Strict Scrutiny - Ethics, Shmethics

Episode Date: May 1, 2023

The stories about federal judges doing shady things just keep coming. Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, joins Melissa, Kate, and Leah to discuss proposals for making the judiciary more transparent and accountable. Plus, the hosts recap oral arguments-- including one on whether the government can take your money and keep the change.• Follow @CrookedMedia on Instagram and Twitter for more original content, host takeovers and other community events. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Threads, and Bluesky

Mr. Chief Justice, may it please the court. It's an old joke, but when a man argues against two beautiful ladies like this, they're going to have the last word. She spoke, not elegantly, but with unmistakable clarity. She said, I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our legs. Hello, and welcome back to Strict Scrutiny, your podcast about the Supreme Court and the legal culture that surrounds it. We're your hosts. I'm Leah Littman. I'm Kate Shaw. And I'm Melissa Murray. And this was the last week for the court to hear scheduled oral arguments,

but don't worry, the court got up to plenty of things. So there's lots of news we have to talk about. So we'll be covering that news up top once again. And again, it does help to provide a sense of the actual court and the actual justices who are going to be deciding cases. So we think this is incredibly relevant to our discussion of the oral arguments. After we discuss this breaking news, we'll move on to recapping the cases that the court actually heard during the second week of this oral arguments. After we discuss this breaking news, we'll move on to recapping the cases that the court actually heard during the second week of this April sitting. To cover part of the new segment, the stuff about judicial ethics, or as certain justices might say, schmethics, or unconstitutional restrictions on their ability to use public office to extract

wealth and favor, we are delighted to be joined by Gabe Roth, the executive director of Fix the Court. Welcome to the show, Gabe. Thanks for having me, everyone. So we are going to walk through some of the news that has broken since our last episode, and then we will discuss with you, Gabe, how this is all very cool and very legal and not at all problematic. So if we're all on the same page, let's get to it. And first up, we have some Harlan Crow corruption updates together with a new participant in the One First Street game of Quid Pro... I don't know, maybe? So let's start with some of the stuff involving the best supervillain name in the biz, Harlan Crow.

Crow, just as a reminder, is the Republican mega-donor who became friends with Clarence Thomas after Crow offered Thomas a ride on his private jet after the two met at an event sponsored by a conservative anti-regulation think tank, as one does. But don't worry, it's all fine because Crow told us that all relationships have some reciprocity in them. Hmm. Anyways, back when the initial ProPublica story broke about Harlan Crow lavishing free transportation and lodging on Clarence Thomas, Justice Thomas issued a statement that said he was advised that he didn't have to disclose all of these things because, among other things, Crowe, quote, did not have business before the court, end quote. Dun, dun, dun. And it turns out he fucked, that's F-U-C-T, up. Get it? We're a family show.

Think about it just for a second, because whoopsie-daisy, turns out that statement wasn't quite right. Bloomberg News reporter Zoe Tillman broke the story that Crow did, in fact, have some business before the court. And this is in addition to all of the cases that the American Enterprise Institute participated in. Crow is on the AEI Board of Trustees. Tillman reports that the Supreme Court declined to hear a copyright case involving Trammell Crowe Residential Company. Trammell Crowe won the case in the Court of Appeals, and the Supreme Court declined to review the matter after the party that lost asked them to review the case. The Crowe family had a non-controlling interest in the company at the time, and specifically, Crow

Holdings held less than a 50% stake in the company, and Harlan Crow was, wait for it, the CEO and chair of the Crow Holdings board. Now, it is not clear whether Justice Thomas would have known from the name Trammell Crow Residential Company that Harlan Crow had a connection to the case or to the company. But as we have repeatedly said, that's kind of not the point. The point is the optics of this and what it means for the court's legitimacy. And Gabe, let's bring you in on this latest development. So how do you respond to people basically saying, look, this is not a big deal. It is a non-controlling share in a company in a case

where it is not even clear that Thomas knew that Crow had a stake, and therefore, all of this is much ado about nothing. Yeah, I mean, that's not how it works, right? First of all, I don't know, Gabe, I think it might be how it works. I was just about to say, they're trying to make it happen. Right? Well, you know, under federal law, it says if your impartiality might reasonably be questioned, then it is your duty under federal law to recuse. And in 2005, when that case reached SCOTUS, we had already seen examples, several examples, and I might have even found a few more that you'll be hearing about in the coming days, of Harlan Crowe giving some private jet travel to Clarence and Ginny Thomas and spending that much money on a single justice, as we all know private planes. Well, we don't all personally. We don't know, actually.

We have learned through this reporting. And we can imagine that the private planes cost a lot of money. So Crowe is spending a lot of money on Thomas. So anything with that last name should be on Justice Thomas's conflict sheet, right? Every chambers, especially we're talking 2005, the software system that the judiciary and some of the justices started using was only implemented in 2007. So in 2005, it definitely would have been a sheet of paper. Harlan Crowe, Trammell Crowe, I think that's his brother's name, maybe. Everyone else Crow related should have been on that sheet

and a clerk, and it's really Thomas's own responsibility, but a clerk and Thomas, someone should have figured that out. And there should have been a recusal, not too hard. Okay, this is just wild to me. Also, I noted that you said, like, if we could reasonably expect this to raise questions about impartiality, then the justice has a duty to recuse. And that seems to be a pivotal thing here, because the right is just all agog right now, basically saying anyone who's raising this as an issue is being unreasonable. And that's sort of the entire line. We're all weird harpies who are harping on much ado about nothing. And so what is going to happen here, Gabe? We've heard from Senator Dick Durbin, who's the chair of the Judiciary Committee, he's requested that the Chief Justice or some other

justice appear at a hearing that the Senate is going to conduct on ethics in the Supreme Court. But interestingly, when Senator Durbin requested the Chief Justice, he could have asked for specifically Justice Thomas, the guy accepting free superyacht trips from a Republican mega donor. But Senator Durbin said that he didn't. And here's his explanation as to why. I think I know what would happen to that invitation. It would be ignored. Gabe, what do you make of that? Like, I mean, is this again, like bringing a butter knife to a gunfight? Like, so what if you didn't expect him to say yes to your invitation? Why wouldn't you extend it in any event? Let's take a few steps back. The Democrats are in the majority

of the Senate, right? So theoretically, they have a majority on the Senate Judiciary Committee. But right now, because of shingles, they do not have a majority in the Senate Judiciary Committee. You got to exercise the right to your majority when you have it because it is fleeting. And frankly, given the way that the United States is set up, the Democrats will probably not have a majority in the Senate for, I don't know, the next 20 years. So it's my view that, you know, Senator Feinstein should obviously step aside and they should find someone to replace her who can actually vote on things. And so that's sort of a weak excuse

