Advisory Opinions - SCOTUSblog, Welcome to The Dispatch

Episode Date: April 24, 2025

Amy Howe, the voice of SCOTUSblog, joins Sarah Isgur and David French to discuss the news of The Dispatch’s acquisition of SCOTUSblog. Also: What's the equity in equity dockets? The A...genda: —SCOTUSblog joins The Dispatch —Puppies (and pride?) —Harvard fights back —Equity dockets, revisited  Show Notes: —Read more on the acquisition 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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Starting point is 00:00:00 Okay, Martin, let's try one. Remember, big. You got it. The Ford It's a Big Deal event is on. How's that? Uh, a little bigger. The Ford It's a Big Deal event. Nice. Now the offer? Lease a 2025 Escape Active all-wheel drive from 198 bi-weekly at 1.99% APR for 36 months with $27.55 down. Wow, that's like $99 a week.
Starting point is 00:00:23 Yeah, it's a big deal. The Ford It's a Big Deal event. Visit your Toronto area Ford store or Ford.ca today. 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.
Starting point is 00:00:43 Ooh, what are we watching? I'll make some popcorn. Thanks to Voila, they can order all our fresh favorites from Sobeez, Farm Boy, and Longos online, which is super reliable. And now my parents are reliable, a little too reliable. Voila, your groceries delivered just like that. Ready?
Starting point is 00:01:02 I was born ready. Welcome to Advisory Opinions. I'm Sarah Isgur, that's David French, and have we got an announcement for you guys? And after that, we will talk about the Pride Puppy case, as well as another oral argument about the ACA, Obamacare. We're still doing that. Yep. We also got an opinion from the Supreme Court on immigration and a lawsuit filed from Harvard
Starting point is 00:01:43 against the administration, plus some updates from the last podcast. David, should we tell them the big announcement? Let's tell them, and it is big. All right, drum roll or whatever. The dispatch acquired SCOTUSblog. So to talk more about that, we have Amy Howe here from SCOTUSblog.
Starting point is 00:02:04 Welcome to the family, Amy. Thank you. It's I feel like we should be playing like the Pointer Sisters. I'm so excited. I'm so glad you laughed, Sarah. I was afraid you were too young to know what that song was. You're a family. That's Sister Sledge. Oh, no, that's Sister Sledge. Yeah, I mean, come on, Sarah, you're way out of your depth here. Like, this is 1970s music, you know.
Starting point is 00:02:32 It's not my jam. Leave that to Amy. It was a good try though, we appreciate the effort. Wait, which one's Pointer Sisters? I'm so excited. I'm not singing. I'm so excited, I just can't hide it. Can't hide. I'm about to lose control. I'm not singing. I'm so excited. I just can't hide it. Can't hide. I'm about to lose control. I'm not gonna sing it.
Starting point is 00:02:45 Yes. Okay. All right. Well, look, SCOTUSblog is now in the greater dispatch family and we are building a Marvel comic book-esque extended universe. Amy Howe is our newest superhero. This is gonna be really exciting.
Starting point is 00:03:01 So Amy, will you just give us a little bit of history of SCOTUS blog? And I mean, you were at the arguments earlier today. And I don't know, you actually are covering the court at the court. You're not some random blogger. No, I'm covering the court.
Starting point is 00:03:17 And when I started covering the court, it was kind of like, it was a little more leisurely, I'm going to say, than it was now. Like weekends, summers were kind of slow and, you know, we'd be like, oh gosh, are we going to have any content? And now it's, you know, like with all the rest of the news cycle, it's kind of a 24-7 news cycle, literally, you know, waking up at the wee hours of the morning to orders from the court. But there's a lot going on right now at the court. It's a really interesting time to be covering it. And so it's an interesting, it's a really great time to be joining the Dispatch family.
Starting point is 00:03:56 And you've been doing SCOTUSblog for 20, how many years? SCOTUSblog will be 23 in November. So SCOTUSblog is almost old enough to run for Congress. Unfortunately, Skoda Spog was in the District of Columbia, so it's a little bit of a... You were at the court today. Did any of the justices look particularly sleep deprived? No, they didn't look particularly sleep deprived. It was a relative... It was a pretty high stakes argument, potentially, It was a pretty high stakes argument potentially involving the Affordable Care Act, but it was relatively low key considering how high stakes the argument was. There weren't a lot of dramatic moments.
Starting point is 00:04:38 It was actually, for the most part, a relatively lopsided argument. This was a case in which the Biden administration had asked the court to weigh in after the Fifth Circuit ruled that the structure of this task force, the US Preventative Services Task Force, which makes recommendations for preventive services that health insurers need to cover at no additional cost to the patient. So the Fifth Circuit ruled that the structure was unconstitutional. The Biden administration asked the justices to weigh in, and the Trump administration is continuing to defend the structure of the task force.
Starting point is 00:05:15 And the justices seemed pretty sympathetic to the Trump administration and the task force. Doesn't look like it's gonna be a real lighter. Yeah, one thing that I'm really looking forward to, Sarah, about working with Amy and then bringing SCOTUS blog and seeing SCOTUS blog as part of the larger dispatch family and advisory opinions and all in that mix is Amy follows all the cases, all of them. This is, and can immediately start talking about all of the cases.
Starting point is 00:05:49 Whereas, you know, this case that you just talked about hadn't been like top of mind for advisory opinions, at least not yet. And so I think that's one thing that is gonna be really incredibly valuable, bringing sort of, Skoda's blog already had this very big broad audience, but bringing it all in into this sort of unified whole, you're gonna have, you're gonna be able to nerd out as much as you want to nerd out on the, on these kinds of cases and also, you
Starting point is 00:06:19 know, continue to cover like the, the quote-un unquote big cases, the big culture war slash political fight cases that you know that we've been focusing on more. But I really appreciate that depth of reporting just up and down the line of every element of what SCOTUS is doing. Nerdy now is what we do best. So I'm sure there's lots of people listening who have questions. Let me try to like think of some FAQs off the top of my head, Amy. One, SCOTUS blog is keeping the name SCOTUS blog.
Starting point is 00:06:56 We're not changing it to like AO blog or something. The SCOTUS blog brand is amazing and it's staying SCOTUS blog. Two, we're pumping a lot of resources into SCOTUSblog. We want to sort of bring it to the height of SCOTUSblog glory. So covering every merits case, beefing up that emergency docket page. Three, yes, the live blog is gonna stay awesome. It just might have some additional characters like me and David joining in June, right? Yes, exactly. We'd love to have more people on, particularly as we get to
Starting point is 00:07:31 June and heaven forbid July, when we've got more people joining us for all of these decisions. It's great to have more people come on and comment on what's going on and be able to answer the questions. Because as we get closer to the end of the term, we have more people joining the live blog and more questions and more comments to publish. So the more the merrier, literally. It's one of my favorite parts of my job. And if you're on TikTok and have seen Katie Barlow doing these SCOTUS blog TikTok updates, those will continue as well with beefed up resources and coverage as well, I hope. But look, here's the bottom line, Amy. Do you agree with this? This is the big announcement, right? There's now going to be basically dispatch law and it's going to have SCOTUS blog and AO
Starting point is 00:08:23 and some more announcements to come. But give us a second, right? We're going to going to have SCOTUS blog and AO and some more announcements to come. But give us a second, right? We're going to try to have everything amazing in time for the big hand downs in June. But this is just the beginning. Yeah. I mean, it's exciting. We want to try and bring back everything that SCOTUS blog did a couple of years ago. Relist Watch is gonna continue.
