used to, because it really comes about from the Lochner era, which we need to do with like thunderbolts and lightning.

This was the idea that Congress or states would pass these things against child labor, for instance, or how many hours women could work or how much they could make, minimum wage requirements. Lochner, of course, was about the hours for people who work in bread factories. And the courts basically like, you can't pass these laws because these people have a substantive right for economic liberty. And they somehow found that in due process instead of privileges and immunities. We're not going to go through the whole Lochner era thing here.

Though, then substantive due process kind of like makes it way back. It's way back in that late Warren Court type era for things like Griswold, things like Roe, kind of, sort of, but it's hovering there. Basically, Lochner for economic rights broke. Lochner for social rights, woke. Then the conservative legal movement comes along and is like, no, no, substantive due process is the problem here. Lochner was bad when it was Lochner. Lochner was bad when it was finding new rights for social stuff. Substantive due process is just bad.

Now I think you have some conservatives and liberals saying, I don't know, maybe Lochner had a point. Maybe an activist judiciary is kind of good. So what's weird about this whole debate to me is that conservatives haven't favorably cited substantive due process in decades at the Supreme Court. I literally cannot think of the last decision that was a substantive due process based decision

in the majority. And yet the conversation is re-emerging. So who is Newsom writing to? The Supreme Court or a whole bunch of pro-activist judiciary types out there that are taking over the Federalist Society? I don't know. It's a great question. And in his dissent, he sort of-

Concurrence. In his concurrence, because he's disagreeing with people so much. In his concurrence, sorry. When you say Judge Newsom, though, you should always know it's concurrence, because he's disagreeing with people so much. In his concurrence, sorry. When you say Judge Newsom, though, you should always know it's concurrence. I know. He's always concurring. In his concurrence, he does note this sort of flip-flop around that there are conservatives who have long criticized substantive due process and that now there are conservatives who have strange new respect for substantive

due process, especially in connection with parents' rights. And he refers to, like, Pearson-Meyers, some old parents' rights cases. And so one thing I really liked about the Judge Newsom concurrence is it highlighted exactly that tension that you see where the sides seem to be kind of flipping around a little bit. And he talked about how conservatives are now more interested in substantive due process with the parental rights strain. And this is what you're getting right now in these transgender identity cases in elementary

schools, middle schools, high schools, where the question is, do parents have a right to know how their kid is identifying at school? And so you are seeing this sort of resurrection of interest in substantive due process where, and I think this is another one of those cases that's really interesting where he clearly states his personal preference. He clearly argues what he thinks the law should be, but he's concurring because he knows what the law actually is here. And this really is rooted, Sarah, in this question of what is the mechanism through

which we recognize unenumerated rights? And this goes back to sort of the privileges or immunities clause in the 14th Amendment. Do you recognize unenumerated rights through privileges or immunities? Do you recognize unenumerated rights through due process? Well, how are you recognizing a right through due process? Well, that's how you get substantive, but does that really work conceptually? No, no, it doesn't. Yeah. So this is the new-

It never did, it never shall. So I think you will see the Supreme Court continuing to recognize parental rights, but the question is, will they continue to recognize parental rights through substantive due process? And here's the little cork on that, Sarah, that's really, really, really interesting.

Privileges or immunities in the 14th Amendment applies to...citizens. Due process in the 14th Amendment applies to persons. So if you recognize an unenumerated right through privileges or immunities, does that mean that only citizens will enjoy that unenumerated right through privileges or immunities, does that mean that only citizens will enjoy that unenumerated right? David, that is a really good point.

I've been thinking a lot because I've always said privileges or immunities versus substitute due process. You go to privileges or immunities because that's clearly more conceptually clean than due process. But then the other day, when I was prepping to teach my course on the philosophies of the Foundings, I was rereading the 14th Amendment and it was like,

oh. Right, so like even green card holders aren't citizens, but they're parents who. But they're parents. Exactly, exactly. Well, that's a mess. Look, this is the other point where like, I agreed philosophically with Professor Kerbo when the rubber hits the road, it's a mess. Look, this is the other point where I agreed philosophically with Professor Kerr, but when the rubber hits the road, it's a little weird.

So his point was, don't write concurrences, write law review articles. But Judge Newsom ain't got time for that. You can't turn this whole thing into a law review article at the snap of your finger because it's based on this specific case and it allows you to then enter this world of substantive due process, law review articles take a lot of time. So, practically, we're just deciding, is this important to hear from Judge Newsom or not? Because there's not like, no, he'll still write it. You just have to go to a law review to read it?