that Democrats are using, but if they don't want to use their majority, you might as well give a Georgia Senate seat to Kelly Loeffler. The best advice I give to students is if you don't think you will succeed, just give up and don't even try to fight. That's what we try to teach young minds. And look, I understand Senator Durbin is stuck. And behind the scenes, we don't know

what he's doing. But you know, I think there needs to be a little bit more resources to bear on the get a actual majority in the Senate Judiciary Committee. And then we can talk about subpoenas. Because yeah, currently, it's 10 to 10, 10 Republicans, 10 Democrats and one shingles. And when it's 10 to 10, you can't subpoena anybody. So that's what's holding it up. That's right. So you can't subpoena anyone right now. And actually, so what Durbin decided to do was to issue an invitation. Now, of course, he could have issued an invitation to Justice Thomas. But having decided that such an effort would be doomed from the start, he didn't even undertake it, instead issued the invitation to Chief Justice Roberts. And despite Durbin

evidently assessing his chances as better with the chief, the chief, like how to put this, declined the invitation. I'm not sure that's the right way to describe the chief's response to the invitation from Durbin. I believe the legal term is deuces. See you when I see you. Right? I mean, it was just big, I don't care, do you energy. That's a very good TLDR of the chief's response to the invitation from Durbin to show up to talk to the committee about Supreme Court ethics. So we should talk about this letter from the Chief Justice because it really was a pretty epic brush off, right? So it cites judicial independence, it cites the separation of powers, but can barely be bothered to elaborate on how exactly those values would be compromised by the Chief Justice participating in some sort of

hearing, right? Jamal Bowie had a great column about this with the headline referencing the kind of polite disdain of the letter, which I think well captured its overall tone. But basically, TLDR does chief. The chief says, no, I will not be participating in your little hearing. The better TLDR is like from Sex and the City, that Post-it note that Berger leaves to carry. I'm sorry, I can't. I'm sorry. Just I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I can't. So it is worth, I think, skimming the letter in full because of the dripping disdain it shows toward the prospect of congressional oversight, you know, the entitled hand-waving that masquerades as reasoning. You know, another TLDR is just like, I am king and you don't ask the king to testify.

More seriously, it's like, well, you know, there were only two instances of chief justices testifying to the Senate, and I'm just going to declare that those were about unimportant routine matters. And slight footnote, I'm not even sure that's an accurate characterization, but what's little history between friends? And the letter continues, like, chiefs appear on the House in similarly mundane issues, like the appearance of a coin. And it waves around, as Kate, you're saying, like the separation of powers and judicial independence as if they were like, spirit fingers, you know, saying like, testimony of chiefs is rare because of the separation of powers and judicial independence concerns they raise. It's just, ugh. Yeah, it is pretty typical in the context of congressional requests to actors in other branches, like the executive branch, where I spent some time for an exchange of letters to occur. So somebody gets an invitation to appear,

and there's a resistance on the part of the invited party to doing so. And there's often a letter that basically explains the reason for declining at least an initial invitation. But what is so wild about the way the chief wrote this letter was that, as you just said, Leah, it lists instances in which other chiefs had appeared before congressional committees, and it sort of suggests that those were on trivial matters. But then it doesn't actually do the next part of the kind of ritual, which is to explain why these are different circumstances, and therefore no appearance will be forthcoming. It like doesn't say this is different. It doesn't even bother to construct an argument that this is more trivial than those matters, that this is different in a relevant way from those matters. It's just like a kind of, you know, here's some other

examples of chiefs yes showing up and bye-bye. And then the other thing that is, I think, so dismissive about the letter is that there is often in these exchanges some sort of offer to get some information to Congress in another way. Like, I'm not going to show up, but maybe I'll answer some written questions or send a staff member. And there's nothing along those lines, right? There's like this weird statement signed by all nine justices, which we should discuss. And then he pretty clear sense that this is the chief's last statement on the topic. It was a wild letter. Well, it reminds me a lot of what we saw in the subpoenas of the executive branch officials during the Trump administration, like where everyone talked about like how historically there had been this sort of give and take between the

branches. And indeed, the Chief Justice talks about this negotiation that historically has happened when there's interbranch conflict. He talks about this in either Trump versus Vance or in the Trump versus Mazars. Exactly. And there's none of that here. Like there's just no effort to sort of compromise like, you know, you want information. I can't show up, but I can offer you X. Like, it's just like, you know, it's not you.'re very ethical. We promise we're being ethical. And we're all doing ethical things according to our secret ethical guidelines. Is that did I miss something? Gabe, when you read that? Were you just wanting to say, Elena, Sonia, Katonji, what's the safe word? Yeah, there was definitely some arm twisting

among the justices to get the nine to sign that. I think from multiple ends, from some of the justices that probably wanted to be a little bit more forthcoming with their ethics, rules, responsibilities, and maybe some new regulations. And then from some justices who probably believe the Ethics in Government Act to be unconstitutional, right? The 1978 post-Watergate law that the Supreme Court, by the way, upheld in 1981 when they're asked to rule on it. They denied cert and when the lower court had upheld the law. That law, which requires financial disclosure, gift disclosure, reimbursement disclosure, talks about personal hospitality. I think they would just believe that that law is unconstitutional facially. And so they don't even need to send out a pointless three-page ethics missive. So, you know, I've said this before. I think that letter was worse

than nothing. I mean, with nothing, at least we could have maybe convinced ourselves that something was coming up, something good was coming up, some statement saying, hey, members of Congress can't accept gifts, we're also going to stop accepting gifts. Or when a close friend wants to give us a gift over $250, we're going to ask an ethics officer or someone else at the judicial conference if we can accept it. Because when members of Congress have close friends that offer them gifts greater in value than $250, they have to ask someone if it's ethically kosher. So to me, it was just worse than nothing and really sets us up for a further escalation between Congress and the courts in terms of what Congress is going to, well, at least Democrats in Congress, I'm hopeful for Republicans and we can talk about that, but what Congress is going to do to try to rein in some of the more corrupt behavior by the justices. The end of the joint statement also

seemed to close by reminding people that justices face security threats, which I wasn't sure were they implying that considering ethical guidelines or other such things was like a threat to the justices. It was it reminded me of that statement in the chief justice's year end report that we discussed when that came out. They've gotten all this money for security. That's incredibly important. What's frustrating to me is having sent open records requests to the U.S. Marshal Service about threats against the justices just in their travel and having learned that Justice Sotomayor had a credible threat against her, Justice Ginsburg and Justice Thomas all had credible threats against them six, seven years ago. And there wasn't sort of this ethics push back then. Now that there's

this ethics push, we're talking about a little bit more about security. And Republicans have sort of used that as a bludgeon to say why they don't want more transparency. Oh, we're gonna, you know, Democrats are trying to take away security funding when they're threatening to hold up some of the Supreme Court's funding, because that's another way to do it, right? We could actually just tell the Supreme Court, sorry, guys, you get no more clerks, or you get no more funding for clerks until you come to the table on ethics. But that's really a false equivalence. Like the justices have tens of millions of dollars every year that they use for travel and equipment and clerks. And Congress has every right to hold that up