Starting point is 00:08:47 We wanna revive the stat pack that I know a lot of people really liked. And then we wanna expand and bring on some new features. So it's gonna take, we're not gonna go from zero to 60 overnight, but we're gonna get back up and start doing the things that we were doing. And then, you know, there's more to do. And as I said, lots more announcements to come. Stay tuned. But if you haven't visited SCOTUS
Starting point is 00:09:14 blog lately, give us a few weeks. Come for the live blog in June. I think it's going to be simply awesome in every way. Can I interrupt with just a point of clarification that I know will give readers a lot of relief? When we say extended universe, that does not include the multiverse, which is ruined Marvel. So we're just staying here. We're just staying in this universe,
Starting point is 00:09:39 but it's gonna be extended, just for clarification. Extended, not multi. David, you and I are gonna have to have a whole conversation about Black Mirror, I think, if you haven't watched the new season. I do need to watch that, have not seen it yet. Are you a Black Mirror person? I am not.
Starting point is 00:09:56 Amy has her hands full because she's actually doing real work, unlike your AO host. Amy Howe, I'm so excited. Amy and I had to do a photo shoot together last week for this. And it was the silliest. They were like, shake hands. There was a literal engagement photographer doing this. So Amy and I very much in love. We have the pictures to prove it. Amy, I'm so excited. No ring, but yeah. No ring.
Starting point is 00:10:29 All right, more to come. Welcome, SCOTUSblog. Welcome, Amy. Looking forward to talking to you guys soon. Thanks for having me on. So, David, pretty exciting. We now have an extended universe, just like we always wanted. Extremely exciting, Sarah. And I'm just glad you left it at extended universe, which like we always wanted. Extremely exciting, Sarah.
Starting point is 00:10:45 And I'm just glad you left it at extended universe, which was peak Marvel, the MCEU peak Marvel. When Marvel went to the multiverse, then it jumped the shark. So I just want to assure listeners, we will have an advisory opinions extended universe, no multiverse. There are no other versions of us out there.
Starting point is 00:11:06 This is it, this is it, Sarah. Have you watched this season of Black Mirror yet? I have not, I have not. I've heard good things, but I've not watched it. Hmm, I say. All right, let's move on to the Supreme Court. David, we have talked about this case before. I will actually read from SCOTUS blog. The question
Starting point is 00:11:27 presented was whether public schools burden parents religious exercise when they compel elementary school children to participate in instruction on gender and sexuality against their parents religious conviction and without notice or opportunity to opt out. I'll say, I actually found that question presented to be not misleading in any way, but not really the question that ended up, I think, really being the heart of the oral argument in a lot of ways. This is a question about Montgomery County Schools in Maryland for June having an inclusivity curriculum for English language instruction.
Starting point is 00:12:06 So it's not like a human sexuality class or health class or anything like that. It can start as young as three years old for pre-K. It runs through, I think they said elementary school, sixth grade or so, and it included five books that were at issue here. One of which was the famous now Pride Puppy. Another one is Uncle Bob's Wedding, I think it's called, Uncle Bobby's Wedding, something like that.
Starting point is 00:12:32 And the idea was to teach inclusivity on things like same-sex marriage, gender identity. They used to have opt-outs for parents. They would tell the parents, we're teaching this. If you don't want your kid learning this, raise your hand. But then they said there was so much absenteeism of parents, both with religious objections and with just age-appropriateness objections, that they had to get rid of the opt-out.
Starting point is 00:13:02 It was no longer feasible because there were so many children opting out. Now for most school boards, David, perhaps that itself would maybe be a sign that something's not going right at your school. But no, not in Montgomery County. They were like, no, instead, we will just not have opt-outs for this part of the curriculum.
Starting point is 00:13:21 We will continue to have opt-outs for books that, for instance, picture the Prophet Muhammad or choir if they're singing a religious song. And of course, for health and sexuality classes, if you think that Valentine's Day is too religious, you can opt your child out of Valentine's Day in Montgomery County schools for religious reasons. But just not this part of the curriculum for religious reasons. So the reason I say that the question presented, David, didn't capture it all for me is because there's also just a very easy kind of viewpoint discrimination part of this. You know, it reminded me a little
Starting point is 00:14:01 bit of Shirtleff, the Boston City Hall flag case about Boston saying like, you can have all of these flags that the government doesn't choose, but you can't have a whatever it was called the Christian cross or something like that. Supreme Court was like, no, no, no, that's you can't like allow everything else and not this. Here, they are allowing opt-outs for all sorts of other religious objections, just not a religious objection to not exposure to same-sex marriage or gender identity. David, let me read a little piece of the transcript from the oral argument.
Starting point is 00:14:40 Here's an exchange with Justice Barrett. I just want to ask you a couple of questions about the instructional material. So part of the conversation today has been about exposure and whether this is about teaching civility. And so I just wanted to read you a couple things from the instructional materials to get your reaction of how, if at all, this plays into the analysis. So I don't understand petitioners to be arguing that, you know, there was an objection to being taught respect and kindness to those who have different beliefs. I understand them to be more focused on things like, you know, this is an instruction to the teacher, quote, if
Starting point is 00:15:12 a student observes that a girl can only like boys because she's a girl, the board suggests that the teacher disrupts the students either or thinking by saying something like, actually, people of any gender can like whoever they like. Or the transgender issue quote, when we're born, people make a guess about our gender and label us boy or girl based on our body parts. Sometimes they're right, sometimes they're wrong. When someone's transgender, they guess wrong.
Starting point is 00:15:40 When someone's cisgender, they guessed right. This is now Justice Barrett continuing. So, you know, it is kind of along those things, which seems to be more about influence and shaping of ideas and less about communicating respect, because it's less about communicating respect for those who are transgender, who are gay, and more about how to think about sexuality. So, David, there's been a lot of focus on, for instance, what's actually in the book Pride Puppy. In fact, I got sort of a nasty gram from someone associated with the book. It's legally irrelevant, actually. And I think for listeners who aren't lawyers,
Starting point is 00:16:18 it's worth emphasizing. For legal purposes, we take the worst version of the book. You know what I mean? And I know that's frustrating when you're involved in making this book that people are, to your view, mischaracterizing the book, for instance. The book itself isn't what's at issue here. The issue here is what rights parents have. And by the way, this is the rights of the parents,
Starting point is 00:16:42 not the children, actually. What rights do parents have to opt out of a public school? By the way, is that a public benefit? If you're required to go and it's a misdemeanor, if you don't send your kid, that was a big discussion here. And you have a religious objection to what's being taught. And at the same time, as was brought up, what if there's a transgender student in the class?