And practically, are Supreme Court justices gonna see it if it's a law review article? If a law review article falls in the forest, does anyone hear it? Not really. Yes, if a judge writes it, it's more likely to be read. You and I would maybe, yada, yada. But these concurrences give them a lot more attention. Unless you're Will Bode and Michael Stokes Paulson and you have a law review article that says the president isn't eligible for office, at which point you're going to crash

the servers, man. Speaking of which, hey, Professor Bode, you were going to come on the podcast this month for a very fun little topic, a niche topic, if there ever was one. But I'm calling you out. Send me those dates. You know what you did. Spring breaks are hard to work around. Everyone knows that. But nevertheless, we do have a Will Bode special coming up here because anytime Professor Bode is on this podcast, it is my favorite podcast.

All right, David, we have more 11 circuit drama to get to. Yeah, yeah, we absolutely do. We have a case involving the constitutionality of age restrictions on firearm purchase. And here we're having a circuit split. Here we've got a fascinating back and forth between two conservative judges, Judge Pryor of the 11th Circuit and Judge Brasher.

And this case involves whether a ban on the purchase of firearms, purchase of firearms by minors violates the second and 14th amendment as applied to individuals between the ages of 18 and 21, which is a little confusing sentence. This is the actual opening sentence. This appeal requires us to decide whether a state law that prohibits the purchase of firearms by minors violates the second and 14th amendment as applied to individuals between the ages of 18 and 21, which in my mind reads as applied to individuals who are not minors.

Yeah. Okay. That's the question. And this is another, say it with me, everybody, text, history, and tradition. And the question once again, everybody, is how close of a historical match do we need to have? Yeah. What's so interesting about this case

is you had sort of two things going on at once, which is the age of majority, they say pretty clearly throughout the majority opinion, it was 21 years old. So age of majority in the colonial area, 21, which honestly, Sarah, I feel like is something I should have known but didn't really know.

And I just kind of had this expectation since we're dealing with a time period in which life expectancy was so much shorter. People are getting married at very young ages that like, I don't know, I thought maybe the age of majority was like 14. But no, age of majority 21. And so that was one strand of history.

And here was the other strand of history was that members of the militia, people were required in some cases to be members of the militia in their state well younger than 21. So if you're a member of the militia before you're 21 and you're using personal firearms, doesn't that mean logically that you would have a right to purchase the firearm? The majority would say no. The dissent said yes. And you know what this was, Sarah?

I'm going to keep going back to this. This was intermediate scrutiny, text history and tradition versus strict scrutiny, text history and tradition. That is exactly what we saw in this opinion or in these competing opinions. So here was what was fascinating to me about this. I mean, to our point about like this concurrence podcast. Yeah. Rosenbaum filed a concurring opinion,

Newsome filed a concurring opinion, Wilson filed a concurring opinion. But the majority opinion was written by Chief Judge Bill Pryor, who is sort of a famous conservative judge. Yeah. The most famous still active conservative judge on the circuit courts right now. He is a feeder to Justice Thomas. Everyone looks to Judge Pryor to decide what the like, you know, one true faith is. He is joined in this opinion by Jordan Rosenbaum,

the other Pryor, Judge Jill Pryor, Newsom, Grant, Abedu, and Wilson. The dissent is written by Judge Brasher, joined by Judges Branch, Luck, and Lagoa. So first of all, David, the four dissenting judges were all appointed by President Trump. These are the judges saying that this law does not survive scrutiny under the Second Amendment of any kind, and therefore has to be struck down. Now, that's not to say that all of the judges, all the Trump judges were in dissent,

and all of the non-Trump judges were in the majority. Judge Grant, Judge Newsom, they were all in the majority, and also Trump judges. But still, what an interesting break in terms of generational differences between conservative legal thinkers that basically the youngins were like, nah dog, and the old school was like, this seems fine. Yeah. Yeah, and I do wonder if the old school conservatives are really, really used to that intermediate scrutiny regime when it comes to the Second Amendment. And I found it interesting that prior began the opinion, which

is evaluating the constitutionality of a statute with a detailed and frankly horrifying description of the Parkland, Florida, the Marjie Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Florida that triggered, that was the inspiration or caused this bill, this gun control bill to pass the Florida legislature. And so he walks through exactly what happened

in that high school in this very, very chilling way. And if you knew nothing else, you would almost know from the fact description that they were ruling for this law. They were ruling for this law. And Sarah, I can't, this is just an instinct, an impression that I have, and I'm interested to know if you share it.

