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Rebuffing Consent-Based Jurisdiction Over the PLO for Overseas Terrorist Acts

The following post is by Rocky Rhodes (South Texas) and Andra Robertson (Case Western), who have been writing and blogging about consent-based jurisdiction. They covered Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway for us last Term. We invited them to write a series of posts in the coming days on two recent Second Circuit cases, the first to consider Mallory's scope.

Procedural and transnational scholars have an abundance of puzzles to unravel in the Second Circuit’s recent decisions holding the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause prohibited the “deemed consent” provisions of the federal Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act of 2019 (PSJVTA) from establishing personal jurisdiction over the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Palestinian Authority (PA) for supporting overseas terrorist acts. The cases are the first federal circuit court decisions interpreting in depth the Supreme Court’s decision this summer in Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co., which held that Pennsylvania’s corporate registration scheme (which specifies that corporations registering to do business submit to general personal jurisdiction in Pennsylvania for any and all suits) did not violate due process. The Second Circuit’s decisions also rest on questions that have long divided scholars and courts on the transnational scope of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause and whether the PLO and PA should be afforded due process protections from the adjudicative authority of United States courts. We are grateful to Howard for giving us an opportunity for posting our thoughts and analysis in unpacking some of these issues.

The Suits Against the PLO and the PA

The primary and signed Second Circuit opinion, Fuld v. Palestine Liberation Organization, arose from the fatal stabbing of U.S. citizen Ari Yoel Fuld in a 2018 terrorist attack outside a shopping mall in the West Bank. His widowed spouse and his children filed suit in the Southern District of New York against the PLO, which conducts Palestine’s foreign affairs and serves as a Permanent Observer to the United Nations on behalf of Palestinians, and the PA, which is the non-sovereign and interim governing body of parts of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The Fulds allege that, because the PLO and PA incentivized and assisted the terrorist act that led to the fatal stabbing, monetary damages should be awarded against both defendants under the remedial provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA), which authorize compensation to United States nationals injured “by reason of an act of international terrorism” from “any person who aids and abets, by knowingly providing substantial assistance” to the perpetrator of the attack.

But the PLO and the PA moved to dismiss the Fulds’ suit for lack of personal jurisdiction. Although Congress enacted the PSJVTA specifically to authorize jurisdiction over the PLO, the PA, and any successor or affiliated entities in suits under the ATA in federal court, the defendants urged that the PSJVTA’s jurisdictional provisions deeming their statutorily defined post-enactment conduct as a “consent” to personal jurisdiction conflicted with the dictates of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.

Congress enacted the PSJVTA in response to the success of the PLO and the PA in having other overseas terrorist-activity suits under the ATA dismissed on jurisdictional grounds. One of those cases, Waldman v. Palestine Liberation Organization, was also before the Second Circuit, now for the third time, and was decided on the same day as Fuld. Almost twenty years ago, the Waldman plaintiffs had likewise sued the PLO and the PA under the ATA for money damages for providing material support for terrorist attacks. Although the Waldman plaintiffs eventually obtained a substantial jury verdict, the Second Circuit reversed in Waldman I, 835 F.3d 317 (2d Cir. 2016), on the basis that the PLO and the PA were not amenable to jurisdiction. While acknowledging that sovereign foreign governments lacked due process rights, the Second Circuit concluded that, because neither the PLO nor the PA were recognized by the United States as sovereign states, they were protected by personal jurisdiction due process limits, which are “basically the same under both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.” The only relevant difference, according to the Second Circuit, is that the Fifth Amendment allows the consideration of the defendant’s contacts throughout the United States, rather than just with a particular state.

In the absence of consent, these jurisdictional limits require that foreign defendants such as the PLO and the PA have the necessary contacts with the United States to support general or specific jurisdiction. General jurisdiction exists where the defendant is “at home,” allowing plaintiffs to bring all claims, wherever they arose. But the PLO and the PA are “at home” only in Palestine, the headquarters and nerve center of both entities. Specific jurisdiction occurs when the defendant establishes purposeful contacts with the forum and the dispute “arises from or relates to” the defendant’s forum contacts in a manner that satisfies certain standards of fairness. But the overseas terrorist activities of the PLO and the PA were neither related to nor aimed at the United States—the random attacks only affected U.S. citizens because they were victims of indiscriminate violence abroad, which the Second Circuit held in Waldman I was not sufficient for specific jurisdiction.

Statutory Jurisdictional Consent

Congress initially responded to Waldman I, and similar holdings in the District of Columbia Circuit dismissing cases under the ATA against the PLO and the PA for lack of personal jurisdiction, with the Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act of 2018 (ATCA). The ATCA provided that if, after more than 120 days of the statute’s enactment, a defendant accepted certain forms of assistance from the United States or maintained an office within the jurisdiction of the United States under a waiver of a federal statute barring the PLO from operating such an office, the defendant would be deemed to have consented to personal jurisdiction in an ATA suit, regardless of when the international terrorism occurred or suit was filed. But, within the 120-day period, the PLO and the PA formally terminated their acceptance of any relevant assistance from the United States and shut down the PLO’s only office operating pursuant to a federal statutory waiver. Based on these actions, neither of the ATCA’s predicates were met. The Second Circuit in Waldman II thus refused to recall its mandate from Waldman I that dismissed the suit for lack of personal jurisdiction. See Waldman v. Palestine Liberation Org., 925 F.3d 570 (2d Cir. 2019) (per curiam), cert. granted, judgment vacated sub nom. Sokolow v. Palestine Liberation Org., 140 S. Ct. 2714 (2020) (mem.).

While petitions for writs of certiorari were pending before the Supreme Court in Waldman II and a case from the D.C. Circuit, Congress tried again for a consent-based solution, this time with the “Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act of 2019.” The PSJVTA, which applies just to the PLO, the PA, and successor or affiliated entities, deems that those entities consent to personal jurisdiction if, after a specified number of days from the statute’s enactment, they either (1) make a direct or indirect payment to an imprisoned terrorist or a member of his family after his death, or (2) conduct activities while physically present in the United States or maintain any facilities or establishments within the United States other than those devoted exclusively to conducting official business of the United Nations or related to engagements with United States officials or legal representation. Congress provided that this new act should “be liberally construed to carry out the purposes of Congress to provide relief for victims of terrorism” and should apply to “any case pending on or after August 30, 2016,” which meant it applied to both the Waldman and Fuld litigation.

Congress thus sought in the PSJVTA to rely on a third pathway to personal jurisdiction: consent. Defendants may consent to personal jurisdiction, either by agreement or litigation conduct, in a forum where they would not otherwise be subject to personal jurisdiction. As we have discussed previously on Prawfs, the Supreme Court held in Mallory this summer that the Due Process Clause was not violated by Pennsylvania employing a consent theory to uphold jurisdiction over an out-of-state corporation registering to do business in the state, even when that corporation would not otherwise be subject to either general or specific jurisdiction. Congress similarly sought to base jurisdiction over the PLO and the PA on their deemed consent to jurisdiction in engaging in certain specified activities.

But the PLO and the PA responded in Fuld and Waldman that the statutory jurisdictional predicates in the PSJVTA did not signal an acceptance of or an intent to submit to the jurisdiction of the United States. While a variety of legal arrangements may constitute the necessary consent, the defendants maintained that the predicate activities deemed “consent” under the PSJVTA were unrelated to the litigation or any submission to the judicial power of courts in the United States. In other cases relying on this jurisdictional basis, the defendant’s consent was predicated on either litigation-related conduct or the acceptance of some in-forum benefit conditioned on amenability to suit in the forum. But neither of those, the defendants argued, were present under the PSJVTA. First, foreign payments made to foreign nationals were neither an in-forum benefit nor related to litigation conduct; and second, the United States had not provided any forum benefit for the alleged United States activities of the PLO and the PA—rather, any such activities were illegal under federal law. This meant, according to the defendants, that the PSJVTA deemed activities consent in a manner that violated their due process rights.

The Second Circuit agreed. We will explore the Second Circuit’s rationale and its implications for the future of consent jurisdiction in our next post.

Judicial supremacy and proceduralism

I seem to be spending the day reacting to Gerard. He wrote this at Balkin, pointing out that many secretaries of state will not act in the absence of a SCOTUS ruling and will not take the steps necessary to obtain that ruling. Much commentary (especially from non-legal-scholars but also from lawyers who should know better) has taken the tone of "no secretary of state can keep Trump off the ballot, only SCOTUS can."

The problem strikes me as a combination of judicial supremacy, misunderstanding procedure and how cases come to the Court, and an assumption that everything is an EpY action in federal district court. Accepting the Court must have the last word, that is the end of the game; something must happen at the beginning, when someone does something to trigger judicial review. The pervasive lack of understanding (or bad faith) means no one will understand or accept when a Secretary of State excludes Trump from the ballot to create the opportunity for litigation. Nor will they accept the case going through state rather than federal court. Everyone seems to be waiting for a random person to file suit in federal court, ignoring the obvious lack of standing.

The Procedure of Trump (Updated)

Someone on the Civ Pro listserv suggested that one could structure a Civ Pro/Fed Courts course around Donald Trump and his orbit. Today's lesson: Removal and Remand.

1) Judge Jones remanded the Georgia prosecution of Mark Meadows, concluding that Meadows did not satisfy the requirements  of federal-officer removal because neither the charged conduct nor the alleged overt acts related to his office or his official duties (the court never reached colorable federal defense). The court emphasized the absence of an executive role in state elections and the Hatch Act's limitations on federal employees' partisan activities; these defined the outer limits of Meadows' job. Because Trump, and thus Meadows, cannot play a role in state elections, everything Trump did post-election (the Raffensberger phone call, etc.) involved the campaign and his efforts as a candidate, which the Hatch Act places beyond Meadows' official functions. Remand of a § 1442 removal is appealable, and Meadows has appealed.

2) A group of citizens, represented by C.R.E.W., filed suit in Colorado against Trump and Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, seeking to exclude Trump from the ballot under § 3 of the 14th Amendment; Trump removed. Derek Muller and Will Baude agree on the predicted outcome--the federal court will remand because, while there is arguably jurisdiction under § 1331,  plaintiffs lack Article III standing. I will add the following:

    • I think the § 1331 argument is pretty strong. To arise under federal law under Grable & Sons, the federal issue must be necessarily raised, actually disputed, substantial (meaning important to the federal system at a whole), and capable of resolution in federal court without disrupting the federal-state balance approved by Congress. The first three seem obvious here. The last prong looks, in part, to how often the type of case will arise and how many similar cases will land in federal court. So a quiet title action turning on the validity of a federal tax lien will not come up that often; negligence claims based on drug misbranding and attorney malpractice arising from patent work will come up frequently. A dispute over candidate qualifications, especially whether a candidate engaged in insurrection or rebellion, seems more analogous to the tax lien case.

    • The case will be remanded on standing. An individual voter does not have more than a generalized grievance as to who appears on the ballot. Discussions of how to enforce § 3 never mention the several unsuccessful 2008 lawsuits by random citizens seeking to declare Obama ineligible as not born in the U.S.; all were dismissed for lack of standing.

    • The removal problem arises because of the plaintiff's procedural choice to include Trump as defendant. Why did they do that? The relief sought--a declaration of ineligibility and an injunction preventing his inclusion on the ball0t--runs against the secretary, not Trump. Trump has an interest in the case that the secretary may not adequately protect and he may be entitled or permitted to intervene to protect that interest. But there does not seem to be any reason to include him as a defendant in the first instance, which also gave him the power to remove.

Update: Trump filed an unopposed motion to remand after consulting with plaintiffs and recognizing that they lack standing and that removal was procedurally improper (Griswold did not join or consent to removal but had been served, contrary to Trump's initial representation).

3) Paulsen/Baude argue that § 3 is self-executing. The responses/critiques have confused effectiveness with enforcement. Their point is that § 3 creates an extant and enforceable legal obligation--one that does not require congressional action and has not been rendered a nullity by past congressional action or by desuetude. But, as with any legal provision, someone has to enforce that obligation, which usually leads to court; Paulsen/Baude do not claim otherwise. The question is how that occurs, which forms a big piece of Akhil Amar's two-part discussion with Baude and Paulsen). Paulsen in Part II gets to what I believe the right answer--some enforcement action by a state official, followed by some state-law proceeding in state court, followed by (often expedited) review to the state supreme court, followed by SCOTUS review. SCOTUS will get the last word, but the case arrives from state court (as Bush v. Gore did); none of this will begin--or be removed to--federal district court. And, again, that is perfectly fine and consistent with ordinary litigation. As with the controversy around S.B. 8, it is simply not true that the sole or necessary process for constitutional adjudication is an offensive EpY action in federal court.

Fugitive abortion seekers

The Washington Post reports on the latest exclusive-private-enforcement efforts from Mark Lee Dickson and Jonathan Mitchell--county and city ordinances prohibiting the use of local roads to obtain a legal out-of-state abortion, enforced through private lawsuits. I have questions.

How does private enforcement work here and how does a plaintiff have the basic information to bring suit? How can a plaintiff know what roads someone took to leave the state? Is he going to follow the woman and her driver through town (and when does that become stalking)? Are they given interdiction authority to find out where someone is heading (which strengthens the argument that "any person" acts under color)? Will local law enforcement help (which provides a target to sue in an offensive pre-enforcement action)? How can a plaintiff know they took these roads on the "abortion trip" as opposed to some other time. What constitutes one trip and how do you identify the purpose of that trip--if a person drives on those roads on Monday but does not leave the state for the procedure until Wednesday, has she used the roads to obtain the abortion?

The hard part for rights-holders facing these laws is creating litigation and the opportunity to challenge the law as a defense. Anti-choice activists do not want to sue, because they do not want to provide that opportunity, since the law is clearly constitutionally invalid. Someone needs to be Estelle Griswold. A friendly plaintiff action should be easy heree--"any person" includes anyone anywhere who knows the route a woman took out of state, including any person who supports abortion rights. Or how about a caravan of cars driving through town at once, daring someone in town to sue. Again, it takes time. But these ordinances seem to impose less of a chill than S.B. 8 did.

