Additional Court Rulings and Future Cases

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Today is Tuesday, june thirtieth, and we are focusing solely on the Supreme Court and the eight decisions that the court has released over the last two days. Now I do just want to apologize because this episode is a bit delayed. I thought I would be able to knock it out yesterday in a timely manner, but yesterday was a travel day for me And it was our first travel day with the baby. So The episode did not get done. But today, we're back to it. We'll focus on Supreme Court decisions, and then on Thursday, we'll get back to regularly scheduled programming and talk about the news more generally. Today's episode is quite long, so get comfy, get cozy, get ready to learn a lot because there's a lot to cover In today's episode we will cover the first four decisions the court released on Monday, and then we'll cover the remaining four decisions that the court released today Before we do that, though, I do just want to provide everyone, I guess with some necessary context as to why we are talking about these cases and why they are so important. And if you tuned in to Unbiased University, you are definitely familiar with this. But I just want to be clear that the Supreme Court is the final interpreter of the Cstitution and federal law. Congress or state legislatures, they can write laws, they can pass laws, But if those laws are challenged in court, the Supreme Court can ultimately decide whether they stand. The Supreme Court plays a very important role, and that's checks and balances at work, right? Now at the end of the Supreme Court's October term, which usually runs from October through late June, sometimes early July, but usually late June The Court often releases some of its biggest and most closely watched decisions, and that is where we're at right now So you might remember Roe vers. Wade was overturned in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization on june twenty fourth the court overturned the forty year old Chevron doctrine on june twenty eighth, twenty twenty four. So the bigger cases often come at the end of June. sometometimes like I said, very early July, but typically end of June and that's what happened this year. The court wrapped up today on the final day of the month Let's start this episode talking about Monday's decisions. The first decision released on Monday was Watson v. Republican National Committee. Now this was the case about mail in ballots. So the question here was if a voter mails that are ballot by election day. If it's postmarked by election day, can the state still count it even if it arrives a few days later? And the court said yes This was a case out of Mississippi and under Mississippi law, mail and absentee ballots have to be postmarked by election day and received by election officials within five business days after the election. So if a voter fills out their ballot and it's postmarked by election day, Mississippi allows that ballot to count even if the postal serervice delivers it a few days later. And there are a handful of states that operate this way. We know California is one of those states. California has been in the news a lot because of this the Republican National Committee, the Mississippi Republican Party, a Mississippi voter, and a county election commissioner sued argued that federal law does not allow this. Their argument was that federal law sets one national election day for federal elections. That is the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. And that means ballots have to be both cast and received by that day And a quick constitutional backdrop here, even though we're talking about federal elections, states generally have the primary role in running elections as well as setting the mechanics. So setting rules surrounding ballot casting, ballot counting, things like that. That is the case unless Congress passes a federal law that overrides those state rules. That is the exception So that is why the challengers had to argue that Mississippi rule conflicted with federal law But Mississippi, of course, disagreed with these arguments. Mississippi defended the state mail and ballot law and argue that federal law sets the deadline for voters to make their choice to cast their ballot. But it doesn't set a national deadline for when election officials have to physically receive allot And the Supreme Court agreed with that. The Supreme Court said federal election dayay statutes do not require ballots to be received by election day. They just require the voter's choice to be made by election day. And the keyword for the court was election. The majority said that historically, an election has meant the act of choosing someone for office So the election happens when the voters make their choice, not necessarily when the ballot physically arrives at the election office Now, the court also pointed to federal laws for military and overseas voters because those laws talk about state deadlines for when ballots have to arrive. So the court said, you know, including state deadlines for when ballots have to arrive wouldn't make much sense if federal law already required every ballot to arrive by election day So the way the majority saw it, that showed that Congress understood states could set their own deadlines for when mailed ballots arrive C also rejected the challenger' historical argument. So the challengers argued that historically, ballots were usually received by election day. But the majority said that history alone didn't prove Congress actually required election day receipt as a matter of federal law. And the court rejected the policy argument here too. The challengers said election day receipt deadlines help protect election integrity and voter confidence But the court said that those kinds of policy arguments are for the legislatures, not the courts Justice Alito dissented, he was joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch and mostly joined by Justice Kavanaugh. And that just means that Kavanaugh didn't agree with the entire dissent, but he agreed with most of it. And the dissent saw this case very differently, right? Justice Alito argued that when federal law says an election must happen on a specific day That should mean ballots have to be received by that day. And he focused a lot on historical practice. He argued that for most of American history, election dayay meant ballot collection day., the day officials actually received the votes. The dissent additionally raised prical practical concerns. They arguue that if election day is only the deadline for voters to send their ballots, not for officials to receive them, then where's the stopping point? Could could a state allow ballots to arrive twenty one days later? Could a state eliminate receipt deadlines altogether? Could ballots be handed to third parties and still count as long as the voter gave them to the third party by election day So those were the dissents's main points. But again, the only question here was whether Mississippi's specific rule counting absentee ballots that are postmarked by election day and received up to five days later conflicts with federal election day laws. And the court said it does not Now I do want to note here that if Congress wants A nationwide election day receipt deadline for federal elections, federal elections. emmphasis on that, not state elections, federal elections. If Congress wants a nationwide election day receipt deadline for federal elections, that is something Congress could certainly try to write into the law. The court here wasn't saying Congress can't do that. It was just saying Current statutes, current federal law, do not prohibit the counting of mail and ballots after election day So that was Watson. Okaykay. So now we're going to move on to Chadbury v United States. Chatury for short This was a big Fourth Amendment case about geofence warrants. And this one is important because it deals with how much privacy we have when we're using our phones and more specifically how much privacy we have in the location data that our phones store for us. So quick refresher from Unbiased University