The impression that I have is that an awful lot of judges are just not willing to view gun ownership exactly the same way that they view, say, free speech or due process. They're just not willing to do it, and they're not ever going to do it. And so the- Batman stays in jail and Batman doesn't get gun.

Exactly. Exactly. Or Batman stays in jail, dangerous man doesn't get gun, and we're going to give a lot of deference to the state's assessment of who's dangerous. Right. And the idea that speech is dangerous, which was very much the prevailing view, for instance, in World War II or during the Red Scare, that speech itself was dangerous. That has fallen out of favor, but the gun ownership itself is dangerous, but still very much in favor as school shootings

and mass shootings sort of continue to be a cultural force. I said this years ago, years ago, when we were debating red flag laws at National Review and a lot of my friends at NR were against red flag laws. I was sort of carrying the banner for red flag laws, waving the flag for red flag laws. But the one thing we absolutely agreed on that was the number one threat to gun rights in this country actually wasn't found in either one of the political parties. The number one threat to gun rights in this country was mass shootings.

That the more mass shootings there were, especially at schools, the more likely that the outcry from the public was going to become so overwhelming. So if you support gun rights, one of the most effective things you can do to defend gun rights is try to creatively One of the most effective things you can do to defend gun rights is try to creatively and effectively prevent mass shootings. And so the mass shooting problem, I think, is one of these problems that could be more fatal to gun rights than even normal everyday crime is. Because a lot of times people look at normal everyday crime and think that's something I want a gun to defend myself from, for example, or they look at two criminals

shooting each other and they don't necessarily feel implicated in that or endangered by that. Whereas if it's kids at school or shoppers at Kroger or Walmart, people feel that in a way they don't feel that if it's a gang-related shooting in a part of town they never go to. Fun last fact here. I mentioned that Judge Brasher wrote the dissent against Chief Judge Pryor's majority opinion. Guess who Judge Brasher clerked for? That's right. He wrote a dissent against his own judge. Oh, wow.

sent against his own judge. Oh, wow. Justice Gorsuch was the first justice in history to serve on the court with his previous boss that he had clerked for. So it is fun to see these when they last. They don't usually last for long. Obviously, Justice Kenney retired the next year after Justice Gorsuch joined the bench.

But look, Chief Judge Pryor very much hanging on and he's not an old guy, by the way. So there are going to be years for Pryor and Brasher to butt heads, which is really fun. Yeah, absolutely. My parents have had a lot of time on their hands lately. At first, it was nice. Hey, mom, can you drive me to soccer practice? Sure can. We're having slow cooked ribs for dinner.

It was awesome. And then it became a lot. Some friends are coming over to watch a movie. Oh, what are we watching? I'll make some popcorn. Thanks to Voila, they can order all our fresh favorites from Sobeez, Farmboy, and Longos online, which is super reliable. And now my parents are reliable. A little too reliable. Voila. Your groceries delivered. Just like that. reliable. Voila! Your groceries delivered just like that. At Desjardins, we speak business. We speak equipment modernization. We're fluent in data digitization and expansion into foreign markets. And we can talk all day about streamlining manufacturing processes. Because at Desjardins business, we speak

the same language you do. Business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us and contact Desjardins today. We'd love to talk business. Can we talk about Garcetti now in the Seventh Circuit? Oh, yes, we can. Oh, gosh, guys, this case really, it's, you know, again, I'm going to go back to this and say it's really interesting the times we live in where some of these culture war cases that would have been front page news are just, I mean, they're footnotes now.

It's just fascinating how issues change. But this one, this is a case that dates back to really what you would think of as kind of the height of cancel culture, the height of extreme sensitivity around language around race. So here are the basic facts. This is a case coming out of Illinois. It's in the Seventh Circuit. And again, reading from the opening of the opinion, it says, after Professor Jason Kilburn included an expurgated racial slur in a law school exam question, University of Illinois