if the justices are going to be so thick headed on improving their ethical responsibilities. Yeah. The point is, though, no one is suggesting that the justices shouldn't have security. And it is just specious to equate critiques of ethics with somehow aligning oneself with a position that the justices should not be protected. Like, of course, they should, like, full stop. Speaking of the exchange of ideas and communications between the different branches, Senator Durbin put out a statement in response to the chief justice's letter. And that statement essentially said, it's time to impose a code of ethics for the Supreme Court, to which we say, yes, correct, sir. What did you make of the statement, Gabe? Too much, too little? I think code of ethics. Yes, the Supreme Court needs a code of ethics. The House has one, the Senate has one,

the executive branch has one, and the lower courts have one. A code of ethics is important, but it's not a panacea. It's almost more like be impartial. The justices shouldn't participate in political activities. the code of conduct or part of the ethics bills that have been introduced in Congress this year. So there's the new one from Angus King and Lisa Murkowski, bipartisan. There's one from Chris Murphy, which is a little bit different from the one he's introduced every odd numbered year since 2011. And then there's one from Senator Whitehouse, which is similar to one he released last year, that would have some enforcement mechanisms. Basically, the way that would work is there would be an inbox. And I know Senator Whitehouse has gone on this podcast and talked about it. But this is in all three of these bills, there would be a way to file a complaint against a justice to at least in some corner of the court, say this justice acted unethically in this way.

And then at the end of the year, after an investigation, and the three bills sort of differed in terms of how an investigation would happen. then at the end of the year, after an investigation, and the three bills sort of differed in terms of how an investigation would happen, but at the end of the year, an ethics officer in the court would have to release to the public what sorts of investigations occurred, just like the Senate Ethics Committee does. I was reading their report earlier today, just like the House Ethics Committee does. And look, no one's going to say that anything, or at least I'm not going to say that anything that Clarence Thomas did or any of the other justices did, because all nine of them have had ethics lapses, that one's going to say that anything, or at least I'm not going to say that anything that Clarence Thomas did or any of the other justices did, because all nine of them have had ethics lapses that you can go to fixthecourt.com and look at.

None of this behavior is impeachable. But at the same time, we can't have trust in our top legal officials if we don't have an understanding of where they are in terms of their ethical responsibilities. So I think having an inbox, having a reporting mechanisms creates a little bit of accountability through transparency, because currently under the system, all we have is impeachment and removal, and that's never going to happen given the makeup of Congress. So let's talk about some of those ethical lapses by other justices, because this week, Politico also broke the story of a real estate transaction involving one Neil M. Gorsuch.

And the story goes something like this. Neil Gorsuch and two of his buddies formed an LLC, Walden Group LLC. And they bought some property in Colorado with that LLC. Because as we all know, Neil Gorsuch is not a regular coastal elite. He's a cool coastal elite and a man of the people from the Colorado heartland. And all those regular guys in Colorado form LLCs with their buddies and buy millions of dollars in property, specifically 40 acres of it. An LLC, if you can keep it. Apparently, at some point, these guys became bored of their property holding, and they put it up for sale in 2015. But here's the thing, nobody wanted to buy it. So it sat on the market

for about two years. It was originally listed in 2015 for $2.4, $2.5 million. And apparently they struggled so much to find a buyer over those two years that they eventually were forced to sell it for $1.8 million in 2017. And interestingly, that sale took place, wait for it, nine days after Gorsuch was confirmed to the court. Hmm. Wow. So who was the lucky buyer? Turns out it was the chief executive of Greenberg-Trorig, one of the biggest law firms in the country and one that practices regularly before the Supreme Court. Political reports that Greenberg, the law firm, has participated in at least 22 cases since the purchase, although we should say there's no indication that the actual buyer, the chief executive of Greenberg, participated in any of those cases. But notably, in one case before

the Supreme Court, a Greenberg lawyer represented North Dakota in last term's West Virginia versus EPA, which invalidated the Clean Power Plan and announced really the modern major questions doctrine. The CEO that purchased the property turns out apparently to be a major Democratic donor. Now, Gorsuch did not disclose the identity of the purchaser on his financial forms. The sale was reported. The LLC was listed. But the identity of the purchaser, which there is a field for on the form, was left blank. The Greenberg CEO says he didn't know it was Gorsuch's property when he entered a contract to purchase it nine days after Gorsuch was confirmed to the court and that he doesn't know and has never thing that Gorsuch had financial dealings with other D.C. law firms just to level the playing field for fairness and due process.

Okay, Gabe, we are once again dealing with an onslaught of no one thinks this guy actually bought any votes kinds of takes, should that assuage our fears or concerns about this transaction. We're also dealing with like people getting on Twitter talking about how law professors don't understand how LLCs work. We totally do. But that's not really the point of all of this, right? There's several issues here. One is, if you just look at his financial disclosure report, it says Walden Group LLC was sold in 2017 or was sold off in 2017. And that's really all it says. We only know that Walden Group LLC is an LLC that owned a mountain home in Colorado due to investigative reporting. And I think it also stands in contrast to Chief Justice Roberts, who owns an eighth of a cottage in Southern Ireland, and his property actually converted

to the Irish equivalent of an LLC last year. But he actually lists Karaheen Partners, one eighth cottage in County Limerick. So he lists the whole thing. He doesn't just list Karaheen Partners as he probably could under the instructions. So this to me is we need greater instructions, we need greater detail, the financial disclosures that the justices have are both under the law and the regulations, missing a lot of details that I think are very important. And then Justice Gorsuch left the gain code blank. So some outlets have misreported that he made $250,000 to $500,000. No, he received $250,000 to $500,000 for selling his stake. But it looks like he probably broke even or potentially lost money because the instructions say if you lost money, just leave it blank. So if you lost, if you sold something at a loss,

it's almost worse than breaking even. So again, it's a lack of exactness in the financial disclosure law, in the financial disclosure instructions that make your mind sort of go to these places that imply a lack of ethics. Do you feel like this moment is different in the context of the degree of public attention and press attention on the justices, on the ethics of the justices? Could we actually see enough sustained attention on this issue that something gives, that something changes? I think there is definitely more attention being paid to this than ever before. More people are waking up to the fact that they're, you know, just to use my example, that their sister who works at an eye clinic for a VA hospital in Little Rock has

stronger ethics, gift, and disclosure rules than the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. You know, when we launched Fix the Court, we had an ad on cable like Fox and MSNBC and CNN that said, you know, the Supreme Court, the most powerful, least accountable. And now I think people finally, in a half a year, believe that, right? I think they've sort of come to the realization that what I've been harping about for, you know, since 2014, sadly, especially on the most powerful part, has come to fruition. And now we're seeing sort of the least accountable part jump into the bloodstream as well. In terms

of changes, that remains to be seen. Last year, we passed a law that made it so the justices' disclosures have to be put online. Before then, you got them in a thumb drive, sometimes months, years after the fact. Now they have to put their financial transactions like stock sales online, like members of Congress have to do. And then there's live streaming for oral arguments. So there have been some, you know, pretty monumental changes in the last few years at the margins. But I think this would be just a wholesale change, what we're asking for now, and how the justices really view and act on their ethical requirements. So, you know, I'm hopeful we're getting there and stories like we've been hearing about Justice Thomas will get us there. But because people like to go to their

partisan priors when they hear a name like Justice Thomas, I think it still remains an uphill battle. All right. Well, we know you're going to keep fighting it. Gabe Roth, Executive Director of Fix the Court, thank you so much for the work you do Thanks for having me. We also have some news about Bill Nye, the science... Wait, I'm sorry. I read that wrong. Scratch that.