The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. And over time, courts have had to apply that protection in new ways as technology has evolved. So first, the home was the classic example of where we are entitled to privacy, right? Then years go by, the Supreme Court recognized privacy in places like a phone booth Years later, the court said police generally need a warrant to search someone's cell phone. Now this case took the question one step further. What about cell phone location data gathered through a geofence warrant. In other words, when police ask a tech company to identify devices that were near a crime scene at a specific time, does that count as a search under the Fourth Amendment? And if it does, what constitutional limits apply? That was the question in this case. So first, what is a geoense warrant That's a good place to start A geofence is essentially you could think of it as like a virtual boundary that's drawn around an actual location. So a geofence might be the three mile radius around your local coffee shop. It could be the boundaries around your neighborhood. That's a geofence Now, instead of police saying to these tech companies, we think This specific person committed a crime. We think Joe Joe Schmoe committed a crime and we want Joe Schmo's phone data With a geofence warrant, police say, hey, a crime happened in this area at this time. tellell us which phones were there. So it's a bit backward. Police don't start with the suspect. They start with a place at a time and then ask a tech company, in this case, Google, to tell them which devices were in that area at that time So here's what happened in this case. In twenty nineteen, a man robbed a bank in Virginia. pololice reviewed surveillance footage and interviewed witnesses, and they learned that the robber had approached the bank from near a church that was adjacent to the bank and seemed to be talking on a cell phone So about a month later, police apply for a geoence warrant directed to Google. and the warrant ased Google for the location data from devices within a one hundred fifty meter radius of this specific bank during the hour around the robbery, from thirty minutes before the robbery to thirty minutes after And the warrant worked in three steps. At step one, Google gave police anonymized location data. And There were nineteen devices that data was given for that were inside the Geofence during that hour. So police didn't get the names of the users. They just got the location data connected to anonymous device identifiers At step two, police narrowed that list and asked Google for more location data for some of those devices over a longer two hour period, including where the devices went outside the Geofence And then at step three, police narrowed the list again. This time it was narrowed down to three users, and Google gave them specific identifying information about those three users. It was no longer anonymous One of those users was Okello Chaty, who happened to be the suspect His location data showed that his phone entered the geofenced area about ten minutes before the robbery and then headed toward a nearby neighborhood after leaving the bank area Police investigated a bit more, Chapy was arrested and he was charged with robbery and related firearm offenses Chat Ray though moved to suppress the Google location data. He argued that the government got this evidence through an unconstitutional search and therefore it should not be used against him. because if evidence is gathered through an unconstitutional search, a defendant can ask the court to keep it out. There are exceptions. We'll actually see one of those exceptions play out in just a second The lower courts, they did not agree with Chabry. The district court said even though the warrant had significant Fourth Amendment issues The officers in this case relied on it in good faith, and therefore the evidence could still be used. And that's called the good faith exception The goodood faith exception says that even if a warrant turns out to have been defective, the evidence can still be used if the officers reasonably relied on the warrant at the time And the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that decision. So Chaty takes the case to the Supreme Court. And before we get to the court's decision, I do just quickly want to touch on the Fourth Amendment a bit more because it is such a big part of this case As I briefly mentioned earlier, the Fourth Amendment protects people against unreasonable searches and seizures. And the Supreme Court famously held in nineteen sixty seven that the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places Usually when police want to conduct a search, they need a valid warrant supported by probable cause. And the warrant has to be specific about what's being searched and what they are allowed to seize But one of the biggest questions in analyzing a Fourth Amendment issue like this one is whether the action taken by police even counted as a search under the Fourth Amendment. becausecause if it's not a search, then the Fourth Amendment doesn't really apply. And police don't have to meet the Fourth Amendment warrant and probable cause requirements If it is a search, then the government has to justify it under the Fourth Amendment Now a search usually means the government has intruded on something that the law treats as private. Sometimes that can be really obvious, like you know police just physically going into your house, That's an obvious search But with technology, it can obviously get a little more complicated because police might be getting information from a phone or an app or a tech company like Google You know, and they're not literally walking into your house, but they're still obtaining your information. So the question becomes, did the government intrude on something the law recognizes as private? If yes, that's a search, if no, usually, it's not And Chat Ry's argument was that this is absolutely a search. Because privacy is such an integral part of the Fourth Amendment analysis, his argument focused on the fact that Google loocation history can reveal really private details about a person's life. It can tell you where people go on a daily basis. It can tell you who they spend their time with, whether they go to the doctor's office, at church, whether they visit a lawyer, whether they see a therapist, whether they go visit someone else's home, et cetera, etcetera He also argued that this warrant was too broad because police didn't have probable cause to search the location data of every person whose phone happened to be near the bank In other words, who was saying, you know, you can't just search a bunch of innocent people's occasion data just because one of them might be the suspect The government though, of course, argued the opposite. The government argued that Chat Ray did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in this data because he had enabled Google location history and allowed Google to collect it And this is related to something called the third party doctrine. and that's the idea that if you voluntarily share information with a third party, you might lose some Fourth Amendment protection over that information simimple example of this is phone numbers. The Supreme Court has said that when you dial a phone number, you're sharing that number with the phone company because the phone company needs that information to connect the call. So under that logic, you may not have the same privacy protection in the number you dialed as you would in the actual content of the call So the government's argument was Chatbery had allowed Google to collect his location data. So he can't claim the same level of privacy in that data and therefore, the Fourth Amendment doesn't really apply here But the Supreme Court ultimately decided with Chat Re. The court said the police did conduct a Fourth Amendment search when they obtained his Google location history data because people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their cell phone location information, even when that information is stored by a company and even when police are only asking for a limited