These private-enforcement laws (what Jon Michaels and David Noll call "vigilante federalism" and "subordination regimes") have, thus far, remained the province of red states. Despite suggestions about the rights blue states could target (something Rocky and I look at in a potential new paper), only California has done something, a half-hearted regulation of ghost guns and assault weapons. This story reminds of another feature of performative cultural-war legislation--the divide between states and municipalities. Red states (notably Florida and Texas, of course) use state law to override the local laws and policies of blue municipalities within the state--Ron DeSantis suspended two elected Democratic states attorneys; Florida's various anti-woke laws aim to override local school-board policies; Texas has stripped cities of the power to establish immigrant sanctuary cities. The Post article mentions blue-state conservative cities near a red-state border (for example, New Mexico cities near the Texas border or Illinois cities near the Missouri border) prohibiting abortion clinics from operating there, thus eliminating a destination for out-of-staters seeking services. Yet Democratic state governments have not taken similar steps to strip municipalities of their local power.

Judicial departmentalism in Tennessee (Updated)

In June, a judge in the Western District of Tennessee declared the state's drag-show ban constitutionally invalid and enjoined the Shelby County D.A. from enforcing the law. The D.A. of Blount County, located in the Eastern District of Tennessee, announced intent to enforce the law there with the help of police, including against the organizers and hosts of an upcoming pride event. Organizers of the upcoming event and a drag performer sued local officials and the state A.G. Chris Geidner and FIRE are dismissive of and outraged by the actions of the Blount County officials.

Update: A judge in the Eastern District issued a TRO that includes prohibiting defendants from interfering with Blount Pride Fest, scheduled for Saturday. More below.

Let's break this out.

On the surface, this is an easy case, without full-bore judicial departmentalism. The W.D. Ky. order "ENJOINS District Attorney Steven J. Mulroy from enforcing the AEA within his jurisdiction in SHELBY COUNTY, TENNESSEE." The Blount County prosecutor was not a party to that case and not bound by the injunction. Nor should he be bound by the declaratory judgment, which declares the rights of "the parties." Accepting that non-judicial actors must adhere to judicial precedent (i.e., rejecting departmentalism in favor of judicial supremacy), district court opinions do not establish binding precedent, within the district and certainly not outside the district. The district court's declared the law invalid in general. But the law of precedent dictates the effect of its declaration beyond the parties; the law of precedent says district court decisions are persuasive on other courts. There is no good argument that a district court opinion should have greater effect on executive officials than on other courts. And in a judicial-departmentalist world (where judicial precedent does not bind non-judicial actors), the fact that the precedent comes from an out-of-district trial court means the Blount County DA does not even face the guaranteed judicial loss (and attorney's fees) as if he pursued new enforcement in the face of binding judicial precedent.

On the surface, things are proceeding as they should. One group of rights-holders successfully sued to stop enforcement by one official against them; a second executive official pursued enforcement against a second group of rights-holders; the second group of rights-holders sues the second executive and raises the same (strong) constitutional arguments, including pointing to the prior district court opinion as persuasive authority; and we see what happens. My guess is they would get a TRO or preliminary injunction allowing this weekend's event to occur, have the law declared invalid (because First Amendment law is clear, even without the prior district court opinion on this law), and recover attorney's fees.

Here is where the case gets complex. Blount Pride, the plaintiffs in the second action, argue (¶¶ 85-90 in the Complaint) that the Blount County DA and all state executive officials are bound by the prior DJ. They argue that county DA's act as the state in enforcing state laws, thus the DJ against the Shelby County DA binds all state officials who enforce this law on behalf of the state--the AG (who litigated the first case, although not named as a party) and every county DA. Although they do not specify, I think they are using this for a preclusion argument.

But the scope-of-judgment problem is not about the defendants bound in the first case--it is about the plaintiffs protected in the second case. The first action declared the rights of and protected that plaintiff, Friends of Georges. Although the injunction used typically sloppy language, we know that DJ's declare the rights of "the parties" and injunctions should extend no further than necessary to protect the plaintiff--again, so long the plaintiff (and its members*) are protected, the injunction goes no further. The plaintiffs thus argue that the prior DJ as to Friends of George dictates to every official who enforces the anti-drag law that it is constitutionally invalid and cannot be enforced against Blount Pride.

[*] See also Michael Morley and Andrew Hessick's forthcoming piece arguing against associational standing.

This argument fails on three points:

    1) If Blount Pride believes it is protected by the existing WD Tenn. judgment, its move should be to return to that court for further relief where the DJ has been ignored. My guess is Blount Pride knows its rights had not been declared.

    2) Given # 1, this lawsuit attempts to use non-mutual preclusion--a new plaintiff, not party to the prior case, using preclusion against a prior party. But governments (and government officials sued in their official capacities) are not subject to non-mutual preclusion.

    3) The preclusion argument ignores Doran--"[N]either declaratory nor injunctive relief can directly interfere with enforcement of contested statutes or ordinances except with respect to the particular federal plaintiffs, and the State is free to prosecute others who may violate the statute." That is this case. The prior DJ and injunction stops enforcement of the anti-drag law "with respect to" Friends of George and its members; it cannot directly interfere with enforcement of the anti-drag law against anyone else, such as Blount Pride. Even if every DA and the AG were parties to the first case, that judgment has no direct effect on the efforts to enforce the law against new individuals.

Michael Dorf wrote a post considering what it means to say § 3 is self-executing:

However--and this is an obvious but crucial point--that does not mean that it is literally self-executing. State and local election officials who attempt to place Donald Trump's name on a primary or general election ballot will not find their hands stayed by a mysterious force field or a lightning bolt.

Section 3 is self-executing in the way that other self-executing provisions of law are, not in the way that laws of nature are. To say that Section 3 is self-executing is to say only that government officials can and indeed must give it effect even absent implementing legislation.

I would add that effect will be given when disputes--likely multiple disputes--over attempted application reach court for the court to resolve.

We can say the same about the First Amendment. No mysterious force field or lightning bolt stops the Blount County DA from attempting to enforce the anti-drag law, even if the First Amendment protects drag performance. When the DA and a drag performer dispute whether the law is valid, the case must move to court to resolve that particular dispute. That is what happened when Friends of George disputed with the Shelby County DA. It now happens separately when Blount Pride disputes with the Blount County DA.

Again, things in Tennessee are playing as they should within the judiciary--certainly if you are a judicial departmentalist and even if you are a judicial supremacist. Adjudicating constitutional rights requires litigation. That process is long and cumbersome and not as clean as the First Amendment "protects your right to dress and perform in drag" and "First Amendment protections apply everywhere." But it gets where we are supposed to be.

Update: Two words on the new TRO. First, as always, the court overdid the order, prohibiting defendants from "enforcing, detaining, arresting, or seeking warrants or taking any other action to enforce or threaten to enforce T.C.A. § 7-51-1407 pending further order of this Court," without limitation to the plaintiffs (the festival organizers and one drag performer). This is not a class action and such breadth is not necessary to protect these plaintiffs.* Second, the court in no way believed that the prior district court opinion controlled. The court called the opinion "well-written, scrupulously researched, and highly persuasive," "well-reasoned," providing "an adequate basis for [a] decision," and reflected the analysis "the Court is likely to adopt" in this case. But--contrary to plaintiffs' arguments and shouts from FIRE, Geidner, and others--defendants' enforcement threats did not violate or ignore that order, nor did defendants do anything a priori wrong in threatening enforcement.

[*] A few years ago, I spoke (with Suzette Malveaux) to the National Association of Attorneys General about universal injunctions. A point I thought of, but did not get a chance to make, is that they, among all litigants, should be circumspect on this. While they may love universality when suing the federal government, universality could and would come back to bite them as defendants in challenges to state law. That point, unmade, stands.

More merits and standing overlaps

The Third Circuit rejected a First Amendment challenge to Pennsylvania's anti-discrimination/anti-harassment PR rule (ABA Model Rule 8.4(g)), concluding that the lawyer plaintiff (Zachary Greenberg) lacked standing. Given the definitions of harassment and discrimination, the plaintiff's planned speech (teaching CLE classes in which he would oppose hate-speech bans, repeat racist epithets in discussing cases, support due process protections for people accused of sexual misconduct, and support the right to express intolerant racist views) did not violate the rule and did not face a credible threat of enforcement.

This strikes me as good illustration of standing constitutionalizing an obvious merits issue. The plaintiff did not suffer an injury because his planned speech did not violate the rule and thus he did not risk liability for it. But that is the same as saying the rule does not violate his First Amendment rights by imposing liability on him for his protected speech. In fact, that is how the First Amendment would be raised and adjudicated in an enforcement action--the state initiates disciplinary proceedings against Greenberg; Greenberg defends by arguing that his speech does not constitute harassment or discrimination or that if it does, the statute is constitutionally invalid because his speech is protected by the First Amendment; and the disciplinary proceeding fails on the merits (either before the Bar or before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court).

If that analysis goes to the merits in an enforcement action, it should go to the merits (and not jurisdiction) in a pre-enforcement action. A pre-enforcement action allows a rights-holder to determine her substantive rights without having to violate the law and risk sanction. That pre-enforcement action should mirror the enforcement action. If jurisdiction is not an issue in one, it should not be in the other. The counter might that the question of the scope of the law and whether it reaches speech (the first defense in an enforcement proceeding, independent of the constitutionally protected nature of the speech) is a question of state law and that the federal court lacks jurisdiction to address state law. But courts do not fine-grain the standing analysis in that way.

Greenberg tried to argue that he would alter his speech based "on his perception of the social climate, which he sees as infested by '[w]idespread illiberal impulses for ‘safetyism,’”" citing studies of public distaste for offensive speech. But the court refused to find injury, traceable to the rule, from Greenberg's discomfort in speaking freely or in losing professional reputation, job opportunities, and speaking opportunities. This is important. The PR rules should not sanction lawyers for protected-but-obnoxious speech. The First Amendment should have nothing to say about social consequences for being publicly obnoxious.

303 Creative as "fake case" (Updated)

I have never understood the "fake case" criticism of 303 Creative. The fact that Smith had never designed a wedding site or been asked to do so and the supposed fake email request from a same-sex couple struck me as red herrings.

In attempting to write (without success, thus far) on the case, I looked at the lower-court orders. The district court denied standing because Smith could not show that any couple, much less a same-sex couple, would seek her services (this is where the notorious email comes in). The court of appeals reversed, relying on Susan B. Anthony List, the controlling case on pre-enforcement First Amendment challenges that the district court did not cite. SBA adopts a forgiving approach, at least in First Amendment cases--plaintiff must show "an intention to engage in a course of conduct arguably affected with a constitutional interest, but proscribed by a statute, and there exists a credible threat of prosecution thereunder." Smith satisfied the first prong because "[a]lthough Appellants have not yet offered wedding website services, Ms. Smith has been employed as a graphic and web designer in the past. Appellants have also provided clear examples of the types of websites they intend to provide, as well as the intended changes to 303 Creative's webpage." The court would not assume that, if Smith offered the intended wedding-site services, no customer would request her services or that only opposite-sex couples and no same-sex couples would do so. To require the latter proof would eliminate pre-enforcement challenges, requiring rights-holders to violate the law and create active enforcement situations. That all seems right to me.

Standing's ideological drift increases daily--the left wants to ratchet it up and the right wants to swing open the federal courthouse doors. But imagine A wants to open a drag club in Tennessee--she has not begun business, but has run clubs in the past and lays out her business plan for the club. I imagine critics of 303 who support LGBT+ rights would want that business owner to be able to file a pre-enforcement action and not be forced to open the business, put on a show, and have some unknown customer complain.

Update: As if on queue , Richard Re has an essay (forthcoming in Notre Dame Law Review Reflections) showing why the criticisms are wrong, if one accepts pre-enforcement litigation, and how the case indicates an ideological realignment on standing.

Fifth Circuit takes injury where Fletcher and Newsom would not

The Fifth Circuit found the 2016 and 2021 FDA expansions of Mifepristone use unlawful under the APA; the majority upheld the original approval, over a dissent from Judge Ho. The case was brought by an organization of anti-choice emergency-room doctors; the court found associational standing based on probabilities that some member doctor might treat someone suffering from complications of Mifepristone, requiring the member to violate his conscience, deal with that patient rather than other patients, or suffer the mental and emotional stress of treating them. Ho goes a step further, finding doctors suffer aesthetic injuries from being deprived of the happiness of delivering babies--just as environmental activists are deprived of the happiness of seeing the Nile crocodile. In essence, the Fifth Circuit recognized--at least for anti-choice doctors--standing based on opposition to government policy where the policy's downstream effects cause them some anguish. Adam Unikowsky takes down the absurd--and unlimited--standing analysis.

I want to add a slightly different path on this point.

In arguing that "injury" cannot be detached from law (and that standing is about the merits of a claim, William Fletcher in his foundational article and Judge Newsom of the 11th Circuit in a 2021 concurring opinion offer versions of a case everyone recognizes as an insufficient legal injury. Fletcher offers A, who loses sleep over homelessness and donates money (which he would otherwise not do) to aid the homeless; Newsom offers B, who loses sleep over the federal deficit and purchases sleeping pills to help her sleep. Each then offers the identical comparator of C, a homeowner who loses sleep because of a barking dog and spends money on something (ear plugs, sleeping pills, thicker windows) to help.Everyone agrees that C has standing because she suffered a physical and monetary injury. And everyone agrees that neither A nor B has suffered an injury courts would recognize as establishing standing. But, Newsom and Fletcher argue, A, B, and C suffer identical injuries--loss of sleep and expenditure of money to alleviate the cause of the sleeplessness. We thus cannot attribute the different outcomes to the presence or absence of an injury; the difference arises from what what the substantive law recognizes as a violation of that law and of the rights created by that law-as Newsom puts it, "whether his legal rights have been infringed and whether the positive law authorizes him to sue for that infringement."

The Fifth Circuit decision recognizes the injury that Newsom and Fletcher agreed courts never would recognize--the government adopted a policy (allowing the sale and prescription of Mifepristone by willing doctors to willing patients) that worries other doctors and that causes these doctors to engage in some conduct (treating patients they would rather not treat for conditions they would rather not treat).

When I teach standing, I hit the theme of the ideological drift of standing--from a doctrine that conservative judges wielded strictly to stop liberal cause litigation to a doctrine hat interfered with conservative cause litigation to a doctrine many conservative judges want to discard in the name of conservative cause litigation. Between this case and Biden v. Nebraska, as well as Alito's insistence that there was standing in California v. Texas, we have many examples to choose from.

