#nationwide injunction

[nationallawreview]

Corporate Transparency Act Recent Update

As previously reported, in early December, the District Court for the Northern District of Texas issued a nationwide injunction against the enforcement of the CTA [1]. The government quickly appealed. Just a few weeks later, on December 23, 2024, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals granted the government’s emergency motion to stay the nationwide injunction — effectively lifting the injunction and…

[sweaterkittensahoy]

Good news! And please take a moment to consider the bravery and determination of the five undocumented pregnant women who are putting themselves in the middle of this fight for their children and their rights.

[mariacallous]

A years-long effort to change how colleges respond to reports of sexual harassment and discrimination and to expand protections for transgender students is dead after a federal judge ruled Thursday that the Biden administration’s overhaul of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 was unlawful.

The court order vacates the rule nationwide and could create more confusion for colleges as they seek to move forward without running afoul of the federal gender equity law. The Title IX changes were already on hold in 26 states and at hundreds of colleges, thanks to a series of lawsuits from 26 Republican attorneys general. Thursday’s order is the first final ruling in those cases and was part of a lawsuit brought by Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.

Republican lawmakers and state officials celebrated the ruling as a victory for women and girls while advocates for LGBTQ+ students criticized the decision as an attack on transgender students. The Biden rule allowed students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity.

Chief Judge Danny Reeves of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, who previously criticized the rule, wrote in a 15-page opinion that the regulations suffer “significant constitutional infirmities.” For instance, using the wrong pronouns for a student could be considered harassment under the rule. That provision “offends the First Amendment,” wrote Reeves, a George W. Bush appointee.

“As expected, courts have continued to find it impossible to justify the Biden administration’s changes to Title IX rules eviscerating students’ speech and due process rights,” said Tyler Coward, lead counsel for government affairs at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech and civil liberties advocacy organization.

The ruling is the latest legal setback for Biden’s higher ed agenda, which hasn’t fared well in federal court.

‘Back in Time’

Colleges and universities will now revert to the previous Title IX rule, which took effect in summer 2020 during the first Trump administration. Those regulations required colleges to hold live hearings with an opportunity for cross-examination to allow those accused of sexual misconduct to confront their accusers—a provision the Biden rules nixed. Additionally, the 2020 regulations defined sexual harassment more narrowly than the Biden Title IX rule.

“Fitting, I guess—everything’s going back in time four years,” said Brigid Harrington, a higher education attorney at Bowditch & Dewey who focuses on compliance with civil rights laws. “Schools that had been enjoined were already there, so it doesn’t change things for many.”

Colleges don’t have to throw out all their new policies related to harassment and discrimination; they can keep the parts that don’t conflict with the 2020 rule. For example, under the 2024 regulations, colleges must give pregnant students notice of their rights, and the 2020 rule doesn’t prevent a college from doing so. (Reeves didn’t take issue with the pregnancy provisions but said, “It simply is not proper for the court to rewrite the regulations by excising the offending material.”)

Thursday’s ruling wasn’t a complete surprise for colleges and universities, considering the injunction and upcoming change in administrations. Andrea Stagg, director of consulting services at Grand River Solutions, a company that works with colleges on Title IX and other issues, said that colleges already have started talking about what to change in their policies and what to keep.

Still, reimplementing the 2020 regulations will mean retraining and re-educating students, staff and faculty about the changes.

“It’s very complicated, expensive and exhausting … and folks don’t have the resources,” she said. “For a field that already experiences a ton of burnout … it’s demoralizing to work so hard and then have the rules change on you.”

Several other lawsuits challenging the rule are still pending, and the Biden administration could appeal the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, so Thursday’s decision may not be the end of the legal battle over Title IX. The Education Department could not be reached for comment Thursday because the offices were closed in commemoration of former president Jimmy Carter’s passing.

“I don’t think this is the last that we’re going to hear of this,” said Harrington. “I think that civil rights are going to be a big topic for the next four years.”

A Repudiation or an Attack?

Republican attorneys general who sued the Biden administration and conservative advocates who criticized the rule celebrated the judge’s decision “as a massive win” and a sign that “common sense is slowly returning.”

“The court’s ruling is yet another repudiation of the Biden administration’s relentless push to impose a radical gender ideology through unconstitutional and illegal rulemaking,” Tennessee attorney general Jonathan Skrmetti said in a statement. “Because the Biden rule is vacated altogether, President Trump will be free to take a fresh look at our Title IX regulations when he returns to office [Jan. 20].”