Matthew Kazmarek. Oh, this is... That's what I meant to say. This is so unfair to Bill Nye. Oh, God. I know. He's a great guy. It's like, I'm sorry.

I didn't see it. All right, so we actually have some news about Matthew Kesmeric, not a science guy, but a district court judge in Texas who authored, as we know, the opinion revoking the FDA's approval of mifepristone that would have designated mifepristone an unauthorized drug. Now, we have obviously focused a lot of attention on that opinion. And let's just say it was a drama filled, turgid work of fiction where Matthew Kaczmarek cosplays being a scientist who knows more about health and safety and drugs than the FDA does about Mifepristone. But it turns out that that little turn in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine versus FDA is not the only screenwriting fiction credit that Matthew has on his resume.

He has other works in his repertoire, things that perhaps he's been just too modest to take credit for. And the story really begins back in early 2017, before Judge Kesmeric was even nominated to be a judge judge when he was just, as we say in the biz, Maddie from the block. He submitted an article to the Texas Journal of Law and Public Policy. And this is where things get interesting. That's right. So the draft article criticized Obama era protections for transgender individuals and individuals seeking abortions. Let's just give you a couple of samples from the piece. So the draft accused the Obama administration of unfairly treating religious physicians who, quote, cannot use their scalpels to make female what God created male, close quote, and again, open quote, cannot use

their pens to prescribe or dispense abortifacient drugs designed to kill unborn children. Close quote. Now, if that last phrase sounded familiar, it should, since it is basically verbatim how Judge Kazmarek described Mifepristone in the opinion that Melissa was just describing. And as the Washington Post reported, this draft article was first submitted to the Law Review with only Matthew Kazmarek's name on it. At the time, Kazmarek was a lawyer at the Group First Liberty Institute. Then, a few months later, Kazmarek wrote to the student editor he was working with and said, for, quote, reasons I may discuss at a later date, close quote, the name of the author on the piece would no longer be Matthew Kazmarek, but instead two of his colleagues at the First Liberty Institute. By this point, we know Kazmarek had already been interviewed for a judgeship by the Texas

senators and was awaiting a White House interview. When he was... Hmm. Uh-huh. So that, you know, the timing might not have been pure coincidence. For reasons he was sure to disclose later. Sure. And when he was eventually nominated to the district court, Kazmarek did not disclose

this article. And you are required to list all your publications when you are nominated for a Senate confirmable position. But evidently concluding that this wasn't a publication under his name because he had done this kind of bait and switch after submission, he didn't list it in his Senate paperwork. Kate, that suggests that there's something nefarious afoot. And I refuse to believe that of Judge Matthew Kaczmarek. I think there is probably a very normal, rational explanation for this. And in fact, when asked, First Liberty Institute, through a spokesperson, said that in fact, Judge Kaczmarek's name had merely been, quote, a placeholder, end quote, and that Kaczmarek did not provide a substantive contribution to the article.

And I know that I am now relieved. Like, this seems like a very plausible explanation. And of course, this is much ado about nothing. Psych. Let's look at the evidence. Well, first, can we just like pause for a second on the concept of a placeholder i mean because it's not a submit to our reviews oh my god i don't know when i submit to our reviews i always put like barack obama or luke bader ginsburg as a placeholder we all have like

just kidding it's melissa murray we have our gnome diplumes, which are our submission names. And then we swap in our real names once the editing process is well underway. Super normal. The thing is, once the editing process is underway, which it was by the time he pulled this patent switch, you have signed a contract

in which you represent. You are still the placeholder, Leah. The work is your own. I guess all of these contracts merely recognize me as the placeholder author. I don't know. These are boilerplate contracts, placeholder. I mean, when Kate and I submitted our piece,

we put it under our assumed pen names, Charlotte Bronte and Emily Bronte. And it was accepted. And then we were like, before we sign this contract, we should tell you. It's really painful. No, no, no, we signed.

We signed as the Brontes. And then we subsequently told them before we sign this contract, we should tell you. No, no, no. We signed. We signed as the Brontes. And then we subsequently told them who we really were. And now they're pissed because they think they're getting Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. And instead it's Dobbs and Democracy. Instead it's better. It's actually better. It's actually. I don't know.

Those are pretty good. They're very good. They're very good. There's nothing normal about this. Yeah. This is not a real thing. And in addition to that, you have this this other evidence which is before he asked to remove his name like he was the only person listed as the author he had exchanged emails with the editor including a draft with

the file titled mjk first draft guess whose initials mjk no no no that just stands for matt's just kidding exactly that's all that stands for. Matt's just kidding. Exactly. Neither of the people's names appeared on the draft. These are the people who were later identified as authors. Neither of them are cited in footnotes. The final version is almost identical to the one Kazmiric submitted.

The editor who received the request asked the Law Review editor-in-chief why Kazmiric was making the request. And the Post reports that the editor-in-chief smiled and said, quote, you'll see. A little postscript, that editor-in-chief now works in the Texas Attorney General's office defending, among other things, that office's ability to choose to file cases in Amarillo, Texas, and in so doing to select Kazmiric as a judge for their case. What a tiny little world it is. I mean, I'm just like, how many hairless cats can you stroke down there? Like peak villain stuff. Anyway, in addition to some undisclosed law review articles, Judge Kaczmarek also seems to have done some undisclosed interviews on, wait for it, contraception and LGBTQ equality. So CNN has reported that in an undisclosed radio interview, Matthew Kismarik

referred to being gay as a quote unquote lifestyle and expressed religious liberty concerns about new norms such as quote, people who experience same sex attraction, end quote, no fault divorce and quote, permissive policies on contraception. Let's just make the Victorian era happen again, like no fault divorce. Like-fault divorce? What the actual fuck? Are you serious? That's on the list. And also the last time I have heard the phrase, people who experience same-sex attraction, the 90s and 2000s would like their homophobia back. Yep. And taking a cue from those guys at One First Street, Judge Kazmarek also seems to have filed some pretty vague financial disclosures. So federal law allows a judge to

conceal information if, for example, the information would expose a judge or entity to threats. So in 2020 and 2021 annual disclosures, Judge Kazmarek wrote that he held somewhere between $5 million and $25 million in common stock of a company whose name would be withheld. Judge Kazmarek did tell CNN, I know what, you know, the mind does wonder. What company? I know, like, start thinking about what company it is. Yeah. But evidently, in this instance, Judge Kazmarek actually sought and received from the Administrative Office of the United States approval for the redaction after some review of the relevant rules that, under some circumstances, allow those kinds of redactions. So, you know, Kaczmarek evidently did a little diligence before filing that report. Good for him. I know. See, no one can say we never say a nice thing about