window of time Justice Kagan wrote the majority opinion and in doing so, she quoted an earlier Supreme Court case, which reads, quote The courourt is obligated, as subtler and more far reaching means of invading privacy have become available to the government to ensure that the progress of science does not erode Fourth Amendment protections. She then continued and wrote, quote, todayod's decision follows from the same judicial obligation to guard against the same risk of undue encroachment. The Fourth Amendment applies to, when officials tap into Google's database of physical location information. That database is new, but the principle covering it is not principle is instead the one our history has given. The Fourth Amendment must, as ever, protect against unjustified governmental intrusion on the privacy of the individual end quote So the court said, yes, was this was a search under the Fourth Amendment. We've, you know, that issue has been we decided that issue, but the case actually isn't over. We're going to send this case back theth circuit to analyeether this was a reasonable search. So we know it was a search, but was it a reasonable search? In other words, did the warrant, the actual Geofense warrant satisfy the Fourth Amendment's requirements for probable cause and particularity at each step? Was it specific enough? Was there enough reason to search the location data the police requested even if the warrant had issues, can the evidence still be used under that good faith exception we talked about because officers reasonably relied on it at the time those are the questions the Fourth Amendment will now have to decide Now before we jump off to the next case, something that I just want to be clear about in Chat Re. is that the court did not say geoense warrants are unconstitutional. It said getting this kind of location data is a search under the Fourth Amendment, which means Fth Amendment protections apply. These kinds of searches are permissible, but they have to be done the right way and follow proper procedures under the Fourth Amendment Okay, the next case we have to talk about is Trump v Cook. This was a case about Trump's attempt to remove Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors Context first The Federal Reserve is the country's central bank. The Fed board has seven governors. The governors are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. and the president can remove them, but it has to be for cause use basically means the president needs a legally valid reason to remove someone. And this case is about what counts as a valid reason So here's what happened Lisa Cook was appointed to the Federal Reserve Board by President Biden in twenty twenty two. She was reappointed in twenty twenty three to a full term that was set to run until twenty thirty eight. But then in twenty thirty five, Bill Polty, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, sent a criminal referral to the DOJ accusing Cook of possible mortgage fraud The allegation was that before she joined the Fed, she had listed two different properties as her primary residence in mortgage documents. So the Trump administration argued that because mortgage terms depend on whether or can depend on whether a property is listed as someone's primary residence, second home, or investment property, the allegations against Cook raised concerns about her honesty, judgment, and fitness to serve on the Fed board, and President Trump moved to remove her. But Cook sued. She argued that Trump could not remove her based on unproven allegations about private conduct from before she joined the Fed. She said for cause had to mean something more than the president saying he had lost confidence in her. She said that if unproven allegations were enough then the president could remove Fed governors whenever he disagreed with them and simply just frame it as a concern about judgment or fitness She also argued that she wasn't given a meaningful chance to respond before the president tried to remove her. So there was a for cause removal argument. Did these allegations legally count as cause under federal law? And then there was also this due process argument. Was she entitled to notice and a meaningful chance to respond before being removed The lower courts temporarily blocked Cook's removal, and the DC Circuit left that order in place. So the courts didn't necessarily reach the merits of this decision. They just said, while this litigation is playing out, we are going to temporarily block her removal The administration then went to the Supreme Court and asked the justices to pause that injunction and let Trump remove Cook while the case continued. But the Supreme Court on Monday denied that request. And what that means is Cook can stay in place while the litigation over her attempted removal continues. And a few things are important here. So number one, the court did not issue a final decision on whether Cook's removal was proper or whether Trump had valid cause to remove her. The court was just deciding the injunction issue. Basically, should Cook stay in her job while this case continues, or should Trump be allowed to remove her immediately while the courts keep reviewing the case Now whenever a court decides whether to pause an injunction, it usually weighs several factors. And the big one is whether the party asking for the pause is likely to win on the merits. The court can also consider things like whether the party will suffer irreparable harm without a pause, where the balance of harms and the public interest point But in this case, the Supreme Court said it only needed to focus on that first factor, whether the Trump administration had shown it was likely to win on the merits. And the court said, no The majority of the justices said the administration had not shown that it was likely to succeed on its legal arguments. The court rejected the idea that the president's for cause determination was completely beyond judicial review, as the administration had argued. The court rejected the administration's idea that cause was such a low bar any concern about Cook's judgment fitness or competence would automatically be enough. And the court also rejected the administration's argument that evenven if Trump hadn't properly shown cause, Cook could still not remain in office while the litigation continued. For all of those reasons, all of those arguments were rejected, the court upheld the lower court's injunction and Cook will remain in her position for now while the litigation continues. On the due process argument, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, quot, As a last resort, the government halfheartedly contends that Cook in fact received due process after all. In its view, the Pident gave Cook notice and an opportunity to be heard when he first posted about the matter on social media That is despite the fact that the president's post did not suggest that a response from Cook would be appropriate, nor did it even provide a clear account of the charge made against her It instead read simply, quote, Cook must resign now, end quote, and linked to a news article about Polty's letter That will not do At minimum, Cook was entitled to some explanation of the evidence at issue, some avenue for a response and a deadline by which a response would be due. Because Cook did not receive such process, her removal was erroneous and void from the start endnd quote So that was cook. Let's take our first break here. 