President-elect Donald Trump has criticized Biden’s Title IX changes, and many experts expect him to issue new regulations that are more conservative than his 2020 rule, especially concerning LGBTQ+ students.

Congressional Republicans, who sought to overturn the Title IX rule, also praised the ruling and pledged to protect educational opportunities for women and girls. Passing legislation that would prevent transgender students from participating on the sports team consistent with their gender identity is a top priority for the House.

“It is clear the Biden-Harris administration completely lost its way on Title IX,” said Louisiana senator Dr. Bill Cassidy, the chair of the HELP committee, in a news release. “They betrayed the original intent of Title IX by removing longstanding protections that ensured fairness for women and girls.”

Representative Tim Walberg, the Michigan Republican who chairs the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said that Biden’s proposed rewrite “would have undermined safety, freedom and fairness for women.”

Meanwhile, advocates for LGBTQ+ students and those who experience harassment or sexual violence described the ruling as an attack on trans students and others that would impact their educations.

“With these protections already removed in some states, students who experience sexual assault have had their complaints dismissed, or worse, been punished by their schools after reporting; pregnant students have been unfairly penalized for taking time off to give birth to a child; and LGBTQI+ students have faced vicious bullying and harassment just for being who they are,” said Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center.

Tracey Vitchers, executive director of It’s On Us, a national organization working to combat campus sexual assault, took issue with claims that overturning the Biden rule would protect women and girls.

“The 2020 regulations did well-documented harm to the safety of women and girls by making it more difficult to report and obtain justice if they experience sexual violence in school,” she said. “If preserving the rights and safety of women and girls was the actual litmus test for today’s decision, the judge would have chosen to uphold Biden’s rule. Instead, the safety of women and girls is being weaponized to discriminate” against trans people.

Vitchers added that while Title IX is important, colleges are required under state and federal laws to respond to reports of harassment and address student safety.

“Institutions are going to have to find ways to be creative to uphold the rights and safety of students on their campus under this new environment,” she said. “If Title IX is going to continue to be this horrible political football it has turned into, we need to see schools invest in evidence-based approaches to sexual violence prevention, because the ultimate goal is to ensure students have an education free of sexual violence.”

[leohtttbriar]

Energy Transfer is one of the Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Texas, and Warren is its extremely politically connected co-founder. Warren is also one of the most generous donors in the Texas (and national) conservative political scene, and has funneled huge donations to politicians like Governor Greg Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, and Attorney General Ken Paxton. Warren’s investments, unfortunately, seem to have paid off. In 2021, Energy Transfer and its execs profiteered $2.4 billion off of the February collapse of Texas’ electric grid, which resulted in the deaths of at least 246 Texans. Governor Abbott subsequently, and successfully, steered scrutiny away from Energy Transfer and other energy companies who were either responsible for or profited from the crash. Mere months later, Warren sent Abbott’s campaign a million-dollar check.

Warren and other Energy Transfer leaders and lawyers now seem poised to manipulate the system in favor of the pipeline company once again, this time in the federal courts. 

Prior to the recent raging pipeline fire in Texas, Energy Transfer was behind a very different disaster unfolding at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency that often acts as a watchdog for labor unions and regularly fields and reviews complaints from union members nationwide. In 2022, an unidentified employee of Energy Transfer’s subsidiary La Grange Acquisition filed an unfair labor practice charge against the company, alleging that it had retaliated against him for complaining about unsafe working conditions, including “radioactive material and hazardous dust in work areas.” The NLRB opened an administrative case, investigating those claims and the subsequent allegation that he was fired in part for filing the complaint.

In 2024, Energy Transfer sued the NLRB, seeking to halt the administrative proceedings and joining SpaceX, Amazon, and other corporations in basically arguing that the board’s foundational structure is unconstitutional. That argument threatens the basic function of the NLRB (and other agencies like it) and could have sweeping consequences for its ability to conduct investigations or engage in basic enforcement actions for violations of labor rules and regulations. 

That suit ultimately landed in front of Judge Jeffrey Vincent Brown of the Southern District of Texas—a Trump appointee—who issued a preliminary injunction against the NLRB’s investigation into Energy Transfer in order to allow the company’s suit against the NLRB to proceed. 

Though the NLRB has nearly 90 years of case law supporting its structure and administrative court reviews, Brown’s ruling cited instead a recent Fifth Circuit ruling, Jarkesy v. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which held that the SEC’s structure and enforcement procedures were unconstitutional. In July of this year, the Supreme Court partially affirmed Jarkesy, but remained silent on the Fifth Circuit’s ruling on the (un)constitutionality of the SEC’s administrative law judges, a structure that the commission shares with the NLRB—and many other federal agencies. 