Matt Kaczmarek. I applaud him for being transparent in that regard. And I'm genuinely sorry for this company that would make him the subject of threats. So we had a little bit more news we wanted to touch on. Now, we obviously cover opinions when they come down. And when an opinion is first issued, contemplating the effects of that opinion always involves some prognostication. Over the last year, we have tried to kind of stay on top of the fallout from decisions in particular like Dobbs and the gun case Bruin. And we have a bit more to say on those topics and also to kind of follow up from another decision as well. So first, post-Dobbs news. So CNN reports that House Republicans may be abandoning their push to include in the 2024 presidential platform a promise to pass a federal abortion ban.

So, ladies, does this mean a federal abortion ban is no longer a real possibility in the event the GOP retakes the White House and the Senate? What do you think? Do not believe it. Do not believe it. Yeah. Ever vigilant. Ever vigilant. Right. It just means they no longer want to believe it. Yeah, I mean, ever vigilant. Right? It just means they no longer want to admit it. This is like after they have been promising to appoint justices who would overrule Roe versus Wade. And then Amy Coney Barrett is nominated to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And all of a sudden,

the Republican senators are like, What are you talking about? We have no idea. Never heard of her. No, yeah, not gonna happen. And on top of that, there are things like reinvigorating or attempting to enforce the Comstock Act in the works that wouldn't actually require them to pass a federal law in order to restrict abortion on a nationwide basis. Right. So yeah, don't get comfortable again, seriously. We also wanted to cover some of the fallout from another case that we covered toward the end of the term last year. And that, of course, is Kennedy versus Bremerton School District. And if you don't remember what that case is about, it's basically the praying coach case.

So Coach Kennedy, with an assist from Coach Gorsuch and Coach Kavanaugh, won his case with the court saying that he could pray openly on a school football field after a school football game, even though student football players allege that they felt pressured to join despite their own misgivings. When the case came out, we predicted that one of the next dominoes to fall would be the whole question of prayer in school, which the court had earlier addressed in cases like Engel v. Vitale, but which the court has said in those cases is not permitted. But again, we suggested that maybe the tide was turning on this, and others also warned that this might be the case, including folks like UVA's Micah Schwartzman and Cornell's Nelson Tebbe,

who were on our podcast last summer. Guess what, folks? Your Cassandras are once again right. Texas officials have taken a look at the Kennedy opinion and have said like, hey, you know what? You know what's not that far from a football field? Classrooms. You know what could also be a private space if a public man is praying in it? A classroom. So to make this concrete, the Republican-controlled Texas Senate has passed several bills that seem to not just allow but require public schools to promote religion. So one bill

directs that public schools display in a conspicuous place a durable poster or framed copy of the Ten Commandments. And the bill's author cited the court's decision in Kennedy as support for the bill. Another bill would allow public schools to require time for students to pray and read the Bible in schools. There, too, the bill's author told The Washington Post that the Supreme Court, in the Kennedy opinion, debunked the false doctrine of the separation of church and state. And the Texas lieutenant governor said in a news release that bringing the Ten Commandments and prayer back to our public schools will enable our students to become better Texans. So, you know, the court is just a firehose of kind of chaos right now, but we are going to try to keep our eye on the impact on the ground of these decisions because we did think that Kennedy had the potential to destabilize a ton of longstanding

norms of religion in public spaces, including public schools. And it really does seem like that's happening very, very swiftly. Should we mention Biden's re-election campaign announcement video, which dropped since our last episode? Two things that I noticed. Abortion is healthcare in a sign in the second, I think, frame of the video. This was, I thought, really significant. There were quite a few bands off our bodies signs in the video. And a few seconds and only about a two minute long video of Justice Jackson walking with President Biden. And I was glad to see both abortion and the court figure relatively prominently, since as we have talked about, this president has been, I think, conspicuously disinterested in messaging and talking about the Supreme Court.

I would have liked to have heard the words abortion, Supreme Court or federal courts, but I guess it is some progress. One last piece of news is hot off the presses. As we sat down to record on Friday, the North Carolina Supreme Court with a newly constituted Republican majority has now officially overruled the decision under review in the independent state legislature-ish case Moore v. Harper. The North Carolina Supreme Court now says that partisan gerrymandering is not justiciable under the North Carolina Constitution and now seems likely that the Supreme Court will now not decide Moore versus Harper. So independent state legislature ideas will just be out there like a loaded gun. Perfect. Let's move on to argument recaps.

So the court heard oral arguments in Tyler versus Hennepin County. The question in the case is whether taking and selling a home, a government doing that to satisfy a debt to the government and keeping the surplus value, potentially constitutes a taking and violates the takings clause. And then there's a second question, which the court may not get to, and that's whether the forfeiture of property worth far more than needed to satisfy a debt plus interest penalties and costs is a fine within the meaning of the Eighth Amendment. From the argument, it seemed like Hennepin County is going to lose probably nine to zero and that the justices were going to say keeping the surplus value from selling a home to satisfy a debt to the government is in fact a taking. Here, the home was sold for $40,000 when the homeowner, a grandmother, only owed $15,000 in taxes and costs. So why do we think the bottom line is so clear here? Well, it seemed to be where the justices' sympathies and intuitions were during oral arguments. And again, there is a very sympathetic grandmother-homeowner here, which I think is a big part of it. The difference

between what she owed in taxes and what the home was ultimately sold for is significant. But we did want to play a few excerpts that highlight different justices and their takes on this particular point. So here's a little clip from property sales enthusiast Neil Gorsuch, who knows about selling at a loss or a gain. Statute of Gloucester. 1292. Is that right, Mr. Kotschel? I think 1272, if I recall. All right. Well, you know, a funny thing happened after that. It was called the Magna Carta. Okay, a few points on this excerpt. First, Gorsuch, just like peak smug and condescending Gorsuch in this quote, but also kind of peak Gorsuch, which as it turns out, he's kind of wrong about the date and the timeline. So as Caggiel sort of says, without really saying a couple of lines later, the Magna Carta, which Gorsuch performatively says comes after the statute that was 1272, Magna Carta is actually 1215.