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Let's talk about Trump v slaughter, the last decision from Monday Slaughter is similar, but it's also different from Cook. It's similar in the sense that the issue at the center of the case deals with Trump's removal power But it's different in that slaughter was decided on the merits wasn't. So Trump feesaughter centered on Trump's attempt to remove Rebecca slaughter from the Federal Trade Commission. The Federal Trade Commission, FC is the federal agency that deals with things like consumer protection, unfair business practices, antitrust enforcement, things like that. So if a company is accused of deceptive advertising or unfair competition or certain anti consumer practices, it's the FTC that's involved in holding that company accountable Now the FTC is run by five commissioners, and those commissioners are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate similar to the Fed Congress intentionally designed the FTC to be somewhat independent from White House control So FTC commissioners serve staggered seven year terms. No more than three commissioners can be from the same political party. And under the Federal Trade Commission Act, the president can remove an FTC commissioners only for very specific reasons. Those reasons are inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office Rebecca Slaughter was an FTC commissioner, originally nominated by President Trump in twenty eighteen and later confirmed by the Senate. In twenty twenty three, President Biden nominated her for another term and the Senate confirmed her again. Her term was supposed to run until twenty twenty nine. But in march twenty twenty five, President Trump removed her According to S slaughter, the only reason Trump gave was that her continued service was inconsistent with his administration's priorities. He didn't accuse her of in effeiciency, he didn't accuse her of neglect of duty, didn't accuse her of malfeasance. And those are, of course, the specific reasons listed in the FTC statute. So sllaughter sued. and her argument was that Congress FTC commommissioners can only be removed for cause. Trump removed her without cause and therefore, her firing violated the Federal Trade Commission Act. The district court agreed with her. It said the attempted removal was unlawful and blocked the administration from interfering with her ability to serve. The Trump administration then eventually took the case to the Supreme Court. And the reason this case was so important is because There's a major Supreme Court precedent from nineteen thirty five called Humphrey's Eecutor v United States That case also involved the FTC. Back then, President Franklin Roosevelt tried to remove an FTC commissioner and the Supreme Court said he couldn't do that at will The court upheld the FTC's removal protections and said Congress was allowed to create certain independent agencies whose members are protected from being fired just because the president wants them gone For almost ninety years, Humphrey's executor has been one of the main cases supporting independent agencies But the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to either limit or overrule cedident And the administration's argument was that the Constitution gives the presresident executive power And If an agency is exercising executive power, like enforcing laws, bringing lawsuits, issuing rules, investigating companies, making binding decisions, the president needs control over the people running that agency So the administration argued that because FTC commissioners are executive officers and because they exercise executive power Pident has to be able to remove them And the administration also set forth this argument that ern the modern FTC is very different from the FTC the Supreme Court described back in nineteen thirty five Back then, the court described the FTC as more of more of an expert quasi legislative quasi judicial body. But the Trump administration said today's FTC clearly exercises executive power. It investigates, it enforces laws, it sues companies, it issues rules, it makes decisions that affect private parties The administration's position was that even if Humphrey's executor made sense in nineteen thirty five, it doesn't make sense now. and anything left of that decision should be overruled. Slaughter side obviously argued things very differently. Her argument was that this case is, you know, it was basically controlled by Humphrey's executor. The case involved the same agency, the same kind of removal protection, the same basic question, which was, you know, can Congress protect FTC commissioners from being fired at will by the president And Slaughter argued that the the answer to that question has been yes for ninety years. She also argued that independent bipartisan agencies serve an important role and the whole point is to make certain agencies less vulnerable to political pressure. So if every president can immediately fire commissioners from the other party and replace them with loyalists then agencies like the FTC become much more directly controlled by the White House. And her side also made a reliance argument, which was that Congress has built a lot of the modern government around this model of independent agencies, so overruling Humphrey's executor wouldn't just affect her. it could affect agencies across the federal government. Now the Supreme Court ultimately sided with the administration. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion and the court held that the FTC's removal protection violates the separation of powers The court explained that Article two of the Constitution gives theives gives executive power to the president, meaning The president is the head of the executive branch and is responsible for making sure federal law is carried out And if an official is exercising executive power on behalf of the United States That official has to remain accountable to the president The majority says accountability requires removal power The president can't be responsible for how executive power is used if he can't remove the people using that power So the court said the FTC commommissioners cannot be protected from removal in the way the FTC statute currently protects them The majority emphasized that the modern FDC isn't just a neutral advisory body. It said the FDC does exercise major executive power because of those roles that you know we talked about earlier. Because of that, the court said the FTC is exercising the kind of power that belongs within the executive branch. And if FTC commissioners exercise executive power, then they're subordinate to the president and have to be removable by the president Now in addressing Humphrey's executive specifically, the majority said that case was based on an old understanding of the FTC as an agency. And the understanding back then was that the FTC was mostly quasi legislative and quasi judicial rather than truly executive. So this is pretty much in line with the administration's argument. And the court said that that's no longer how the agency works. The majority said the modern FC clearly exercises executive power. So to the extent that Humphrey's executor protected FTC commissioners from being fired at will by the president, it has to be overruled The court did include one important caveat, though, It said this decision was about the FTC specifically, not necessarily every independent agency. So the court specifically said it was not deciding what this means for the Federal Reserve. It wasn't deciding how this rule applies to certain specialized courts, like the Tax Court or the Court of Federal Claims, it was just addressing the FTC So while the court's holding, yes, it was broad, it's not necessarily unlimited Justice Sotomayor dissented. She was joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, and they argued that the majority was overturning nearly a century of precedent and weakening Congress's ability to create independent agencies In the dissent's view, Congress has a al long had some power to limit presidential removal in certain offices. and Humphrey's executor should have controlled this case. So the majority said, you know the FTC exercises executive power and people exercising executive power have to be removable by the president. But the dissent argued that Congress can create certain independent agencies with removal protections, and the court should not have overruled you know, this president that has stood as such a big support beam for for the system that is the government for almost ninety years Now let's talk about today's decisions. The Supreme Court first decided two major cases about transgender athletes in school sports, Little V. Heacockks and West Virginia v BPJ Both of these cases were about whether states can require girls and women's sports teams to