When the Supreme Court does not affirm nor reject an aspect of a ruling issued by a lower court, the lower court’s ruling is functionally left in place, which now poses a serious threat to the basic functionality of the SEC and other federal regulatory agencies that are mandated to act as watchdogs over unscrupulous corporations and in defense of the public interest. Contradictory rulings on the issue from other federal judges have highlighted the conflicting precedents that have allowed the Fifth Circuit to activate an issue that had been deemed settled for decades. 

[...]

An NPR investigation just this year found that he, along with two other Southern District of Texas judges, had failed to file a required form disclosing his attendance of a privately funded seminar. 

The case is far from settled, and it will now be heard by the Fifth Circuit with the NLRB’s appeal of Brown’s earlier ruling. What happens next is yet to be seen, but with the foundation of the government agency that historically has protected labor union members’ rights in the hands of a notoriously partisan court that previously attacked it, the outlook is not promising. 

[gehayi]

February 5, 2025.

Trump is, of course, appealing the injunction.

[follow-up-news]

A second federal judge onWednesday blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order that seeks to end birthright citizenship, saying it’s likely unconstitutional and “runs counter to our nation’s 250-year history of citizenship by birth.” The nationwide preliminary injunction from US District Judge Deborah Boardman is a significant ruling against Trump’s Day 1 order, which was swiftly met with legal challenges and put on hold days later by a separate judge. The order “conflicts with the plain language of the 14th Amendment, contradicts 125-year old binding Supreme Court precedent and runs counter to our nation’s 250-year history of citizenship by birth,” Boardman said during a hearing on Wednesday. “No court in the country has ever endorsed the president’s interpretation,” she said. “This court will not be the first.”

[wilted-wizard]

Fuck doomposting, I’m hopeposting now

There is still good things, people are still fighting back. It’s only over when we let it be

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Erin Reed at Erin In The Morning:

On Monday morning, the Supreme Court announced it would take up whether gender-affirming care bans for transgender youth violate equal protection rights under the U.S. Constitution. The case under consideration involves the gender-affirming care ban in Tennessee, where the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the ban to take effect. The court ruled that transgender people do not have equal protection rights under the Constitution, citing the Dobbs decision overturning abortion and Geduldig v. Aiello, a ruling on pregnancy discrimination that has gained new traction in conservative courts targeting transgender individuals. Regardless of how the Supreme Court decides, the eventual ruling could have far-reaching impacts on transgender people across the United States; a ruling from this case could potentially be applied to many other laws targeting transgender individuals as well.

The announcement that the court would hear the case came on the second anniversary of the Dobbs decision, which ruled against abortion rights nationwide. One component of that decision was the Glucksburg test, which claimed that equal protection rights must be “deeply rooted in this nation’s history and traditions.” Notably, many things commonly found to be unconstitutional and atrocious, such as segregation and anti-miscegenation laws, are “deeply rooted” in American history and traditions. In the Tennessee 6th Circuit Court decision, which the Supreme Court is now taking up, the majority of justices similarly used the Glucksburg test to deny trans youth in the state equal protection, ruling, “This country does not have a ‘deeply rooted’ tradition of preventing governments from regulating the medical profession in general or certain treatments in particular, whether for adults or their children.” The 6th Circuit decision being considered by the Supreme Court also relied on Geduldig v. Aiello, a 1974 ruling which determined that pregnancy discrimination is not inherently sex discrimination because it does not "classify on sex," but rather, on pregnancy status, and that pregnancy status was not a proxy for sex in equal protection claims. 

It is important to note, however, that other courts have recently found such arguments to be faulty. For instance, the argument that there is no “deeply rooted” right to gender-affirming care was countered by a recent Idaho ruling which stated, “The parents’ fundamental right to care for their children includes the right to choose a particular medical treatment, in consultation with their healthcare provider, that is generally available and accepted in the medical community. And the Court has no difficulty concluding that such a right is deeply rooted in our nation’s history and traditions and implicit in our concept of ordered liberty.” Though the Supreme Court limited the Idaho ruling, it did so only on the basis of the scope of preliminary injunctions and did not consider the constitutionality of the ban. Notably, though, the Supreme Court is not taking up the parental rights/due process claim.