Starting point is 00:17:03 Can you object to being in a classroom with that student? What if the teacher's transgender and wants to be called Mr.? Can the student opt out of being in that teacher's class? These are all examples from Justice Jackson, for instance. What about evolution? Can a student not be taught evolution because that conflicts with their parents' religious beliefs?
Starting point is 00:17:24 I'll stop there, David. What was your, oh, one other thing actually though that I think was relevant. There's a lot of assumptions over who's objecting. And as was brought up, perhaps surprising to people, these objections came mostly from Muslim and Ethiopian Orthodox students in Montgomery County.
Starting point is 00:17:46 And that's what sort of became, I guess, overwhelming to the schools. And resulted in some intemperate remarks at the school board meeting, which also brought up another thing that wasn't in the question presented, which is at the point that the school board was saying negative things about the religion,
Starting point is 00:18:02 for instance, chastising a young Muslim female student for, quote, parroting her parents' dogma or saying, it's a real shame that Muslim parents here are siding with white supremacists. Some, you know, sort of Masterpiece Cake Shop-esque discriminatory negative comments that could lead one to believe there was actual animus towards those with these religious beliefs. So a lot of different ways for Montgomery County to lose here. I don't think there's much question that they will lose. David, how do you think Montgomery County will lose? That's a great question.
Starting point is 00:18:41 You know, Sarah, when we first talked about this case, we said, this is a bit of a harder case than you might think because there are legitimate questions about limits. And Justice Jackson asked some of those, as you outlined, what if there is a student in the class who's transgender? What if you have a transgender teacher? How far does the parent's ability to assert a burden on religious expression or religious belief extend? Is it just when the books are in the classroom at all? Now, in this case, the plaintiffs were saying, no, no, no, it's not just if the books are in the classroom, but it's got to be more than that. So there are a lot of hard lines to draw here, ultimately, Sarah, but this is the easiest hard case I've ever seen
Starting point is 00:19:27 when you actually look at the facts. So yeah, the lines to draw hard, the ultimate outcome, as we saw from the oral argument, I don't think it's much in doubt. And I was just trying to try to, I was thinking, how can I walk listeners through how bad Montgomery County's case is. And I thought I'd do a little exercise where I'm going to pretend for a moment that you've
Starting point is 00:19:52 been called in as the lawyer for the case and you're sitting down and you're going through the facts. And so here's the first thing you're going to ask. Okay. All right. You've always prohibited opt-outs, right? No, we've generously granted opt-outs in the past and now we stopped.
Starting point is 00:20:11 Okay, all right, that's not ideal, but you stopped all opt-outs, right? You don't have some opt-outs in some area and some in another. Oh no, no, no, no. We allow for religious opt-outs in some contexts, but just not this context. Oh, okay.
Starting point is 00:20:27 That's not ideal either, but it is what it is. But I'm just gonna go ahead and assume that you've been respectful to these plaintiffs throughout this process and you've not cast verbal explicit aspersions on their religious beliefs. Well, I mean, we might have insulted a Muslim kid, and there might be some allegations of white supremacy somewhere in the record when,
Starting point is 00:20:49 but a lot of the plaintiffs here are black, right? Okay, well, but you have to understand how it's all connected. You walk through this and you realize, these are some bad facts, guys. These are some bad, bad facts. And so what you saw, I think in the justices, was kind of a bit of incredulousness, to be honest, Sarah.
Starting point is 00:21:09 There was this sort of way, school boards all over America allow opt-outs. You've allowed opt-outs. Opt-outs are the norm here. What is going on? And then there's this other element. Oh, I forgot one element of the of the interview. So this is in the context of a comprehensive health and sexuality curriculum, correct?
Starting point is 00:21:31 No, it's an English class. Wait, what? Excuse me? And so when you put it like this, you realize Montgomery County was walking into the courtroom like if you're going to talk about like with its legal arguments with say an empty revolver in many ways. Its best argument really was the limits argument. Okay, they can't define what the limits are. The limits are not easily definable here and you could spin out sort of the parade of bad hypotheticals as Justice Jackson did. But when your best argument is you can spin out a bad hypothetical and the plaintiff comes at you with bad facts, that's not good for you. That's not good for you. So I think, Sarah, what you're going to see, and I don't know if this is going to be a Smith free exercise loss or a Yoder sort of parents rights loss.
Starting point is 00:22:27 I think Occam's razor is this is a strict scrutiny because it is not a neutral law of general applicability. They have targeted, they have protect some religious expression or religious beliefs in some circumstances, allow opt-outs in some circumstances, not in others. That's not neutral. So I think they're gonna go in this more narrow way than a kind of broader granting sort of a blanket opt-out, right? They don't have to go exactly that far. Wouldn't shock me if they did to some extent,
Starting point is 00:22:59 but I think they're just gonna say, look, under these facts, you've got a strict scrutiny problem either under just a plain Smith analysis where it's not neutral and not generally applicable, or maybe a hybrid analysis where you're combining religious liberty and due process rights of parents to raise their kids. But either way, under these facts, under these facts, you're in a world of hurt. And I think that's where it's gonna land, Sarah.
Starting point is 00:23:25 And it just really makes me wonder, why did they push this to the Supreme Court? This is a choice. This is a choice. Huge mistake to not just pull this from the curriculum and not create law on this, which will be bad for schools, by the way. It will give them less freedom
Starting point is 00:23:42 than they had the day before. Anytime you sort of have to legalize opt-outs or anything else involving school curriculum issues. So I'm sure there's a lot of school boards out there with Montgomery County voodoo dolls that are really annoying right now. Oh sure. I do think that you have here an interesting veto problem that really I didn't see any of the justices pick up on because as you say, I think they were somewhat incredulous.
Starting point is 00:24:10 They were doing the opt-outs until they were introducing curriculum that was so extreme for so many parents that the opt-outs became unworkable because so many parents were opting out. There were, they had to get other classrooms basically and they were like, well, we don't have enough instructors to have these other classrooms. On the one hand, again, if I were on the school board, I'd think, huh, we seem out of step
Starting point is 00:24:35 with our population. What is our role here as a school board? For instance, here's another piece of the curriculum. If a student says that a boy can't be a girl because he was born a boy, a teacher is to respond. That comment is hurtful, and we shouldn't use negative words to talk about people's identity. Exposure is the book is on the shelf. Exposure is that the book has, you know, as you're flipping through parents of the same gender,
Starting point is 00:25:09 walking down the sidewalk to go pick out a puppy at the store, you know, and they just like, it's not really part of the plot. Telling a student that basically what their parents told them about their religion is quote, hurtful and negative is clearly more than exposure. But David, you do end up with a bit of a veto problem that on the one hand the school board is democratically elected and on the other hand if enough parents object
Starting point is 00:25:34 so that it makes the opt-out infeasible which I am taking the school at its word this sounded pretty infeasible at the end because so many parents were opting out well then you just gave some tipping point percentage, probably not a majority. Maybe if 20% of parents try to opt out their kids, 30%, I don't know what the right number would be. At some point you've given them something like a veto power over school curriculum
Starting point is 00:26:00 from a democratically elected school board. That does give me pause, I will tell you. No, I'm with you on that, Sarah. I do think that's why I said this is the easiest hard case because the facts of this case make the outcome, the narrower outcome of did Montgomery County violate these parents' rights? I think that the facts of this case make that pretty plain.