Chicago officials opened an investigation into allegations that he had created a racially hostile environment for non-white students. The university found that Kilburn had violated its non-discrimination policy and suspended him from teaching until he completed a diversity training program. He was also denied a 2% raise. Okay, so what did he do? He included an exam. He had an exam question that has been part of his exams for a decade,

which raises an interesting question. Yeah, it does, by the way. Yeah. But fine. Like, okay. So it says the question concerns a fictional employer who says she quote, quit her job at employer, capital E employer,

after she attended a meeting in which other managers expressed their anger at Blaine Tiff calling her a N- and B word and says in Perrin profane expressions for African Americans and women and vowed to get rid of her. To be clear, it said N word. It did not spell out the word. Yeah. It just said N dash and B dash or N underscore and B underscore. So it did not say the word. So nobody has complained, but students who took the exam in, Sarah, do you wanna guess the year

just off the top of your head? 2020. 2020, yes. No way. Yes, you are 100% correct. So students who took the exam in 2020 were upset by Jusso the slurs shared their displeasure with the Dean. So the professor reaches out to students to discuss the exam question. He sent a note of

regret to his class for any distress caused by the references, exchanged emails with a student, participated in a cordial four-hour Zoom. Four hours is not cordial. That is violence. Turns out to be less cordial than he thought it was because during the Zoom meeting, the Black Law Students Association member asked Kilbourne, the professor, why the dean had not shown him a student petition criticizing the exam question. Kilbourne replied that perhaps the dean had not shared the petition with him because she feared he might become homicidal if he read it. Okay.

Which normally you read that and you think he would be really mad. We say this in our family all the time. Like we kind of speak hyperbolically in our family and we'll say I'm yeah, this makes me homicidal. Like we watch Lakers games after the Luka trade and I feel homicidal after they missed that call, you know, whatever. And so they said they feared a possible threat of imminent violence. Sorry.

Yeah. Yeah. Canceled classes and barred him from campus and put him on indefinite leave. Yeah. And they allowed him back on unrestricted duty a few days later, but only after he submitted to drug testing and a medical exam. Yeah. Now, there were other elements, and I'm going through this because it's just kind of almost like a walk down, a very short walk down memory lane as to the atmosphere at this time. So they also investigated two other comments. So here's one of them. Here the professor is talking about the relationship

between frivolous litigation, plaintiff incentives, and media coverage. And this is what it says. The fact that other plaintiffs see that one other plaintiff lost isn't a disincentive. If it were, frivolous litigation would have ended long ago because lots of plaintiffs have been pushed to the wall and lost. You don't hear about those stories in the media. You hear about idiot people winning a million dollar verdict against Subway for having 11.5 inch long sandwiches. That's what makes the press write that Subway lost, not that they win against this ridiculously frivolous case. That wasn't in the media, only in the legal media. Maybe if you're paying attention.

And that's the problem. If they win, no one hears about this. They only hear about it if they lose, and God forbid that, then all the cockroaches come out of the walls, they're thinking, right? What was the offensive thing there? Cockroaches. Cockroaches.

Okay. I am fluent in woke speak. Thank you. Yeah. In the same discussion, Kilbourne also remarked, I'm not subjecting my corporate bottom line to that public lynching. I'm sorry. That's not the right word to use. And in discussion on race-based police stops, Kilbourne used an African-American vernacular

English accent while repeating the lyrics of a Jay-Z song. You mean this Jay-Z song that every criminal law professor cites in class because it's actually pretty good for the purpose of learning Fourth Amendment searches? Yeah, you was doing 55 and a 54. Yes, that's the beginning of the song. Yeah. So that's the reason for the suspension. And so the Seventh Circuit absolutely positively gnawed off the university's discipline. And I found the case interesting for a couple of reasons. One, the Seventh

Circuit, like other circuits, said this case, Garcetti, the Garcetti case that we've talked about quite a bit does not apply to his classroom instruction. This is in line with other circuit court cases, directly relevant, by the way, to things like the STOPWOAK Act, which were passed under the argument that if you are teaching and you're a public university teacher, you're not exercising First Amendment rights. And the state can tell you what to say. So this directly contradicts that notion.

And then the other part of it that I really liked, which is why, one of the reasons why I said, we got to talk about it, the majority opinion cites one of my cases, Sarah. So from back in the day, from back in the day. That's exciting. I feel like we should put the lyrics to 99 problems, by the way, in the show notes,

because again, every criminal law class that I know of goes through this and you decide like whether he's right. License and registration and step out of the car. Are you carrying a weapon on you? I know a lot of you are. I ain't stepping out of shit. All my paper's legit. Would you mind if I look around the car a little bit?

