The quick resegregation of higher education is particularly pronounced. In 1951, in the case of McKissick v Carmichael, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals compelled the UNC Chapel Hill School of Law to admit 4 black students. In 2025, they admitted 5. law.unc.edu/wp-content/u...

@tphillips.bsky.social and I recently wrote about this issue. We also drafted an amicus brief that touched on it in Slaughter. As far as we are concerned, Slaughter did not resolve the conflict between the Take Care Clause and the removal power. We'll post an update on @lawfaremedia.org shortly.

I don’t think people really understand how bad the OMB proposed rule is going to be for state and local govt. We’re talking about putting a full third of state budgets under the explicit control of Russ Vought. (1/2) www.bondbuyer.com/news/cities-...

Fortunately, elections in the United States are administered largely by its 3,000 counties, as well as by the 50 states. This commission has no actual enforcement power. This one of the few levers available to Trump. His intention is clear - but this is an expression of weakness, not power.

The idea that Congress cannot establish independent commissions to help run elections but instead has to subject them to presidential control is just bonkers. Nothing supports this. Not text. Not history. Not tradition. Not precedent. Not prudence. Just raw will. That’s not constitutional law.

It is such a blatant violation of the Take Care Clause and all based on a non-textual and ahistorical removal power on steroids.

There's a reason the case is called "Slaughter"

This may be a be-careful-what-you-wish-for situation. As Mark Graber says in the story, if this gets to the current SCOTUS, it loses. The “equal sovereignty” principle is used not only in Shelby Co against the VRA, but originates in cases invalidating new states admission restrictions. 1/

Tampa Bay Times could have done better with the lead paragraphs here. It was not "scandal" that wrecked his career, it was documented sexual harassment that wrecked the careers of his victims. www.tampabay.com/news/florida...

NYT‘s old standby, “dems in disarray”

Kudos to the faculty at the state schools who challenged this, and special kudos to Leroy Pernell, professor and former dean at FAMU law school who has had an amazing career supporting academics and justice.

"managerial concerns are not at play here. Florida has not asserted that its law plays any role in allowing proper performance of professors’ daily duties, avoiding classroom disruptions, or the like. Instead, the law is a “per se ban on speech the state disagrees with.” #1A ⚖️

Relieved to see this result, written by Trump-appointed Judge Grant. But Judge Lagoa’s dissent is cray cray and signals where the MAGA judges want to take things 1/ www.aclu.org/press-releas...

BREAKING: Eleventh Circuit, on a 2-1 vote, upholds injunction blocking Florida from enforcing its 2022 Stop WOKE Act in the university context. The majority opinion is from Judge Britt Grant, a Trump appointee: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

This

Being a woman rocks because if you use AI you’re stupid and if you don’t use AI you’re dumb

“Since 1776, the United States has received about 130 million immigrants—a legacy that the Founders fully expected and would have welcomed.” As a proud American immigrant, I absolutely adore this tremendous piece by @davidjbier.bsky.social and @cato.org.

American democracy stands out internationally in several ways, from a constitution that's unusually hard to amend to a capital city without voting representation in the national legislature. New from @pewresearch.org: 8 ways that US-style democracy stands out globally.

The administration de-legalizing many nursing home workers will kill American seniors. "...a 25% increase in the steady state flow of immigrants to the US would result in 5,000 fewer deaths nationwide... reduced use of nursing homes as a key mechanism driving this result" www.nber.org/papers/w34791

In the well-over 100,000 documents written by founders included in the Founders Online database from the National Archives, no one uses the phrase "God's noble experiment." No one.

Most people feel that going to a live professional sporting event is financially out of reach. (@today.yougov.com) yougov.com/en-us/articl...

And you know what they could have done about it? Filed an amicus supporting Haitians and not have their guy sign one for Trump.

NYT’s “only dems have agency”, Pope Leo edition.

Eff this guy. If it were up to him Balogun would not *be* a citizen eligible to play for the US.