Starting point is 00:26:24 But it raises the hard question. I think that the facts in this case make that pretty plain. But it raises the hard question. I think the Justice Jackson questions are good questions. So for example, if you had a transgender teacher, would there be a right to opt out of that? How would that play into anti-discrimination obligations, for example, that the school has? If you had lots of parents opting out from the transgender teacher's class,
Starting point is 00:26:44 does that make the transgender teacher's employment less viable, for example, which would then raise these nondiscrimination concerns? So there are hard questions here that are at the edges, but this case is so far removed from the hard questions that I'm not sure how much we'll get into it at all. But I also think, Sarah, that there is a kind of, and this is something that the attorney for the plaintiff's, I thought dealt with pretty effectively, which was, look, if we're talking about
Starting point is 00:27:15 an opt-out regime here, this is not blue ocean uncharted territory. This is the normal way that schools operate. Schools normally have opt-outs. And what you see is not chaos. It is not disorder. It's typically taken advantage of by a very small percentage of students. This situation was highly unusual,
Starting point is 00:27:36 but it was highly unusual because of Montgomery County's own actions. This is not something that school boards, a step that school boards typically take because they're very well aware of, although they might have won with 50.1% of the vote, that you have to have more than 50.1% buy-in to public education and to the system for it to work well. This is just kind of basic common sense. So I absolutely agree with you that there are edge cases here
Starting point is 00:28:07 that would give me pause without question. This is not one of those edge cases. And so that's the tension here. Now we'll take a quick break to hear from our friends at Ethos. When you're a parent, you think a lot about your kid's future and how you can make sure you're setting them up for success. I know I do.
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Starting point is 00:29:21 the precedents that we're looking at and the legal tests here. But just before we do that for a second, for the books in question here, your kids went to public school, right? Yeah. Well, my yes, yes, yes. That two of the three have been to public school. Yes. Sorry. Do you want me to not ask that? Let me back up. That's no one's. No, no, no, that's fine.
Starting point is 00:29:40 That's yeah, I was just trying to remember if Naomi had had a cup of coffee in public school, but she is not. But two of had had a cup of coffee in public school, but she has not. But two of the three have been in public schools, yeah. Would you opt out? If I had been, at that age, yes. So I found it interesting that David Latt, friend of the pod, David, for those who don't know is married to a man, a wonderful man, Zach.
Starting point is 00:30:00 David in his newsletter said that he probably wouldn't read this book to his kids. And I was kind of, you know, the example is like, well, what about all these books with heterosexual couples in them? And like, you have one book that's about homosexuality. And I went back through the briskets books. I literally cannot find a book with a dad in it, which is maybe a whole different problem. So like there's a lot of moms, but it's never mentioned like who mom is married to.
Starting point is 00:30:32 So like Hug Machine, only mom. Llama Llama Red Pajama, only mom. And then of course, the vast, vast majority of books don't have parents. Llama Llama Mad at Mama. Yeah, all of those, there's only mom. Give a mouse a cookie and the give a moose a muffin.
Starting point is 00:30:48 Like I think mom is like back there because she was the one who made the muffins or maybe she's cleaning up the jam. I don't remember. Red is best. Definitely only mom. Mom's the one saying like, why can't you just wear your blue berets?
Starting point is 00:30:59 Cause the red berets make my hair sing. So it's sort of funny. And in the, like I did find one book that I had where like, it's exactly what we're describing. You're flipping through, the book is called The Color of Love, and there are different families represented just of all kinds.
Starting point is 00:31:15 There's different families with different races. There's different families with different genders, like all of that. But you never are like, and here, look at this. And it's very unclear to me why Montgomery County that, but you never are like, and here, look at this. And it's very unclear to me why Montgomery County couldn't do the color of love, for instance, for inclusivity month. And I think the answer is very obvious, David,
Starting point is 00:31:36 because they wanted to influence the students. They think that's important. And they're backing off of that here in the argument, which I think, which I think is an issue, because it's a little like the affirmative action case, where they could say it was to remedy past discrimination, or they could say it was for a diverse student experience. And they're trying to guess which one is less objectionable to the people who object. And here, I think Montgomery County still would have lost. But I do think it's really interesting
Starting point is 00:32:09 that they basically kept backing off their influence argument, when that's very obviously what this was always about. It was the only thing it was about. I mean, that's the, and when I say I would opt my kids out, That's the, and when I say I would opt my kids out, I have a very high tolerance for my kids being exposed to competing ideas. We have been very much on the not shelter our kids
Starting point is 00:32:36 from competing ideas side of the spectrum. We've been very much on the spectrum of exposing our kids at early ages to lots of people and ideas that were very different from them. But here's where, here's what makes my Spidey sense tingle, Sarah, why I would say opt out is I feel like there's a very big difference between as the discussion unspooled into unspooled and oral argument between exposure and coercion or indoctrination.
