With 2A gender & racial justice back in vogue at SCOTUS, Daniel Harawa & I are avail to discuss their brief Rahimi respite should @strictscrutiny.bsky.social @profmmurray.bsky.social @kateshaw.bsky.social @leahlitman.bsky.social want any help yalelawjournal.org/collection/u...

ACB in Wolford: “It is beyond me why Hawaii would claim these vile laws can justify its present day restriction” because the analogous gun laws cited were part of Black Codes passed by committees describing slavery as benign and misunderstood….sounds eerily familiar www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

I highly recommend Eric Ruben's Law of the Gun, 107 Iowa L. Rev. 173 (2021), to understand the problems with conceiving of guns as the only (or primary) means for keeping and bearing arms for self-defense both historically and currently papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

A truly bonkers part of Alito’s Wolford opinion is distinguishing old laws concerned with the negative impact of shootings on private property because nobody would notice someone carrying a concealed gun…..until that gun is used, which is the entire point of Hawaii’s law 🤦‍♂️

Alito is aghast that Hawaii could deign to burden a person who merely wants their handgun at the ready at the gas station, convenience store, restaurant, coffee shop, drug store, grocery store, big box store, home improvement store, barber shop, hair salon, and laundromat

Framing Rahimi as concerning modern conduct is bizarre because it is a modern law that makes the conduct modern and that law is what is challenged. The law’ “recent vintage” should work against it under Bruen but Alito’s description suggests it creates more flexibility under Bruen 🤷‍♂️

Even in Bruen the numbers-based restriction was inconsistently used by dismissing the relevance of territories or low population areas, while deriding the few modern states with the restriction that covered 80 million people….not a great exemplar of judicial constraint

This part of the opinion is critical because it means assault weapons bans (among other restrictions) will be presumptively unconstitutional and diminishes—if not eliminates—potential dangerous/unusual arguments

Alito loves using women to justify broad 2A opinions, ignoring women's main threats are known assailants in the home. As I wrote in @yalelawjournal.bsky.social after Rahimi, women are more likely to be found guilty and sentenced to longer terms when shooting abusers papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

For additional reading, here's some of my pal Daniel Harawa's writings on the topic: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

"The Fourth Amendment and the Color-Blind Constitution," new from me at Volokh. reason.com/volokh/2026/...

Guns as essential self-defense weapons at the founding has repeatedly been disproven and is unnecessary. Its less absurd to say self-defense is the 2A core and the right protects guns now because of tech changes over time. Alito is forcing a false persistence of gun-centric culture in this country

Right off the bat Alito begins with anachronism. As @maureenebrady.com brilliantly showed in her recent SLR piece, the Court is projecting modern property categories backwards. www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/prope...

KBJ repeatedly asks the majority to choose in 2A rulings: abandon Bruen or apply it. The inconsistent application reveals the futility of a history-only test and judicial activism hell bent on deciding who gets guns, what guns, and where they can be used, health and wellbeing of others be damned

Thomas also used to be the lone dissenter saying all of the abortion jurisprudence is wrong and Roe should be overturned, so.......🫣

The third and not last decision is Mullin v Al Otro Lado. Alito, again, has the opinion for the 6-3 court, holding that a person does not "arrive in the United States" if stopped on the other side of the border. Sotomoyar is reading from her dissent for the trio. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...

fuuuuuuuuuuck

The 2nd opinion is Wolford. The court holds Hawaii’s law barring licensed concealed-carry permit holders from carrying handguns on private property open to the public without the property owner’s express authorization violates the 2nd and 14th Amendments

For those who were at my panel for an early June conference (you know who you are) where property rights were presented as a potentially fertile ground for appealling to more conservative jurists, I present Wolford v. Lopez (which I mentioned at the time could be a problem with the idea)

Not only did Alito refrain from dissenting, he wrote a “chillax bro, what’s the big deal if someone smokes a little weed” concurrence that Kagan joined! 🤯

This result was expected by most (all?) at Duke’s 2A WIP last month so 9-0 ruling isn’t surprising. The ruling is narrow, due to the govt’s extremely broad view that the law automatically applies to anyone who uses a scheduled drug unlawfully or with any regularity @dukefirearmslaw.bsky.social

Holy crap. Gorsuch is taking a direct shot at Bordenkircher, the case that basically enshrines modern plea bargaining's power (a threat of "take the plea deal for a few yrs or face life in prison if you go to trial" was not seen as coercive).

Weed normalization from Sam Alito was not on my bingo card for this morning

Absolutely disgusted that ever justice used a hyphen instead of an en dash in Rooker–Feldman. Feeling betrayed by the secret SCOTUS style guide. May write in with a complaint.