So it's like definitely earlier. Oops. History and traditions, y'all. All historians on this court. It's history-ish. But there's also the fact that Gorsuch's dismissiveness of the relevance of this ancient history was, in light of his ardor for history elsewhere, a little hard to swallow. So I especially found that true in this excerpt here. There's one line in the reply brief that I thought summarized the point pretty well. Tyler was not a vassal owing fealty to her lord, but a modern-day fee-simple owner of real property. And the statute of Gloucester was about lands owned by the feudal lord and what happens when a vassal

fails to provide enough wheat to his lord and can his lands, which really belong to the lord, eschete to the lord. And I just don't understand what on earth any of that history has to do with this case. I'm just staring in Dobbs and Bruin right now.

That's all I'm going to say. Like I said, historians, every single one. For thee, but not for me. Yeah, no, really. There was also another moment involving Lady Safehaven, aka Justice Barrett, about the court's history and traditions analysis, and that also seems worth exploring. So let's hear it. What about Justice Alito's question about the car? So Justice Kagan's asking, is the bank account different? What about Justice Alito's question about the car? So Justice Kagan's asking, is the bank account different? What about the hypothetical of you owe like $20 of parking tickets? Can the state just take your whole car?

Again, I don't think that there's a, that would be a reasonable condition on ownership because there is no tradition that goes back that could be looked to. Well, there weren't cars. Well, but buggies, whatever, you know. Your buggy? Whatever. And that exchange followed a Kagan knifing of the history and traditions approach more broadly. If you had a $10,000 income tax bill due and the government came in and took your $100,000 bank account and didn't give you the $90,000 back, taken? Takings, yeah.

So what's the difference? If the mind rebels at the notion that the government can seize your $100,000 bank account and not give you back the $90,000 that you don't owe, if the mind rebels at that, why should whether it's what was going on in 1200 or what was going on in 1776 change anything about that? And because it's nearing the end of the term, things are scary and the ethics shit show is dispiriting. In case you need an extended pick me up, here's Elena Kagan schooling Neil Kachial about the meaning of the court's precedent. Are there any limits to that? I mean, $5,000 tax debt, $5 million house,

take the house, don't give back the rest? Well, I think this court's decision in Nelson affirmed a scheme in which it was a $65 water bill, Justice Kagan, and the house was sold for $7,000, and this court said that was absolutely permissible. But Nelson had a very easy way for the property owner to get all the surplus value. Au contraire, it's a much, much harder way, Justice Kagan and Nelson. And Nelson, it was a 20-day pre-sale period that you had to file and ask for the surplus. And this court said you only might get it back here. I mean, and Nelson, when the state sold the house, you had to file some paperwork, and then you got all the money

back. Here, when the state sells the House, there's nothing you can file to get your money back. The state says we'll keep it. And my question is, are there any limits on that? Justice Kagan, I'd say you'd have to be pretty darn sure that this was a constitutional violation and not just your policy preferences at that point when you have precedent like Nelson, which is approving $65 and $7,000. And you've said, you know, we definitely have a different view of Nelson. My view of Nelson is you can get your money back by filing a form. This is what I consider self-care. This was Neal Katyal's 50th argument before the court. So it's kind of unfortunate that he kind of got

schooled in this way. But we all should love in different ways. He's also going to lose 9-0 in this one. I think that's pretty clear. Yep. But I mean, it's a milestone. Sometimes that's thems or the brinks. We congratulate you. That's right. Although the bottom line in Hennepin County may have been clear, the justices voiced some questions or concerns that may come up in light of this holding in future cases. So one set of questions seemed to concern whether or how the government could just describe any surplus or at least some part of the surplus as a penalty extracted for a failure to pay and to keep it under that theory. So basically, what amount can they actually keep as a penalty? So here's an exchange between

Justice Kagan and one of the lawyers about that. I know everything, but what I'm trying to say is how about less than everything? How about 50 percent? How about 10 percent? I think it's probably still an issue if they're tying the value to the estate. But I think it gets harder. The line drawing gets harder if they're being clever the way that you're being clever. I mean, that's a clever idea. It sort of seems like a kind of obvious idea, but okay. Nobody's doing it as far as I know.

Another set of questions is how to determine the value of the taking, that is the surplus, if the county or the government never sells the property. Similarly, should the value be determined at the time the county asserts possession of the property rather than when it sells it, which could matter, and this came up a couple of times in the oral argument, if there's a significant delay between those two events and there's like a stock market crash or something after the property is transferred. Bottom line, though, I think is that Ms. Tyler wins, and all of these questions are likely for another day. The court also heard oral argument in Locke de Flambeau band versus Coughlin. And the question in that case is whether the bankruptcy code expresses unequivocally Congress's intent to abrogate the sovereign immunity of Indian tribes. Native American tribes, as you know, enjoy sovereign immunity, and generally they cannot be sued without their consent.

But Congress has the authority to eliminate that immunity, to abrogate it, and to authorize suits against the tribes, even if the tribes, or in this case, a nation of Native Americans doesn't consent to being sued. Specifically at issue here is whether Congress authorized suits against tribes under a provision of the bankruptcy code that abrogates immunity as to governmental units under several different bankruptcy code provisions. And the law defines a governmental unit to mean the United States, states, commonwealths, districts, territories, municipalities, foreign states, and then kind of departments and instrumentalities of all of those entities. And then there's a clause at the end of the definition section that says, or other foreign or domestic government. So the question is, you know, the words tribe and native nation don't appear on the list. So

are tribes and native nations encompassed within the clause that refers to other foreign or domestic governments? And in previous cases, we should just underscore the court has said that to eliminate tribal immunity, Congress has to provide a very clear statement doing so. We can kind of loosely sketch the gist of the argument. There were, to no one's surprise, questions about what kind of language is necessary to authorize suits against tribes. So Justice Thomas wanted to know whether the statute had to say tribe. The chief and others wanted to know, you know, would just every government do the trick? And as Justice Kagan and others said, the court has resisted the idea that there are a set of magic words or certain words that Congress has to use to abrogate immunity. So there were also questions about how to understand the legal backdrop to the statute, you know, the background rules against which Congress wrote the statute, like when they mean tribes, do they just say tribes?

And also what to do about the fact that there is a list here and tribes aren't named on that list. There were also questions about why Congress would have left tribes off the list of governments and entities who can be sued, that is entities whose sovereign immunity Congress has eliminated. And the lawyer for the tribe, Prateek Shah, offered a few potential explanations. And I thought he was quite persuasive here, actually, but it wasn't clear to me how persuasive the court thought these explanations were. And I thought the justice's interest in this question, like why did Congress leave tribes off the list, was really revealing in that the court says that they are all textualists,

but they are all also interested in purpose. Like, why would Congress have done X? This is something Anita Krishnakumar has written a lot about, and I thought it was really on display here. So Shaw said, you know, here's a few possibilities. One, under previous versions of the law, you couldn't sue tribes. And so that kind of carried over here, though he didn't totally explain why Congress would have kept that rule. Two, he said, you know, look, this law was passed around the same time as other laws seeking to empower tribes and give them economic independence. So maybe that's an explanation. And third, he said, let's go back to the founding. Tribes were not invited to the bargaining table of the Constitutional Convention or allowed to participate in the same way that states were.