More pedantry

Defendants do not move to remove cases to federal court and do not file motions for removal. They remove them to federal court through a notice of removal--telling the federal and state courts that this case is in federal court. In other words, Mark Meadows is not "attempting" or "wanting" to move his Georgia prosecution to federal court; that prosecution is now pending in the Northern District of Georgia. It then is on the State to challenge removal through a motion for remand and for the courts to agree with and grant that motion, ordering the case returned to state court.

The future of New York Times and SLAPP laws

A federal judge last week dismissed Donald Trump's $ 450 million lawsuit over CNN describing his post-election statements as "the Big Lie." Despite some gratuitous shots at New York Times and the media* (some judges can neither help themselves nor resist the temptation to audition for a higher court), the court recognizes that NYT has nothing to do with this case because every statement at issue is opinion rather than provably false fact and political motivations do not affect speech's constitutional protection. That is, this action fails not because of actual malice but because of the entire First Amendment edifice.

[*] And truly gratuitous praise for the affirmative-action decision, which has nothing to do with anything. Again, cannot help themselves.

The case also illustrates a separate point about anti-SLAPP laws and their importance in protection speech. In my view, the special dispositive motion, which does not apply in federal court in the Eleventh Circuit, is not necessary to deter frivolous defamation suits and protect speakers against the costs and burdens of litigation. Rule 12(b)(6) suffices in most cases to end litigation quickly and without discovery--thanks to Twiqbal (it is hard to plead falsity and actual malice) and to how much of the First Amendment regime creates questions of law for the court (such as whether a statement constitutes fact or opinion).

The real protection comes from awarding the prevailing defendant anti-SLAPP attorney's fees. That alleviates the costs (if not the distraction) of litigation, regardless of how long it goes. One judge in the Southern District has held that Florida's anti-SLAPP law disentangles fees from the dispositive motion--a defendant can recover fees when the court finds the suit without merit and filed for an improper purpose, regardless of the mechanism for that finding. This contrasts with other states in which defendants recover fees when they win on the special anti-SLAPP motion (which cannot be brought in most federal courts). Waiting to see if CNN seeks fees and whether this judge follows his district colleague as to the availability of fees.

Peak scope-of-injunction confusion

Judge Presnell (M.D. Fla.) may have produced the singularity of scope-of-injunction confusion in refusing to narrow-and-stay his injunction prohibiting enforcement of Florida's anti-drag law. The plaintiff is the owner of an Orlando restaurant that presents drag performances; the court preliminarily enjoined state officials (properly) from bringing "any enforcement proceedings" (improperly). The state sought to stay the injunction to the extent it went beyond the plaintiff--which Presnell describes as "neuter[ing]" the injunction.

Presnell emphasizes the law's facial invalidity in justifying the scope of the injunction. In doing so, he commits several category errors.

• The court relies on overbreadth cases allowing rights-holders to challenge a statute because of the statute's broader effects. But First Amendment overbreadth does not expand the scope of the court's order. It allows a rights-holder whose speech could be constitutionally regulated by the challenged law to raise the law's constitutional invalidity because it would be constitutionally invalid as to someone else's speech. Overbreadth allows a party to make constitutional arguments and to gain judicial relief based on those arguments about how the law affects non-parties. But nothing in that doctrine extends the judicial remedy to those non-parties; it merely gives the party additional arguments.

    Many overbreadth cases are not § 1983 offensive pre-enforcement actions; they are enforcement actions in which rights-holders raise the First Amendment as a defense (despite the defendant engaging in unprotected activities). Although the overbreadth arguments are the same, no one believes that an order dismissing a state enforcement action (e.g., a prosecution of the corporation or an attempt to strip its liquor license) protects anyone beyond that party.

    Here lies the benefit of Henry Monaghan's justification for overbreadth--valid law due process. Due process requires that any law be constitutional valid before it can be enforced against anyone, even if those constitutional defects do not affect the party to the case. This explains why an Carol Anne Bond could raise federalism defects in a chemical-weapons ban.

• I am not entirely sure why the court went the overbreadth route here. Nothing the plaintiff wants to host in its restaurant falls outside constitutional protection--it is not obscene or obscene-as-to-older-minors; this is not a case of a plaintiff arguing "my speech is unprotected but the law reaches other people's protected speech." The law is overbroad in the sense of not narrowly tailored, but that is a different thing.

• The court relies on Califano v. Yamasaki as to the availability of facial challenges. But it ignore the parts of Califano that the injunction should provide "complete relief to the plaintiffs." However constitutionally invalid the law might be or however broad the constitutional arguments he can make, the remedy benefits the plaintiff. And allowing continued enforcement of this law against others does not deny the plaintiff complete relief.

• The court conflates, in the most explicit language I have seen, geographic and party scope. The court says the following:

    • Responding to Eleventh Circuit doubts about so-called nationwide (but really universal) injunctions, the court says this "injunction is neither nationwide, nor does it pertain only to a limited class of individuals."

    • This law is not limited to a discrete universe of plaintiffs; it could apply to the vast majority of Floridians.

    • "To limit Defendant’s enforcement of the Act only to Plaintiff would subject everyone else in Florida to the chilling effect of a facially unconstitutional statute. Consequently, a statewide injunction which includes non-parties accords with the extent of the violation established."

The court expressly conflates nationwide/statewide and university. Every injunction as to a federal law is nationwide and every injunction as to a state law is statewide--the injunction prohibits enforcement of the law against the plaintiff every place in the nation/state that plaintiff goes.* Thus, of course this injunction is and should be  statewide--Florida cannot enforce this law against any restaurant that HM Florida, LLC owns and operates. But Presnell issued a universal injunction, one that protects everyone everywhere; that is the problematic piece of this.

[*] And out of state, but the protection against that comes from the limits of a law's extraterritoriality, not the injunction.

Again, this is why nomenclature matters and why the wide adoption of "nationwide" confuses the analysis. This injunction suffers the  identical defect as the Mifepristone or student-loan or sanctuary-city injunctions against federal laws and regs--it protects beyond the plaintiffs without class certification. But because we have used "nationwide" to describe those, Presnell could purport to distinguish those cases and thus the doubts about those injunctions--"those were nationwide injunctions, whereas this injunction is statewide."

• On the court's reasoning, the more people subject to a law, the more people whose rights the law infringes, and thus the more proper a universal injunction. That means that universal injunctions should be the norm, at least for laws of general applicability. But that would undermine the principle that enjoining a prosecution as to one person leaves the state free to prosecute others. And it renders FRCP 23(b)(2) useless--if a state can enjoin enforcement against everyone subject to a law when one person sues, no plaintiff would ever need or want to certify a civil-rights class.

• This also demonstrates how universal injunctions allow individual judges to arrogate a great deal of power, at the expense of other courts--to play constitutional hero. Yes, this law chills the speech of many, many people. The remedy for that is for any chilled speaker to sue and obtain an injunction protecting itself against enforcement (as the plaintiff did here) and for the opinion in one case to guide future courts handling future lawsuits from other speakers asserting their rights and seeking a remedy that protects them. If Presnell is right about the law's validity, his opinion in this case will persuade other judges to reach the same conclusion and issue injunctions protecting future plaintiffs. Moreover, if Presnell is wrong about the law's constitutional validity, his single order deprives any other judge or court from the opportunity to address that question.

Bad all around. While I hope the 11th Circuit affirms that the drag laws are constitutionally invalid, I also hope it corrects as to the scope of the injunction. Meanwhile, I wish courts would get this stuff right so I do not have to keep defending the authoritarians in Florida's government.

Belkin & Tushnet endorse judicial departmentalism

Aaron Belkin and Mark Tushnet authored an open letter urging Pres. Biden to pursue "popular constitutionalism" where "if and when they issue rulings that are based on gravely mistaken interpretations of the Constitution that undermine our most fundamental commitments, the Administration will be guided by its own constitutional interpretations." They explain:

The central tenet of the solution that we recommend—Popular Constitutionalism—is that courts do not exercise exclusive authority over constitutional meaning. In practice, a President who disagrees with a court’s interpretation of the Constitution should offer and then follow an alternative interpretation. If voters disagree with the President’s interpretation, they can express their views at the ballot box. Popular Constitutionalism has a proud history in the United States, including Abraham Lincoln’s refusal to treat the Dred Scott decision as a political rule that would guide him as he exercised presidential powers.

Belkin and Tushnet are describing what Kevin Walsh labeled and I have pursued as "judicial departmentalism." The President can and should pursue a constitutional interpretation at odds with the Court's precedent. The Dred Scott reference is the tell. Lincoln argued not that Dred Scott was free or that he could disregard the judgment in that case, but that he could act contrary to the Court's opinion about the rights of enslaved persons or the constitutional validity of the Missouri Compromise.

The recent equivalent would be continuing to pursue affirmative action in higher education (outside Harvard and UNC) and elsewhere. Belkin and Tushnet push that point:

President Biden could declare that the Court's recent decision in the affirmative action cases applies only to selective institutions of higher education and that the Administration will continue to pursue affirmative action in every other context vigorously because it believes that the Court's interpretation of the Constitution is egregiously wrong.

They lose me on that last point. I like the idea that the President should explain his intention and why, so the public sees and measures the competing constitutional approaches. But I do not agree that the President can (or should) do this only where the Court's interpretation is "egregiously wrong." That retains a whiff of judicial supremacy--the Court gets the last word except in some unique and extraordinary circumstances.

Better to say the President can pursue his competing interpretation in all cases where he believes appropriate. The limiting principle on the power (which Ilya Somin argues is absent) is not the egregiousness of the case. The limiting principle comes from the inevitable litigation challenging the President's actions and the likelihood that the Court will adhere to its view and reject the President's view in issuing a new judgment in a new case. And I do not read Belkin and Tushnet to argue that the President can ignore a judgment in a specific case.

Of course, while Democrats talk about whether to do this, Republicans do it. The Alabama legislature enacted  a new legislative map that, like the map declared invalid Allen v. Milligan, contains one (rather than two) majority-Black districts. This has liberals up in arms about a return to the 1960s and Alabama ignoring the Supreme Court. But isn't this what Belkin and Tushnet argued for?

Accepting that government can ignore an opinion but not a judgment, the answer depends on what we understand as the "judgment" in Allen. Was the judgment that Alabama must enact a map with two majority-Black districts because § 2 requires two such districts, given the population in Alabama? Or was the judgment that Alabama's prior map violated § 2 and that Alabama must enact a new map that conforms with § 2, even without a second majority-Black district (the enacted map has a second district that is about 40 % Black)? If the latter, Alabama is within its power (as Biden is under the Belkin/Tushnet argument) in enacting what it believes to be a proper map and triggering a new round of litigation. Alabama might (will?) lose that litigation, if the Court believes Allen's logic and reasoning requires a second district. But that does not mean Alabama crossed the line into defying the injunction.

Fighting universality

Jeffrey Sutton of the Sixth Circuit has been a leading critic of universal injunctions. He returned to that in an order staying the injunction barring enforcement of Tennessee's prohibition on gender-affirming medical care. The majority held that the plaintiffs were unlikely to succeed on appeal on their equal protection or due process claims. The "fraught task of justifying" universal relief reenforced the need for the stay:

District courts “should not issue relief that extends further than necessary to remedy the plaintiff’s injury.” Commonwealth v. Biden, 57 F.4th 545, 556 (6th Cir. 2023). The court’s injunction prohibits Tennessee from enforcing the law against the nine challengers in this case and against the other seven million residents of the Volunteer State. But absent a properly certified class action, why would nine residents represent seven million? Does the nature of the federal judicial power or for that matter Article III permit such sweeping relief? A “rising chorus” suggests not. Doster v. Kendall, 54 F.4th 398, 439 (6th Cir. 2022); see, e.g., Trump v. Hawaii, 138 S. Ct. 2392, 2424–29 (2018) (Thomas, J., concurring); Dep’t of Homeland Sec. v. New York, 140 S. Ct. 599, 599–601 (2020) (Gorsuch, J., concurring); see also Samuel Bray, Multiple Chancellors: Reforming the National Injunction, 131 Harv. L. Rev. 417, 457–82 (2017). Article III confines the “judicial power” to “Cases” and “Controversies.” U.S. Const. art. III, § 2. Federal courts may not issue advisory opinions or address statutes “in the abstract.” California v. Texas, 141 S. Ct. 2104, 2115 (2021) (quotation omitted). They instead must operate in a party-specific and injury-focused manner. Id.; Gill v. Whitford, 138 S. Ct. 1916, 1934 (2018). A court order that goes beyond the injuries of a particular plaintiff to enjoin government action against nonparties exceeds the norms of judicial power.

The scope issue has arisen in other district court decisions declaring invalid these care bans. District courts have issued broad injunctions despite obvious opportunity for narrower relief. The order universally prohibiting enforcement of Kentucky's ban is in obvious trouble for this and for substantive reasons.

Injunctive absurdity

Judge Doughty of the Western District of Louisiana found that federal jawboning of social media sites with respect to COVID, the 202 election, and Hunter Biden likely violates the First Amendment and enjoined hundreds of federal officials (including all of State, HHS, and DOJ) from engaging in a whole range of speech urging social-media companies to remove material. Some thoughts:

• He finds that Missouri and Louisiana have standing, in part, on behalf of their citizens' speech rights, even though states cannot exercise parens patriae standing against the federal government. The court also cannot say that the sites removed speech because of government coercion or that they would not have removed the speech without government action, which should be essential to traceability and redressability. And to the extent the evidence is unclear, the plaintiffs bear the burden of establishing standing so the uncertainty should go against standing.

• The line between lawful government speech and problematic jawboning or coercion is difficult. Judge Doughty makes no effort to engage that question or draw that line. He offers pages of examples of communications between government social-media companies in Newsmax-level conspiratorial tones, but does not explain where the line is or when some communications cross the line. Some examples lack any direct communication between government and the companies. For example, the court offers Anthony Facui's public media statements and congressional testimony criticizing hydroxychloroquine as a COVID treatment followed by social-media sites removing certain videos. Apropos the point above, the court says Facui may have spoken with sites, but does not remember. Again, however, the plaintiffs bear the burden of showing communication and causation.

