My home circuit holds that under recent Supreme Court precedents, states may lawfully refuse to provide gender-affirming care through Medicaid. This is very, very bad. In part because of endemic workplace discrimination, trans folks are almost 3x as likely to live in poverty.
That would be true even if state constitutions were basically just copies of the U.S. Constitution, but in fact they're not. They have very different structures, provisions, and histories. There's no reason to treat federal interpretations of the federal constitution as even a starting point.
If the Supreme Court says the U.S. Constitution's Due Process Clause, for example, means x or y, that's a precedent other courts must follow. But that doesn't mean they got it right & it doesn't mean a state court should presumptively interpret a state constitution's due process clause the same way.
State courts are the authoritative interpreters of state constitutions, but they often defer to the U.S. Supreme Court's interpretation of analogous federal provisions. This amicus brief urges the NM Supreme Court to take itself and its constitution seriously as independent from federal doctrines.
NEW: for @nytimes.com, I wrote about a new study showing that queen bumblebees can breathe underwater, surviving submerged for a week
the “remarkable” study stems from a lab snafu, when a co-author thought she accidentally drowned several bees—but later found that they were alive 🧪
gift link 🎁
ICE detention peaked at roughly 73,000 people in custody in mid-January. Since then, my sources say total in detention has fallen to sub-63,000. That is a significant drop, reversing the trend back to where things were in early November.
I am deeply skeptical of any major changes, to be clear.
I have to assume Trump has offered or threatened something (some threats have been public, but maybe there have been more in private), and Polis feels that it's worth letting this one person out to save the state a lot of hassle or money. (I think he's wrong, to be clear.)
This is the sort of thing a cashless society robs us of, the opportunity to try to get away with paying the bus fare in Carthaginian currency www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
If you’re a Spotify subscriber, the audiobook of Collapse is well done and available for free on the app, or at least it was a year or two ago. Highly recommended!
Relatedly, I always thought the USSR fell because of unresolvable contradictions in the Soviet economy/Cold War pressures/etc., but then I read the fantastic history Collapse by Vladislav Zubok and learned it was because of 6 years of nonstop fuckups by well-intentioned but naive Gorbachev.
I really wonder whether the confusion between “war crime” and “horrible thing that was done during a war” exists in non-English spaces. Because good lord folks are addicted to “war crime” as shorthand for everything they don’t like in war.
Something I've been wondering this winter: is the snow by the side of the roads all black and gross from internal combustion engine exhaust, meaning if there are no ICE vehicles on our roads in a decade or two this won't happen? Or is a lot of this pollution from tire debris, etc.?
Yeah they’re called train tracks, not trains tracks
I agree it made no difference to the Supreme Court, but I also don’t think it had any effect on the liberal discourse on gun control. Like most Supreme Court amicus briefs, it was probably just a waste of time and effort.
DC’s highest court splits with every fed appeals court that’s reviewed high capacity magazine bans since Bruen. The full court may vacate this, but the fully and newly Trumpified 3rd Circuit is likely to strike down NJ’s similar law along with its assault weapons ban. So the issues are SCOTUS-bound.
Here's an interview at @inquest.bsky.social with some of the public defenders behind the Bruen amicus brief. It shows their thinking, but I don't think they really grapple with the question of whether a ruling in their favor (which they got) would do anything to solve the problems they identify.
In other words, NY courts have said that just because the state had an unconstitutional requirement for getting a gun license, that doesn't mean people could lawfully possess a gun without a license. This differs from precedents in the 1st Amendment context (licenses that restrict speech).
They've erected a bunch of procedural barriers; for example, until last November, they were saying criminal defendants didn't have standing to raise 2nd Amendment issues unless they'd applied for a gun license and been denied. On the merits, they've said the part struck down is severable...
A bunch of NY public defender organizations filed an amicus brief in Bruen urging the Supreme Court to overturn NY's gun licensing law, which it did. They were criticized at the time for providing cover for a right-wing attempt to roll back gun regulations that would never help their clients.
The 2022 landmark 2nd Amendment case known as Bruen struck down New York's gun licensing regime. Since then, public defenders across the state have raised 2nd Amendment issues in thousands of gun prosecutions. To my knowledge, not a single NY conviction has been avoided or overturned on this basis.
This is notable because the vast majority of legal cases in which gun regulations are at issue are criminal prosecutions. But none of the Supreme Court's landmark decisions expanding the 2nd Amendment have been criminal appeals: they've all come in affirmative lawsuits brought by gun rights groups.
The DC Court of Appeals did something very unusual today: it overturned a criminal conviction under the 2nd Amendment, striking down DC's ban on large-capacity magazines. The Supreme Court and lower courts have struck down many gun laws in the past 15 years, but rarely in criminal cases.
The future continues weird. This is a nice example at the now common intersection of “It’s remarkable that this is even possible”, “You can see the vistas it opens up”, and “Pretty sweet for the company to have people use their service in this very pay-as-you-go resource-intensive way”.
I think this would be a really tough race, but I'd be optimistic about Phara's chances if it were an open seat (which it someday will be!)
What does this mean?
Under federal law, U.S. states cannot unilaterally adopt permanent daylight saving time. The start and end dates of DST are set at the federal level; states can choose to opt into DST, or not, but they cannot choose different start/end dates.
David Eby speaking in a room of kids
BREAKING - B.C. is switching to permanent daylight saving time, making this week's time change the last one in the province. Announcement is live here: www.cbc.ca/player/play/...
This seems almost like the exception that proves the rule (which is that territorial wars of conquest don’t really work anymore)
Putin's invasion of Ukraine has overall been mostly a disaster for him and shown the downsides of actually attempting to do traditional imperial shit where you take and hold territory, I think. vs the trump approach of darting in and breaking shit and grabbing people and then leaving
superb piece. among other things a really useful look into how apartment investing actually works www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/aft...