And so the Constitution just doesn't give Congress the same authority to abrogate tribes' immunity as it does give Congress the power to abrogate states' immunity. When it comes to tribal immunity, the Constitution requires Congress to do something more. And the lawyer for the federal government, which is supporting the plaintiff here and arguing that Congress did abrogate tribal immunity, said, well, Congress was listing the entities that it thought were most likely to be implicated in a bankruptcy proceeding, and then it added this catch-all to encompass everybody else. And maybe Congress just didn't think to include tribes on the list because this law predates a lot of significant tribal economic revitalization and booms. And so Congress just didn't think about tribes when it was drafting this language. In addition to the question of

why, you know, Congress might have done one thing or the other, I think it's also important and sane to think about kind of the political economy in context of the case and the legal issue. So I've said it before, and I'll just reiterate it again here, sovereign immunity, I'm just not a huge fan. You know, it's the doctrine that allows states and the federal government to evade a lot of accountability because they just say, yeah, we did something wrong or violated the law. So what, nanny, nanny, boo-boo, you can't sue us. And it's been invoked in just a bunch of horrific cases, like where state-run hospitals

deny needed care to patients, costing them their lives and health. You know, So left to my own devices, I'd kind of level down the whole sovereign immunity thing. Congress can freely abrogate immunity in suits for violations of federal law, so that's probably coloring part of how I see the case. But even aside from all of that, there are actual questions about what immunity would do here and what the longer-term consequences of that would be. And as Justice Sotomayor pointed out, tribal immunity could also possibly bar suits or claims to undo fraudulent transfers. So instances where a bankrupt party, for example, just fraudulently gives their property to an entity that's immune in order to prevent the asset from being distributed to creditors. And with that in mind, and with that reasoning in mind, but also I think for other reasons, Justice Gorsuch asked this question.

I think the gist of some of the questions is, while prevailing here would advantage the tribe, obviously, in terms of monetary claims against it, that it would also mean that you lose certain benefits for tribes. And on a net basis, could Congress have been concerned that, you know, the rule you're asking for will hurt rather than help tribes? I think what Gorsuch may have been getting at might come from the facts of this case itself, which involves a private citizen challenging predatory lending practices, practices that are actually prohibited by state law. So here, the ban set up a chain of corporations that includes Internet payday lenders that make small loans to borrowers of limited means and then charges them, as do basically all payday lenders, huge interest. The plaintiff in this case says the loans leading to this case had an effective annual interest rate of like over 100%. He took out a loan in 2019 for $1,100. By the end of the year, that loan had increased to $1,600. So, you know, these are really pretty abusive sounding lending practices. There's an amicus by Public Citizen that highlights others.

They've offered $400 loans at like a 700, 800% annual percentage rate through a trade name entity. And the same amicus brief highlights testimony about how these practices have really disadvantaged Native American communities. And the terms of the loan would be forbidden under state law. The tribe says they're not subject to suit, though, right? That's the point of this immunity. Although Shaw, I think, suggested that this really is about damages actions against the band and not about questions of compliance with the law more broadly. And all of this ended up coming to a head after the plaintiff who took out these loans, Brian Coughlin, filed for bankruptcy. Then in violation of the bankruptcy code, the payday lender called the plaintiff and harassed him to collect the bankruptcy code, the payday lender called the

plaintiff and harassed him to collect the loan. And the plaintiff alleges that these collection attempts and threats caused him to attempt suicide and to be hospitalized. He claims that he suffers from clinical depression. And so Coughlin essentially filed suit against the tribe to recover for his medical bills and other actual damages. The bankruptcy code authorizes an action against governmental units who take acts to collect assets or recover claims against a debtor after they've filed. And this is part of why I just think like I don't have a ton of sympathy for any entity, like don't care what kind of government they are that's engaged in these practices. I did want to highlight one, let's say, questionable exchange or one that caught my eye between Justice Alito and the lawyer for the tribes that we'll explain after we play it.

Mr. Shaw, just out of curiosity, could I ask you a few questions about the relationship between the tribe and Lend Green Loans? Yes. Who actually operates? The tribe does, Your Honor. This is not a rent-a-tri tribe situation. The other side has never alleged it. So what was this referring to? The phrase rent a tribe is a pretty dismissive and questionable term that's used to describe instances where an entity that does not possess sovereign immunity affiliates with an entity that does possess sovereign immunity here, tribes, to insulate themselves, the private entity,

from lawsuits. And again, this is the case as a lawyer for the tribe indicated here, but to describe the practices this refers to, which could be some relevant context for thinking about what Congress did or didn't do in this law here, this would be like if some totally private company that did abusive internet payday lending that violated state law, and they didn't want to be subject to lawsuits, and they wanted to be able to violate the bankruptcy code provision, preventing them from trying to collect on debts from people who file for bankruptcy. And so they make an arrangement with a tribe whereby they could say, it's the tribe that holds the debts, and we'll be trying to collect on them. But the private entity, you know, would still be

kind of the primary entity involved. An amicus brief by Public Citizen touches on this as part of their overall argument around this case. They highlight one case where the private entity received 95% of the loan profits and the tribe received just 4% as part of one agreement where the private entity was affiliated with a tribe and the tribe agreed to assert sovereign immunity. Justice Scalia wrote about this in dissent in a previous case called Bay Mills. Now, it's possible that these practices could be dealt with separately and independently in the event the court says the tribes are immune under the bankruptcy code, but it would generate difficult cases about when it's really a tribe

versus really a private entity operating the business and when it's an agreement structured to affiliate with a tribe in order to avoid immunity. One other note about the argument, the lawyer for the tribes and some of the justices kept referring to the big four governments as the ones listed in the bankruptcy code as governments that could be sued. So foreign governments, state governments, federal and tribes. And Justice Sotomayor at one point piped up to make clear that she thought there was an important omission in this formulation of the big four. I would call it the Big Five territories. Territories. Fair enough. Thank you. So just Sotomayor reminding us that territories are often erased from our conception of governmental status. There is a question in a case involving the Puerto Rico Oversight Board involving

territorial sovereign immunity pending before the court, but she just wanted to make clear that territories were being pretty erased from this entire discussion. All right. We're not going to cover or discuss the case of Dupree versus Younger. Whenever I hear that case, I just think of you, me, and Dupree, which is that horrible movie. But anyway, Dupree versus Younger is a case which involves a procedural question about how to appeal something decided at a stage of the case known as summary judgment. But we did want to highlight this one exchange that has us, I don't know, a little bit worried, anxious about what the court might have in store for us. Counsel, we used to live in a world of trials. Now nobody wants to try. Everybody wants to do

everything on the papers. I go to trial, Your Honor. I miss it, too. It's a lot of fun, isn't it? It sure is. Yeah. More fun than here. I expect you're having fun here today, too, though. There's only one judge at trial. Yeah. Touché.