This is a possibility. But we do not know this - too soon to evaluate and the past is a treacherous analogy guide. It is not wise to…1/

“John Mercer Langston...began by saying that he was a believer in the Declaration of American Independence; and proceeded to show that all people in the land, white and colored, were slaves to the oligarchy which inaugurated the present rebellion” +

Happy 4th of July! "America the Beautiful" - Katharine Lee Bates #QuarantineHobby #America250

July 4th/5th always seems to bring out some version of a conservative libertarian reading of Frederick Douglass's 1852 speech. But those are mostly bad readings. Here is why. 1/

This is my lane. I went through the 194 Trump v Barbara opinion from yesterday section by section, noting what they got right about US migration and citizenship history, and what the dissents get wrong. Please share if you think it is helpful to others.

🔥

With so many others I'm relieved that SCOTUS upheld birthright citizenship. And yes, it shouldn't have been this close. Please, everyone, read Justice Jackson, who gives a particularly forthright account of the relevant history and emphasizes the stakes for this country.

Rusty's in the club

I keep seeing certain people referred to as birthright citizens because they were born in the US to noncitizen parents, but it is vital to understand that every single person* born in this country is a birthright citizen! *except children of diplomats, who aren't subject to US jurisdiction.

The ban is heinous for what it does to transgender athletes. But if you think cisgender girls and young women won’t be caught up in the fallout, too, you are woefully ignorant

The day after Gorsuch concurs to self-righteously warn about the admin power of the executive (in a case that greatly expanded that power!!!) he argues to uphold an EO destroying statutory and constitutional citizenship rules. Total 🤡

The danger is not Alito or Thomas stepping down before 2029. It is whether Roberts will.

Now? If people posting on a justice’s feed or talking on their preferred TV channels want something, that seems like enough; suddenly ideological priors seem way easier to unleash in high leverage cases.

This is a good time to re-up our call for papers on the big SCOTUS cases. Expedited publishing in 4-6 wks time & faculty edited.

Just a reminder that undoing the Second Founding has been on the right's agenda for a very long time. bsky.app/profile/larr...

With this ruling, the birthright issue is not going away. The right hasn't really begun *organizing* around getting rid of the citizenship clause. Like Roe, this will be their fight for a generation. And if the Democrats just say "we won" and ignore it, like Roe, the Republicans will eventually win.

About WV v. BJP: The Court did not go as far as it could have in rendering trans-people liminal in society. But this Administration will do what it did in SFFA v. Harvard--push the envelope on a narrow decision to eliminate protections for marginalized groups.

This this this

Friggin' 5-1-3 in Barbara? Kav *could* have stopped at "EO violates statute." He goes out of his way to also say congress has power to do what Trump tried. Which, thankfully, Barrett did not join and so congress does not have that power currently.

The supermajority's decision in NRSC allows wealthy donors to circumvent limits on contributions to individual candidates by donating much larger sums to political parties, which can now spend the money in direct coordination with specific candidates. An open invitation for quid pro quo corruption.

The Court appears to apply intermediate scrutiny in WV (finding it satisfied) and to avoid reaching a decision on standard of review for discrim against trans (*not* taking Barrett's suggestion in Skrmetti)?

Exactly this. The imperial order and the colonial order did different things, and that legal inheritance developed in a different way after the founding. The 14A reset what colonial law and the American constitutional order, in particular Jacksoniansm, did to move the U.S. away from the common law.

In the effort to counter the really bad work of Wurman et al, I see a bit too much bending in the other direction. The legal question of birthright citizenship across race was contested in the antebellum US, but Taney had precedents too. 1/

Wow

Gorsuch’s concurrence in Slaughter: It’s actually kind of scary for the president to have absolute control over the administrative state! 😱 But don’t worry ☺️ there’s a solution: get rid of the administrative state 🪄

Law/legal history folks: Can anyone think of two SCOTUS decisions that came down the same day that were as transparently inconsistent as Slaughter and Cook? Justice Bradley’s opinions in Slaughterhouse and Bradwell were that, but those were dissent/concurrence. Must be some crim pro decisions?