Starting point is 00:33:05 And so, if my very young kid, my very young kid, now again, when they're older, I'm even fine with exposing them to people or trying to persuade them to go in different directions. But my very young kid, exposing them to a situation where, as we described, the teacher is being taught to tell my very young child that whatever values that I teach them at home are just hurtful or wrong, that's the problem. It's not, and I'm glad we went to the difference between exposure and coercion. It is not, in my mind, this is just me,
Starting point is 00:33:43 David French's dad talking, it is not the exposure, it is the effort, explicit effort at influence, especially at that very early age. And anytime Montgomery County tried to back away from this with the counter hypotheticals or sort of like the edge kind of analysis, it just seems so disingenuous because it was so incredibly obvious that their
Starting point is 00:34:10 entire purpose of bringing this in young, eliminating the opt-outs was to have a moral influence on these kids. That was the purpose and anything arguing to the country, just the credibility was just leaking out and draining out. And how interesting, by the way, that there was the parade of horribles on the one side, right? The transgender teacher who, you know, instructs the students to say mister when referring
Starting point is 00:34:38 to the teacher. As you said, David, I think that's a very, very hard case for all the reasons you mentioned. But we never had the parade of horribles on the other side. If a school can refuse opt-outs on this, what about curriculum in October that teaches that Israel is bad, right? And students who say, well, I think they were just defending themselves, the teacher is instructed to say, no, they are occupiers and colonizers, and you are allowed to fight occupiers and colonizers with deadly force if need be, including against children as long as they're Jews. I mean,
Starting point is 00:35:11 at least according to the ideas presented here, I think the school would say, like, well, you know, we're teaching this and like you can't opt out because we don't want you to opt out. Okay, let's move on. Go be homeschooled. Go be homeschooled. Yeah. I mean, that was the other element of this was you've got your choices, your choice to go to a different school. Well, as we know that very few families, very few families are equipped to homeschool their kids and very few families, relatively speaking, have the financial resources to go to private school. So that is not, you know, I'm a school choice supporter, but I do not pretend to think that school choice
Starting point is 00:35:53 is something that absolutely cures any issue in public schools, absolutely not. O.C., that's interesting. I think this is a great, you know, sort of like all of these cases, I think, are now really good examples of why we want to limit executive power. Like, aha, see, now you like to limit executive power in the administrative state. I think this is a great case for, aha, now you see why maybe we should have school choice across the board and you're not forced to go to the public school based on where you
Starting point is 00:36:23 live. Aha, maybe? Okay, let's move go to the public school based on where you live? Uh-huh, maybe? Okay, let's move on to the legal arguments. Let me start with the most narrow version of this. This was brought up by Justice Barrett that perhaps the Supreme Court doesn't need to get into opt-outs at all, that they can simply say that the Fourth Circuit's
Starting point is 00:36:40 definition of a burden on religious exercise was too narrow. And just send it back on that and like basically have this whole thing go back down. And if you will give Montgomery County another chance to do the smart thing here. I'm sure this would look a little like NetChoice where like we're sending this back. Please don't come back. And here we'll write a long opinion as to how we would potentially decide this if you do decide to come back. As a you know, a net choice where they said this was a facial challenge. We don't like that. But just to be clear, yeah, for sure you can't tell social media companies what content they
Starting point is 00:37:16 have to leave up on their websites. XOXO Justice Kagan. So that was like the narrowest version of it. David, I didn't really hear anyone else pick up what Justice Barrett was laying down there, but it will be interesting to see if Justice Barrett writes separately or sort of joins in the judgment only on that. Also then, move on to like the broader win, like yes, you must. If you're allowing opt-outs for other things, you can't not allow opt-outs for this. So the sort of viewpoint discrimination
Starting point is 00:37:47 opt-out problem where some religious views are honored with opt-outs and other religious views are not honored. This, of course, would just get you into strict scrutiny land. So you need to have a compelling government interest by the least restrictive means. compelling government interest by the least restrictive means. And that was the answer that the plaintiff's lawyer gave to a bunch of the hypotheticals. I just don't think that would survive strict scrutiny. This does. I don't think that would survive strict scrutiny. This does. So like, the book is on the bookshelf. Even if we're in strict scrutiny land, like whatever, it's just there, like no problem. I think it still gets a little harder with some of Justice Jackson's more extreme examples.
Starting point is 00:38:31 But he answered, you know, one of her examples was there's a love is love is love hallway in the school. Can a student opt out of having to walk down that hallway or force the school to take down those posters? And he was like, no, no, no, definitely strict scrutiny land. That just passes strict scrutiny. It's the least restrictive means or whatever else. I don't know that that's all true,
Starting point is 00:38:50 but it was a good answer at the time at least. So let's talk about two cases that are relevant here, David Yoder. This is a 1972 case that held Amish children could not be placed in compulsory education past eighth grade, that the parents' fundamental right to free exercise of religion outweighed the state's interest in educating their children. Now the Montgomery County lawyer pushed back and said, that's actually far less burdensome
Starting point is 00:39:23 because they just leave the school system. Here you're talking about changing curriculum, having to find alternative rooms for the students, and that even though it feels like the lesser, that in fact it's a much bigger burden on the schools than Yoder. Curious David, Yoder as precedent, where did you think it fell? Is this a Yoder case? I actually thought that was an interesting argument made that you're it's less burdensome to opt out completely. I think
Starting point is 00:39:49 they're actually right about that, that it is less burdensome for the school for them to opt out completely. What I found in persuasive about Yoder and this, this leaks into the other other cases we'll be talking about the Employment Division v Smith line of free exercise cases is Yoder and Employment Division v. Smith after Employment Division v. Smith was decided. Will you just sing us a few bars of Employment Division? Oh yes. And there's also supposed to be like the Darth Vader theme every time we say Employment
Starting point is 00:40:20 Division v. Smith. Like this is the Woodrow Wilson of this podcast is Employment Division v. Smith, like this is the Woodrow Wilson of this podcast, his Employment Division v. Smith. And this was a Scalia opinion, essentially saying that overturning the previous test for religious free exercise, First Amendment test for religious free exercise, which was a strict scrutiny-based test when you could show a substantial burden on a religious belief and replaced it with not much of a test at all, where if you were challenging a neutral law of general applicability, and then in that case it was a prohibition against the use of hallucinogenic drugs, this was a case involving peyote, that if you're challenging a neutral law of general applicability on free exercise grounds, you just lose, you lose.
Starting point is 00:41:07 And neutral laws of general applicability will survive. Now, there are, when would your free exercise clause case be strong? It would be strong if the law was not neutral and generally applicable. For example, if you could provide evidence that it was aimed at religion. And then there was this other category
Starting point is 00:41:24 that was sort of called hybrid cases. If you could link free exercise with another constitutional right, you could get yourself into strict scrutiny land. And so there were some interesting conversations in the oral argument about hybrid. Is this a hybrid case? In other words, is Y Yoda working together with Smith to create the strict scrutiny. And that's where I found that the analysis more interesting. I'm not sure I thought that the rebuttal that this is not exactly
Starting point is 00:41:55 Yoda because Yoda is actually easier for the schools. I found that to be somewhat persuasive but this does seem like one of these classic hybrid type claims. It's really hard for me to see how the school escapes strict scrutiny. And the interesting question for me, Sarah, is going to be this. If the school, if the Supreme Court senses that the school here is operating out of some sort of animus against these families, I cannot easily imagine a decision, and I think you said it well, where regardless of what the precise holding is,
Starting point is 00:42:29 there's going to be enough dicta there to where the school won't be able to do something like, well, okay, we're just getting rid of all opt-outs. If having an opt-out for viewing Mohammed was a problem, we're getting rid of all opt-outs. So now what are you going to do? So I think you might see a situation where the courts kind of saying, oh, on the narrow question, you lose Montgomery County. And if you're going to pull any fast ones, we have a lot of reasoning here that says it's going to be really hard for you
Starting point is 00:43:01 to do this curriculum without strict scrutiny period end of discussion. So I kind of think that's where it's headed. There's also the line of cases about what exactly the opt out can be narrowed down to. So for instance, I wouldn't get an opt out David, because my objection is this isn't age appropriate. That's not a religious objection. It's not religious and it's not a sincerely held part of my religion. So all of the it's not age appropriate parents don't get the opt out in theory, even if this case comes down, I think, in the best way for the plaintiffs. And that's quite a limit, I think, as well. And it maybe answers some of those accidental veto problems, because there's only so many parents you could have that would have a sincerely held religious objection.