[...] Perhaps the most important decision likely to come out of the Supreme Court case will be the determination of what level of scrutiny judges should apply to transgender youth and potentially all transgender people. The eventual ruling could have profound impacts on a wide array of laws affecting transgender people, from bathroom bans to prohibitions on adult care. The 6th Circuit ruling hinted at the latter, denying equal protection rights “for adults or children.” A broad decision against heightened scrutiny for transgender people could pave the way for several states to implement openly discriminatory policies without challenge.

Those who are looking to find signals for what the justices will decide may have trouble doing so. Justices such as Roberts and Gorsuch have, in the past, sided with transgender people when it came to discrimination under employment law, stating that one cannot discriminate on the basis of gender identity without also discriminating on the basis of sex in the Bostock v. Clayton County decision. That decision has since been used to overturn many other kinds of discriminatory policies towards transgender people by applying similar rationale. If those justices decide on this case using the same logic, a 5-4 decision in favor of transgender people appears to be a possibility. On the flipside, many have speculated that Gorsuch may decide against protecting transgender care, siding with the 6th Circuit’s rationale in the wake of the Dobbs decision allowing for bans on abortion. One of the few times Gorsuch has opined on laws targeting transgender people since Bostock was during a recent debate over EMTALA protections in Idaho. EMTALA mandates that hospitals cannot deny emergency lifesaving care, including emergency abortions

On the 2-year anniversary of the disastrous Dobbs ruling, SCOTUS is taking up United States v. Skrmetti, a case that deals with gender-affirming care bans for trans minors (and adults). The case could have huge impacts on access to gender-affirming care (and trans rights more generally) nationwide.

Expect this case to be decided at SCOTUS sometime during the next term, likely in June 2025.

See Also:

The Guardian: US supreme court to weigh in on transgender healthcare ban for minors

[theculturedmarxist]

Conor here: The following post goes into the ins and outs of the case ahead of the April 23 beginning of the case, the outcome of which seems to be a foregone conclusion and will be a major blow to labor.>New York Times labor reporter Noam Scheiber noted back in January when the Supremes agreed to hear the case that the very fact that they did so meant they would likely rule so that it’s harder to unionize. The reasoning behind that belief isn’t just the conservative majority on the court but also that the courtdeclined to hear a similar case in 2014 (back before the current conservative majority).

By Michael Z. Green, professor of law and the director of the Workplace Law Program at Texas A&M University. Originally published at The Conversation.

What factors must a court consider when the National Labor Relations Board requests an order requiring an employer to rehire terminated workers before the completion of unfair labor practice proceedings?

That’s the central question that the Supreme Court will consider on April 23, 2024, during oral arguments in the Starbucks Corp. v. McKinney case. The global coffee shop chain is challenging the NLRB, the federal agency responsible for enforcing U.S. workers’ rights to organize, saying that the agency used the more labor-friendly of two available standards when it asked a federal court to order the company to reinstate workers at a Memphis, Tennessee, store who lost their jobs in 2022 amid a nationwide unionizing campaign.

The Conversation U.S. asked Texas A&M law professor Michael Z. Green to explain what’s behind this case and how the court’s eventual decision, expected by the end of June, could affect the right to organize unions in the United States.

What Is This Case About?

Seven baristas who were attempting to organize a union at a Starbucks shop in Memphis, Tennessee, were fired in February 2022. Starbucks justified their dismissal by asserting that the employees, sometimes called the “Memphis 7,” had broken company rules by reopening their store after closing time and inviting people who weren’t employees, including a television crew, to go inside.

In June of that year, the shop became one of more than 400 Starbucks locations since 2021 that have voted in favor of joining Workers United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union.

While a complaint over the mass dismissal was pending with the NLRB, Kathleen McKinney, the NLRB director for the region that includes Memphis, sought an injunction in a federal district court to force Starbucks to give the Memphis 7 their jobs back while the case proceeded. The company must “cease its unlawful conduct immediately so that all Starbucks workers can fully and freely exercise their labor rights,” she said.

By August 2022, a judge had ordered Starbucks to do that, and in September the baristas were back on staff.

Although the seven baristas got their jobs back and the union vote prevailed, the company has appealed the case all the way to the Supreme Court because it believes the court should not have ordered the company to reinstate the workers while NLRB proceedings were still pending.

But the NLRB argues, and the lower courts agreed, that the terminations chilled further union activities at the store even after the election.

Nevertheless, Starbucks argues that firing the seven workers had no effect because employees at that coffeehouse still voted in favor of unionization.

