Strict Scrutiny - Let's Be Legends

Episode Date: December 6, 2021

Tiffany Wright joins the show to recap last week’s oral arguments and to preview the second week of the December sitting... hijinks ensue.Strict Scrutiny depends on support from listeners. Become a Glow subscriber today for just $7/month, and get access to special live shows and virtual happy hours.Resources: "Texas Abortion Law Complicates Care for Risky Pregnancies," by Roni Caryn Rabin. New York Times, November 26, 2021. "The Judge Who Told the Truth About the Mississippi Abortion Ban," by Reynolds Holding. The Atlantic, November 30, 2021. Amicus brief by the Howard University School of Law Human and Civil Rights Clinic 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 necks. Welcome back to Strict Scrutiny, your podcast about the Supreme Court and the legal culture that surrounds it. I'm your host, Melissa Murray. And I'm Leah Littman. And this is a very special episode because we are joined by Tiffany Wright. Welcome, Tiffany. Happy to be here. Thank you for

having me. Tiffany is the person who runs Howard's Appellate Law Clinic. And before she began running the clinic at Howard Law, she was a senior associate at Ora Carrington and Sutcliffe and at WilmerHale, where she was a member of the Supreme Court practices. And before that, Tiffany was the Jennifer Lopez of clerking because she served as a law clerk to three judges on three different levels that she leveled up every single time. So first she started with the Honorable Royce Lamberth on the D.C. District Court. She then went to the Honorable David Tatel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. And then finally, she took her amazing stuff to the show, clerking with the Honorable Sonia

Sotomayor of the U.S. Supreme Court. Tiffany is one of the rare people who has had a federal judge publicly admit that she convinced them about how a case should be resolved. So in a Washington Post profile of Tiffany, the judge she clerked for on the Court of Appeals, Judge Tatel said, you know, she came to me with this case and I was like, are you sure? And she convinced me that she was right. I mean, none of the judges I clerked for are definitely ever going to say that. So no. Let's just like, Tiffany not only is leveling up, she's on another level. And in addition to all of that, she's a magna cum laude graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center, where she served as a senior editor of the Georgetown Law Review and the editor-in-chief, that is the head person,

of the Georgetown Law Journal's Annual Review of Criminal Procedure. And she did all of this in law school while working full-time at the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Maryland, where she managed discovery and trial presentation in numerous RICO prosecutions. So Tiffany, one, how do you do it all? And how can I, how can we level up and be on your level? You have to give up sleep. I also had a toddler in law school. Okay, Tiffany. And you didn't leave your toddler at a safe haven designated site. I did not. I took on my burden of motherhood. I did not leave the toddler at a safe haven. You took on the burden of forced parenthood and you managed to do all of this. Well, I think you can make that argument at the Supreme Court.

I wish they would have me. I think they should. I think they should. Well, welcome to the show. Thank you. I'm happy to be here. We're delighted to have you. This week's show follows the usual format. So we're going to briefly discuss some news, then we'll hit recaps of last week's oral arguments, and we will preview some of the big ticket cases that are slated for next week's arguments. And then finally, we'll dig into a little court culture. And specifically, we're going to talk to Tiffany

about all of the great work that she's doing with Howard Law's Supreme Court Clinic. So Leah, do you want to read the news? Sure. So we wanted to highlight a New York Times story about the non-abortion costs of SB8 in Texas for those seeking to carry high-risk pregnancies to term. Obviously, any and all of the medical complications that arise during pregnancy are completely irrelevant since people can drop off their baby at a police station. But, you know, interesting story anyways. Well, it was actually a great story. It came out on November 26th by Roni Karen Rabin and basically just argued that there are a number of women who are pregnant and their pregnancies are sort of coming into conflict with the terms of SB8. And

so if they have a high risk pregnancy, they need certain kinds of prenatal care. Doctors are really worried about providing it because it may run afoul of SB8 if they need to counsel them about abortion or the prospect that the pregnancy may fail and they will need an abortion in the future. And so, again, we've already talked about the on-the-ground complications for the landscape of abortion access in Texas, but this is another level. And this isn't just about people who are seeking abortions, but pregnant people who are trying to continue with healthy pregnancies. What else has been going on in the legal news, Leah? We wanted to take a moment to recognize that the truly exceptional Sherilyn

Ifill announced that she will be stepping down as president and director counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and that she will be replaced by the also extremely wonderful and fabulous Janae Nelson. So we look forward to hopefully convincing Janae to join our show, just like Sherilyn did. Well, I will also say that Sherilyn Ifill is an alumna of the best law school, NYU Law. So we are going to be very excited to welcome her back. Now that she has more time on her hands, we'd love to have her down here in Washington Square hanging out

with us. So Sherilyn, come by. Let's hang out in the faculty lounge. You know, Melissa, I hate to say this. I fear she will be too busy because when Steve Breyer gets the fuck out of one first street, then she will be needed to replace him ASAP. So those are my plans for her. I like your plans, Leah. I like where your head's at. But I also know our boy Steve. So I'm just going to keep a seat warm in the faculty lounge for her until until the Senate changes when he steps down. When the Supreme Court overrules Roe versus Wade, Steve Breyer is going to insist on staying on the court for an additional term just to prove it's nonpartisan, because that will really do it. Big ally energy. Big ally energy. Very nice. Very nice. Do you

have any news you want to tell us, Tiffany? Anything that we should know about? I don't. I do want to say about Sherilyn, though, that in addition to being exceptional and great and all of those things, she's just such a great mentor to so many Black lawyers who are trying to follow in her footsteps. And every time I talk to her, I feel like, you know, both extremely intimidated and terrified, but also she just imparts so much wisdom. And I'm so grateful to her for the 10 years that she gave to LDF and really, really looking forward to whatever comes next for her, which I hope is to replace Justice Breyer. Sorry, Melissa. Tiffany's with me. This is how you level up, Steve.

We are all on the same page. Like I'll find a new faculty friend. Like I'll be okay hanging out drinking tea by myself. I would love to see her on the same page. I'll find a new faculty friend. I'll be okay hanging out drinking tea by myself. I would love to see her on the Supreme Court. We should also say that her tenure at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund was truly transformative. I mean, she sort of expanded the fundraising apparatus. They raised more money than I think they ever have in the history of the organization. They started the Marshall Motley Fellowship Program. This was named for Justice Thurgood Marshall and Judge Constance Baker Motley, the first Black woman to serve on a federal court. And the whole purpose behind the scholarship

program is to provide scholarships to law students who are going back to the South for the purpose of being civil rights lawyers in underserved communities. So it's an absolutely transformative program. I was delighted to be an interviewer for it. And again, we'll be the seeds of the next generation of civil rights lawyers in places that truly need them. So hats off to Sherilyn. And wherever you go, whether it's 1 First Street or 40 Washington Square South, we will be delighted to hang out with you. All right. So let's get into some oral argument recaps.