And along similar lines, we wanted to draw attention to this statistic from friend of the pod, Steve Vladek's SCOTUS newsletter, One First Street, which you should subscribe to if you are not already subscribed. So Steve notes that the 13 signed decisions and argued cases so far this term have come from six authors, Kavanaugh, who authored four, Sotomayor, Gorsuch, Barrett, and Jackson, who have authored two apiece, and Justice Kagan, who's authored one. Those are the six junior most justices by seniority. We have had no opinions yet from the Chief Justice, Justice Thomas, or Justice Alito, who likely receive at least the original majority assignments in the lion's share of the bigger and more divisive rulings that are coming. So yikes, buckle up buttercups, it's about to get real. We will talk about our plan for covering whatever it is the court has in store for us at the end of this episode.

We also got a really big grant for cases that the court will hear next term about when, if ever, there might be a First Amendment violation for a public official who blocks users on social media. And hmm, what to say? I think this could be a wonderful oral argument. I'm extremely excited to hear from reply guy Sam Alito, whose writings reveal he is extremely online, since I know he will have some thoughts about this one. This is a fascinating series of questions that arose in a case filed against Donald Trump that got decided in the district court in the Second Circuit, but never in the Supreme Court. And we have obviously much lower level officials who have blocked individuals on social media in this case. But I, too, am very excited about this oral argument and the case in general. Do you quote tweet and subtweet?

I mean, they're going to get such an education. There will be some good questions. They really will. They're so good. In actually good news, which is so rare, we learned last week that the Oklahoma Attorney General is going to recommend clemency for death row inmate Richard Glossop. He's a death row inmate whose case we've covered at various junctures on the show. Before we launched the show, he was the petitioner in Glossop v. Gross, a 2015 case about methods of execution. There have long been questions about his potential innocence, and it now sounds as though the attorney general of the state, after having taken a careful look, is recommending clemency. We don't know if that will actually result, but it is a very significant development. We also wanted to chat about the plan for the remainder of this season of the podcast as the court finishes up the term. So next week,

we will have our first ever listener grab bag episode, during which we will answer questions such as, does Leah know she has vocal fry? And have you ever considered not referring to justices by their first names or as Coach Kavanaugh, which is extremely disrespectful? So stay tuned for that and more. The short answer is no. No, we've considered it. We've just rejected it.

But still, you should tune in. You should definitely still tune in. That was just a teaser. After the grab bag episode, we did want to explain the plan for the podcast since we know we've gotten some new listeners since last season. So we want to just let you all know what's going to happen. So going forward, our episodes aren't going to be tied to the court's calendar because they don't have a calendar

anymore. They're not hearing oral arguments. And so we'll be covering instead decisions as the court issues them. But here's the thing. We have no idea when they will issue decisions. So depending on what happens, there may be some occasions for the fun and exciting emergency pod drops. So we'll be for really big decisions. We may do some emergency podcasting and drop some emergency episodes on you on top of our regular Monday one. So this

is the part of the year where you just get like a double dose of strict scrutiny sometimes. So there may be some double dose weeks, but depending on the pace of opinions, we may also release some deep dive episodes that are kind of interspersed in there. So if the court spends a couple of weeks between now and the end of June without issuing a lot of opinions, we may release some episodes that we've got recorded with some incredible guests that are basically in-depth conversations about books related to the Federalist Society, the religious rights efforts to take over the courts, the shadow docket, the civil rights struggle, struggle for Black freedom and equality in the lead up to the

Civil War, and so much more. So again, we're going to see what the court gives us, and we will in turn give you content that is responsive to what the court is giving and the periods when the court is a little bit more quiet. And this is the part of the episode where we're going to do a couple of shout outs. So we have some really great listeners. And we've been on the road to lots of different places. You know, we went to Hawaii, we're still thinking about Hawaii, aloha friends in Hawaii. But they're also friends of the pod elsewhere. and we wanted to give them some shout out. So we wanted to offer a very special strict scrutiny congratulations to Miss Halper's senior class at Trinity in New York City. They are avid listeners of the pod, and we just want to wish them well as they get ready to graduate from high school and to make their way in the world. They've had a terrific teacher in Rachel Halper, and we really appreciate her efforts to make sure that her students know about the court and all the stuff that they're doing. Also wanted to give a shout out to George Jarecki, who listens

to the show and whose daughter is a student, an economic student at the University of Michigan. Before we go, we also have a big announcement from our friends at Crooked. Crooked Media is venturing across the pond with a brand new podcast, and I'm so excited about it, Pod Save the UK. This hilarious and insightful new podcast is going to be your go-to source, besides me, for everything concerning the UK and its politics. The podcast will be hosted by comedian Nish Kumar and journalist Coco Khan. And it's everything you love about Cricket Podcast, except with a little British twist. It's going to be fantastic. So from strikes to scandals, they are going to cover all of the topics that matter. And it's from the minds of Cricket Media and our friends

at Reduce Listening. So you will not want to miss a single episode of Pod Save the UK. So subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts. And Melissa, you'll let us know when you have your first guest appearance on that pod, right? I mean, like, I don't understand why no one has called me about the coronation. I'm so ready. I've been preparing my whole life for this. Bookers, get on this. On it.

I'm here. I'm ready. I have podcasts. Podcast, television, radio. Melissa will take your calls. I'm here. I'm ready. I have thoughts. Podcast, television, radio. Melissa will take your calls. I can do history. Like, I remember the 1953 coronation. Not that I was there, but I've studied it in depth.

This is not a drill. Seriously, Melissa Murray needs to be on your airwaves about the coronation. Put me in Coach Kennedy. Put me in Coach Kavanaugh. I'm ready to play. She was born ready. And with that, don't forget to follow us at Crooked Media on Instagram and Twitter for more original content, host takeovers, and other community events. And if you are as opinionated as we are, consider dropping us a review.

Guys, there are some mean reviews. You need to drown out the voices of the haters. We may also be covering some of these during our listener grab bag episode. So there's value in mean reviews. But I'm just saying, if you have listened this far, you are a listener. And you could write a review that helps write the ship of our reviews. Because there are some crazies in there. And we need to write the balance in our reviews. Brett, you don't have to write a review.

Or Sam. Strict Scrutiny is a Crooked Media production hosted and executive produced by me, Leah Littman, Melissa Murray, and Kate Shaw, produced and edited by Melody Rowell, audio engineering by Kyle Seglin, music by Eddie Cooper, production support from Ashley Mizuo, Michael Martinez, and Ari Schwartz, and digital support from Amelia Montuth.