Starting point is 00:43:45 So that's a piece of this as well. David, there was also, um, there was one precedent that was mentioned in the oral argument that I chuckled at for you. You know which one I'm talking about. It's hot, sexy, safe. It's back. So this came up as Justice Jackson is basically trying to find ways to
Starting point is 00:44:08 prevent the plaintiffs from winning. I don't know that she cares that Montgomery County wins. I think she'd prefer Montgomery County to win, but it's like live to fight another day. And so one of her arguments was we don't have a record down below. This was done on a preliminary injunction. So the curriculum had not actually been rolled out. We're basing this on the mandatory books in the classroom. The books must be taught. I think it was a minimum of five times per book. And then those sample question and answers, for instance, the teachers were supposed to use,
Starting point is 00:44:37 but we don't have examples of those actually rolling out because of the injunction. And she said, you know, why don't we wait to have a real record? And the answer from the plaintiff's lawyers was, we don't need to wait for a hot, sexy and safe situation where these kids and he says, I'm not even going to describe what was taught in that case. And I thought, oh, David had no problem describing that.
Starting point is 00:45:01 I mean, he literally did have problems describing it. He turned bright red, but. Yeah, I read that, Sarah, and I was like, oh, I felt morally convicted. I mean, here you have, it's actually relevant in a Supreme Court argument, and the attorney had too much, he had too much moral restraint
Starting point is 00:45:19 to describe what was happening in that case. And I didn't even have to describe it. And I was like, YOLO, here we go. And it's bad, it's bad. The other bucket of case I wanted to talk about, there's the Yoder part, there's the Smith part, it's the Bob Jones part. And I only wanna mention it
Starting point is 00:45:37 because it's a relatively small part of this argument, but because it's just coming up a whole lot this month in other contexts, including one that we'll talk about in a few minutes here. Bob Jones was a 1983 case from the Supreme Court. It was 8-1 about whether the IRS could revoke Bob Jones University tax-exempt status because they didn't allow interracial dating. But there's this quote from the opinion that is sort of stunning, I think, to our modern legal ears, David.
Starting point is 00:46:08 The government has a fundamental overriding interest in eradicating racial discrimination in education, which substantially outweighs whatever burden denial of tax benefits places on the university's exercise of their religious beliefs. So David, I think it does pretty clear just from reading that quote that Bob Jones probably doesn't come out the way it did today,
Starting point is 00:46:32 but it is precedent and it is relevant here in terms of the government's quote unquote compelling interest to combat racial discrimination. What about the government's compelling interest to combat incivility as the Montgomery County attorney was talking about it? Is Bob Jones still good law? Because boy, is it coming up a lot of late.
Starting point is 00:46:56 I do not think the current Supreme Court would decide Bob Jones in the same way. Now that is not to say that it wouldn't have a similar outcome. Would there be a situation in which the Supreme Court would say that there is such a thing as an entity that cannot serve the kind of charitable purpose that a C3 serves if it is engaged in invidious racial discrimination as part of its charitable purpose, so to speak? It's a real open question to me, but I think the language and reasoning of Bob Jones is far more sweeping,
Starting point is 00:47:34 or sweeping is the wrong word to use, more broad than it would be today. Because this came up not just in this context, Sarah, but also in the context of Trump floating the possibility of eliminating Harvard's tax exemption, that the Bob Jones case would empower him to do that, maybe because of anti-Semitic harassment on campus or because of past racial discrimination related to affirmative action before the Harvard versus Fair case. But having looked at closely at this issue, I was a lawyer for Tea Party plaintiffs in the Obama era. So I represented dozens of Tea Parties in the Tea Party targeting scandal out of the IRS. And one thing was absolutely crystal clear in all of that was that if we could establish that the Obama administration had targeted these tea parties for ideological reasons,
Starting point is 00:48:33 they lost. They were going to lose that without question. And Bob Jones was no impediment to that. And so I'm not sure that Bob Jones is going to be all that relevant going forward. But as you said, it's still it is precedent. It is out there and some of the language is pretty broad. And precedent, of course, like the purpose of stare decisis is to uphold a case for consistency's purposes even when the case is wrong, right? If it were rightly decided, we don't need stare decisis, you could just reach the issues again
Starting point is 00:49:11 and come out the same way. The whole purpose of stare decisis, of letting the thing stand, is letting the wrong thing stand. And I just like to emphasize that because I so often hear people say, the court needs to respect precedent, but I never hear them say, you know, the court needs to respect precedent. But I never hear them say,
Starting point is 00:49:27 even though I agree it was wrongly decided, no, they want the court to respect the precedent they think was correctly decided, but then that has nothing to do with precedent actually. From early morning workouts that need a boost to late night drives that need vibes, a good playlist can help you make the most out of your everyday. And when it comes to everyday spending,
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Starting point is 00:50:14 is your cheat code for the city. Light, agile and stylish for all you smart commuters. Find your pulse today. Learn more at canammmotorcycles.com. Okay, so David, last thing on the Pride puppy case. Is it six three? Is it seven two? What's your final count?
Starting point is 00:50:41 I'm interested that Kagan could join the majority. I'm going to go with I'm at 6-3, but that's a soft prediction. I think it's a, I would not be surprised that it would, if it would be 7-2 with a narrow case. This could be one of those interesting issues where Justice Kagan comes in and says, you've got a seventh. You've got, I will break up that 6-3 dichotomy that,
Starting point is 00:51:05 you know, gets people worked up and you'll have your seventh, but it needs to be a bit narrower. That's a possibility, but that, so I'm a soft 6-3 prediction. So I think it's 6-3 unless Barrett prevails on her burden only analysis and it just gets sent back for the Fourth Circuit to apply the proper burden test. I think Kagan could join that, but short of that, and we've seen Barrett not get her way on a lot of these narrower ideas that she has. I think this one's a six, three, or David,
Starting point is 00:51:39 we're talking about Bob Jones. There's another case that is new. We don't normally talk about complaints on this pod, but it's a Bob Jones related complaint, if I've ever seen one. Will you introduce the subject for obvious reasons? Yeah, so the subject here is the Harvard University has sued the Trump administration
Starting point is 00:51:59 as a result of the Trump administration's extremely coercive demands against Harvard related to not just Harvard's alleged failures to protect Jewish students after October 7th, but sort of a shotgun blast at Harvard for being Harvard, being too left, being too woke, et cetera. And the Trump administration made a number of extraordinary demands to
Starting point is 00:52:27 force Harvard to change his policies. So Harvard filed suit and the suit, if you read, if you go down to that signature block there, Sarah, it is fascinating because it is a who's who of conservative Fed Soc lawyers, including, including, drum roll please, one husband of the pod. So that moves us into how do we discuss this case? Because we've got some new listeners. New listeners may not realize that in very recent past, one of the most important cases we talked about,
Starting point is 00:53:00 the OSHA vaccine mandate case out of the Biden administration, husband of the pod was involved in that case as well. So I think we kind of need to walk through our little conflict of interest spiel here, Sarah. So the short version is I will try to always give a disclaimer when we're talking about this case that my husband is the counsel of record and that I therefore have a financial and sexy interest in the outcome of this case. By the way, like side note, how great is the headline gonna be?