And it was a pretty easygoing week at the court. Not a lot of attention given to the court. Oh, sorry. Just messing around. Not surprisingly, it was a big week at the court because the court took up the oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization on Wednesday, December 1st. That, of course, was a challenge to Mississippi HB 1510, which bans abortion at just 15 weeks of pregnancy. Obviously, Dobbs was the big ticket case for last week. And since we covered the oral argument extensively in a special emergency episode slash therapy session, we won't spend too much time on it here. And we encourage you to

check out the emergency episode. But Tiffany, we didn't get a chance to talk about it with you. And so I guess briefly, we know what we thought about it, but we'd love to hear what someone outside of the strict scrutiny bubble chamber had to say. What did you think? Well, I'll start by saying, as I was telling you a few minutes ago, I turn 40 tomorrow. I have managed to make it nearly 40 years without drinking and Wednesday finally put me over the edge. And so that's how I thought that argument went. A couple things I'll say is I am as always so grateful for Justice Sotomayor because I really felt like she was carrying so much weight really by herself. And what I thought she was doing, and I saw you say this on Twitter, Melissa, is that she was really talking to the public and helping the public to understand folks who don't follow this, to understand just how bad this is and how awful it is. The thing that was

surprising to me about the argument is the role that race played, you know, from the very first question from Justice Thomas about, you know, Black women in South Carolina and the use of cocaine. It was interesting because he wasn't saying how awful it was that women who were struggling with the disease of substance abuse were treated that way, but sort of to make an argument that shuts down the bodily autonomy of those women. And then the discussion of Plessy and Brown, it was really difficult to listen to, knowing the history of what Mississippi specifically has done to Black women and their bodily autonomy, not recognizing that they could even be raped as a matter of law for many centuries.

The institution of slavery, compulsory sterilization for Black women. And then to stand up and end your argument by quoting from Justice Harlan's dissent and Plessy and saying that Brown is the greatest thing the court has ever done. When Mississippi fought brown tooth and nail and has been no friend to Black people and particularly Black women, that their law will hurt disproportionately, I thought was really hard to take and just pretty disgusting. And that, you know, the whole argument, I was sort of biting my teeth and just barely holding on. And that was the moment where I just sort of lost it because it was just so disingenuous and vile. Well, we thought that race would play a role in this argument, but it didn't come out in the way that we had predicted it would. We thought it would be Justice Thomas sort of talking about

abortion and eugenics. And obviously, he's saving that for the reason bans. But I, too, I think was really disturbed by the invocation of Plessy. I think the only thing that could have made it worse was if Justice Alito had begun talking about, yes, we have rescinded rights before. We rescinded the associational rights of white people when we overruled Plessy. But you're exactly right. I mean, there was an argument about bodily autonomy that was being borne on the backs of Black women. There was an argument about the legitimacy of the court overruling Roe that depended on the legitimacy of Brown. And that did not interrogate at all the history of Southern recalcitrants, including Mississippi's recalcitrants, to the tenets of Brown. I just want to say that I feel like Tiffany just put together the 10-minute version, Tiffany's version, of my efforts to try to talk about the Dobbs argument on Wednesday. And just like the 10-minute Taylor's version of All Too Well, way better. So thank you for that, Tiffany.

Tiffany, do a short film of this. It'll be great. Like, we'll get Gabrielle Union a short film of this. It'll be great. Like, we'll get Gabrielle Union to play black women. It'll be amazing. To your point, though, Tiffany, there's an amazing article by Pulitzer Prize finalist Reynolds Holding in The Atlantic. And it's called The Judge Who Told the Truth About the Mississippi Abortion Ban. And it's about Judge Carlton Reeves, who has been involved in this case.

He was the district court judge that first enjoined Mississippi HB 1510 and then was later rebuked by Jim Ho of the Fifth Circuit because in his district court opinion in joining the law, Judge Reeves, in a series of searing and pointed footnotes, called out this history in Mississippi of limiting the mobility and rights of Black people and Black women and noted that the whole idea that this law is enacted for the purpose of serving women's health was, as he put it, pure gaslighting. And so that's another fantastic article that if you're feeling some kind of way about the return to Plessy, that might help you get over it. You don't always have to turn to alcohol, Tiffany. And I'm sorry that this argument drove you to drink, but there are other ways. But alcohol is always good, too.

All right. For listeners who want to know, we highlighted the brief, Tiffany, you had filed with the Howard Clinic. And that brief does underscore, you know, the general efforts as well as Mississippi's efforts to control the reproductive autonomy of black women. So listeners should definitely check out that brief, which we will highlight on on Twitter, with a link as well. And just your point about Justice Sotomayor, I want to provide some anecdota for this just because I get really annoyed when people complain about Justice Sotomayor's questioning at oral arguments, just because I think-

Wait, wait, who's complaining? The men's, or certain segments of the men's. But I swim with a group of people here in Michigan, and I'm the only lawyer in the group. And the only person whose questions these very smart non-lawyers wanted to talk about from the argument was Justice Sotomayor. Obviously, they had some complaints about Justice Barrett's, but the questions that resonated with them were Justice Sotomayor's because she was explaining the stakes to real people's lives. And that is what they heard. And that is what mattered to them. And that's what she's so good for and why I'm just eternally grateful for her. She does the

same thing with police violence cases where, you know, the conservatives are very good at talking about qualified immunity in a way that sounds reasonable and rational if you're not familiar with what they're actually doing. And then she comes through and says, no, no, no. What you're actually doing is making it so that police don't have to think about the consequences of their actions. And it's the communities of color that bear those consequences. So she is very often the person who puts it in terms that the everyday person can understand both at argument and in her opinions. And so I think she's just such a critical force on the court. I mean, we could talk about Dobbs again some more. Obviously,

we want to, but there are other cases, other things to dismantle. So we should attend to those as well. All right. So in addition to Dobbs, the court also took up some cases dealing with Chevron deference in the administrative state. So two cases, Becerra v. Empire Health Foundation and American Hospital Association v. Becerra. They were argued on two different days. We previewed both of these cases in an earlier episode. But even though they were argued separately, both cases present similar challenges to the continued vitality of the Chevron doctrine and indeed the administrative state as we know it. So Leah, can you give us a quick primer on