• The court finds coercion, in part, because much of the targeted speech is "conservative." But viewpoint discrimination is irrelevant to the coercion line. Coercion is coercion regardless of any viewpoint preference--government engages in impermissible jawboning regardless of whose speech it targets. On the other hand, non-coercive government speech can be as viewpoint discriminatory as the government wants to be.

• The injunction is absurd in its breadth. From the binding side, it binds hundreds or thousands of officials. It prohibits officials from "urging" or "encouraging" social-media companies to adopt or change content-moderation guidelines or to do anything with "protected free speech" on their sites.

• The injunction is internally inconsistent; it swallows itself, in a way one commentator describes as the judge wanting to have his cake and eat it. After listing all the "protected" speech the government cannot encourage or urge sites to remove, the court limits the injunction to not reach "permissible government speech promoting government policies or views on matter of public concern" (such as appearances on TV to discuss the effectiveness of medical treatments, perhaps?). And it does not reach speech "informing" social-media companies of "threats that threaten the public safety or security of the United States;" "postings intending to mislead voters about voting requirements and procedures;" and  efforts to "detect, prevent, or mitigate malicious cyber activity." The line between "informing" and "urging" or "encouraging" is illusory and the court never attempts to define it. In any event, much of the speech covered by the injunction falls within the categories excluded by the injunction and vice versa.

For example, speech threatening the public safety of the United States retains constitutional protection unless it is a true threat or incitement, which most of the speech on these sites is not. So at the same time the injunction allows officials to inform social media companies of speech that threatens public safety, it cannot urge companies to do anything about that speech.

• I guess Republican officials now like universal injunctions, because this defines the concept. The plaintiffs are two states and about five individuals; the injunction prohibits government from taking steps to urge sites to remove the speech of any person on any site from any source. As always, the injunction could have been particularized to these speakers, those two states, and the citizens of those two states.

• Compounding the universality problem, the court refused to certify a 23(b)(2) class, because the plaintiffs had not presented a "working class definition." This demonstrates, from two directions, how universality undermines Rule 23(b)(2). Class certification is pointless and unnecessary if individual plaintiffs can obtain relief for an entire class of possible speakers. And if the court cannot define an appropriate class of speakers, it should not issue an injunction protecting every would-be member of that class.

Some free-speech advocates have argued that the federal government's conduct--from both the Trump and Biden Administrations--has crossed some lines. But this absurd injunction is not the answer.

303 and SB8 (Update)

I have not gotten around to reading 303 Creative or commenting on the First Amendment analysis. I want to address the standing issues not addressed in the case but which have entered the conversation.

Liberal critics have decried this as a "fake" case because no same-sex couple asked Lorie Smith to design a web site for their wedding. The record includes a declaration about one same-sex couple that did request a wedding page, but that story appears false--one of the men is married to a woman and played no role in the case. Thus, the argument goes, Smith and 303 lacked standing, but the Court (as its liberal conservative (interesting mistake) majority is wont to do) ignored that to reach out on an issue and hand a victory to a religious-conservative cause.

Apart from my usual views about standing, this should be a non-issue. Smith brought an offensive pre-enforcement challenge, so she need not show actual violations of the law or actual enforcement of the law against her--the whole point is to be able to challenge the law without violating it or risking legal sanction. She had opened a web design business and intended to do wedding sites; state law proscribed her desired conduct (decline business from same-sex couples and announce that intent); and the state was likely to enforce the law against her if she announced and followed that practice. That should be enough for a pre-enforcement action, especially in a free speech case (where courts apply standing in a more-forgiving way). Moreover, this looser approach benefits minors challenging state prohibitions on gender-affirming care--I do not want courts hanging those cases up on "this plaintiff alleges that she wants gender-affirming care, but has not yet seen a doctor or has not yet been prescribed puberty blockers."

Some link 303 and SB8 and find political motivations in the Court's differential treatment--303 dramatically expanded a species of free-speech right through an expansive approach to pre-enforcement litigation, while the Court's restrictive approach as to SB8 eliminated all pre-enforcement challenges to an abortion restriction. But the cases are not comparable. 303's supposed standing problem involves injury--because Smith had never been asked to make a wedding web site for a same-sex couple, she incurred no injury (no genuine risk the state would enforce the law against her). The standing problem in SB8 went to traceability and redressability--the lack of public enforcement meant no public official caused that injury and the court could not enjoin anyone to stop enforcement. 303 does not reflect a distinct approach to pre-enforcement litigation. Had Colorado adopted purely private enforcement for its public-accommodations laws,* there is no reason to believe the Court would not have rejected the case for the same reasons it rejected Whole Women's Health.

[*] Perhaps Blue states seeking to mimic SB8 for liberal causes and against disfavored constitutionally protected activity should consider this issue, rather than obsessing about guns. I wonder what Jonathan Mitchell, Texas officials, and conservative commentators would say.

Update: I do not intend to minimize the issue of the false evidence. If that turns out to be the case, Smith and her lawyer should be on the hook for sanctions. It does not change the appropriateness of the case, because the case was sufficiently real and live without that further evidence.

Mootness and jurisdiction in Moore

I am late to the conversation about Moore v. Harper, where the Court found the case alive (over the dissent of Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch) and (mostly) rejected the independent state legislature doctrine. Three thoughts on the jurisdictional issues. (Long post ahead).

1) I still am not sure where I land on mootness. I do not believe--contra Justice Thomas and Josh Blackman-- that the Chief fell into the writ-of-erasure fallacy. Thomas fills Part I of his dissent with (correct) descriptions of how courts enjoin actors from taking action, do not act against laws themselves, and "do not render 'judgments' that toggle statutes from 'operative' to 'inoperative' and back again, as if judicial review were some sort of in rem jurisdiction over legislative Acts."

Here is the procedural history: The state trial court held that partisan gerrymandering is a political question under the state constitution. The North Carolina Supreme Court reversed; it made three legal determinations--1) partisan gerrymandering is justiciable; 2) ISL is nonsense; and 3) the 2021 electoral maps were invalid partisan gerrymanders--and entered a judgment prohibiting use of those maps. The state legislators appealed that decision to SCOTUS. Following SCOTUS' cert grant, NCSCt affirmed the trial court's decision rejecting a remedial map. On rehearing (and following a change of court personnel), NCSCt withdrew its opinion affirming rejection of the remedial maps, "overruled" its original decision (the one sitting before SCOTUS), and dismissed the action with prejudice. But, the majority says, the state court never reinstated the original maps; its decision started everything over, allowing the NC legislature to enact whatever maps it chose. That includes enacting a new law adopting the 2021 maps.

Despite some loose language in the Chief's opinion about "presently operative statutes," I do not believe he made the mistakes Thomas accuses him of making. Rather, I think the point of departure is what happens to a preliminary injunction when the action is later dismissed. NCSCt issued an order--do not use the 2021 maps; that order was on review to SCOTUS. The court overruled the basis for that order in concluding that partisan gerrymandering is a political question and allowing the legislature to do what it wants going forward. But it did not authorize use of the 2021 maps authorized by the 2021 law.

Does that matter?

2) While I agree with Thomas' explanations for the role of courts (while remaining unsure of his conclusion), I question this:

[A]n unconstitutional provision is never really part of the body of governing law,” for “the Constitution automatically displaces [it] from the moment of [its] enactment.” Collins v. Yellen, 594 U. S. ___, ___ (2021) (slip op., at 35) (emphasis added). Thus, when a court holds a statute unconstitutional, it is emphatically not depriving it of any legal force that it previously possessed as an Act. The court is only deciding “a particular case” “conformably to the constitution, disregarding” a statute that cannot “govern the case” because it is already “void.” Marbury, 1 Cranch, at 178; accord, Bayard v. Singleton, 1 N. C. 5, 7 (1787) (holding that the unconstitutional “act on which [a party’s] motion was grounded . . . must of course, in that instance, stand as abrogated and without any effect”). “That is the classic explanation for the basis of judicial review” set forth in Marbury and Bayard, and it remains “from that day to this the sole continuing rationale for the exercise of this judicial power.” Mackey v. United States, 401 U. S. 667, 678 (1971) (Harlan, J., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part).

That works for defensive litigation. When the state prosecutes Johnson for burning a flag, the court disregards the law of prosecution and refuses to allow it to govern the case, thereby requiring dismissal of the prosecution. It does not work for offensive pre-enforcement litigation, in which the federal plaintiff seeks to avoid the case in which the challenged law would govern, by enjoining an official from enforcing that law in the future. A federal court in an offensive action does not disregard the challenged law; it prevents future conduct by a government official with that law. And that conduct may occur outside of court--such as administering elections under particular maps.

3) Mootness aside, Moore also presented issues of SCOTUS jurisdiction under § 1257(a), which is limited to "final" judgments or decrees. Although the state court had decided that ISL does not apply (a federal issue), the case remained ongoing in state court as the parties worked to create new maps consistent with the state constitution.  Cox Broadcasting v. Cohn treats as final cases in which the "highest court of a State has finally determined the federal issue present in a particular case, but in which there are further proceedings in the lower state courts to come." Cox identified four circumstances in which a state supreme court order is final despite ongoing state-court proceedings. The majority relied on the second category--"the federal issue, finally decided by the highest court in the State, will survive and require decision regardless of the outcome of future state court proceedings."

This is the wrong category. Cox defined this category by citing to Radio Station WOW and Brady v. Maryland. In WOW, the state supreme court ordered the transfer of property from a federal license holder and ordered an accounting; the ongoing accounting did not affect the federal issue (interference with the license), which was tied to the transfer. In Brady, Maryland's highest court* upheld Brady's conviction but ordered a new sentencing hearing; that proceeding did not affect the federal due process rights that Brady argued were violated by a conviction without disclosure of evidence. The key to this category is that the remaining state-law proceedings do not affect the federal issue; nothing that happens eliminates the federal issue, regardless of who wins or how the state courts resolve those future issue. Brady believes his conviction violates due process; that remains alive regardless of the ultimate sentence. The radio station believes the loss of property affects its federal license; that remains alive regardless of the outcome of the accounting.

[*] Then called the Maryland Court of Appeals, changed to Maryland Supreme Court in 2023.

That is not this case. Whether the federal issue remains alive depends on what happens in state court. Imagine (as was the case when SCOTUS granted cert) ongoing state litigation to draw new maps that comply with the state constitution. If the state court approves the legislature's preferred maps, the federal issue (ISL) goes away. The state will not appeal the maps or argue they have unfettered power, because they won and so the scope of their power does not matter; the plaintiffs will appeal the maps on independent-and-adequate state constitutional grounds, but would not argue ISL because it does not help them. if the state court rejects the legislature's preferred maps, the federal issue remains alive--the state will return to NCSCt, NCSCt approves the maps, and the state challenges those maps on ISL grounds. Of course, that takes time and energy, leaving the federal issue unresolved. And that is, in fact, where the case landed: The state won on state-law grounds (partisan gerrymandering is non-justiciable) and any appeal the plaintiffs might have rests on state law, not federal law.

Thus, this case better fits the fourth category, created in Cox:

Lastly, there are those situations where the federal issue has been finally decided in the state courts with further proceedings pending in which the party seeking review here might prevail on the merits on nonfederal grounds, thus rendering unnecessary review of the federal issue by this Court, and where reversal of the state court on the federal issue would be preclusive of any further litigation on the relevant cause of action, rather than merely controlling the nature and character of, or determining the admissibility of evidence in, the state proceedings still to come. In these circumstances, if a refusal immediately to review the state court decision might seriously erode federal policy, the Court has entertained and decided the federal issue, which itself has been finally determined by the state courts for purposes of the state litigation.

That is this case. The appealing party (legislators) might prevail on nonfederal grounds (as, in fact, they did), depriving SCOTUS of the opportunity to review the federal issue; immediate reversal on the federal issue precludes further state litigation--had SCOTUS adopted ISL, the state wins without having to do anything more. And the delay or elimination of the ISL issue "seriously erode[s] federal policy" by leaving unresolved whether state legislatures can do whatever the hell they want--sure to be an issue in the coming presidential election.

I am not sure why the Chief went with # 2 rather than # 4.

Why "universality" better captures the scope-of-injunction problem

Everyone will be talking about the death(?) of affirmative action, but I do not have much legal to add to that conversation. So I am going to use and a few other posts to catch up on some things.

First up, Judge Hale of the W.D.Ky. declared invalid that state's ban on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors, joining district courts in Arkansas, Tennessee, and Florida. These cases trigger anew the scope-of-injunction problem-- and not well. Judge Hale issued what he called a "facial injunction" and said the following:

The Commonwealth suggests that any injunction should be limited in scope to cover only those plaintiffs who are already taking the drugs in question. (D.N. 47, PageID.514-15) But the fact “that some minors experiencing gender dysphoria may choose not to pursue the gender transition procedures covered by the Act and therefore would not be harmed by its enforcement” does not mean that a facial injunction would be overbroad. Brandt, 47 F.4th at 672; see id. (“The proper focus of the [facial] constitutional inquiry is the group for whom the law is a restriction, not the group for whom the law is irrelevant.” (alteration in original) (quoting City of Los Angeles v. Patel, 576 U.S. 409, 418-19 (2015))). The Commonwealth notably “fail[s] to offer a more narrowly tailored injunction that would remedy Plaintiffs’ injuries,” id., and as Plaintiffs point out, it would be virtually impossible to fashion one. (See D.N. 52, PageID.1678-79) A facial injunction is therefore appropriate.

This is nonsense. An obvious narrower injunction remedies plaintiffs' injuries--the state cannot enforce the law to prevent these seven minors from continuing and/0r begin receiving treatments, as they choose. That remedies their injuries, regardless of what the state can or does do as to any other trans person who seeks or intends to seek treatment.  Protecting these plaintiffs need not help non-plaintiffs (compare an order compelling a school to return a book to the library). Nor is this a case in which the court cannot identify plaintiffs from those similarly situated. Because the trans kids sued on their own behalf (rather than through some organization or a doctor or a state asserting third-party or associational standing), we can easily identify who the injunction protects and who falls outside the injunction.

This and other cases illustrate why it has been a mistake to use "nationwide" to describe beyond-the-plaintiff injunctions. The problem never was confined to challenges to federal laws and regulations. States always could enact broad discriminatory laws and regulations simultaneously affecting large numbers of people, triggering the same issue of who an injunction protects after a court declares those laws constitutionally invalid. But no one would label this injunction "nationwide," while "statewide" adds another term and thus more confusion. That is why universality works best--it captures the idea of an injunction (improperly) extending to everyone who might be subject to enforcement of the challenged law, regardless of the breadth of that universe.