be based on biological sex or whether these kinds of laws unlawfully discriminate against transgender girls and women But these two cases differed a bit when it came to the legal framework they were argued under Little v. H Cx is primarily a constitutional case, specifically an equal protection issue, whereas West Virginia v BPJ is primarily a statutory civil rights case, a Title nine issue. And that distinction will make more sense once we walk through these cases separately The first case, Little V. H Cx came out of Idaho. In twenty twenty, Idaho passed a law called the Fairness and Women Sports Act. That law required sports teams to be designated for females, males or coed teams. And it said that teams designated for girls and women were not open to students who did not meet the law's definition of female sex, which it defined as the biological sex The plaintiff, Lindsay Heacx, is a transgender woman who attended Boise State University. She wanted to try out for the women's cross country and track teams. But Idaho's law prevented her from doing that. So she sued. She argued that the law violated the equal prrotection Clause of the fourteenth Amendment P protection Clause basically says states cannot deny people equal protection under the law. Now that doesn't mean the government can never treat groups differently. but if the government does draw lines between groups of people courts Courts ask what kind of classification the law is making and how strong the government's justification has to be. And that's where levels of scrutiny come in The highighest level is strict scrutiny, which applies to things like race discrimination or laws affecting fundamental rights very hard for a law to survive under strict scrutiny. In the middle is intermediate scrutiny, which usually applies to sex based classifications. Under intermediate scrutiny, the law or sorry, the state has to show that the law serves an important governmental interest and that the law is substantially related to achieving that interest It can show that the law can stand. If it can't, thew the law gets shuck down The lowest level is rational basis review, where the government usually only needs a legitimate reason for the law The lowest level, rational basis review is easiest for the government to survive. the highest level, strict scrutiny is hardest for the government to survive And this was actually one of the big reasons that these two cases specifically were watched so closely. The Supreme Ct still had not definitively said what level of scrutiny applies to laws that classify based on transgender status specifically. So people were watching to see whether the court would answer that question here Now Procedurally, the Ninth Circuit said the law in Idaho treated discrimination based on transgender status as sex discrimination and applied intermediate scrutiny Idaho argued that the law served important interests like fairness in women's sports and athlete safety And this law was substantially related to those interests and therefore the law should be upheld And the ninth Circuit accepted those interests as fair, but said Idaho hadn't shown that a blanket ban like this one based only on sex at birth, was substantially related to its goal of protecting fairness in women's sports. So the appellate court actually blocked the law while the case continued. And Idaho ends up going to the Supreme Court Now the Heac Cx case was interesting because Heacx had actually stopped playing women's sports by the time the case got to the Supreme Court, and Heacx actually asked the court to dismiss the case as moot, but Idaho argued that the court should still decide it. So even before the justices got to the constitutional question here, they had to decide whether there was still a live case spoiler alert, the court did in fact, decide it was a live case and did answer the constitutional question But the second case here was West Virginia V BPJ That case, you guessed it came out of West Virginia. West Virginia passed a law called the Save Women's Sports Act, which said girls and women's school sports teams were limited to students who met the state's definition of female based on reproductive biology and genetics at birth. BPJ is a transgender girl who challenged the law because she wanted to join the girls' cross country and track teams. And this case raised an equal protection similar to Heacocks, but also but the main issue in BPJ was title nine Now Title nine is the federal civil rights law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs that receive federal funding And a lot of people associate Title Iine with women's sports and that is a major part of Title Iine. But Title Iine actually applies even more broadly to education, things like admissions, housing, access to school programs, et cetera The questestion in BBJ was whether excluding a transgender girl from girls sports violates Title Iine's ban on sex discrimination and whether it violates the equal Protection Clause The Fourth Circuit Court of Aeals sided with BPJ on her title nine claim. The court said she was treated differently from other girls because of sex based considerations tied to her transgender status The Fth Circuit also discussed equal protection and, like the ninth Circuit, applied intermediate scrutiny. West Virginia, like Idaho, argued that the law protected fairness and safety in girls sports. and while the court accepted that fairness is an important interest, said the state had not shown that excluding BPJ specifically advanced that goal Now a key fact in that case was that BPJ had received puberty blockers and therefore hadn't gone through male puberty. So the court said the state couldn't simply assume she had the athletic advantages that the state was concerned about So from there, West Virginia appeals to the Supreme Court, and West Virginia's argument was similar to Idaho's. Sports have long been separated by sex. Title IX allows sex separated teams, and states should be allowed to use biological sex when deciding eligibility for girls and women's sports BPJ's argument, though, was that she was being excluded from girls sports because she's transgender and argued that this law treats her differently from other girls and does so based on broad assumptions rather than her individual circumstances BPJ argued that the state cannot just assume all transgender girls have an unfair athletic advantage without looking at the actual facts So the Supreme Court had two related but slightly different questions in front of it. In Heacks, the main question was whether Idaho's law violated the equal Protection Cause of the fourourteenth Amendment. In BPJ, the court had to consider both the Equal Protection Clause and Title nine And today, the court said that Title Iine and the fourteenth Amendment allow states to preserve girls and women's sports for biological females because safety and competitive fairness are important interests Biological sex is a permissible way to draw that line in sports The court started its analysis with Title IX. The court focused on the word sex and said that when Title I and its sports regulations were adopted, sex meant biological sex, not gender identity. And the reason that was important to the analysis is because as the court emphasized Title IXine's sports regulations have long allowed schools to separate teams from members of each sex, especially when teams are based on competitive skill or involve contact sports. So in the court's view, if Title IXI allows sex separated sports and sex means biological sex in this context, then schools are allowed to use biological sex as the dividing line for those teams. And because of that, the court rejected BPJ's argument that schools have to make an exception for transgender girls who have taken puberty blockers or hormones. The majority said Title Iine and its regulations do not require that exception Then the court turned to equal protection. The court agreed with the lower courts that these laws classify based on sex, which means they trigger intermediate scrutiny And the states had to therefore show an important government interest and a substantial relationship between