Chevron deference and maybe tell us a little bit about these two cases? Yes. So Chevron versus Natural Resources Defense Council was a landmark case in which the court announced the legal tests for determining whether to defer to an administrative agency's interpretation of a statute that it administers. Under Chevron, an agency's interpretation is entitled to deference where an agency's interpretation is based on a permissible construction of the statute and Congress has not spoken directly to the precise issue. Becerra involves a dispute over how to calculate additional payments under the federal Medicare program for hospitals that serve a large number of low-income patients. At issue is whether, for purposes of calculating additional payments,

the Secretary of Health and Human Services has permissibly included in a hospital's Medicare fraction all of the hospital's patient days of individuals who satisfy the requirements to be entitled to Medicare Part A benefits, regardless of whether Medicare paid the hospital for those particular days. In a similar vein, American Hospital Association v. Becerra involves whether Chevron deference permits the Department of Health and Human Services to set reimbursement rates based on acquisition cost and vary such rates by hospital group if it has not collected adequate hospital acquisition cost survey data. It also involves an argument about whether the judicial review of health and human services adjustments is precluded by federal law. Specifically, the case is a challenge to a Department of Health and Human Services rule that cut Medicare reimbursement rates for prescription drugs for hospitals that participate in a program for underserved communities. I'm not going to lie.

Both of these cases are really in the weeds in terms of their relevant interpretations of these Medicare statutes. And if Dobbs did not drive you to drink, then these briefs and these different statutory provisions certainly will. But the underlying issue here is actually quite important, and it's whether reviewing courts should defer to the agency's interpretation of the statute it administers in circumstances where Congress has not actually provided clear instructions as to how those provisions should be interpreted. And we don't have to tell you, there were a number

of justices on the court who are skeptical, if not downright hostile, to the entire idea of the administrative state. And destabilizing or otherwise dismantling Chevron would be a major advancement in the effort to limit agency authority and the sweep of the administrative state. And so, as we predicted in our earlier episode, the anti-administrative state crowd was out in full, full force. So Leah, what did the men's have to say about the administrative state? So Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh pointed out what they argued were missteps by the agency. Justice Gorsuch characterized the agency's process as a long history of getting Congress's commands wrong. Justice Thomas also seemed to think the agency was interpreting the statute incorrectly. Justice Gorsuch floated a question about whether Chevron deference is ever appropriate when the agency's interpretation, quote, favors the government's own pecuniary interests.

He seemed to be urging the court to make a new additional exception about when Chevron deference does not apply. And Justice Thomas actually started off the argument in American Hospital Association asking about whether the court should just go ahead and do the thing and overrule Chevron. So let's play that clip here. Mr. Varelli, if we don't agree with your last statement, but rather with the D.C. Circuit and its application of Chevron, and that we agree that Chevron disposes of this. Would you argue or are you arguing that we should overrule Chevron to get to the statutory approach that you're taking? Let's be legends, boys. Let's do it.

Was this a warm-up to Dobbs, given that these cases were argued before Dobbs? He's like, I need to get out that overrule verb, you know, before. This was totally carbo-loading. Yeah. I have to say, I admire the

sort of workman-like nature of the conservative supermajority because, I mean, they are really like marching through their greatest hits. They have expanding Second Amendment rights, getting rid of Roe, destroying Chevron, destroying voting rights, all in the space of one year. And so it would be admirable if it weren't so wrong. But I do think that listening to this argument, HHS sort of gave the anti-chevron crowd a little bit to work with because there were shifting interpretations of the statute to mean diametrically opposed things and the bungled rulemaking process in 2003 to 2005, which is what Justice Sotomayor seemed really bothered by at this argument. But I have to say that I think it's sort of ridiculous to use this case or these cases as a way to get rid of or to undermine Chevron because Chevron sort of deals with this thing. If you think the process was wrong or the interpretation was wrong, then that means that it's unreasonable, which is what Chevron allows you to deal with. And so I think it won't stop them from using this case to undermine Chevron, but it sort of seems like Chevron was

in part designed to address exactly this sort of thing. Well, that was Justice Sotomayor's point. As you say, she wasn't especially sympathetic to the agency here. And at least in the first case, Becerra versus Empire Health, she specifically said, like, I don't think you're entitled to Chevron deference here. Like, you made too many mistakes in the initial rulemaking process. Those were procedural errors, and you don't get deference in those situations. But that would have been too minimalist, I think, for the rest of her colleagues. And again, I think, you know, you had the sort of, you know, YOLO, like, let's do it. And, you know, Justice Alito later picked up on Justice Thomas's

invitation to just go whole hog and overrule Chevron. So here's a clip of him doing the full Trollito. Can I just take you back to Justice Thomas's first question? If the only way we can reverse the D.C. circuit is to overrule Chevron, do you want us to overrule Chevron? I think you're right that this was a Trollito movement because the lawyer who is arguing for the hospitals is Don Verrilli, the former solicitor general to the Obama administration. And so Justice Alito wanted to be like, ha ha ha, like, I can get a lib to say, you know, if the only way to rule for me is to overrule Chevron, just do it. And, you know, I know that brings him joy in his heart.

And Don really tried or did a pretty valiant job of not doing that and saying that we think you can get to ruling for us within the Chevron framework. Yes. But yes, it was totally a trolling moment. And he tried his very best to get the former Solicitor General to agree with him. There were some softer sides of the conservative legal movement. Not everyone had their Leonard Leo to do list and was just checking things off left and right. Chief Justice Roberts seemed at times- Going to find out who's naughty and nice. Well, Santa Fedsock is coming to town and John, you may have some coal in your stocking. So the Chief Justice seemed quite sympathetic to the idea that the government was perhaps

making too much of a distinction between the phrases entitled to and eligible for in the relevant statutes. The relevant statutes here, of course, are the Medicare statute and the Social Security statute, when the ordinary meaning of the two terms is probably the same in these contexts. And I think he and Justice Kagan were perhaps suggesting that because they were relatively similar terms, that was enough to provide deference to the agency in this context. So, you know, perhaps a moment of cross aisle coalition building between the two of them, but the rest of the conservative bloc seemed pretty much on message and the message was burn it all down. So the justice who is soon to be replaced by Sherrilyn Ifill was really in his element in

this argument. What is what is that element? He had some additional comments about how reading is hard. So let's play that clip here. Right. And that's quite a job. I mean, do I understand this correctly? And the chances I understand it correctly are near zero. Okay. Just follow this and see if I understand it. There are two fractions. Call them fraction one, fraction two. Medicare and the Medicaid. Okay. Or the Medicare and Medicaid over Medicare and SSI over Medicare. Okay, fraction one, fraction two. And there are a few people who have Medicare.