Florida Supreme Court displeased with federal judicial overreach

Andrew Warren wants his job as state's attorney back, following his specious and politically motivated suspension by Presidential Candidate (and not-for-several-weeks Governor) Ron DeSantis. But he also wants to avoid the constitutionally mandated process for doing so--a Senate trial--fearing (not without reasonable cause) that the Senate will rubber-stamp DeSantis's decision. He failed in federal district court, in a case I believed never should have gotten as far as it did. And he failed in the Florida Supreme Court, which denied his writ of quo warranto.

The latter was a longshot, as the court explains. Under the Florida Constitution, the Senate is the appropriate "court" for challenging suspension. The Florida Supreme Court exercises limited review to determine that the suspension is facially valid. But court never reached that much, instead denying the writ as untimely, because Warren went through five months of federal proceedings before filing in state court.

In rejecting the writ, SCoFL expressed its displeasure with the federal court and Warren for, in essence, derogating SCoFL and state institutions generally.

As to the district court, the state court said:

Inexplicably, despite having previously dismissed Petitioner’s state-law claim—a claim that challenged the facial sufficiency of the suspension order—the federal district court proceeded to reach various “conclusions” regarding the propriety of the suspension under Florida law. Indeed, the federal district court twice stated that the suspension “violated the Florida Constitution,” id. at D115, D125, and the federal district court purported to decide certain “factual issue[s],” including whether “Mr. Warren neglected his duty or was incompetent,” id. at D117. The federal district court did so even though its “jurisdiction over [Petitioner’s state-law] claim [was] barred by the Eleventh Amendment,” Pennhurst, 465 U.S. at 121, and even though “[i]t is the function of the [Florida] Senate, and never that of the Courts, to review the evidence upon which the Governor suspends an officer,” Sullivan, 52 So. 2d at 425. At one point, the federal district court challenged the Governor to “simply rescind the suspension.” Warren, 29 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. at D124. And at another point, the federal district court seemingly questioned the ability of the Florida Senate to dutifully carry out its constitutional role in suspension matters, referring to that legislative body as “heavily partisan.” Id.

I made similar points following the district court's decision--there was no reason to decide the suspension's state-law validity to decide that DeSantis had a non-pretextual state-law reason for the suspension that defeated the First Amendment claim.

Warren worsened the situation by arguing that the district court's state-law musings should have issue-preclusive effect. Rejecting the argument, the court stated that issue preclusion cannot turn a loser into a prior winner on discrete issues, while noting that the federal case is on appeal to the Eleventh Circuit and thus not final. I would add that the federal court's conclusions about the suspension were not necessary to the federal judgment, another element of claim preclusion.

Finally, the court points to, and does not dismiss, DeSantis's suggestion that Warren invoked SCoFL as a "backup plan," an unfavorable forum to which he ran late and as a last resort. It does not buy Warren's explanation--state law sets no time limit on a quo warranto application and he filed about one month after the district court dismissed that action--because it does not like the idea that he ran to federal court in the first place.

Getting particularity right, legally and practically

Chris Geidner reports on a Northern District of Florida decision declaring invalid Florida's prohibition on Medicaid coverage for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. Reading the order page (declaring the regs invalid; enjoining the named defendant, Jason Weida; and extending the injunction to other officers per FRCP 65(d)(2)), Chris argues that the decision is not only about the plaintiffs, because the first point applies to the law and regulations. This is wrong as a legal matter, although not as a practical matter. It also illustrates where everyone gets the universality/particularity analysis wrong.

As a legal matter, the court's order affects four named plaintiffs--two adults, two minors. That's it. Yes, the court declared Florida's Medicaid laws and regs invalid. But courts do not make legal declarations in the abstract; they declare the rights and other legal relations of any interested party. SCOTUS reaffirmed last week (as to defendants) in Haaland v. Brackeen that a DJ "conclusively resolves '‘the legal rights of the parties.’'" That is, they declare the law and regs invalid as to the plaintiffs. Declaratory judgments are no more universal than injunctions, absent certification of a 23(b)(2) civil rights class , which plaintiffs did not seek or obtain. The court's order binds the named defendant (the secretary of the state health-care agency) and everyone else who might enforce those Florida laws against them--any attempt to enforce against these four people violates the order.

This order does not prohibit anyone bound by the injunction--Weida or other officers--from enforcing these regulations against anyone other than those four plaintiffs. They could deny to John Smith Medicaid coverage of his prescription for puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones, without violating the current court order or risking contempt. But suppose they did that. Smith would join as a plaintiff in the current action and ask the court to extend the DJ and injunction to him; because he is identically situated to the original plaintiffs, the court would quickly grant the request. Or Smith would file his own lawsuit and quickly obtain a preliminary injunction on the strength of the prior decision. Either approach produces a court order that protects Smth as a named plaintiff, such that enforcement of the regs against him violates the order and risks contempt. But it requires that additional step of making Smith a party to the litigation and bringing him under the court's protection.

As a practical matter, on the other hand, Chris is correct--Florida officials will not enforce these regs against anyone; Florida Medicaid will cover these procedures for all recipients, barring a stay or appellate reversal. But the court order, as framed, does not compel that result as a matter of law. Rather, Florida officials will cover the procedures for non-parties because declining to do so wastes everyone's time and money* by triggering the further litigation--certain to succeed--described in the prior paragraph.

[*] Plaintiffs brought this action under § 1983, so § 1988(b) authorizes attorney's fees for prevailing plaintiffs. And each time a plaintiff obtains a new or extended injunction, the state will pay the fees for that process.

Does this matter, if we end up in the same place? In my view yes, because process matters.

Haaland: Standing, or why didn't the entire case have to come through state court

Haaland v. Brackeen rejected (7-2) a constitutional challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act. The relevant plaintiffs were the State of Texas and three sets of adoptive, foster, or birth parents; the defendants were the Secretary of the Interior and various federal officials; the lawsuit was filed in federal district court. The Court rejected the challenge to the placement-preference provision for lack of standing, finding that an injunction or DJ as to the validity of that provision would not redress the plaintiffs' injuries; any injuries arose from the action of state judges applying ICWA and state officials enforce state-court orders, none of whom were parties to the case and none of whom were bound by any judgment. That the state officials likely would follow the federal court's opinion does not establish standing; in  music to my ears, Justice Barrett wrote "[i]t is a federal court’s judgment, not its opinion, that remedies an injury."

But the Court reached, and rejected, the merits of challenges to the entire statute under the Indian Commerce Clause and under Tenth Amendment anticommandeering to the requirements in involuntary proceedings; to placement preferences; and to certain record-keeping requirements. At least as to the latter two, the Court relied on anticommandeering's unique non-application to state courts, which must apply federal law in all cases before it as the supreme law of the land.

What I do not understand is how these plaintiffs had standing to bring a federal suit in federal district court to challenge any of these provisions on any grounds. All claims suffer the same redressability problems--the plaintiffs suffer an injury when non-party state judges apply ICWA to decide cases and non-party state officials enforce those judgments. So it seems to me this entire case should have had to come through state court--a state family court decides an adoption/placement case applying ICWA; the parents (and the State, if so inclined) argue that ICWA is constitutionally invalid and cannot be applied; the loser(s) appeal through the state system and ultimately to SCOTUS, which decides these constitutional issues in the course of reviewing a state judgment applying that law.

Brown or Briggs?

The descendants of the plaintiffs in Briggs v. Elliott, the companion to Brown out of South Carolina, have petitioned SCOTUS to redesignate it as the lead case for that opinion. I was not aware of the story behind how the five cases reached the Court and formed that case, or of the historical debate over whether Brown became lead case because of bureaucratic choice or various political calculations.

What is a slippery slope argument?

The Freakonomics podcast did an episode on slippery slope arguments. It featured Eugene Volokh, Dahlia Lithwick, and a philosophy professor. Eugene wrote a great article on this; his post links to two versions of the article and blog posts serializing it.

I agree with Eugene that episode was interesting. But it went off the rails for me by spending a lot of time on distinct argument that I do not believe qualify as slippery slope. It features the president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids discussing opposition to early smoking bans, which featured arguments that prohibiting indoor smoking would destroy the restaurant industry or that prohibitions on smoking on planes would lead to plane crashes and violence by tobacco-addicted pilots and passengers.* Lithwick talks about CRT bans and book bans as descending into "feelingsball"--people support the bans because learning CRT will make white children feel bad about themselves or reading books about queer kids will lead to bad behaviors. She blames yellow journalism for the monetization of scaring people, even affecting how we discuss weather ("bomb cyclones" and "thunder snow").

[*] The initial ban applied to short (90-minutes-or-less) flights, on industry arguments that tobacco addicts could not last any longer without a smoke.

These are arguments about bad consequences--Policy/Law/Practice A will produce bad results or results I do not like. We can argue they are "catastrophizing"--warning of extreme (and unlikely) and scary consequences ("reading these books will turn your kids queer," "banning smoking will cause pilots to crash planes"). We can even argue they are examples of moral panics, which goes a step beyond catastrophizing bad consequences. Historic yellow journalism and modern-day "clickbait" journalism trade in these arguments--look at all the bad things that will happen from this practice or this law. And the weather example has nothing to do with anything--making weather sound dramatic does not really cause any conduct.

None is a slippery slope argument, at least as I understand the phrase and as Volokh uses it in his article. Slippery slopes argue that allowing Policy/Law/Practice A leads to Policy/Law/Practice B--if we allow gun registration, then government will confiscate guns; if we allow prohibitions on swastikas, then government will prohibit the Confederate flag or BLM flag. That is different from arguing that prohibiting swastikas will anger Nazis and cause them to riot or that gun registration will create a dangerous black market in illegal guns. Slippery slopes are about "slippage" from one set of rules or conduct to new rules or conduct, not from one rule or conduct to the consequence of that rule or conduct.

§ 1983 enforcement survives, for the moment

The Court decided HHC v. Talevski Thursday, seven months to the day after argument. Here is my SCOTUSBlog analysis. The Court held 7-2 (by Jackson) that Spending Clause enactments are enforceable through § 1983 and that Federal Nursing Home Reform Act ("FNHRA") can be enforced through § 1983. I suppose I understand the delay. Thomas wrote a 36-page dissent tracing the history and evolution of the Spending Clause to argue that spending enactments do not "secure" legal statutory rights, only contractual rights, otherwise such rights violate anti-commandeering. Alito (joined by Thomas) dissented to argue that FNHRA is not enforceable because Congress intended to preclude § 1983 enforcement. Gorsuch and Barrett (with the Chief) joined the majority but added short concurrences.

The title of the posts suggests the reprieve to private enforcement may be temporary. Five justices wrote various things suggesting a narrow approach to private enforcement of Spending Clause laws, if not an intent to eliminate it. Thomas made his position clear. Gorsuch's one-paragraph concurrence spoke of "issues lurking" that petitioners failed to develop--namely, the anti-commandeering concerns Thomas discussed. In other words, Gorsuch might agree with Thomas in a different-and-better-litigated case. Barrett and Roberts went out of their way to remind courts to "tread carefully before concluding that Spending Clause statutes may be enforced through §1983." And Alito believes that a combination of state law proceedings and internal grievances sufficient to preclude federal litigation.

JOTWELL: Levy on George, et al. on SCOTUS Clerks

The new Courts Law essay comes from Marin Levy (Duke), reviewing Tracey E. George, Albert Yoon, & Mitu Gulati, Some Are More Equal Than Others: U.S. Supreme Court Clerkships, an empirical study of who clerks for SCOTUS, where they come from, and where they go.

What is the Court planning for § 1983 "and laws"

My SCOTUSBlog case for this term is Health & Hosp. Corp. v. Talevski, asking the Court to reconsider precedent allowing enforcement of Spending Clause enactments through § 1983 "and laws" actions. The Court held arguments on November 8 and still has not issued an opinion. My reading on the argument was that there was no appetite for doing that. But the long delay suggests either 1) they are going to do it or 2) someone is writing separately to argue why they should do it. The case is not, all things considered, that controversial; I would not expect the Court to take seven months (and counting) or to hide it in the end-of-Term document dump.

The delay has created bigger problems for the in-progress third edition of Understanding Civil Rights Litigati0n. The discussion of "and laws" actions covers the state of the law from 1980 (Maine v. Thiboutot) through summer 2023. It includes a paragraph that there is "doubt" about § 1983 and Spending Clause enactments, mentioning that the Court granted cert to decide the issue in Talevski this Term. I wrote that as a placeholder in January, expecting to change it during the editing process. But the final round of of galley edits passed; the only remaining piece of the process is indexing, if we hope to have the book available in August. If the Court does something crazy, it renders several pages obsolete (how obsolete depends on how crazy), with no opportunity to correct it.

We could say the same about Mallory and establishing general personal jurisdiction through business registration, argued the same day as Talevski--this is a long time to spend on this case, suggesting division and someone doing something wild.

What is the trouble with SCOTUS reporting (and with SCOTUS)?

Slate's Amicus Podcast hosted a live conversation with Dahlia Lithwick, Mark Joseph Stern, Jay Willis, and Elie Mystal. The conversation centered on the failures of the SCOTUS press corps. Press failures include: too much focus on the law of the opinions (they liken it to how science reporters cover NASA); failing to identify the "reality" beneath those opinions, whether by exposing the Court's misleading presentation of facts (Kennedy) or by positioning one case within a larger political, ideological, and jurisprudential trend; failing to write about the real-world consequences of the decisions; failing to report on and follow individual justices (compared with the extensive coverage of members of Congress and even small legislative actions); and failing to write about the behind-the-scenes influences on the Justices (Harlan Crow, Leonard Leo, ADF, et al.).

I enjoyed the program, although I did not agree with a lot of it. Some reactions after the jump.