Starting point is 00:53:34 Because as you said, it's a who's who of Fed Soc lawyers on it, but a ton of them went to Harvard Law School, except husband of the pod. So I really am looking forward to the headline, Purdue grad saves Harvard. I like it. I mean, technically I guess it would be Texas law grad
Starting point is 00:53:56 saves Harvard Law School, but whatever. I mean, Purdue sounds more fun. But just whatever is his first love. If he loves Purdue more than Texas, it's then Purdue grad. He has shoes for both, David. He has basketball shoes for both. Barbie it for me on this pod to say which one is his true love. It's probably Purdue.
Starting point is 00:54:14 So first thing, I'll give disclaimers. The second thing though that is worth mentioning, especially as we talk about SCOTUS blog and everything else, if you're a lawyer out there, you know this problem, which is, I know that Scott is either probably going to represent, probably going to file a suit, already is representing a client, but it's not public yet.
Starting point is 00:54:36 I can't disclose those conflicts even if I know about them. I just thought it was worth a second to explain how we deal with that, which is first, if it's not an important case and we can avoid it, we're just going to avoid it. Because if I can't disclose the conflict and we don't really need to talk about the case, we just won't. If it's like a top tier situation that we're talking about, I just want to tell you guys, you should factor that in to how you view my credibility because it could be the case that I will have a conflict in the future and can't disclose it yet publicly to you.
Starting point is 00:55:12 And I just want you to know that that's always a possibility when you're married to a lawyer who does the type of stuff that husband of the pod does. It comes with a lot of benefits, right? I have an expert in my house, I get to ask all sorts of questions to and the downside is sometimes there could be conflicts. David, I actually don't think we've had any in the six years we've been doing this podcast where there's been a conflict that I eventually got to disclose as in the case came about, the client was represented.
Starting point is 00:55:38 But for weeks or whatever, we were talking about some case that I couldn't disclose. But for some reason, and not based on anything in particular, I just feel like saying that out loud that that could always happen. And I won't be able to talk about it until I can. Yeah, no, I think that's a good way of putting it. And I am unencumbered by conflicts of interest. And I have two things to say. One, go Scott, go.
Starting point is 00:56:03 Because this is is wow. I mean, I keep saying this about some of these Trump administration actions. I'm as someone who has sued government actors more times than I can count. I have sued government actors for retaliation more times than I can count. The number one challenge in a retaliation case is not establishing the punishment, it's establishing the motive because constantly the government is putting forward pretextual motives. No, this wasn't about your point of view. This was about your tardiness to
Starting point is 00:56:39 class. No, this wasn't about your point of view. this was about the disruption you created on camp. You go through all the time. It's always there's a pretext and another pretext and another pretext, and you're smacking those pretexts down. For example, in a case involving a professor, we didn't discriminate against you on the basis of your viewpoint when we denied you promotion to full professor. Your record of scholarship was just too sketchy. So you're constantly doing this. Trump administration, it's all different now, Sarah. It's all different, because they're just like,
Starting point is 00:57:12 yeah, we don't like you. We don't like your point of view. We don't like who you've hired. We don't like the composition of your academic departments. And so we're coming at you, brother. It's hard to describe how unusual that is, that we're in this world of just a direct virtual confession of constitutional violation
Starting point is 00:57:34 and then daring everyone to sue them. And this is the pattern here, and this is the pattern in this case. And just one quick thing, we've walked through retaliation case law before because it's so misunderstood. No, Harvard does not have a right to federal funding just by existing as a university or as a tier one research university, whatever. It doesn't have a right to federal funding. But once it receives federal funding, it has
Starting point is 00:58:00 a right to continue to receive that funding or to have the grant obligations fulfilled, etc. It has a right not to be discriminated against on the basis of its viewpoint when it receives that funding. And so it can't be cut off. They can cut it off for other reasons. They can't cut it off because of Harvard's viewpoint. They cannot do that. And the other thing is that the process,
Starting point is 00:58:27 I'm very sympathetic as we have covered at length to the idea that Harvard failed its Title VI obligations after October 7th. There's a district court case that we have talked about allowing lawsuits to proceed against Harvard related to its failures after October 7th. This lawsuit is not excusing Harvard in any way, shape, or form for its failures after October 7th, but if you're going to punish Harvard for his failures after October 7th, there's a legal process for doing that that exists. Under
Starting point is 00:58:58 Title VI, there is a legal process that exists that, guess what? The administration is not following, and this is the constant refrain. The administration keeps trying to do things that the law in one sense would allow it to do if it could prove it, but it won't go through the process. It just leaps immediately to the sentencing. It skips the trial.
Starting point is 00:59:23 And so that's why I'm saying, go go Scott go. You've got a retaliation element here. You've got a due process element here. And yeah, I have beef with Harvard in many ways over many years, but they still possess constitutional rights that should be vindicated. So I don't have the conflict. So I can rant. Worth noting also that this is only the funding lawsuit. It was filed in Massachusetts. The Trump administration has threatened to revoke Harvard's 501c3 status, a la Bob Jones. They have not done so yet. That lawsuit would be a separate lawsuit. It would have to be filed in D.C. just per the statute on how that works.
Starting point is 01:00:06 So we'll see. We can look forward to that. David, a few housekeeping notes from our last episode. First, we talked about the confusion around how many votes it takes for the Supreme Court to decide to hear oral argument, not grant cert or treat an application for stay as an application for cert, put it on the merits docket, but just say like they did with the vaccine mandate
Starting point is 01:00:32 case, for the emergency application, we are going to hear oral argument. There's just no sort of rule in the books. I want to revisit that just a little because the rule is it takes a majority of the court to do anything but grant cert. The granting cert is the exception to that and that only takes four votes. So, kind of using Occam's razor or whatever, or like rules of statutory construction, if you will, that should mean that it takes five votes to set an emergency docket application for oral argument. And there's something about that that makes sense as well, because on the one hand, like, you know, to have five votes, you have four votes. So if you only have four votes, what it's saying is fine.
Starting point is 01:01:12 You can set that on the merits docket. It's going to be, you know, six months away, potentially. There's going to be tons of briefing, all of that. Fine. But if you want to actually take up your fellow justices' time, you know, this argument is May 15th. It's well after argument season. You need five votes to do that. You need a majority of the court to say, yep, we're going to set an emergency argument based on this. So it is true that there's no rule in the books over how many justices it takes. But upon further thought and review, I do believe the answer is it took five justices
Starting point is 01:01:46 to put the birthright citizenship question or lack of question, the birthright citizenship emergency application set for oral argument on May 15th. So best guess, five. Next up, David, you are trying to make Fetch happen with the equity docket. And Fetch is going to happen. Instead of the emergency docket or shadow docket. And I wanted to spend another few moments
Starting point is 01:02:11 on that because one, the shadow docket had these negative connotations because they were doing it right in the shadows. We didn't know how many justices were voting on what and they weren't telling us the reasons. Well, by and large, it's just not really in the shadows anymore. We have lots of written stuff on these questions. We tend to know the votes now. So it's both a negative connotation and it's just not as accurate anymore.