There are some people who have Medicare, but their benefits, Medicare won't pay. And it might not pay because, in fact, there's somebody else to pay. Or it might not pay because they used up all they had on Medicare. Okay, so they won't pay. Now, what do we do with those people? Do we put them in one? Or do we put them in the denominator of two somehow? Okay, that's the issue.

And so let's call them people who've exhausted their benefits. So these people are exhausted, just like me, after reading this case. Okay? We're exhausted. He's exhausted. You know what the remedy is for exhaustion? Retirement. Retirement and sleep. Right. Not hard. Not hard. The Chief Justice referenced this Breyer moment later on,

so we can play that clip here. This is Breyer. Justice. later on. So we can play that clip here. I will say, I know we're not supposed to joke about Justice Breyer retiring because he doesn't want to hear it from us. And I get it. But some of these questions really struck me as way off the mark. So here's one question that he offered that I'm still puzzling over. Here's the clip. Let's try it out.

Ordinary language. Math class, high school teacher has a list of special rewards. Part A says, I scream. I scream, but no more than two a week. So the kids use two a week. Huh? Yeah, but he fits. He needs the reward. He deserves the reward. He's entitled. He's entitled to ice cream under Part A. He fits within it. Ah, but he's not

eligible for ice cream now because he's already had his due for the week. So I read that and try and put it in my ordinary English ice cream high school mind, and there we are. And I have an ordinary meaning that seems to me closer, by that much, to what the government says and what you say. So suppose I believe that. Next question, Chevron. Okay. Gee, do you really apply Chevron where they're so mixed up that there are only two people in the United States when they put out the the notice and comment and nobody understands what it means and they don't even know what their own program is? Hmm. I'm stuck. All right. What do I do? What? Like, what was this? Like, we're back to Lowell High School, San Francisco. Like,

I don't even understand what this is. Do you understand what he was trying to get at here? I do not. I really don't. Again, and not to bring it back to Dobbs, but just this is a really long intervention. And I don't know that it's particularly helpful. And it feels a little bit like it's for his benefit and not for anyone else's. Like, I mean, he's having fun. The rest of us are in hell. Yeah. Yeah.

And this was I didn't know it when I was listening to this before Dobbs. But this was also felt like a warm up to Dobbs for him because he kicked off Dobbs by doing the exact same thing, having a soliloquy with himself while the rest of us are like, what the hell is going on here? So we're going to get him a skull and he's going to be like Yorick. Anyway, yeah, I don't even know what to say, but it does seem weirdly indulgent. Yes. Yes. Okay. Just a side note, beyond the possibly very broad implications for Chevron deference at the administrative state, both of these cases actually have quite significant real-life consequences for marginalized communities.

So the poor, the elderly, the groups that rely on Medicare and the federal drug prescription rates. And Justice Kagan noted this in her question, that all of the government's formulas exclude people generally thought to be low income. So we're talking about this in terms of technicalities and Chevron deference, but there actually are real people on the ground here who are going to be affected in significant ways by whatever the court comes out with here. Not to take this back to Justice Breyer, but I did want to note that we seemed to have at least one other person who was not particularly amused by Justice Breyer's interventions in these cases. And that may have been Justice Kagan, who brought some I'm tired of these fools energy to the argument this time may be directed at Justice Breyer.

But the adjustment... Well, we're probably going to ask the same question. I doubt it. All right. All right. I'll ask two questions quickly. This was my favorite non-Dobbs moment of this week. She just sounded so annoyed. We're not going to ask the same question. I'm pretty sure about that.

So it was a moment. I doubt it. My question will be a question that will not refer to my ordinary English ice cream high school mind. My question will not be an iambic pentameter. We should also give a little nod to our missing co-host, she who will not be named. Who's canceled. We're not canceling her. She's not here today because she has to catch up on all the television she's never watched in her life. So that's why she's gone today. But as Kate predicted, Justice Gorsuch was a tad bit unbearable at the oral argument in American Hospital Association. So let's play a couple of clips here.

Maybe I'll ask you a question more generally. How much ambiguity is enough? You could write a whole law review article about that. Somebody has. Yeah, I know. I don't think I can give you an answer to that question, Justice Gorsuch, but I suppose I would say we agree that you would apply the tools of statutory interpretation. So the government can't tell us how much ambiguity is enough? I'm not sure anybody's answered that question.

It's been a long time. And then here's another one. Justice Gorsuch, can you? I can't help myself, sorry. One last question. If the government can't tell us how much ambiguity is enough, 40 years almost after Chevron. What to say, ladies? What to say? I wonder how you become

this way, right? Like, do you practice to be this just difficult? And it comes across, and I know we'll get to this in the Cummings argument as well, but like you have to, it takes some effort to be this sort of pretentious and difficult to deal with intentionally in argument. So again, those two cases, just the warm up for the beginning of the end of the administrative state, watch this space. Another case that the court heard last week is a major disabilities rights case. This is Cummings versus. Premier Rehab Keller, PLLC. This involved a lawsuit filed in federal court in 2018 in which Jane Cummings, who has been deaf since birth and

is legally blind and whose primary means of communications is American Sign Language, alleges that Premier Rehab Keller, a company that provides physical therapy services and receives federal funding, violated federal anti-discrimination laws when it refused to provide her with an ASL interpreter. She sought compensatory damages for, quote, the humiliation, frustration, and emotional distress that she experienced. At issue in this case is whether federal disability laws allow Cummings to recover damages for emotional distress. And at Oral Argument, there was really, I think, a kind of quest to identify historical analogs to these kinds of suits or analogs for recovering damages from these kinds of injuries. So lots of discussion of Title VII, lots of discussion of the common law,

lots of discussion of the restatements of contracts and torts. And, you know, what to say about all of this, Leah? question in this case whether you can recover for emotional distress under this federal statute by looking to the history and trying to analogize to very different kinds of cases at common law. So let's play that clip here. The treatises all identify a very narrow, the general rule is that emotional distress is not part of compensatory damages for breaches of contract. So they're a very narrow category of cases, as the Chief Justice said, including, you know, the telegram cases and disposal of dead body cases and marriage contract. And the best cases for you are the innkeeper and common carrier cases. So how close is that analogy, the analogy that you're trying to draw?