• There is an electoral/public accountability component to how the press covers Congress (and members of Congress) absent in covering the Court. The press provides information to the public which, we hope, the public uses in deciding whether to keep that person in office. By contrast, there is (I think) continued acceptance that no one (not Congress, not the public) should remove or sanction judges for their decisions. Those (including me) who would like some form of term limits do not want those limits to turn on agreement or disagreement with substance of decisions. Broader (i.e., beyond the opinion) coverage of the Court allows for public awareness and criticism of the Court, with whatever effects public opinion might have on the Court. It perhaps pressures Congress to do something about an out-of-control Court. But that something is not removal of individual members, unless progressives have abandoned the conclusion that the Senate properly acquitted Samuel Chase and that "Impeach Earl Warren" campaigns wrong.

• One SCOTUS decision resolves one case involving one dispute between discrete parties (e.g., whether Mississippi's law can be constitutionally enforced against Jackson Women's Health patients or whether this school could sanction this football coach for these activities). The decision includes an opinion that affects other real-world actors. But the opinion's effects on other actors and its consequences as to them are diffuse, prospective, unknown, and contingent at the time. It thus is impossible for reporters to write about them in covering argument or decisions. At best, reporters in the moment can speculate (and report speculative cases) about what could/might happen (subject to accusations of engaging in unreasonable parades of horribles). Reporting on consequences beyond the parties before the Court requires subsequent follow-up reporting. That reporting should happen, although we might question whether Totenberg, Liptak, Biskupic, et al., should do it and when. In other words, no one knows the specific effects of a SCOTUS case in the moment--it depends on what governments and lower courts do in response. Of course, we could raise the same argument as to congressional reporting--no one knows the specific consequences of a piece of legislation and someone should report on the on-the-ground effects of the enacted law, although the question is who and how and when.

Take Dobbs. States' race to impose the strictest laws was predictable and that prediction should have been part of the coverage (and might have been--I avoid most popular coverage of the Court). But the press could not have written specific stories about specific instances by specific states affecting specific people, as the panelists seem to demand. No one knew which states would enact or enforce which laws as to which people and in which circumstances. When Dobbs leaked in May or issued in June, no one could have written about Mifepristone or about Indiana sanctioning a doctor for performing an abortion on a 10-year-old rape victim from Ohio or about Idaho outlawing travel to other states.

Relatedly, lower courts--thousands of judges on hundreds of courts spread across the U.S.--determine the broad on-the-ground effects. By focusing on how media coverage of SCOTUS fails as opposed to how media coverage of of the judiciary fails, they perhaps commit the error people accuse legal educators of committing. In any event, the handful of SCOTUS reporters cannot cover the entire judicial system, although that is the locus of the large practical effects the panelists want covered.

• They spend a lot of time on the media's failure to report on the supposed outside influences on the Court and the Justices. Put Crow to one side--if that reporting bears out, it may reflect the sort of not-good behaviour warranting impeachment or resignation. The speakers criticize failure to report on the ADF and other conservative advocacy groups spending money (from specific wealthy people with an ideological goal) and operating campaigns to find plaintiffs and bring cases with the goal of overruling affirmative action, creating religious exceptions to LGBTQ+ protections, weaken environmental protections, etc. Criticizing that failure to report implicitly criticizes these groups' litigation efforts--they engage in nefarious conduct and the press commits journalistic malpractice by not writing about and exposing them and their nefarious conduct.

But much of the constitutional law that progressives cheered was created through similar litigation campaigns--advocacy organizations sought out plaintiffs to bring lawsuits challenging various laws with the goal of obtaining SCOTUS review and decisions establishing their favored constitutional provision. And the right resisted those efforts by attacking the groups bringing the cases and trying to bring them to heel. Virginia applied its laws against soliciting legal business to the NAACP's efforts to recruit parents to bring anti-discrimination suits. States investigated and prosecuted advocacy groups under anti-Communist laws, amid questions about who funded these organizations and their advocacy efforts. Lithwick and company would not argue (I presume) that the press failed 60 years ago in not exposing whether "communists" funded the NAACP and its efforts to overrule Plessy and invalidate Jim Crow.

Once again, progressives criticizing conservative impact litigation must distinguish these efforts from prior movements. "I disagree with current efforts but like past efforts" is not a principled distinction.

• Stern offers an interesting take on press coverage of 303 Creative as the latest step in an advocacy organization's campaign to carve religious exceptions into public-accommodations laws. Past cases pitted competing "rights-holders" receiving media coverage--e.g., Jack Phillips on one side and the same-sex couple who ordered the wedding cake on the other. But the posture of 303--Lorie Smith has never created a wedding web site and never been asked by a same-sex couple to create a wedding web site (Stern said it's because she sucks as a web designer). So the designer is the only person the media can cover and they have done so, in the usual soft-focus way; no specific person sits on the other side. I doubt that affects the Justices or the outcome; it affects how the public perceives the case and its consequences.

Stern suggests the one-sidedness shifting media coverage in Smith's favor illustrates why the case is bullshit. Smith lacks standing* because she faces no meaningful, imminent, or non-speculative threat of having state law enforced against her. No one--least of all two gay men, according to Stern--has or is likely to ask her to design their wedding web site or to complain to the state civil rights commission about her failure to do so, both of which are necessary to trigger any enforcement of the law against her. This is a good line, although LGBTQ+ people keep ordering from Jack Phillips.

[*] Or suffers no constitutional violation, in my preferred framing.

Thick-skinned judges

From Judge Joshua Wolson (E.D. Pa., with whom I clerked on that court), dismissing a lawsuit by a state judge against the Daily Beast for describing her as "QAnon-linked:"

Being a Judge is a great job. But it comes with downsides. What we do, we do in public, and we subject ourselves to public discussion and criticism of our decisions, both fair and unfair. Federalist No. 78 noted the importance of Judges being independent of the “effects of those ill humors, which are the arts of designing men, or the influence of particular conjunctures [that] sometimes disseminate among the people themselves.” The Federalist No. 78 (Alexander Hamilton). That remains just as true today as it was in the 18th Century. Being a judge requires a thick skin and a willingness to make decisions in the face of criticism, even unfair criticism, and to remember that sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me.

That view of judges needing thick skin and the ability to handle even unfair criticism and continuing to do the job departs from the attitude expressed by Justice Alito, Judge Duncan, Judge Ho, and others, demanding sanction for or defense against their critics. Is it easy to say this when discussing another judge reacting to criticism (in rejecting that other judge's efforts to silence those criticism) than when handling unfair criticism directed at oneself? (Note that I am not attributing that position to Judge Wolson or suggesting he would react differently to criticism targeting him).

(Guest Post) Judicial Politics and Legal Scholarship in Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith

I meant it when i said I have no idea who had the better of Warhol. So the following is from my FIU colleague Hannibal Travis, who does.

The majority opinion in Warhol carries forward certain recent trends in decisionmaking at the Supreme Court.  As others have noted, there is a "David and Goliath" quality to the ruling that photographer Lynn Goldsmith, breaking barriers as a woman in the male-dominated rock-n-roll photography field and earning a modest living from selling photographs to magazines for around $400, was entitled to compensation for Andy Warhol making an unauthorized tracing and silkscreen of her photograph of the rock star Prince and licensing it to Vanity Fair for $10,000.  It is reminiscent of the celebrated ruling in NCAA v. Alston (2021) that college athletes had been unlawfully exploited when colleges conspired to limit their education-related benefits for playing, and that the NCAA had no right to define intercollegiate athletics as a market in which cost-of-attendance scholarships are the fundamental cap on scholarships to ensure amateur play.  The majority also attempts to return fair use doctrine to what it sees as first principles, contrary to certain lower court rulings that supposedly overemphasized one aspect of one fair use factor.  This continues a trend of swatting away overly formalistic or innovative circuit court tests, some of the more notorious being "design marketability," "likelihood of dilution," the "machine-or-transformation" test for concrete patentable ideas, and the "teaching-suggestion-motivation test" for obvious improvements to existing technologies for patentability purposes.

Henry Mistry suggests that judicial opinions -- including dissents -- are a kind of performative ritual that is intended to alter social perceptions and bolster the legitimacy of the ritual's practitioner.  From this point of view, decisions like Warhol that make up the trend of Supreme Court decisions against various "Goliaths" are not only norm-clarifying but legitimacy-building.  As a related form of performative judicial politics, a dissent calls aspects of the legal system into question while underlining the system's legitimacy as a responsive and "dynamic" one.  In this instance, the majority mobilizes a constituency for its view from the factual background of Goldsmith's craft to its attempt to reassure artists that not much will change in the last paragraph. 

One of the critical points of contention in Warhol is the relationship between the defense of fair use and the exclusive right of Goldsmith and other copyright holders to prepare "derivative works."  As Justice Sonia Sotomayor's opinion for the Court explains:

[T]he owner has a right to derivative transformations of her work. Such transformations may be substantial, like the adaptation of a book into a movie. To be sure, this right is “[s]ubject to” fair use. § 106; see also § 107. The two are not mutually exclusive. But an overbroad concept of transformative use, one that includes any further purpose, or any different character, would narrow the copyright owner's exclusive right to create derivative works. To preserve that right, the degree of transformation required to make “transformative” use of an original must go beyond that required to qualify as a derivative.... See ... Authors Guild v. Google, Inc., 804 F. 3d 202, 214 (CA2 2015) (Leval, J.) (“The more the appropriator is using the copied material for new, transformative purposes, the more it serves copyright's goal of enriching public knowledge and the less likely it is that the appropriation will serve as a substitute for the original or its plausible derivatives, shrinking the protected market opportunities of the copyrighted work”). A use that shares the purpose of a copyrighted work, by contrast, is more likely to provide “the public with a substantial substitute....” [Id.] at 207....

Similarly, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Ketanji Brown Jackson state in their concurring opinion:

[T]he copyright statute expressly protects a copyright holder's exclusive right to create “derivative works” that “transfor[m]” or “adap[t]” his original work. §§ 101, 106(2). So saying that a later user of a copyrighted work “transformed” its message and endowed it with a “new aesthetic” cannot automatically mean he has made fair use of it. Contra, post, at 1–2, 22–23, 34–36 (Kagan, J., dissenting). To hold otherwise would risk making a nonsense of the statutory scheme—suggesting that transformative uses of originals belong to the copyright holder (under § 106) but that others may simultaneously claim those transformative uses for themselves (under § 107). We aren't normally in the business of putting a statute “at war with itself ” in this way. United States v. American Tobacco Co., 221 U.S. 106, 180 (1911).

The opinion in American Tobacco was not about a contradiction between two provisions, however, but between a reasonable reading of a single provision and another proposed reading that would seemingly undermine the legislative objective (freedom of interstate commerce).  In Warhol, the justices were at loggerheads over whether presumptively vesting the ability to adapt, recast, or transform a work in its original author would thwart the very creativity that copyright is deemed to promote.  For dissenting Justice Elena Kagan and Chief Justice John Roberts, there is no tension between finding a work to be an infringing derivative yet favored under fair use as having a "purpose or character" that is akin to comment, criticism, research, or scholarship.  The derivative work right is not eliminated despite this approach because the amount and importance of material taken and any economic harm to the original author can outweigh the purpose factor.  Even more importantly, the derivative work right is "[s]ubject to" section 107 (the fair use statute) and other defenses/limitations.  In 2013, for example, the Court found that even though copyright infringement includes unauthorized distribution of copies, the first-sale (or resale of a lawful copy) defense applied.  The strength of the argument that an unlawful distribution occurred could not eliminate the first-sale doctrine's role (because distribution exclusivity is subject to it).  Thus, ruling against Goldsmith on the question presented (that the unauthorized Prince art based on a Goldsmith photo was "transformative" under the fair use doctrine) would conflict with neither the fundamental goal of copyright nor with the derivative work language.

The legislative history of the Copyright Act further illustrates why allowing fair uses of some derivative works would not make nonsense of the statute.  Both the definition of a derivative work, and that of fair use, refer to a "portion of [the] ... work" being used.  Unlike the majority opinion in Warhol, which defines fair use as necessarily excluding "plausible derivatives," the legislative history states that "no real definition" of fair use even exists.  Several of the examples of fair uses in the legislative history amount to a "recast[ing]" of the original work, and are therefore "plausible derivatives," including: "illustration or clarification of the author’s observations" and "summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report."  Both of these examples are captured in the preamble to the fair use statute under "comment," "research," or "scholarship," so that criticism or parody does not exhaust the world of fair uses.  Nevertheless, the majority opinion starkly contrasts comment and criticism, and greatly disadvantages commentary and research in comparison to "target[ing] an original work."

By excluding illustrative or summative commentary and other plausible derivatives from the scope of the first factor of the fair use doctrine, the majority opinion will confine fair use to a very minor domain because it did not want to "narrow" the derivative or adaptation right.  As the dissent points out, the first factor ensures a "'breathing space' for artists to use existing materials to make fundamentally new works, for the public's enjoyment and benefit."  Courts formerly utilized the first factor to outweigh aspects of the new work that might otherwise negate a fair use, such as use of the entire work or use of the "heart" of the work such as a song's refrain.  The dissent goes on to criticize the majority's move here:

[T]he preamble ... gives examples of uses often thought fair: “criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching[,] ... scholarship, or research.” § 107. As we have explained, an emphasis on commercialism would “swallow” those uses—that is, would mostly deprive them of fair-use protection.... [¶]  [Yet o]n the majority's view, an artist had best not attempt to market even a transformative follow-on work—one that adds significant new expression, meaning, or message. That added value (unless it comes from critiquing the original) will no longer receive credit under factor 1. And so it can never hope to outweigh factor 4's assessment of the copyright holder's [economic] interests.

The dissent in Warhol recalls on earlier dissent on an even weightier issue.  In 1984, the Court ruled 6-3 that paraphrasing and selectively quoting choice passages from the memoirs of a former president and potential presidential primary candidate Gerald Ford were consumptive and exploitive uses of his manuscript, rather than fair news reporting with a more beneficial purpose of conveying uncopyrightable facts without scooping a new book.  Building on this approach, courts  ruled that even liberally quoting unpublished letters could result in a copyright ban on a biography.  Justices William Brennan, Byron White, and Thurgood Marshall issued one of the great First Amendment dissents in the Ford case, warning that news reporting, which was a "prime example" of fair use according to the statutory text, had been disfavored by the majority, threatening open discussion and debate on public figures and official measures.  Scholars  have often confirmed that this danger has indeed materialized.