Well, my glove box is locked. So is the trunk in the back. And I know my rights. So you're gonna need a warrant for that. Right? Like that? Yeah. Yeah, that's good stuff. You can quote that. I mean, my goodness. Yeah. So this, though, created the opposite of a circuit split. It's now basically all the circuits saying that professors are not held to the standard of Garcetti where any of their speech is considered speech of their employer and therefore they

can be held accountable for it like the prosecutor in Garcetti. David, obviously this is good for academic freedom and all of that and blah, blah, blah. But I guess if I were to offer some pushback, again, all the circuits agree with this, so it's not like it's going to the Supreme Court. There has to be some line at which though, again, we've talked about this with curriculums and everything else, we've put the thumb so far on the scale of academic freedom that it does feel like state legislatures are losing control of the curricular aspects of their schools. Now, they need to get into the nitty-gritty of how it's

worded on the exam. Like, I'm not really gonna take the other side of this case. But if Garcetti doesn't apply at all, you just get into this problem, right, where professors are saying not whatever they want in class, because you've laid out a good argument that, you know, if the class is on criminal procedure and you do a whole lecture on Gaza, like, well, no, that doesn't count. But yeah, but what if it's, you know, closer in between, like my contracts professor didn't really teach contracts.

A lot of a lot of contracts in that class. Neither did mine. Right, and it's like- But we loved him. Mine could do a handstand, so that was kind of cool. But it was contracts adjacent. And then the school just can't, again, imagine we went to a public school,

but the school can't do anything about that because quote academic freedom, as long as the word contracts is mentioned sometimes. Yeah, at the intersection between sort of setting a curricular agenda and the professor providing his own twist, they're definitely, definitely gray areas. You know, when I was at FHIR, we wrote a letter.

One of the proudest, the things I'm most proud of at FHIR is we had this really big dispute with the New York Civil Liberties Union, which was a fight over Columbia students taking on antisemitism in the Middle East and Asian's Language and Studies Department, which, wait, Columbia had a problem with anti-Semitism? I can't imagine. But we were, so this was 20 years ago, and we wrote a letter to the New York Civil Liberties Union because the NYCLU actually was condemning many of the Jewish students who were using their free speech rights to critique their professors and were saying, look, no, there are layers here. There's institutional

academic freedom, there's professors' academic freedom, and there's students' free speech rights. And it's that tension between universities' academic freedom and professors' academic freedom, which is very interesting. So a university can say, we're establishing a military history department and we're going to hire military historians. So somebody who comes in and maybe they're a gender historian specializing in the middle ages and they apply, you can reject that person because they're not within the scope of the program.

But what happens if the person you've hired for military history also starts injecting a lot of gendered gender history into the class? You know, that's where things start to get gray. And there's a line, an invisible line at which a dean can come in and say, you know, this is really a military history class. This isn't a gender history class. You know, you need to I understand that gender is relevant to the military, but the core of this class has to be military history. So you can do that, but you're right to highlight the tension between that academic freedom for the institution and the individual.

All right. Last up, you may remember Arizona passed a lot of new voting laws about voter registration. In fact, it went to the Supreme Court and then it went back down again. Well, it made its way back to the Ninth Circuit where they basically struck down all of Arizona's new laws. Interesting dissent by Judge Bumate, highlighting just a historical slash text slash history point that I think may come up again given our fights over elections these days, that Article 1 of the Constitution, Section 4, says, quote, the times, places, and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives

shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof, but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations except as to the places of choosing senators. And what it seems like no one has really dealt with very much is that that doesn't include presidential electors. It's very clear that in fact it's only about senators and representatives. And when it comes to presidential electors, it in fact does not give Congress any role in prescribing the manner of those

elections. And Boutté makes a persuasive case that in fact that is part of the separation of powers that you wouldn't want presidents, for instance, to be wary of angering Congress or something for fear that they would change the election rules to hurt one presidential candidate or another. And so in fact, this is an intentional difference in Congress's ability to preempt state law when it comes to the time, place, and manner of elections for federal elections for senators and representatives, but not for presidential.

And so therefore, this whole Arizona, the state registration form versus the federal registration form and the federal form preempting the state form, he's like, there's different elections on there and Congress has different authorities. He goes through the various Supreme Court precedents that the majority argued show that the Supreme Court has blessed Congress doing stuff related to presidential elections. And Bumate, I thought, made a very persuasive case that actually those precedents stand for the opposite, that there are these very narrow ways in which Congress can regulate in any way presidential elections.