It seems to me that you would need to kind of draw a pretty strong analogy to that particular category, wouldn't you? The question she seems to want to answer is whether this federal disability law is more like a telegram case or a case involving the disposal of a dead body. And of course, the history that she is omitting is the very purpose of these statutes, which is to provide a remedy for exactly this sort of harm, intentional discrimination. So that was seemed to me that they're focusing on the wrong area of history here. But they were very concerned, I think, with the prospect that allowing compensatory damages in this statutory circumstances would allow for uncapped compensatory damages as opposed to damages under Title VII, which are capped, for example. And so because Congress has been silent about any kind of cap, I think they sort of imagined this to be some kind of windfall for

the disabled person who is able to recover compensatory damages on what they seem to be suggesting are pretty thin you know, thin and amorphous snowflake liberal claims of humiliation, emotional distress, etc. I thought that position as counsel, though, did a really good job at making the point that those sorts of large windfalls just haven't existed in these cases. And so you're not seeing this parade of horribles. And on the point about the not understanding sort of the, or trying to portray the damages as like liberals just being weak, I thought that the moment that

really struck me was when Alito asked the question about, you know, specify exactly what the harm was here. Can you quantify it? And he seemed to be really dismissive of this form of harm. And I thought that it displayed a sort of dismissiveness that can only come about if you are sort of a white man who's never been at the end of this sort of discrimination. And it was a really and Justice Sotomayor tried to come in and say, no, like, tell me more about exactly what the harm is. And the harm is, of course, the humiliation and being made to feel like you're a second class citizen. But Alito and the conservatives just didn't seem to want to accept that these were real harms that are deserving of compensation. I thought that LDF's brief did an excellent job of explaining why that is wrong. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I think there's a lot to say here. Could we talk a little bit about the advocates? So Andrew Rosinski was the lawyer for the petitioner here. And he is a lawyer who specializes

in working for the deaf community. And he is with a firm that specifically focuses on bringing claims to vindicate the rights of deaf people. And so he's sort of all in here. I think this was his first outing before the court. And hats off to him. Like this is, I think, a hostile crowd to do your first oral argument. And on the other side was Colleen Sindak, who is, you know, she's not Paul Clement, but this wasn't her first time before the lectern. And I think Andrew Rosinski had some tough sledding ahead lectern. And I think Andrew Rosensky had some tough sledding ahead of him and I think had a harder time sort of crystallizing some of his points. He got a lot of assists, I think, from Justice Sotomayor, who stepped in occasionally to kind of clarify his arguments and sort of point the way. But I thought the justices really

kind of beat him up a lot on some of these points. Yeah. And I was I was grateful. This was also, if I might say, a great week for women advocacy, women being advocates at the court, because I thought Colleen came in after he had such a hard time and was really getting beat up. And she sort of, you know, did a lot of assisting and cleaning up some of the answers that were given in the first part of the argument. So she, I thought, was fantastic. But I did get the sense, but I often get the sense from, you know, particularly Justices Alito and Gorsuch that they were being really tough on him in a way that was unfair because, of course, they just didn't want to hear the answer that he was giving. It's not that he wasn't providing effective answers, but there were not answers that they wanted to accept.

So he definitely had a tough time. They seemed impatient because he was a little halting and tentative. I think, though, and this is this is another point about cultural competency at the court, because I think that that is something that comes with working with the deaf community. I, for a very long time, was an interpreter and trained at Gallaudet and did a lot of work with the deaf community. I, for a very long time, was an interpreter and trained at Gallaudet and did a lot of work with the deaf community. And like, that is just something that comes with you. You can't speak quickly because you will not be receiving what's coming back to you because of the delay when you're dealing with folks who are hearing as opposed to people who are deaf. So as I was listening to him, at first I was getting a little frustrated because

they would ask a question and then there would be a long pause or he wasn't like, but then I had to check myself and say, no, wait, like that is exactly what someone who's been working in the deaf community would do because that's how you have to communicate in that space. That's actually a great point that I had not even thought of. I assumed that the halting nature of his responses was a factor of nerves and that this was his first time. But you're exactly right. I mean, it likely is part of just how he's conditioned given the communities with whom he works. Yeah. Our boy Steve also had things to say in this case. Again, one has to hydrate and get ready for one's big, big race. And of course, that big race was on Wednesday. So here is a clip of Justice Breyer, who in peak Justice Breyer form interrupted Justice Barrett to make this intervention. Available.

The innkeeper. Oh, well, that's what I was going to go to, the innkeeper. I think that's very bad for you. Yeah, I do too. The same question. I mean, you know, nope, you can't stay in the room. You have to sleep outside. There you are, outside, and that's uncomfortable.

But also all the little kids come around and say, ha, ha, ha, he's sleeping outside tonight, ha, ha, ha, just as they might say something even worse for the person who can't walk upstairs. There's no elevator. And so this handicapped person is trying to climb up the stairs. And that's a bore and painful. And also a lot of people might think this is a little you know sort of make fun of the person that's poor canon shan mcgann who's just in the middle of all of this this yeah i mean justice fryer also credited his law clerk whose research skills he was complimentary of this is

something he does with some frequency he's like I had my law clerk go look for this. And, you know, here's what they said. So let's play that clip here. My law clerk has looked up a lot of these things. He's usually right. I mean, she's found about, I don't know, five treatises going back to 1883 and 32 cases. You just heard him say and a lot of other stuff. And they all seem to say, well, there is an exception where the object of the contract is such that that's likely to be the harm.

And so where do we think this is going? I think the deaf community loses here, don't you? That's where I that's what I walked away feeling that this was this was a loss. And I think it's a loss that's going to have, unfortunately, consequences that go far beyond the deaf community and touch people who are victims of racial discrimination and sex discrimination under Title IX. Like there are all sorts of consequences to this case that are really, really quite unfortunate. So again, the spending clause provisions that give states money but condition it on them following and complying with anti-discrimination statutes, this decision, if it goes the way I think we all think it will, will not only limit the prospect of compensatory damages for those seeking claims on the basis of disability law, but other kinds of civil rights laws that fall under those spending clause privileges. Just one more point on that. I think it's an interesting example of something that you all discuss a lot, which is the distinction between rights and remedies. And so you have federal

statutes that say you have some protection against this type of harm. And then the court comes in and says, yes, well, you know, you may have been wrong, but we're going to take away your ability to get an effective remedy for the exact sort of harm that Congress was trying to remedy. And so this is just another example of this court doing that. Oral argument previews. We will just quickly go through these since we'll obviously cover them more in depth when we do the recaps in the arguments. One of the cases being argued next week is Hughes versus Northwestern University, an ERISA case. Melissa wanted me to describe this as a totally sexy ERISA case. I dissent from that.