What’s Being Challenged?

The justices will have to decide which approach federal courts should use when they consider requests for injunctions like this one.

Currently, five appeals courts, including the one where this case arose, base their decision on a two-part test.

First, the courts determine whether there is “reasonable cause” to believe an unfair labor practice has occurred. Second, they determine whether granting an injunction would be “just and proper.”

Four other appeals courts use a four-part test.

First, the courts ask whether the unfair labor practice case is likely to succeed on the merits in establishing that labor violations occurred. Second, they look to see if the workers the NLRB is attempting to protect will face irreparable harm without an injunction. Third, after showing likelihood of success and irreparable harm, they ask whether those factors outweigh any hardships the employer is likely to face due to compliance with the court’s order. Fourth, they ask whether issuing the injunction serves the public interest.

Two other appeals courts use a hybrid test that appears to have components of both of the tests. They ask whether issuing an injunction would be “just and proper” by considering the elements of the four-part test.

In its Supreme Court brief, Starbucks argues that having to give workers their jobs back in these circumstances can cause “irreparable injury” and that it’s an “extraordinary remedy.”

The NLRB, in its Supreme Court brief, says that the injunction was proper in this case because Starbucks terminated 80% of the union organizing committee at the Memphis store and the evidence showed the chilling effect this action had on the “lone remaining union activist.” According to the NLRB, this chilling effect “harmed the union campaign in ways that a subsequent Board ruling could not repair.”

A labor reporter discussing Starbucks’ unfair labor practice cases, including the one involving the Memphis 7, determined that NLRB administrative law judges had found labor violations in 48 out of 49 cases.

What’s the Potential Impact of the Court’s Eventual Ruling on This Case?

While the case may sound like it’s only about seven people employed at a single coffee shop, the scope is wider than that.

Although the NLRB issues hundreds of unfair labor practice complaints against employers every year, it usually doesn’t turn to the courts to force the rehiring of employees. It only sought these types of injunctions 17 times in 2023, for example.

And seven of those efforts involved Starbucks. Despite the small number of overall injunctions, the large number of unfair labor practice complaints – and the eventual 48 out of 49 findings of violations – might support the rare use of injunctions in this case.

If the Supreme Court rules in favor of Starbucks, the overall impact seems unclear.

For one thing, the court will have picked one test over another without any proof that one is more likely to result in an injunction or not. In addition, the underlying unfair labor practice case has been resolved, since the workers have gotten their jobs back and their workplace has joined a union.

What’s more, Starbucks has agreed to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement with the union – which has continued to make inroads at the company’s coffee shops.

Because the NLRB rarely seeks injunctions, the fact that this issue has obtained enough importance for consideration by the Supreme Court seems odd considering its valuable time and the limited number of cases it can consider each year. But let’s see what the court’s majority decides.

[nationallawreview]

Corporate Transparency Act— Nationwide Injunction Update and Key Considerations

On December 3, 2024, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas issued a nationwide injunction halting enforcement of the Corporate Transparency Act (“CTA”).1 In response, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) confirmed it will comply with the injunction while also appealing the decision. FinCEN also states on its website that…

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

The never-ending debate on Brazil's university quota system

Alisson dos Santos Rodrigues, an 18-year-old student from the countryside São Paulo town of Cerqueira César, was set to be the first person in his family to study in Brazil’s prestigious public university system.

After passing a state-wide entrance exam, he was accepted to the medical school of the University of São Paulo (USP), receiving one of the places reserved for black, multiracial, and indigenous applicants as part of Brazil’s racial quota system.

But at the end of February, after traveling five hours to São Paulo on what was to be his first day of classes, he found out that his enrollment had been canceled. The university’s judging committee ruled that Alisson, who has always self-identified as multiracial, was not in fact black or multiracial.

A similar thing happened to 17-year-old Glauco Dalalio de Livramento, who lost his place in USP’s law program this year when another judging committee disagreed with his self-identification as multiracial.

The families of both students took the university to court. In Alisson’s case, a court in his home city gave USP a period of five days to explain why the 18-year-old was disqualified. Meanwhile, a state court issued an injunction to reinstate Glauco’s enrollment, which the school can appeal.

Racial quotas have existed in Brazilian public universities since 2002, designed as a way to help even out the country’s long-standing inequalities in access to higher education. However, the cases of Alisson and Glauco — two teenagers whose self-identification as multiracial appear appropriate — have sparked a nationwide debate about how quotas are allocated and the fairness of the system as a whole.