the law and that interest. And the states again cited fairness and safety and girls and women's sports as their reasons, same reasons they gave in the courts below. And the majority agreed that those were important reasons and that limiting girls and women's teams to biological females is substantially related to those interests in finding that states are allowed to use biological sex is the line girls at women's teams The court noted that sports are different from a lot of other areas in life. In sports, One athlete making a team, getting playing time, winning a race, or earning a medal can directly affect another athlete's opportunity. That's what the court said. So that rationale played a big part in their analysis On the hormone and puberty blocker issue, the court said states don't have to make individualized decisions for every transgender athlete. So even if some transgender girls who take puberty blockers or hormones might not have those physical advantages the state's worried about, the majority said that doesn't mean the whole law is unconstitutional. Justice Kavanagh wrote the opinion for the court. he he's actually He's a justice that has a long history with sports. who really takes a special interest in sports related cases. He also has a long history of coaching girls sports, his daughter' sports teams. In fact, when this case was argued, there were articles going around about how Kavanaugh might have an interesting take on this case because of his experience as a girls coach. So anyway, Justice Kavanaugh wrote this opinion. he finished the opinion, writing, quote, The two states here, along with twenty five other states, the IOC, the USOPC, and the NCAA, have concluded at this time that women and girls should be allowed to compete for those life changing opportunities on an equal playing field without fear of physical injury from biological males or being forced to compete against biological males Consistent with Title Iine and the equal Protection Clause, we hold The states may maintain women's and girls sports for biological females. They may determine eligibility for women and girls sports based on biological sex The Constitution and Title Iine do not require an overhaul of women and girls sports throughout America In so ruling, we emphasize one last point Most of the biological female and transgender student athletes who are involved in transgender sports disputes around the country are teenagers or in their early twenties. Those student athletes want to play sports. Their desire to compete warrants respect. No student athlete on either side of the issue whether a biological female or transgender deserves to be ostracized or vilified endnd quote Justice Sotomayor wrote the dissent. The dissent was joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson And this is actually really important to say. So they agreed with the court's Title Iine analysis. The Title nine portion of the ruling was unanimous. It was nine to zero What they disagreed with was the equal protection analysis. Sootomayor's main point was that the court moved too quickly here. She said, the issue was not whether states can ever protect fairness and safety in girls sports because they can, but whether West Virginia's blanket rule was justified as applied to BPJ specifically. BPJ argued that she had not gone through puberty and therefore didn't have the physical advantage that the state was concerned about. So in the Dceense's view, the lower courts should have been allowed to develop the facts here before the Supreme Court upheld the law The dissent argued that the state might have important interests, but it still had to show that excluding this student actually served those interests And one thing that I want to mention here too is that the court still has not definitively decided what level of scrutiny applies to transgender status specifically. Instead, the majority here said these laws classify based on biological sex, not transgender status. And because sex based classifications get intermediate scrutiny, the court analyzed the laws under that standard and said they p, but the court still has not definitively said, and this is still an open question what classification is is or what level of scrutiny is given to laws that discriminate based on transgender status specifically Let's take our second and final break of the day. when we come back. 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Law Supplies last ends june thirtieth, terms at aka dot mS slash college PC Who cares about your poops? Ollie does. That's why Oie's science back to gut health lineup help support your family's regularity. From daily probiotics to fibergummies your kiddles will love. Find it all on Oie dot com That's ollY dot comot These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease Welcome back. Moving right along the second to last decision of the day today was in a case called National Republican Senatorial Committee the Federal Election Commission This was a big campaign finance case about how much political parties can spend in coordination with their own candidates. So Under current federal campaign finance law, there are limits on how much money people can give directly to candidates. There are also limits on how much political parties can give directly to candidates. But this case was about a slightly different category. coordinated party expenditures. That basically means money a political party spends to help one of its candidates. So it's not It's not given directly to the candidate. It's where the party and the candidate are working together And the political the political party is spending money to help the candidate. So You know, imagine a party wants to run ads supporting its Senate candidate If the party creates and pays for those ads completely independently, without any sort of coordination with the candidate's campaign, that party can generally spend without a cap But if a party talks with the candidates' campaign about, you know, what the message should be, what strategy they should utilize, the timing, audience, you know, what the content should look like, anything, that becomes coordinated spending, and once it is coordinated, federal law limits how much the party can spend. And that was the rule being challenged in this case The challengers were the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, JD Vance, who was a Senate candidate when the case began, and a former Republican representative. And their argument was that Political parties exist to help elect their candidates. So if a party wants to speak in support of its own candidate and wants to actually coordinate with that candidate to make the message effective, the First Amendment should protect that. They said the current law puts parties into this weird position. Either speak independently and avoid meaningful conversations with your own candidate, or coordinate with the candidate and face a spending limit. And in their eyes, this was a burden on core political speech Now the side defending the law arguue that once a party is working directly with a candidate, that's spending It becomes more like a contribution to the candidate and contributions can be limited because they can create a risk of corruption or at least the appearance of corruption. So these coordinated campaign expenditures should be limited in the same way But the challengers pushed back on that. They said the corruption concern doesn't really fit here because this isn't an outside donor secretly trying to buy influence with a candidate. This is the candidate's own political party trying to help the candidate win And the challengers pointed to federal law, which already has other safeguards, like donor contribution limits, earmarking rules, disclosure requirements, all these things to stop donors from using parties as a workaround. But the side defending current law argued back that this workaround concern is exactly the point. Their concern wasn't necessarily that political parties are bribing their own candidates. It was that wealthy donors could give huge amounts of money to party committees, and then the party could spend that money in