At issue is whether allegations. What? ERISA is so sexy, though, actually. The S in Arisa is for sexy. Okay. And there are often cases with really salacious facts. That's true. I am an Arisa fan. I think it's very sexy. Well, I'll revisit my apparent bias. At issue here is whether allegations that a retirement plan charged its participants excessive fees are sufficient to state a claim

against planned fiduciaries for breach of the duty of prudence under the ERISA statute. The Solicitor General's Office really pressed for the court to grant review in this case. In addition to Hughes v. Northwestern University, the court will also take up United States v. Taylor, where it will consider whether an attempted robbery under the Hobbs Act qualifies as a crime of violence, meaning that it has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person or property of another. There is currently a circuit split on this issue, and the Hobbs Act

imposes a mandatory minimum sentence of five years for the use of a gun during a crime of violence. So the question of what a crime of violence is will obviously be important because it has the potential to expand the category of defendants who will be eligible for this mandatory minimum going forward. So really important criminal justice case being argued next week. Another important case is Shin v. Ramirez, which considers how the equitable rule announced in Martinez v. Ryan interacts with the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, or EDPA, which precludes a federal court from considering evidence outside of the state court record in many cases.

Specifically, the question is whether federal courts, when reviewing the merits of a claim that a defendant's trial counsel was constitutionally ineffective, may hear evidence about whether the trial counsel was constitutionally ineffective. If that sounds odd or silly, it is, but it's also extremely consequential. The question really is whether federal courts, when reviewing ineffective assistance of trial counsel claims that Martinez v. Ryan said they could review, whether those courts can hear any evidence to support those claims. We've previously talked about Shin v. Ramirez a bunch in a previous episode, so I'm not going to spend more time here, but we are going to do a much deeper dive on the oral argument recap. Another case that's being heard next week is Patel v. Garland. And this concerns a jurisdictional question about whether immigration decisions are reviewable in certain circumstances, and if they are, whether a non-material misrepresentation

as to immigration status can render a non-citizen inadmissible. And so the facts are actually really striking here. The petitioner checked a box on a Georgia driver's license application falsely stating that he was a U.S. citizen, even though he was eligible for a license regardless of his citizenship status. He might have had to answer more difficult questions, though, because he was then seeking to regularize his immigration status after entering the United States unlawfully. I think that's part of the confusion here about what he did with regard to the driver's license. When he later sought to adjust his status to lawful permanent resident and obtain a green card, a divided panel

of the Board of Immigration Appeals denied him relief, holding that he was inadmissible because he had falsely represented himself as a U.S. citizen for a benefit under state law, the driver's license. When the petitioner sought review of that decision, the en banc 11th Circuit, in a departure from the decisions of other courts, rejected the government's own reading of the statute, and it held that the court lacked jurisdiction to review threshold eligibility findings for discretionary relief from removal, including whether the immigrant is inadmissible for incorrectly representing himself as a U.S. citizen. The government's position was that the statute foreclosed only review of the ultimate

discretionary decision about whether to grant relief, not foreclosing review of predicate or threshold conclusions about whether someone is even eligible for that discretionary relief. The 11th Circuit also held that non-citizens are inadmissible, even if their misrepresentation of citizenship is immaterial to the government benefit they are seeking. The case is interesting in part because the petitioner contends that the 11th Circuit erred in holding that the federal statute bars judicial review of all findings related to a non-citizen's eligibility for relief in the form of adjustment of status. And, wait for it, the government agrees. As the government explains, the federal statute precludes judicial review of only

discretionary determinations related to the granting of relief under the relevant section. The 11th Circuit's contrary conclusion, they argue, implicates an acknowledged and entrenched circuit split on the scope of the relevant section. And accordingly, this case then is a suitable vehicle for resolving that disagreement. Where the parties, however, part ways is on the second question. The petitioner contends that the 11th Circuit erred in holding that a false representation of U.S. citizenship need not be material to the benefits sought to render a non-citizen inadmissible under federal law. Remember, he could have gotten the driver's license regardless of his citizenship status. The government disagrees with that assessment and notes that, unlike the first question, the 11th Circuit's not establish that his false claim of U.S. citizenship was immaterial to the obtaining of the driver's license that he sought and received.

So on these grounds, the government argues that review of the second question is unwarranted in the first instance. Again, major immigration rights case and like an interesting sort of confluence of state law issues as well mixed in. The final case, I think it is fair to say, Leah, and you can correct me if you think I'm wrong on this, but I think this is probably going to be the big swinging marathon case of the week. The one for which these other cases we've talked about are merely going to be the carp loading, hydration station warmup for what is to come. And no, I have to disagree with you on this since Shin versus Ramirez is a federal habeas case about vindicating ineffective assistance of trial counsel claims. Melissa, you knew you knew you were setting me up for this.

If Shin weren't in the calculus, I think you agree with me that this is the big one. So that case is Carson versus Macon, and it is a follow-on to October term 2019's Espinosa v. Montana Department of Revenue. There, the court ruled that although states are not required to subsidize private education, states that choose to do so cannot exclude religious schools from receiving funding simply because they are religious. Carson v. Macon involves a question that Espinosa did not resolve, whether a state violates the Constitution when it operates a program

that provides students with money to attend private schools but bars them from attending schools that provide religious instruction. And the context of this is quite interesting. The case comes out of Maine where over half of the school districts don't actually operate their own high schools because the areas are too rural. And so instead, what they do is they pay for students to attend public or private high schools elsewhere, both in and outside of the state. And the tuition assistance program only allows these funds to be used for quote unquote, non-sectarian schools. The challengers in this case are parents who want

to use these public funds to send their children to private Christian schools that the state has labeled sectarian and therefore ineligible for the funding. And interestingly, the parents in their briefs cite the Cardigan Mountain School, a private boys' school in New Hampshire, that the state has labeled non nonsectarian, even though its program is, quote unquote, nominally religious. And so one of the questions here is, now that the Cardigan Mountain School has entered the chat, will Chief Justice Roberts, whose son attends or did attend the Cardigan Mountain School, will he recuse himself from the consideration of this case that has the potential to further expand the scope of the free exercise clause? So Leah,

what are the over and under on whether the Chief Justice recuses here? It's not happening. It's just not. So LOL, right. LMAO. No, not happening. He also gave the commencement speech at the Cardigan Mountain School. Yes, he did. But I think there's a 0% chance that he recuses himself. When the VMI case came before the court in 1996, Justice Thomas's son, Jamal, was a student at VMI. And he, I think, appropriately recused himself. You know, it's a little different here because I think the chief justice's son has since

graduated from the Cardigan Mountain School. So he's not a student there, but weird nonetheless. And also that school isn't a party. And, you know, it's just one of the parties pointed to that school as an example. So, you know, different. But why would the petitioners raise it is the question. I think maybe to give some familiarity or context or an example with which they knew one of the justices would be familiar in order to strengthen their case. So that's what's