Starting point is 01:02:37 So then most people have moved over to the quote, emergency docket, as has been pointed out by Will Bode and others. Like, really? Are these emergencies anymore? Is that even the right name for this? Like, they took a month to decide what they were gonna do on the birthright citizenship cases, and then they're putting argument a month later.
Starting point is 01:02:56 Like, really? Is that an emergency at that point? So maybe that's not totally accurate. It's also the case that the emergency docket encompassed quite a bit. It encompassed these like stay petitions that we talked about or injunctive questions of like what will be the status quo as the case is pending. But it also included death penalty cases.
Starting point is 01:03:21 And I think we have reached a point at the court, David, where it is time to no longer put those all in the same bucket. I think the death penalty cases need to move into their own category, especially as these other types of cases, the interim cases, if you will, have become so, so many. And it used to be the case that almost all of the emergency docket was death penalty. And then there were these few status quo cases. Now that's just totally flipped. There's way more of these than there are the death penalty cases,
Starting point is 01:03:50 both just because there's so many more of these and also because so many states have banned the death penalty. There's fewer death penalty impositions, et cetera, et cetera. Okay, so David, you want to call it the equity docket. The main book on Supreme Court practice, Stern and Grossman, they use the term interim relief. They don't actually use the term docket, but for our purposes, the interim relief docket.
Starting point is 01:04:14 And for those looking for page citation numbers, that would be 17.2, 17.3, and 17.5 of the 11th edition of Stern and Grossman, if you have it handy. Thank you for that. There's so many readers, I mean listeners, just flipping frantically. So I'm glad you gave the page number. Yes. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:04:31 So here's the problem with the word equity docket, David. It's vague and imprecise, and it makes it sound like they're just doing what they think is like good or fair. And while equity is a term of art for legal geeks, a lot of people will hear it and think it's the DEI docket. On the other hand, interim relief docket sounds like constipation medication that nobody wants to take. So what are we supposed to do about, I mean, the word equity is a bit confusing in this
Starting point is 01:05:05 context if you're not a lawyer. It does sound like DEI. I've also had someone suggest expedited docket, the expedited docket, which isn't an emergency, but it is moving faster than the other things. But I don't think that necessarily captures the we're just deciding the status quo while these cases continue docket. But that's a little bit wordy. I don't know, David, I want to continue the conversation for a minute here. What do you think? Yeah, I get the, you know, it's funny when I said equity docket, I never, I did not, was not thinking in the DEI context at all, but I totally see how if you're just walking into this fresh, you're not a highly educated advisory opinions listener who is familiar with the difference between law and equity
Starting point is 01:05:45 that we talked about and that you would think, oh, equity docket, this is just them doing what they think is fair. I get that weakness, but it's catchy. It's so much catchier than interim relief docket. So the question is, do I bow to- Did you have too many fajitas last night for dinner? Try interim relief docket. So the question is, do I bow to... Did you have too many fajitas last night for dinner?
Starting point is 01:06:07 Try interim relief docket. Perfect. I love it. So do I go with the accurate but vaguely medicinal description, or do we go with the catchy and also accurate, but susceptible to misunderstanding? So that's your choice. And I'm mainly because I made up the term equity docket. I'm leaning towards just going ahead and educating the whole public as to what that means is
Starting point is 01:06:39 sort of the simplest thing to do. I mean, it might be nice to take back the word equity. It has a meaning and the meaning doesn't mean, like DEI tried to change it from equality of opportunity to equity means equality of outcome. That's not what that word means. It has a meaning. So I don't know. We'll check out the comment section people,
Starting point is 01:07:01 if they're cool with equity docket, now that we've explained some of the upsides and downsides of the constipation medication. Last thing David, Judge Thapar made such a compelling case about various health benefits, about his own health. Here we go. That I went out with my son and went to a juice bar nearby and ordered a shot of... Well, now I don't even know how to pronounce it, but turmeric.
Starting point is 01:07:29 Also, there's an extra R in there that I wasn't even really aware of because I don't really pay attention to spelling. So it's not tumeric because it's T-U-R-M something, something, something. It's turmeric. Turmeric. Yeah. So we still have that problem. But the point is this, David. That's the worst thing I've ever voluntarily done to myself.
Starting point is 01:07:48 And remember how many rounds of IVF I've gone through? Nothing compared to this. I would do IVF all day long and twice on Sundays rather than take another shot of turmeric. I've had two C-sections. Yep, I think I would do that over. I had one c-section without the benefit of full anesthesia. Close call on that one. That's how bad this shot of turmeric was. I think my son thought that, like the look on my face, he thought that I was voluntarily poisoning myself. He was on far better behavior when he realized that I was going to survive
Starting point is 01:08:25 better behavior when he realized that I was going to survive this decision that I had made. I also spilled the tiniest bit in my mother's car. All those leather seats are now stained neon yellow, as well as the drop that landed on my leg. My leg is now stained neon yellow. What has happened to my insides if it's doing that to leather seats? I was nauseous for hours. I cannot tell you what a bad life decision this was. So Judge, how many burpees do I have to do to never have hermeric? What's the equation here? Because you're deterring me very effectively, Sarah. I wanna know in the health calculus, is it 10 more burpees a day? Done, 20, done, 50, done. Cause that sounds horrible.
Starting point is 01:09:10 I think the answer is you need to mix it with something. Do not do shots of this stuff. That's where I went, I think really horribly wrong. I think you can put it with some other strong powered flavors and maybe that would work. I would not spill it. I'd treat this like nuclear waste, handle it with tongs if need be, because it will stain your skin and everything else around you.
Starting point is 01:09:30 You're making such a great case for turmeric. Look, I did tax judge the par and tell him about this episode, and he said, but the inflammation. He was like, suck it up, kiddo. And I do, I like... Advil is an anti-inflammatory. But I like suck it up, kiddo. And I do, I like- Adbil, Adbil is an anti-inflammatory. But I like suck it up kiddo arguments. Like that's really powerful to me
Starting point is 01:09:51 because like I think I'm pretty tough and I have a high pain tolerance and all of that. So I don't know. I don't know where I'm landing on this but I wanted to give you that piece of my life. My formula is more burpees and more Ben and Jerry's. Like that's at some point you can't burpees and more Ben and Jerry's. Like that's at some point,
Starting point is 01:10:07 you can't out burpee the Ben and Jerry's, but until that day comes, that's the formula. All right, we'll talk to you next time on advisory opinions. We have more oral arguments next week that we'll be covering. And I mean, now we have Amy Howe joining us anytime, anyhow, as they say. SCOTUSblog, this is so exciting.
Starting point is 01:10:29 So many more announcements to come on this extended universe, so stay tuned on that. And next on Advisory Opinions. Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh,

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