direct coordination with the candidate because That donor would otherwise be limited in donating the money themselves, but by routing support through a party, donors can help candidates in a way that gets around the direct candidate contribution limits. Now there was also a major precedent in the background of this case, FEC v. Colorado Republican Federal campaign Committee This case is often referred to as Colorado two. It's from two thousand one. And in that case, the Supreme Court upheld limits on coordinated spending by political parties by a vote of five to four. Justice Thomas, the only member of the court now that was on the court then that is still currently on the court, wrote for the dissent in that case Ct treated in Colorado to. Coordinated party spending as similar to a contribution to a candidate rather than fully independent speech So in this case, the NRSC and the other challengers had to argue that either Colorado I did not control this case or the court should just overrule it completely. The defenders of the law obviously argued that Colorado two should be upheld and and should control this case. The lower court, the sixth Circuit, agreed that it was bound by Colorado to. evenven though some judges suggested that you know later Supreme Court cases had created tension With Colorado to, the sixth circuit said only the Supreme Court could overrule its own precedent, which is true. A lower court cannot overrule the Supreme Court. So the lower court upheld the limits The appellate court actually pointed out that the Challengers had some good arguments, but it was bound by the Supreme Court's decision in Colorado too And then it goes to the Supreme Court. and today the Supreme Court struck down the limits and overruled Colorado two In writing for the majority, Justice Kavanaugh wrote that these spending limits, quote, necessarily abridge political party's freedom of speech, because virtually every means of communicating ideas in today's mass society requires the expenditure of money. A restriction on the amount of money a person or group can spend on political communication during a campaign necessarily reduces the quantity of expression by restricting the number of issues discussed, the depth of their exploration, and the size of the audience reached Qote, Kavanaugh finished with, quote, importantantly, by holding political party coordinated expenditure restrictions unconstitutional, The court's decision today treats all political parties equally. whether the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, or other parties, all political parties and candidates going forward, can compete equally under the same rules regarding coordinated expenditures and can structure their fundraising, spending, and political speech on a level playing field as they see fit with a law end quote The dissenting justices were Justice Kagan, Justice Sotomayor, and Justice Jackson, they focused mainly on the corruption argument. So Kagan wrote, quote, For over half a century, a federal statute has guarded against actual and apparent quid pro quo corruption in our political system by limiting the amount of money a donor can contribute to a candidate. But today, the court rewrites the rules to allow circumvention of the contribution limits. The majority invalidates Congress's restriction of coordinated expenditures, thus enabling a party to serve as an alternative checking account for a campaign. So the court ushers back in the same opportunities for quid pro qu quot corruption that the corruption limits were meant to check End quote. In addressing the court's reliance on disclosure requirements to prevent corruption, Kagan wrote, quote, too count on disclosure to prevent corruption is as much as to give up on the goal itself, which is sad to say, what this court does today. End quote Now, to be clear, this does not change how much donors can give directly to candidates or parties. thoseose contributions still exist. What it changes is how much parties can spend in coordination with their own candidates. That obviously has real world effects. It'll likely give official party committees more influence over campaigns because you parties can now offer more direct support to candidates they want to help thingsings like ads voter outrage, campaign strategy, et cetera. Parties might also have more leverage over candidates who want that support, which then could in turn mean that national party leadership becomes more powerful in shaping primaries and general elections and then that of course, could make it harder for outside candidates to win if they don't have support from the official party. And then this decision could also change the role of super PACs. Super PACs can still spend unlimited money, but they generally can't coordinate directly with candidates. If parties can now coordinate more freely, campaigns might rely more on official party committees and less on those outside groups and super packs So those are some of the real world effects of this decision. I know not everyone is familiar with campaign finance rules and so that's why I wanted to go over it. But now let's talk about the decision everyone was waiting for. The final decision of the day was the birthright citizenship case. Let's hope my voice holds out for this one because it is becoming a strugg. I guess after an hour, my voice starts to say, all right,ve Done enough talking But today, the Supreme Court struck down President Trump's executive order, which attempted to limit birthright citizenship for certain children born in the United States. This decision was five to four on the main opinion, six to three in the result. And that's just because Justice Kavanaugh, he concurred in the judgment, but he dissented from the majority's reasoning. and we'll talk more about that at the end of this discussion So birthright citizenship is the idea that if you're born on US. soil, you are automatically a US citizen regardless of your parents's citizenship or immigration status. And there are a few exceptions like children of foreign diplomats, for example, children of foreign diplomats are not entitled to birthright citizenship Birthright citizenship comes from the fourourteenth Amendment. and the first sentence says quote persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States. quote That subject to the jurisdiction thereo phrase is what this whole debate centered on The challengers argued that this phrase has a pretty straightforward meaning, If you are born in the United States and you are subject to US law, you are a United States citizen The Trump administration though read it more narrowly. The administration argued that being born here is not enough by itself. A child also has to be born to parents who have a fuller legal and political connection to the United States. So in the administration's view, children whose parents are here unlawfully or temporarily shouldn't automatically become citizens just because they're born on US soil Now here's how the case started. On the day Trump returned to office, he signed an executive order titled Protecting the Meing and Value of American citizenship And that order told federal agencies not to recognize U. S. citizenship for two categories of children born in the United States The first category was a child whose mother was unlawfully present in the United States when the child was born and whose father was not a US citizen or lawful permanent resident The second category was a child whose mother was in the US legally but only temporarily on a student visa, work visa, tourist visa, or through the visa waiver program, and whose father was also not a US citizen or lawful permanent resident The order didn't apply to every child of immigrants. It specifically applied when the mother falls into one of those two categories and the father was not a US citizen or green card holder The order also only applied going forward. It did not apply retroactively. It covered children born more than thirty days after the order was signed Almost immediately though, the order was challenged in court. And before Trump v. Barbara got to the Supreme Court, there was another related case