going on at the court in the second week of December. Who knows if December, the second week, will be as eventful and momentous and devastating as the first week. We can only hope they're just three weeks until the end of this year anyway. Okay, so let's talk some court culture. And Tiffany, we want to hear all about everything you're doing at the Howard University School of Law's Civil Rights Clinic. So can we talk a little bit about that? Sure. So Howard, for anyone who doesn't know,

is the nation's oldest historically Black law school. Can we talk about some of your famous alumni? We can. There was a Justice Thurgood Marshall. I've heard of him. And along with the former dean on Charles Hamilton Houston, they created what was called the West Point of the civil rights movement, the training ground for really, really famous lawyers that really devised the strategy for pushing back and eventually overturning separate but equal. And many of those cases and one of the things that I've talked about with the dean is, you know, 60 years ago, when those cases were before the court, they were almost always argued by Black lawyers. So when there was a civil rights case, when there was a case that disproportionately impacted the Black community, it was a Black lawyer that was standing up and putting the argument before the court. And of course, now that is completely changed such that when there's a civil rights case, chances are there will be no Black lawyer involved on the merits outside of the amicus pool, which tends to be a little bit more diverse. And so we've been trying to change that. And in looking to how you get more Black students involved, we noticed that at most predominantly white institutions,

especially at the top law schools, top 14, there are appellate litigation training programs, practicums, clinics, and none of the six historically Black law schools have an appellate litigation training programs, practicums, clinics, and none of the six historically Black law schools have an appellate litigation clinic, an appellate litigation center, and are not really involved in the appellate community. And so we've been trying to change that by taking the civil rights clinic, which has always existed at Howard, and giving it an exclusively appellate focus. And we've, I just wrapped up the third semester with students in that clinic. And it's been so great to hear from Black students who say,

we learn about Thurgood Marshall and Constance Baker Motley and all of these folks, but we never thought that that was a viable career path for us because we don't see anybody who looks like us arguing at the court or practicing at the court. And so having them writing briefs that are filed at the Supreme Court and just the look on their faces when they do that. And I send them the booklets after they're printed and they're just so excited because they've now worked on their first Supreme Court brief. And so we're really trying to give students the

confidence and the knowledge that you belong in this space, you can absolutely do it, and you're just as good as any of the lawyers who are standing up there today. That's absolutely amazing. Howard is, of course, the perfect home for this. It's the place that trained Thurgood Marshall, Charles Hamilton Houston, William Hastie, the first federal judge, taught at Howard, Spotswood Robinson. Polly Murray. Polly Murray. Yes, yes. I mean, like Howard University School of Law is so pivotal and instrumental in the whole fight for civil rights in the legal community.

And it's fantastic. And of course, you've just mentioned the Dean of Howard Law, Danielle Holly Walker, who is absolutely fantastic. So, I mean, you could not have a better boss. She's amazing. She is amazing. And we're also, Professor Valerie Schneider, I have to give her a shout out because even before we switched the clinic to focus on appellate stuff, she was trying to revive

the MOOC program at Howard. So of course, Brown was mooted at Howard. Obergefell, I think, was mooted at Howard. And we're trying to bring that back. So we actually mooted Dobbs and Thompson versus Clark and have a couple more cases for this term that we hope to moot. And what we're trying to do is have something like what Georgetown has with their Mood program, with the difference that we only moot the pro-civil rights advocate or the pro-criminal defendant advocate. And we also prioritize diverse advocates. And we guarantee that all of the Mood panels we put together will be extremely diverse. And so we are going out there and finding folks who are representative of the communities impacted by these decisions to be on moot court panels, which I think is also really meaningful.

So you're essentially seeding the next generation of appellate lawyers. I mean, one of the things we've talked about incessantly on this podcast is how advantage compounds. So yes, Paul Clement is a great advocate, but one of the reasons he's argued before the court 150 times and has been able to say that NYU doesn't have a campus is because he's done it before and people are willing to trust him because he has experience. And so experience is a massive advantage that allows your advantages to compound over time. And so if you can't get in the door to get your first experience, then you're really at a disadvantage. You're on the back foot. And so you're giving these students an advantage even before they're formally barred and in practice.

Yeah. And we hope, I mean, the next step of this, this is only our second year, but the hope is to ultimately have students arguing. And so the DC circuit allows students to argue, the fourth circuit does. And these are things that, you know, I was in the appellate litigation clinic at Georgetown and, you know, those were opportunities that were available to us. And so we want to make sure that they're also available to Howard students because being able to graduate law school and saying, I've worked on a Supreme court brief and I've made an argument in a court of appeals is a major thing that we're really trying to push. And also trying to push students towards, you know, we have a lot of overlap with the MacArthur Justice Center and their appellate folks.

And we've had some students work there trying to place our students in the appellate shops at some of the firms that are notoriously not diverse. I'm tired of being the only black person in all of the appellate shops I've worked in. And so maybe we can change that by getting these firms to actually recruit appellate practitioners from Howard students, which would be a really, really great thing. So we're trying very hard to train the next generation of appellate lawyers who hopefully will look a lot different than this generation. Can I ask another question? I have two questions. One, I imagine that having this kind of appellate experience will make it perhaps easier for students to be competitive for clerkships. I think Howard students are already quite competitive, but I mean, this is sort of an added feather in the cap that really allows you to stand out. And again,

getting into these appellate shops at the major law firms often is a function of having a set of particular credentials, one of which is a clerkship, whether for a district court or a circuit court. So that's a huge thing. And so we should talk a little bit about the clerkship pipeline and the lack of diversity there. And then I think just generally, I did not go to an historically Black college or university, whether for undergrad or law school. And part of that, I think, is because I was sort of in that immediate post-Brown generation where a lot of people were just going to predominantly white institutions. Like my father was a Howard graduate for both undergrad and graduate school. And he was just of the view that if these other vistas were open to

you, why wouldn't you take them? But now, I mean, I sort of wonder if there isn't something to be gained from being at an institution that is actually completely organized around you and your experience and where, I mean, and this is where I'm going to sound like Clarence Thomas, where, you know, you're not merely aesthetic and, you know, like, but you're the main course and it's about you. And so could you talk a little bit about being at an historically Black law school? I also did not go to NHBCU either for undergrad or law school, in part because, I mean, my undergrad story is I went to Maryland because my high school boyfriend was in Maryland. And so I made a horrible life decision.