So I highlight that because I think we'll be talking about it again down there in the future. And also just the sheer intellectual heft that Judge Bumate is lifting over there in the Ninth Circuit continues to really impress me. And I've said this before, I've known now Judge Bumate since I was a 1L in law school and we worked together at the Department of Justice. And I don't know if you've ever had friends that are just like so cool and normal and you don't really talk like intellectual nerd stuff with them. And then all of a sudden they're putting out these opinions and you're

like, what? I had no idea. Where is this coming from? This whole time we could have been having these conversations and instead we were like floating down the river at harpers ferry You know drinking beer. I mean, I don't regret it, but I missed opportunity So the question I have is how close to judge boomatee do you have to be to call him boom boom? I don't do it on the podcast I don't do it on the podcast. Okay, okay. I think my rule, I've had to think about this. Do I need, when do you call your friend by their title?

Basically, I've decided if there are other people around, then I call them by their title. But if there aren't, or if we're all sort of grandfathered in, then I think nicknames are fine. Okay, okay. I think that's a good standard. That's a good standard. The only reason I ask it is that's just a great nickname. It really is.

I mean, again, like, can't you imagine my surprise and delight to find that someone who I've called boom boom for 20 years, like writes a descent with just so much like beauty and majesty and history and intellectual weight. I don't know. It's just, it's really something. And I was asking the question out of no respect, disrespect to Judge Bumate, just genuine sociological curiosity. All right, David, last thing for this episode. I talked about how we were going to cover

this in the last time that we have a listener who actually entered the new SCOTUS lottery system. He went in for that Smith and Wesson versus Estadios Unidos Mexicanos, the one about whether the Mexican government can sue gun manufacturers for the cost of gun violence in Mexico. And he actually entered for NRC versus Texas as well. He won the lottery for both cases, ended up making a vacation out of it, and says he had a great time. Seeing all nine justices in person is a surreal experience I recommend to all friends of the pod.

And I said, wait a second, we need more details. So I'm going to read to you his experience. The court has a portal for the lottery on its website. You can enter yourself or a party for any case on the docket as long as it is, I believe, at least three weeks out. The court notifies you three weeks before the case if you won or lost, along with details to attend. You'll get multiple emails asking you

to confirm your attendance. If you confirm and do not show, you can be banned from future lotteries. That's a good idea. They ask you to arrive at least one hour before the case, so 9 a.m. for a 10 a.m. oral argument. Just tell security you have a lottery ticket and they'll lead you inside.

Once in the court, you wait with your fellow winners for about 30 to 40 minutes before putting your belongings in a locker, no electronic devices, jackets, umbrellas, et cetera, in the courtroom. You go through a second round of TSA style security before being seated in the last three to four rows in the courtroom. to four rows in the

courtroom. You can bring in a blank notepad for notes. I assume it so you don't have a pre-made sign to distract the justices, but you could easily write that once in there. Security loves to make a point that they do not cite and release, break the rules in the hearing, and you will see a judge, quote, hopefully by tomorrow morning. Once the oral arguments are over, you can roam the exhibits in the building or eat at the food court, barring the court hearing multiple cases that day. Overall, a great experience and very painless. The outside line still exists if you're hoping all seats are not taken. David, that's really fun. Also, I was at the Supreme Court the other day and took a picture of the menu at the cafeteria because I thought

people would be tickled. I think we've discussed this before. The most junior justice on the court is on the cafeteria committee. There's lots of committees. There's courtyard committees. I mean, justices get the worst jobs. And David, yes, there's things like you would imagine, chicken salad, BLT. But I did notice a new addition to the Supreme Court cafeteria list, a Thai grain bowl. Hmm. Ooh. Haven't tried it. No word on that.

If you have been to the Supreme Court and tried the Thai grain bowl, do let us know. I have to say I'm not that interested. But you can let Sarah know. They have avocado toast too. All right. With that, thank you for listening to Advisory Opinions. Next week, I don't know, David, I think we might have to dive into this United States Institute of Peace debacle.

Debacle both in terms of what is the United States Institute of Peace debacle, debacle both in terms of what is the United States Institute of Peace in terms of its status as a, as a organization. Is it government? Is it private? Is it what? And also the debacle of the standoff that happened Friday night where did Doge break into the United States Institute of Peace? There was definitely a locksmith involved. So more on that maybe if we can figure out some good facts. I cannot wait. I can wait. Bye.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,