Continue reading.

[cultml]

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/anti-money-laundering-law-appeals/2024/12/27/id/1193021/

US Appeals Court Halts Enforcement of Anti-Money Laundering Law

A U.S. appeals court has halted enforcement of an anti-money laundering law that requires corporate entities to disclose the identities of their real beneficial owners to the U.S. Treasury Department ahead of a deadline for most companies to do so. The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals late Thursday reinstated a nationwide injunction that had been issued earlier this month by a federal judge in Texas who had concluded the Corporate Transparency Act was unconstitutional.

[mariacallous]

A federal judge has blocked the Biden administration from enforcing new federal protections for LGBTQ+ students in four GOP-led states.

The preliminary injunction issued Thursday by US District Judge Terry Doughty prevents the Biden administration from implementing the new protections – which are set to take effect August 1 – in Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana and Idaho.

The judge said that the order will remain in effect until the states’ lawsuit is resolved or a higher court permits enforcement of the new rules.

CNN has reached out to the Education Department for comment on the judge’s ruling.

The lawsuit is one of more than half a dozen challenging the new changes to Title IX, the 1972 federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination at schools that receive federal aid.

Among other things, the changes aim to curb discrimination “based on sex stereotypes, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics,” according to the department.

The new rules require schools to protect students from all sex discrimination, including sexual violence and sex-based harassment, expanding that definition to include discrimination based on pregnancy or pregnancy-related conditions like childbirth, termination of pregnancy or recovery from pregnancy. Compliance with the new rules is required to receive federal education aid.

The lawsuit brought by the GOP-led states argues that the Biden administration overstepped its authority in finalizing the new rule. The plaintiffs are asking Doughty to strike down the rules nationwide.

Judge Doughty was appointed by Trump, btw.

[satanfemme]

[ID: A message from journalist Erin Reed reading, "Breaking devastating news: the Supreme Court has allowed Idaho’s gender affirming care ban to go back into effect, siding against the liberal justices. This likely signals an end to to injunctions blocking trans care bans nationwide. I hurt for the trans youth I report on every day." End ID]

[cryoverkiltmilk]

While it's good to celebrate today's unanimous Supreme Court ruling dismissing the lawsuit seeking to revoke access to mifepristone, the abortion pill, it's also important to be clear-eyed about what's happening here.

Republican activists have been judge shopping, taking absurd cases to a district in Texas that only has one judge, who will reliably rule in their favor no matter what, and issue a nationwide injunction. There is no way to prevent this judge shopping at the moment, though the judiciary has made noises about maybe fixing this in the future.

Then the case is appealed to the Fifth Circuit, consistently the most extreme in the land. Cases that should have been instantly laughed out of court get dragged out and rubber stamped before heading to SCOTUS.

SCOTUS, even a very conservative and ideological court, has repeatedly stamped some of these egregious decisions, and even some conservative justices have expressed frustration in their rulings at the shenanigans coming from nationwide injunctions from the district courts and shenanigans from the Fifth. The Fifth is also notorious for misusing administrative stays to essentially enforce rulings that haven't actually been issued or appealed.

So this case should never have even made it through the district Court; the theory of standing was preposterous. Some conservative doctors basically claimed injury because they enjoy looking at babies.

But there's no consequences for that ideological, conservative courts behaving lawlessly and causing chaos, and eventually being overturned by SCOTUS. There's supposed to shame, at being repeatedly overturned and chastised, but these appeals court judges don't seem capable of shame.

But whatever, they ruled the abortion pill is legal, right? Well, no. They ruled the plaintiffs never had standing to bring the case. Red states are already working on bringing similar cases, and while there's no real legal reason to overrule the FDA, which followed its own laws and procedures, who knows how the court will rule on the merits. Alito and Thomas will almost certainly vote for the most extreme possible outcome.

And in the meantime, the main threat to abortion in this country through the courts has already been telegraphed by conservative jurists: they're going to revive a dead 1873 law called the Constock Act, to ban interstate transport of any medicine or tools for abortion. And if conservatives win the White House, they'll push for fetal personhood laws.

Today is a good day because it could have been worse. This Supreme Court has issued wild rulings, or declined to remove wild rulings, many times recently, from essentially ending the Voting Rights Act to allowing the Texas abortion bounty law to even considering immunity for Trump. So at least they didn't do the craziest possible thing today. But this was the kitten of the litter of conservative assaults on abortion rights; the big cats are yet to be unleashed.