But we have all done this. We have all done this. But I will say that my husband was the very first person I met when my mom dropped me off at college and we're still together. You know, all these years. Was he your high school boyfriend? No, no. I you know, there was a little drama there, but we worked it out and then we eventually got married. You did work it out. Level up once again. It was definitely a level up. And then for law school, I actually really wanted to go to Howard, but they don't have an evening program. And I needed an evening program because we wanted to have a two income household and really needed to do that. is such a freeing experience because there are things that in my predominantly white law school and work environment, people don't understand. And I have to do a lot of explaining before I

get to the point where as at Howard, there's so much that we just know and that is understood. And it's just so freeing to like be dealing with folks who get it. Right. And so we can start from a different place. right? Instead of starting from let's understand these basic things about each other, we can start from we get that and now what do we do? But what I do try to teach my students is when you leave this environment, a lot of your job will be to take your experiences as a Black person or a minority and make it relevant. And so when we file briefs at the Supreme Court, for example, and just using Dobbs as an example, all of the people who worked on that brief were Black women

and they knew what their experiences were as Black women, but to get them to explain that experience, the historical experience and their present experience in a way that made it legally relevant to the question before the court was something that took some work. And so being able to convert your experiences into a way that the broader community can understand and understand its importance is a skill that we work on. But it is very freeing to be in an institution where, you know, everyone looks like you and there's a shared history and a shared culture. And you're not worried about things like, you know, I just did a training at a law firm about implicit bias. And I'm like, wow, being at Howard, like that's just not a thing that, like nobody is implicitly discriminated against people because of their race, because, you know,

everybody's Black. So that has also been really freeing. And the clerkship process has been also interesting. It's a huge part of our job, we think, to get our students clerkships. And one way we do that is making sure they're exposed to every semester we bring in a federal judge. And so we've And so we've had so far it's been judges from the D.C. Circuit. And then we bring in a panel of like black Supreme Court and Court of Appeals clerks. And then we help them with their applications. And that was a little bit difficult because judges are not familiar with Howard, unfortunately, and their grading system is a little odd. They get numeric grades. And so you have to overcome that hurdle. But in the very first semester, we were able to get a student placed on the D.C. Circuit for a clerkship. And that was only the second ever Howard clerk, we think, who's been clerking at the D.C.

Circuit. The first was with Judge Spotswood Robinson. So now there is a D.C. Circuit clerk, and I'm hoping that that person goes on to the Supreme Court. And we had a lot of success with other students and placing them in court of appeals clerkships, which, you know, it was my first time being on the phone harassing judges and writing letters and really, really trying to work hard for the students. But it was such a pleasure to do. But there definitely is some work that needs to be done there. And judges are used to gender parity, right? Most judges, I don't want to say most judges because there are some notable exceptions, but a lot of judges say, I want to have like roughly if I'm going to hire two guys, I want to at least try to hire two women. And I would like to see a world where judges are doing the same thing when it comes to racial diversity and making sure that there is representation there as well.

So lots of work to be done in the clerkship process. I think there's a huge amount of work to be done in the clerkship process. You know, I clerked for the Second Circuit in 2003. So, you know, almost 20 years ago. And I was the only black clerk on the circuit that year. And I don't know that it's that different 20 years on. And, I mean, and thank God for then Judge, now Justice Sotomayor, because she actually made it a priority to have a diverse chambers. And I know she does that at the Supreme Court as well. And I actually don't think she gets me, hey, do you have your Supreme Court

applications ready? At first I said no. And the reason I said no was like, I was really sick of being in a world of people that were nothing like me. It was not just racially, but like, I grew up with nothing and I'm dealing with very privileged folks and it was just really hard. So I didn't even want to go to the court because I thought it was going to be more of that. And thankfully, Justice Sotomayor made sure that that was not my experience. I clerked with two other women of color in the chambers. So we had three women of color at one time. It was a phenomenal experience.

And she doesn't get the credit she deserves because her chambers is consistently the most diverse in the building. Well, it was not the first chambers to have all-female clerks, Tiffany. So she really missed an opportunity. She really missed an opportunity. You get stories about Justice Kavanaugh's all-female chambers or Justice Gorsuch hiring the first Native American law clerk when Justice Sotomayor is continually and regularly having a diverse crop of clerks all the time.

And it's a it's a priority. Having gone through the hiring process with her, it is a it's a real priority. And she deserves and I wish that other justices would take after her on that score. So what can folks do to support the clinic at Howard University School of Law? A few things. One, we always welcome mentors for our students. We always welcome people to hire our students. We also, you know, look for cases for our students. And we're in that process now for the spring semester is actually looking for matters for the students to work on and get really good experience. And so if you have cases or whether it's amicus work or actually merits representation, please feel free to reach out. We tend to focus on

core civil rights issues that impact Black and Brown communities. So anything like that is in our wheelhouse. We welcome any help, of course, with the clerkship process. And of course, if you are getting ready to argue a case or you want to have a moot at Howard, then that's something that's also really meaningful for the students. The students got to write a brief in dubs and then sit through and moot and watch Julie actually argue the case. And I can tell you that that was just such a phenomenal experience for them that they will take with them. And it means a lot. And so to the extent we can replicate that, please feel free to reach out. Well, I'll sign up. I'll help

mentor a student. That'd be awesome. I will be in your email box. Okay. Be in my email box. Actually, I'll give you my number. I'm like terrible at email. I'm like, but I'll give you my number. Tiffany, this is amazing. Thank you so much for joining us to recap last week. Pour one out for yourself because it's going to be a long term. I'm definitely going to drink tomorrow for my 40th. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. Thank you.

I'm going to celebrate. Well, we celebrate you. You level up everything and you've leveled up this podcast today. So thank you I'm going to celebrate. Well, we celebrate you. You level up everything and you've leveled up this podcast today. So thank you so much for joining us. We are delighted to have you. An open invitation to come back whenever you'd like. Thank you. I would love to. Yes. This is strict scrutiny, Tiffany's version, and there will be future episodes and a short film. And a short film, I promise. Yes. So um so thank you again tiffany for joining us thank you to melody rowell our producer thank you to eddie cooper who makes our music thank you to

our glow subscribers who make the show possible you can sign up to support the show at glow.fm forward slash strict scrutiny um we did make some merchandise after the Dobbs oral argument. The merchandise, let's say, highlights a notable line from none other than Justice Sotomayor. There is a Sotomayor swag capsule on our merchandise shop. It has already earned the ire of the Federalist Society. So I'd say we're going to do okay. Great job. Get it while it's hot. Will this podcast survive the stench? That is the question. I think it will. I think we'll be fine. Yeah, I'm good. I'm good. Thanks, everyone.