The Warhol dissent takes a minimalistic approach.  The First Amendment right to make art of a postmodern or even simply a "pop art" variety is not discussed, despite effective briefs on the topic by art law professors and copyright law professors.  Even the legislative history, which contains important discussions of the scope of fair use and of the derivative right, makes no appearance.  Cass Sunstein conceived of judicial minimalism as different from judicial restraint in that it promotes core principles on which supposedly everyone can agree, while striking down laws when necessary to shield traditional rights.  It is not "skeptical" of the judicial role so much as committed to a broad scope of political branch discretion, and confident that judges committed to various ideologies and legal theories can agree in reasonable and circumscribed decisions.  In this way, the Warhol majority explains its ruling as an interative development of existing precedents and a straightforward application of statutory text.  The dissent invites readers to review the precedents and read the text differently.  Neither opinion returns to first principles and opens a destabilizing inquiry into their contemporary implications.

Sunstein noted that a minimalistic opinion may fail to provide "justification or guidance for the future" in "wider judgments."  The majority does not even draw much of an explicit distinction between submitting art to a magazine for a fee -- where the art is based on a photograph to illustrate a magazine article or cover about the photograph's subject -- and either displaying similar art in a nonprofit museum or art history textbook.  Thus, Justices Gorsuch and Jackson wrote a concurrence to point out that the first fair use factor might favor such a use in an appropriate case.  The majority is unwilling even to state that a critical book review necessarily benefits from the first factor, because certain quoted passages might satisfy consumer demand for part of the book and therefore lose the benefit of the first factor. 

The majority does offer guidance on a number of important topics.  It concedes that when a creator uses only a tiny portion of what came before or hides whatever is created in the classroom or private quarters, the "plausible derivatives" test may support a fair use under the first factor.  It approvingly cites cases stating that reproducing a photograph that is "the story" unaltered alongside a news article could be a fair purpose, as could altering a photograph for parodic effect.  It reaffirms a decision from 2021 that it could be a fair purpose to make use of "primarily functional" computer software elements to create a new programming "environment" with "shared interfaces" and the ability to attract programmers from earlier coding environments.  It even analyzes Andy Warhol's Campbell Soup Cans from 1962 (part of a series continuing through at least 1969) as having a purpose and character consistent with a fair use because advertisements have a different purpose and the series "target[ed]" the ads, presumably for being "ordinary."  Finally, the majority declares -- with no precedential or theoretical support -- that film adaptations are unfair uses. (The Court ruled in 1911 that a film could be an infringing dramatization of a book under the copyright act of 1891, but fair use did not come up.)

There can be no presumption that a particular type of work is a fair use or even has a fair "purpose and character," for the majority.  As noted above, even book reviews are now at risk even though they were one of the first types of fair uses recognized, alongside abridgements.

The dissent argues that despite the guidance provided, the majority's minimalism and solicitude towards authors' commercial aims will leave subsequent authors and musicians in a very uncertain position as to quoting others' original work.  Were Warhol's Marilyn Monroe series of paintings and screenprints all infringements?  The dissent is unsure, althugh the majority notes that Warhol paid to license the photographic source material of some of his works, so the scope of said licenses might be important.  How could future artists or musicians possibly rely on fair use if even an "avatar" of a bracing and revolutionary form of recontextualizing art worthy of museum exhibition and inclusion in art history's pantheon, had an insufficient legal justification for the "purpose and character" of (at least some of) his works?  No matter, say the majority and the concurrence: a narrow question was asked, and answered.

The majority opinion, like the Campbell case it applies, adopts an analysis from a Harvard Law Review article by Judge Pierre Leval.  Leval argued that the further removed the purposes of the user are from those of the original author, the more excusing an unauthorized use will advance the aims of copyright law .  On the other hand, subsequent authors who share purposes or characteristics of their work with the original author's work threaten to divert income from him or her and harm the mechanism with which copyright adds to knowledge via incentives. 

The central question under this approach is whether an interference with a "plausible derivative" is made by the subsequent author.  As Leval's article put it, any "reasonably substantial" loss of revenue due to the substitutionary effect of a use may negate its fairness. In the Google Books decision, Leval expanded on the proposal:

Even if the purpose of the copying is for a valuably transformative purpose, such copying might nonetheless harm the value of the copyrighted original if done in a manner that results in widespread revelation of sufficiently significant portions of the original as to make available a significantly competing substitute....

There must be a meaningful or significant effect "upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work." 17 U.S.C. § 107(4).

However, Leval's discussion of derivative substitution in his article and in the Google Books opinion dealt with the fourth fair use factor.  The Warhol majority's use of significant-impact-on-plausible-derivatives to inform the first factor will lead to confusion between the purpose and character factor and the effect on value of markets factor, the dissent argues.  The majority denies this, leading to various skirmishes in the footnotes.  The most clarifying statement by the majority is that a significant effect on derivative markets may be correlated with but is not a cause of a purpose and character that is unfair (for being too close to that of the original work).

This analysis by Leval, mediated by its reception in Campbell, is about the sum total of the influence of legal scholarship on the majority opinion.  As with the First Amendment issue and the postmodern art briefs, this was a minimalist move, as legal scholarship is rife with theories about the history and optimal development of fair use. 

In the Warhol concurrence, however, legal scholarship makes a tantalizing appearance.  It is suggested that while fair use may not be viable for the Warhol foundation due to losing the first factor, a defense of outright noninfringement may have had more success.  The Nimmer on Copyright treatise appears for the proposition that "even when two works are substantially similar, if both the plaintiff’s and the defendant's works copy from a third source (reworking, say, a traditional artistic or literary theme), a claim for infringement generally will not succeed."  This, for me, evoked an opinion by then-judge Gorsuch on copyright infringement, in Meshwerks, Inc. v. Toyota Motor Sales USA, Inc. (10th Cir. 2009).  There, the plaintiff digitally sculpted lines and frames initially derived from Toyota vehicle measuresments, for purposes of painstakingly generating all the fine nuances of a vehicle's appearance in a computer-based model.  Its infringement claim against Toyota for subsequent unauthorized uses ran up against a "bedrock" principle of copyright law that aspects of the plaintiff's model attributable to copying the underlying object had to be ignored, and could not form the basis of a claim.  The shape of a vehicle was unprotected or owned by Toyota, not owned by the plaintiff who first traced it.  Analogously, the concurrence seems to suggest that the Warholized image of Prince (which the dissent describes as resulting in "isolated and exaggerated ... differently-colored, out-of-kilter lines around Prince's face and hair") might be noninfringing once Prince's features are ignored.  Scholars (who unfortunately the Court does not engage with to provide more guidance to those using images of people for various purposes) explore this as the "photograph as database" theory, with the photograph as a mirror, repository, or taking of data points preexisting in the world. 

It is, in a way, appropriate that Warhol's work should cause us to reevaluate the dynamic between the creator as generator of meaning and the creator as consumer of meaning.  The majority opinion paints Warhol and similarly situated artists (like Richard Prince or Jeff Koons) as grabbing value from others, as being engaged in "wholesale takings."  Warhol described what he was doing as driving the seemingly strong meaning of ordinary images to a vanishing point.  Repetition, iconography, discoloration, and the like produce a distancing or alienation effect (Verfremdungseffekt or priyom ostraneniya).  The comforting and community-binding aura around popular images takes on a different hue.  Richard Prince and Koons achieve something similar in cases they lost in pertinent part, in the rulings on Graduation and the String of Puppies.  This kind of art will continue to be possible to release without a license, but perhaps only if the source images are obscured in such a way that the alienation effect is not really achieved.  Thus, Richard Prince and Koons prevailed (under pre-Warhol standards) as to works jumbled up or covered over in larger collages and the like.  Warhol, in this way, bans a type of Warholist art. 

The presence of Justice Kagan

Gerard suggests Justice Breyer's absence explains the nastiness of the exchanges in Warhol (and deteriorating relationships among the Justices generally)--he "was a senior and avuncular person who liked to broker compromises. You can't easily replace the social function that sort of person fulfills." Josh Blackman says the same.

But wasn't the ability and desire to broker compromises one of Kagan's selling points, based on her time and efforts as HLS dean? Is she too young? Too junior to play that role on the Court (she is the median justice in seniority)? Too caustic a writer? Or does this involve a different type of compromise--not across ideological lines but across temperament, between two people who generally align.

Kagan on Velazquez and Bacon (and Lain on Cortada)

 Justice Kagan devotes the final ten pages of her Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith dissent (begin at p. 25) to illustrating the "dramatic" effects of the majority's (narrow?) approach to the first fair use factor. Using examples in literature, music, and art, she discusses historic examples of work building on prior work; her premise is that that the majority's approach would not see the later work as transformative and thus as fair use, because both create something to be sold.

On pp. 32-34, she compares Velazquez's portrait of Pope Innocent X with Bacon's "Study After Velazque's Portrait of Pope Innocent X" (commonly known as "Screaming Pope").

Miami artist Xavier Cortada's May It Please the Court depicts ten SCOTUS cases originating in Florida; the paintings hang on the walls of FIU College of Law. Here is the piece for Proffitt v. Florida, which riffed on Bacon's painting:

In Painting Constitutional Law (edited with my colleague Matthew Mirow), Corinna Lain (Richmond) wrote a wonderful essay on Proffitt and how Bacon's painting and Cortada's painting explore "pain, imprisonment, isolation and obfuscation," which constitute "larger themes of the death penalty as well."

If Kagan is right that Bacon's painting cannot happen, then neither can this.

 

 

More on FIRE

I hope I am premature in my anticipatory criticism of FIRE; time will tell. I follow FIRE's statements pretty closely and will update (and eat crow) if it says anything. But two further points:

1) FIRE recently changed its name from Foundation for Individual Rights in Education to "Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression." This does not strike me as mission creep; this represents an intentional branching and rebranding beyond the educational context. As I understand it, FIRE and its supporters believe the ACLU has wavered in its commitment to free expression in the face of contrary commitments to equality and The Trump Resistance; they see themselves filling the gap in protecting free speech throughout society. So this is, in fact, something on which they might weigh in.

2) FIRE's Twitter thread on the Chappelle story reveals not-happiness with the comedy club's choice--dropping everyone's favorite word and wondering whether the club would have "canceled Prince because Tipper Gore and the PMRC didn’t like ‘Darling Nikki’." That is, the thread takes the club to task for "canceling" a speaker in deference to lefty critics, where it would not have done the same to conservative critics of a lefty icon such as Prince. (The answer is probably not. But private actors get to make such choices and distinctions in the name of their expressive preferences).

But if it is wrong as a matter of a "culture of free speech" (their words) to reject Chappelle but include Prince--as FIRE clearly believes--it is wrong to criticize the club for rejecting Chappelle while ignoring the Dodgers rejecting Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. FIRE might argue that a comedy club, as an "artistic and culture venue[]," carries a unique mission. That seems a thin reed, putting aside that sports teams and stadiums should qualify as "culture venues" that draw a lot more people than comedy clubs.

Sotomayor and Kagan

I do not know enough copyright law to comment on Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith (I hope one of my colleagues will write something on it). But what is happening between Sotomayor (for a 7-person majority) and Kagan (dissenting with Roberts)? Their exchanges seem uniquely sharp and direct and personal (each accusing the other of being, essentially, clueless about the law), especially for a non-political case between two justices who tend to agree on things.

The majority refers to "the dissent" more than 40 times and responds to points in 11 footnotes.

Kagan ends the intro to her dissent with the following footnote:

One preliminary note before beginning in earnest. As readers are by now aware, the majority opinion is trained on this dissent in a way majority opinions seldom are. Maybe that makes the majority opinion self-refuting? After all, a dissent with “no theory” and “[n]o reason” is not one usually thought to merit pages of commentary and fistfuls of come-back footnotes. Ante, at 36. In any event, I’ll not attempt to rebut point for point the majority’s varied accusations; instead, I’ll mainly rest on my original submission. I’ll just make two suggestions about reading what  follows. First, when you see that my description of a precedent differs from the majority’s, go take a look at the decision. Second, when you come across an argument that you recall the majority took issue with, go back to its response and ask yourself about the ratio of reasoning to ipse dixit. With those two recommendations, I’ll take my chances on readers’ good judgment.

I also wonder how much Roberts influenced the dissent's style. The opinion is loaded with references and allusions, a common feature of Roberts' writing (even more so than Kagan). The two together cannot help themselves. Unsurprisingly, the dissent is a fun read (again, I pass no judgment on the correctness of its analysis).

Preclusion in the news (Update)

In his CNN-sponsored political rally, held the day after a jury found him liable to E. Jean Carroll for sexual abuse and defamation, Donald Trump  called Carroll a "whack job" and her allegations a "fake story." Carroll is contemplating bringing new claims for defamation.

Any lawsuit will continue Trump's trend of introducing the public to otherwise-obscure legal concepts--this time, issue preclusion. Trump in the new litigation will be bound by the jury's necessary conclusion that he did sexually abuse Carroll in that dressing room; the parties must litigate the remainder of the case (were his denials opinion, is "whack job" opinion, what are her new damages) in light of that established fact. But all the elements are satisfied--the jury found that he abused her, the finding was necessary to the verdict, Trump had a full-and-fair opportunity to litigate, and we actually have mutuality.

It plays an unusual role here. Kyle Rittenhouse has made noise about bringing defamation actions against those who continue to call him a murderer. Those claims fail for several reasons, including that these speakers are not bound by the jury's conclusion that Rittenhouse acted in self-defense and can speak contrary to that. Trump--as a party to the case--loses that luxury.

Update: Ken White on Serious Trouble discusses a different wrinkle (while calling the entire thing a law school exam)--whether Carroll can sue CNN for airing Trump's comments and whether she can establish actual malice based on the jury verdict. Again, issue preclusion does not apply to CNN--as a non-party to the original suit, it never had a full-and-fair opportunity to litigate and cannot be bound by the prior decision. But it presents an interesting fact question (White believes sufficient to survive 12(b)(6) and probably summary judgment) of how much pause a verdict holding a fact to be true must give a future speaker. And that question perhaps interacts with the standard of persuasion underlying that verdict--whether CNN is less reckless in disagreeing with a verdict finding it more likely than not Trump assaulted her as opposed to a verdict finding beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump assaulted her.

