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Interesting thought. They wouldn't need SCOTUS's permission. Not sure about state law constraints, but the tone of the VA Sup Ct opinion certainly suggests they'd find a way to strike it down.

I have no expectation that SCOTUS will take an interest in this. But there is a theory. In Moore v. Harper, SCOTUS said state courts "may not transgress the ordinary bounds of judicial review such that they arrogate to themselves the power vested in state legislatures to regulate federal elections."

Knicks gonna Knicks.

One of the consequences of national partisan polarization is that the Virginia ruling is best viewed as in lock-step with Callais even if it isn't in any formal legal sense. Schoolhouse Rock accounts of federalism can miss what's right in front of our noses.

Marcus's post is a worthwhile read.

Wow. Chaos on the Tennessee House floor. Tennesseans yelling in the gallery and Democrats locking arms in one final stand, as Republicans vote to advance new congressional maps that will carve up the state’s only majority-Black congressional district.

I have it on strong authority that "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race" is not a political statement.

But what if the rich people who don’t live here leave in response?

Curious what Chief Justice Roberts's explanation is for Supreme Court justices being politically appointed.

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I would be very interested to see numbers on how this map affects the likely competitiveness of the new districts. Obviously this wouldn’t have happened if they weren’t projected as R, but by how much? (The new map will also affect who runs and how they campaign, if not in 2026 then in 2028.)

Maybe the investigation in Virginia is justified, but at this point, DOJ has lost public confidence that it is capable of operating in a nonpartisan manner. It comes the day after an investigation into a prominent Trump supporter was dropped. www.newschannel5.com/news/newscha...

May the 5th remember you fondly.

For a New Yorker of a certain age, John Sterling and Rudy Giuliani really define an era.

Great post from Steve, as usual (whether or not one agrees with him). I will take another opportunity to note that Court expansion can, depending on how it is structured, operate as the kind of leverage Steve envisions for other reforms. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/abstrac...

Slightly diminish a book Law's Competitive Authoritarianism

Ugh.

I hope Gen Alpha understands that these are their 90s Knicks. Savor it, you never know when your favorite team will sink into two decades of nonsense.

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For a Court as fetishistic about “history” as this one, it is remarkable to read opinions in which phenomena like racially polarized voting and turnout gaps are treated as if they just kind of spontaneously apparate or vanish, with no relationship to law.

It should go without saying, but the fact that partisan gerrymandering claims are not justiciable doesn't mean partisanship is a legitimate defense against a VRA challenge. This is another example of SCOTUS conflating its own prudential/justiciability limitations with actual legality/legitimacy.

The idea that plaintiffs can't win under the VRA if the only alternative maps they can produce would threaten the legislature's political goals could not possibly be more antithetical to the VRA.

The Court's faith in districting algorithms in Callais is pretty stark to read against the "sociological gobbledygook" dismissed in Rucho.

Others can correct me if I'm mistaken, but I believe Callais is the first time the Court has said the "congruence and proportionality" test applies to the 15th Am. Roberts avoided that language in Shelby County.

The practical result of adding the sum rev from yesterday to today's decision in Callais seems to be that use of race in partisan gerrymandering is permitted (because hard to prove it was race, not politics) *unless* the state is doing it to remedy a VRA violation. This is Bizarro 14th Amendment.

So @cnn.com says Trump passport only avail in person in DC. Some could choose to get one. Apart from everything else wrong with this, doesn’t seem great for democracy to have people display political loyalties on a document used for entry and proof of citizenship. www.cnn.com/2026/04/28/p...

An important effort to force the FCC to respond on a critically important issue. Even if FCC affirms the news distortion policy, that will allow the legal challenge against it to proceed. Instead, Chairman Carr is just sitting on the petition.

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This has always been the most decisive point to me in interpreting this poorly written statutory scheme.

A thorough and clearly correct decision from CA2. The below link also includes Judge Cabranes's concurring opinion, which is worth reading. ww3.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/OP...

A must read.

Personalist Executive Theory

BREAKING: Blanche, Woodward, and Trent McCotter file a deranged motion in the National Trust ballroom case asking the district court to "immediately" issue an "indicative ruling" that it will dissolve the preliminary injunction that DOJ has already appealed if it gets jurisdiction to do so .

Given that SCOTUS is presumably about to clarify in Callais exactly how race can be used in gerrymandering, going with a barely reasoned summary reversal of a finding of racial gerrymandering strikes me as a strange choice.

I've written and reported a lot on presidential security over the years, and wrote a quick analysis of what we know so far and some background about security at the Washington Hilton: www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/a-quick-an...

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We murdered two more people in a boat today.

Another way to put this is that the numerator (instances of close-minded, uncritical, herd thinking, etc.) is pretty easy to find if you're looking for it, but the denominator (reflective, critical, open to diverse voices) is much bigger, and vastly greater than any other domain of human experience.

A shot across the bow from two scholars I respect. I do not agree that my post "confuse[d] the public." A Court that believes enjoining government actions always *irreparably* injures the government should think that fact relevant to the public interest analysis required to obtain emergency relief..

The train is all the way out of the station.

Very informative, from one of the nation's preeminent legal ethics scholars.

Turn your outrage into action. Moms in Texas are organizing to get 10,000 of us across the country to keep this issue in lawmakers faces, turn up the heat till they #CloseTheCamps and #FreeTheFamilies Sign up for 4/16 action - actionnetwork.org/forms/10000-...

This, from @stephenesachs.bsky.social, is interesting. I'd think it relevant (at least to a 1A balance) that it's 10-yr-old memos, not opinion drafts. Also, it would follow from this analysis that justices releasing their papers, eg, might violate the Code of Conduct, which I think can't be right.

Without committing to specific numbers, a federal anti-SLAPP law for high-government officials should clearly be on the agenda of the next sentient Congress.

I think it’s fine that the justices sell books. I think it’s not fine that they stay on the Court for life.

Most striking to me about these memos is the radically different assessment of the harm imposed by the president not being able to pursue his initiatives. Over the last 15 mos., that harm has in numerous cases been treated as almost per se serious and irreparable. Here, it gets no analysis at all.

Probably safe to delete "said she".

An extraordinary document.

This thread seems just right to me. I learned economics from Marty Feldstein and Greg Mankiw. This is not unusual. There is also LOTS of teaching of conservative ideas by non-conservatives, just as many conservatives teach progressive ideas. Good teachers teach the field, not their personal views...