called Trump v Casa. In that case, a judge had blocked Trump's executive order from taking effect nationwide But Trump took that injunction to the Supreme Court. He argued that a lower court judge should not be able to block a federal policy for the entire country. And the Supreme Court agreed. The court said that those nationwide injunctions go too far A CSA, the challengers took a different approach. They said, okay, if one judge can't block the policy for everyone nationwide, then let's bring this as a class action for the children who would actually be affected by the order And that is how Trump v. Barbara came about. There were three main plaintiffs in Barbara who all fit into that certified class. So the district court agrees to certify the class, but only for the children who would be denied citizenship under the order, not the parents. And the court temporarily blocked the Trump administration from enforcing that order against that specific children, the group of children that fit into that certified class The district court said that Trump's order likely violated both the fourteenth Amendment and federal citizenship law So the Trump administration then takes the case to the Supreme Court. And I want to talk a little more. we touch on this briefly, but a little more about the arguments on both sides The Trump administration's argument was essentially The fourteenth Amendment does not give citizenship to every single person born on U.S. soil. The administration said the phrase subject to the jurisdiction means more than just being physically present in the United States or required to obey U.S law In the administration's view, subject to the jurisdiction thereof means being fully subject to the United States in a deeper political sense. So for children of undocumented immigrants, the administration argued that their parents are here unlawfully and do not have the kind of legal connection to the country that the fourourteenth Amendment requires. And for children of people here on temporary visas The administration argued that those parents are still legally tied to another country and are only in the United States temporarily, so their children should not automatically receive U. S citizenship just because they were born here And a big part of the administration's argument is how it read the eighteen ninety eight Supreme Court case called United States v. Won Kim Art Wong Kim Ark centered around a man named you guessed it, Wong Kim Ark. He was born in San Francisco to Chinese parents. He left the United States for a trip overseas. When he came back, the government tried to deny him entry saying he was not a citizen But the Supreme Court said he was a citizen under the fourteenth Amendment. And the court's reasoning was that the fourourteenth Amendment doesn't say your parents have to be citizens. It says that if you are born in the United States and subject to to US jurisdiction, you are a citizen. And because Wang Kim Aark was born in San Francisco and his parents were not diplomats or foreign officials, which is one of those exceptions we talked about He was covered by the fourourteenth Amendment The fact that his parents were Chinese citizens and couldn't become naturalized citizens under the laws at that time didn't take away his citizenship But the administration said Wong K Mark doesn't settle this case because Wang Kim arrc was a little different. Wang's parents weren't just visiting the United States, they were here lawfully and permanently. And this is where the word domicile becomes important. Domicile basically means your true fixed home, the place that you live, the place that you intend to stay. So the administration's argument was that Wong Kim Arc was different because his parents had a permanent domicile in the United States. And therefore Wang's case protects children of immigrants with a permanent domicile here, but it does not protect children whose parents are unlawfully here or here temporarily And the challengers pushed back on this, of course, They argued that domicile was it was a part of the facts of the case, but it wasn't a constitutional requirement. They said the fourteenth Amendment doesn't say your parents have to be citizens. It doesn't say your parents have to be lawful residents. It doesn't say your parents have to be permanently domiciled in the United States. It says, if you're born in the United States and you're subject to US jurisdiction you are a citizen. And the Supreme Court agreed with the challengers. Chief Justice John Roberts, he wrote the opinion for the courts, and he wrote that children born to parents who are in the United States unlawfully or temporarily are born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof. and that quote, under the Constitution, they are citizens at birth end quote. He alsoote quote, Citizenship, then and now was the right to have rights to freely participate in our political community. The framers of the fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to every freeborn person in this land. We keep that promise today. End quote. On the domicile argument, Robert quote For the dissents and the government, Wang Kim Ak is essentially irrelevant. They attempt to narrow that precedent by noting that the court's opinion repeatedly referred to the domicile of Wang's parents. That is true But the reasoning underlying the holding of Wong Kim R cannot be squared with a domicile requirement of the sort the government envisions. As we have already explained, the court exhaustively canvassed the text and history of the citizenship cllause. It traced an unbroken line from the English common law into the founding and annttebellum eras and through the debates The clause is ratification. yet at no point did the court identify any evidence in the historical record that the ratifiers of the fourourteenth Amendment thought themselves to be imposing a domicile limitation endnd quote Justice Thomas, he wrote a ninety one page dissent, which Justice Gorsuch joined. Thomas's dissent is longer than the opinion of the court, but I will just summarize it by saying that his basic point was that the majority misunderstood the original meaning of the citizenship clause and the way he sees it The fourourteenth ammendment was meant to overturn Dred Scott and guarantee citizenship to people who were born and domiciled in the United States, meaning people whose true legal home was here regardless of race. But he said it was not meant to automatically grant citizenship to children whose parents were only here temporarily or unlawfully. Thomas also said that the majority read Wang Kim Arc too broadly. He agreed with the administration on this point. He said Wang Kim Arc protected someone born in the United States to parents who had made the United States their permanent home. That case, he said, did not answer the separate question of children born to parents who were temporary visitors unlawfully present. So to Thomas, the main distinction was whether the child was born into a family legally domiced in the United States, not just where the child was born Justice Alito wrote his own dissent. He argued that the majority made the birthright citizenship rule way too broad. He feels the phrase subject to the jurisdiction thereof means the person must be subject to the United States in an exclusive allegiance sense. In other words, the person can't also be subject to a foreign power in a citizenship or nationality sense. And he focused quite heavily on the Civil Rights Act of eighteen sixty six, which was passed right before the fourourteenth Amendment. And that law said that citizenship applied to people born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power Alito argued that the fourteenth Amendment was meant to constitutionalize that same basic rule. And that's of course, different from the way that the majority saw it. The majority said, If you're born in the United States and subject to U S. law, you're a citizen. Alito said, Well, that can't be right because there were historical groups like tribal Native Americans at the time who were subject to the same US laws, still weren't automatically citizens at birth