Justices Gorsuch, Sotomayor, and Jackson concur in Hunter v. US to get pretty close to saying that plea bargaining is unconstitutional. Worth a read.

BREAKING: Supreme Court unanimously upholds Second Amendment rights of man convicted under a federal law barring occasional illegal drug users from having a handgun www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...

In Skrmetti, SCOTUS painstakingly framed TN's law as restricting treatment for certain purposes. Now the CO's purpose (protecting minors) is framed as seeking to "dictate what particular 'opinion or perspective' individuals may express" while leaving out it applies only in the therapeutic context

SCOTUS in Chiles v. Salazar: talk therapy isn't health care! Siding with a therapist equating conversion "therapy" to chats in a book club has implications for LGBTQ+ health, authority/validity of mental health professionals, & establishing/enforcing standards of care www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

Chiles, Dobbs, Skrmetti, & others show SCOTUS “weighing in on when, why and how politicians can say, ‘Here’s the kind of health care you can give and here’s the kind of health care you can’t give.’” 🚨Anyone in medicine or public health, or who believes in evidence-based care, this is not a drill‼️

Another great piece grappling w/ the tension of talk therapy as speech vs medical treatment, the threats this decision poses for states’ ability to enforce standards of care, and how this decision may undermine Chiles’s very own profession. @michaelrulrich.bsky.social www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

SCOTUS 2A oral argument starting soon on federal ban on gun possession by someone who “is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance”

Standing room only to celebrate my brilliant friend & colleague @azizaahmed.bsky.social and her new book Risk & Resistance: How Feminists Transformed the Law and Science of AIDS Buy it here because you should consume everything Aziza writes, says, thinks, intimates…. bookshop.org/p/books/risk...

This could result in a rule that rights will be defined by the "history & tradition" of a "national tradition." "National tradition" preempts property law, local custom, and even general practice within plural communities. This strikes me as strange even under the mythic view of "our federalism"

Yes, I get what the recent cases say, but the idea that the government isn't allowed to distinguish walking up to a stranger's front door with campaign literature and doing so with a firearm is complete madness.

"Unenclosed land" is not PROPERTY OPEN TO THE PUBLIC how do you people listen to supreme court arguments I'm going on mute

THIS ⬇️‼️ I have tried to make this point since the day Bruen came down, that legislatures can only regulate IF there is indeed a problem to regulate so they can't etch out the scope of ANY constitutional law!!!

Petr: our national tradn is people are allowed to carry on places open to the publc. SS: this just requires permission, right? Petr: rule has always been implied right to do so. SS: not in hawaii Petr: rule is *national* tradn, not local custom

The way god and the founders and John Lott intended 🙌

"The state can't pass a law prohibiting you from bringing guns into people's private residences" is a WILDDDDDDDD hill to go up

Listening to Wolford v. Lopez Justice Jackson: “Do you agree with me that there is no Second Amendment right to carry firearms in someone’s home without their consent?” Petitioners‘ counsel: “I do not” Hannah: [eyebrows soar so high and so fast that they fly off the head]

Necessary reading for this morning is @maureenebrady.com's incisive piece--posted yesterday--about how to think through the categories of historical laws that will be the main focus of argument: old hunting laws. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

3. What hints does the Court give about the level of generality at which historical laws should be viewed, about the proper time period in which to draw from history about what changes Rahimi made to the method--and a whole host of related questions Bruen unleashed.

Big SCOTUS 2A oral argument starting. Wolford v. Lopez is about guns on private property but more importantly the first examination of tension between Bruen and Rahimi, and as a result any tension between the authors of each (Thomas and Roberts)

The overarching presumption of ANY males performing better in ALL sporting competition is insulting and objectively inaccurate Ask 4'8" Simone Biles if she'd fear some big hulking man in a wig beating her in the uneven bars, vault, beam, floor, or any gymnastics event

In trans cases, Kavanaugh makes it clear his mind is made up by asking questions unrelated to the current case. In Skrmetti, he asked about sports. Now with trans minors and sports, he's asking about cis-led suits against states allowing trans participation

This President is already trying to stifle critical comments from comedians on terrestrial tv at midnight

Can we take a moment to highlight basics of this case: we should so fear a group of consumer protection experts taking over the world through the FTC that we must give all power to the President

The conservative justices have their talking point -- what if Congress turned every department into a multimember commission -- and it is totally absurd considering that has never happened under the existing law.

Do we all have to go back to law school if SCOTUS rewrites ALL of the basics of law school training? Tuition remission will be critical in this economy