Snap removal swallows everything

An odd, but probably not unusual, phenomenon--one weird rule affects and infects application of other, related rules and processes. Snap removal seems to act as one such rule, with parties arguing that all sorts of removal is proper so long as it happens before service on a local defendant. I wrote last summer about a district court reading snap removal to override the time-of-filing rule for jurisdiction, allowing Tesla to remove a California case when it moved its headquarters post-filing but pre-service. (I tested on the case this semester). The defendant tried a similar move in this case, arguing that snap removal was proper when the diverse defendant removed before the non-diverse local defendant was served. Fortunately, Judge Stras was having none of it; even recognizing snap removal (the 8th Circuit has never weighed in), that cannot overcome the complete diversity requirement.

Challenging private enforcement

Rocky and I discussed this in our SMU piece, but I have been thinking about it more of late.

B8 and other exclusive-private-enforcement (or "vigilante federalism") draw two related-but-distinct objections. They force rights-holders to litigate their rights defensively, cutting off most offensive litigation; while offensive litigation is not constitutionally required, it offers certain advantages, notably not forcing rights-holders to "act at their peril" as a condition of litigating their rights. And they force rights-holders to litigate in state court.

The second objection arises from two limits on federal jurisdiction--the Well-Pleaded Complaint Rule and Article III standing. Both prevent the defendant/rights-holder from removing a state-court action to federal court. Under the WPC, federal jurisdiction requires the federal issue to appear in the complaint; the rights-holder's federal defense does not provide a basis for federal jurisdiction and thus for removal. And laws allowing "any person" to sue cannot be in federal court even absent the WPC, because a random "any person" plaintiff likely does not have Article III standing (even if he might have standing under more forgiving state law).

Of course, both judge-made limits on federal jurisdiction suffer from significant problems. The WPC arguably undermines the purposes of federal question jurisdiction (uniformity, expertise, respect); those needs are present regardless of the procedural posture in which the federal issue arises. A defendant needs expertise for a federal defense as much as a plaintiff needs expertise for a federal claim. Standing is stupid and not really jurisdictional, as I have argued. And even if jurisdictional, Andy Hessick argues that federal courts should apply state standing rules in diversity cases. Without both stupid doctrines, the defendant could remove the vigilante-federalism action and litigate in federal court, where she has a (perhaps) fairer and less-captured forum and a shorter path to SCOTUS.

This does not address the first objection--rights-holders should not be forced into defensive litigation. But the question is what is the real objection?

Harry Belafonte and the First Amendment

Harry Belafonte died Tuesday, at the age of 96. Belafonte was one of the celebrity signatories to Heed Their Rising Voices, the editorial advertisement seeking support for MLK and the civil rights movement that gave rise to New York Times v. Sullivan.

Social media and state action

The court granted cert in a case from the Ninth Circuit (finding state action) and a case from the Sixth Circuit (finding no state action and taking a very different analytical approach).

Beyond the conclusion, I am concerned for how the Court approaches this. Some lower courts apply a "close nexus" test, which usually applies to purely private actors engaging in private conduct having some government connection or requirement. The analysis here should be different, where the defendant is a government employee/official and the question is whether that official status enabled his conduct. These cases should look more like rogue or off-duty cops, as opposed to labor unions collecting fees through a government-controlled process. It is a subtle difference, but it is more than semantic.

On the other hand, dammit--the publisher said no substantive changes on these edits.

District Court gets defensive/offensive right--standing still sucks

In 2021, I wrote about an Eighth Circuit case in a challenge to Arkansas' exclusive-private-enforcement ag-gag law. An animal-rights organization brought an offensive challenge to the law against several farm owners/potential plaintiffs. A divided court found the chilling effect of the law and the threat of suit established injury-in-fact for standing. I criticized this focus on standing, because the plaintiffs had no § 1983 cause of action against non-state actors; the court did not address that issue because it went to the merits and standing serves as a threshold.

The district court corrected that on remand. It granted defendant's motion to dismiss, concluding that the plaintiffs cannot satisfy § 1983 because the would-be state-law plaintiff does not act under color. The court further rejected plaintiff's argument that in finding an injury the court found state action. While the issues can be "one-and-the-same," the finding of a threshold does not necessarily satisfy the element. Nevertheless, that the plaintiff raised and thought the argument could work shows how far the law of standing has constitutionalized an essentially merits inquiry and needlessly complicated constitutional litigation.The court also explains offensive and defensive litigation and when only one is available--why state action allowing a defense does not equate with state action/under color allowing an offensive action, why every case plaintiff cites arose defensively and thus does not support the § 1983 argument it attempts to make, and why a Fourth Circuit offensive action against a state agency with state-law enforcement power does not support an offensive action against a private would-be plaintiff.

SG to the Court: Originalism Requires Jury Lawfinding

A month ago, the Solicitor General reported to the Court that defendants have been denied the right to the full jury trial intended by the Framers in every case, state and federal, which has been tried at least since the end of the 19th century. Smith v. United States  is a venue case; I wrote about the venue issue at SCOTUSBlog. But in addressing the venue question, the SG revived a controversy with comprehensive implications. The SG explained that one of the “original purpose[s]” of venue, and “one at the center of the Framers’ debates on the issue, was to allow the jurors to serve as the conscience of the community through interpretation of law.” (Br. at 9) Quoting Drew Kershen’s work Vicinage Part II, the SG explained that venue provisions were designed to “enable the jury to ‘serve as the conscience of the community.’ That concept included ‘not simply [the jury’s] interpreting the law’ to apply to the facts, but the jury’s potential ‘to disregard clearly applicable law’ with which it disagreed.” (Br. at 29). The Framers’ juries, in the SG’s view, had not only the raw power of nullification against the law, but the institutional duty and responsibility to mitigate application of laws which would otherwise be unduly harsh. To be sure, as the SG pointed out, the Supreme Court rejected that role for the jury in the 7-2 decision in Sparf & Hansen v. United States, 156 U.S. 51 (1895). But while the majority marshalled much judicial authority, it was the dissent which was most interested in the views of the Framers and the leading authorities at the time the Constitution was adopted. The SG’s brief declared, in effect, that the dissenters were right.

The SG’s position is consistent with the view that many academics have taken in scholarship over the last several decades. Joan Larsen asserts that “the jury of the founding generation had powers and rights that went beyond the fact-finding power of the modern jury. The Founders' jury also had the right to judge the law, a right that criminal juries would not lose until well into the nineteenth century.” Jenia Iontcheva Turner claims that “[t]he authority of the criminal jury to determine law as well as facts was taken as self-evident in many colonies.”  According to Rachel Barkow, “there is evidence that, both before the Framing and for a time thereafter, juries were deciding questions of law.” Darryl Brown claims that “juries at one time explicitly possessed the power to judge the law as well as the facts.”

To be sure, some scholars disagree or find the evidence more mixed: William E. Nelson seems to report variation among colonial jurisdictions, and Stanton Krauss doubts what he calls the “conventional wisdom” about early jury authority. However, the point of originalism as I understand it is not to assess colonial practice, but to ascertain what the Framers intended. The SG has supplied a specific answer to that question.

I am in no position to opine on the ultimate issue. But this is a Court which believes the proper method of interpreting the Constitution is originalism. It is not fanatical about following existing precedent which was, in its view, erroneously decided.  The Court is also willing to dig deep; the Court quite recently rejected the non-unanimous jury based on a careful examination of historical practice. And few would deny the Solicitor General’s insight and influence on the interpretation of the Constitution. Accordingly, every criminal defense attorney in the United States should take this as a command, starting now, to contend that the Solicitor General is absolutely right, and that faithful application of the original public meaning of the jury trial right requires instructing jurors that it is up to them to determine not only what happened, but whether it was wrong. The Solicitor General may recant or the Supreme Court may ultimately read the history differently. But it is difficult to overstate the transformation of the criminal justice system which would ensue if juries were allowed to acquit simply because they, functioning effectively as a legislature for a particular case, did not find that a person should be convicted. The Solicitor General’s brief makes jury law-finding a live issue that must be addressed.

How else are you supposed to do it?

Journalist Jason Garcia is upset that the Speaker of the Florida House acknowledged that the bill altering state defamation law is "intentionally unconstitutional" and designed to trigger litigation and provide SCOTUS an opportunity to overrule New York Times and other defamation precedent.

Put aside that "intentionally unconstitutional" should mean, at most, "unconstitutional as judicial precedent understands the First Amendment" and that a legislature can hold and act on competing constitutional understandings. But even at the most judicial supremacist, what else is a legislature supposed to do if it believes judicial precedent wrong and wants to challenge (and change) it? If a state cannot do what Florida is trying here,  judicial supremacy means the popular branches lack the power to disagree with the judicial understanding or to create mechanisms to express that disagreement and urge the court to change path. The Court's word is not only final but unchanging and irrevocable.

Judicial immunity and other civil rights hurdles (Update)

Steve Lubet (Northwestern) writes in Slate about Judge Robert Benitez (S.D. Cal.), who ordered the marshall to handcuff the 13-year-old daughter of a defendant in a parole-revocation hearing and have her sit in the jury box; his intent, he explained, was to send a message: “So your dad’s made some serious mistakes in his life, and look at where it’s landed him. … And if you’re not careful, young lady, you’ll wind up in cuffs, and you’ll find yourself right there where I put you a minute ago.”

Lubet expresses concern that Benitez will incur no sanction for his actions. Life tenure means he cannot be removed from the bench other than by impeachment. The case was transferred to another, who reduced the 10-month sentence Benitez imposed. A judicial-misconduct complaint has been filed, but the sanctions are minimal--censure and perhaps an interruption of newly assigned cases.

As for civil remedies, Lubet says "He cannot be sued for damages, because he has judicial immunity for conduct on the bench."

But is the immunity issue that obvious? Immunity attaches to "judicial functions," performed not in the "complete absence of jurisdiction." That captures most conduct on the bench. But the conduct must relate to the conduct of judicial proceedings and control of the courtroom. But this may exceed even the broadest understanding of those concepts. Benitez was not maintaining order in the courtroom or ensure the proper conduct of judicial proceedings. He admits to "hoping" to get to the girl--not a party, witness, or other participant and only tangentially related to the proceeding--a "message" about how she should live her life. Above the Law called it a "bush league Scared Straight, which, despite the source, is a pretty good descriptor. Warning random teens about the danger of crime is not a judicial function; that it happens in court should not matter. The motive behind a function does not affect immunity--a judicial function performed for a racist purpose remains a judicial function. But the purpose of an action can affect whether it qualifies as a judicial function--an action that does not reasonably affect judicial proceedings cannot be judicial, even if a judge performs it.

Of course, judicial immunity is not the only hurdle the girl faces. Benitez is a federal judge, so any damages action falls under Bivens--and we know what that means. This presents a new context and thus an extension of Bivens since SCOTUS never allowed a claim against a federal judge. And the usual special factors will counsel hesitation before allowing the action--Congress never created a cause of action, the judicial-complaint system allows for alternate remedies, and a Bivens court will not want to chill other judges in managing their courtrooms in the future. And after Bivens comes qualified immunity and the absence of any precedent clearly establishing that judges should not order the handcuffing of courtroom observers without probable cause and for no legitimate judicial reason. Is the violative nature of this as obvious as leaving a detainee in a cold, feces-strewn cell or placing a prisoner on a hitching post for 7 hours? Who knows.

So Lubet is right that civil damages remedy are unlikely. But judicial immunity is the tip of that iceberg.

Update: Steve responds:

The leading SCOTUS case is Mireles v. Waco, 502 U.S. 9 (1991), which I considered when writing the essay (space limitations did not allow me to get into it). Mireles holds there is no immunity for actions taken in the complete absence of all jurisdiction. But the trial judge in Mireles had ordered the abusive seizure of a public defender who had missed a court call, and SCOTUS found that was not beyond all jurisdiction. I could be wrong, but my conclusion was that Benitez likewise had some jurisdiction over spectators in his courtroom, and especially over someone who had been invoked by the defendant as a reason for leniency – and thus as sort of a witness. She was in the courtroom to influence the outcome. Puente told the court that his daughter was in danger of drug use, so the judge had some jurisdiction to question or interview her about it, if only to determine whether to believe Puente’s assertion. Of course, his questioning was abusive, but that alone does not defeat judicial immunity.

Well, I would prefer being wrong about that, but as the abstract of the Mireles opinion put it, “That he may have made a mistake or acted in excess of his authority does not make the act nonjudicial.”

My reply (hey, my blog, my final word): We might distinguish Mireles because the order to the bailiff had a closer connection to courtroom management--the judge needed the attorney to get to court for things to proceed. I agree that Benitez could have questioned the girl, even in an abusive or threatening fashion; that would be judicial. Handcuffing her--for the purpose of teaching her a lesson rather than for determining whether to believe the defendant as part of the proceeding--is a difference in kind.

Finally, the cases distinguish actions "in excess of authority" from actions "in the clear absence of authority;" the former maintains immunity (as in Mireles), but the latter does not. Steve makes the best argument for why this is the former--she was there to influence the outcome of a proceeding and the judge can question that attempt. But the judge's statements of his purpose, to me, push this into the latter.

To be clear, I am not saying Lubet is wrong about judicial immunity. Only that it is more complex than the typical case of a judge misbehaving while conducting proceedings from the bench.

It's all about the precedent

Jonathan Adler comments on universal vacatur in the student loan case. He gets at the fundamental (and overlooked) insight in this debate: The prospective non-party effects of a decision arise from precedent, never from the judgment. SCOTUS does not issue (or affirm) universal injunctions; its opinion affirming a particularized injunction in Case₁ binds other courts in future cases involving similar issues. The DC Circuit does not issue universal judgments; its opinion in Case₁ binds the circuit in future cases involving similar issues (where, Adler argues, Congress gives the D.C. Circuit exclusive jurisdiction). To the extent that disables regional circuits from imposing broader consequences, Congress chose that effect by creating a regional and hierarchical judiciary.

Departmentalism (not mentioned in the arguments or in Adler's piece) makes this compliance practical rather than legal. The executive follows precedent (at least within the circuit) because it chooses to do so, knowing it will otherwise lose when non-compliance returns to the D.C. Circuit.

Florida redefines defamation law

Continuing my discussion of horrible new Florida laws. Rocky and I discussed DeSantis' 2022 never-reduced defamation-reform plan. It has been introduced in the current session. I describe some of the provisions after the jump.

Two things remain from the original proposal (and why we discussed it in our SB8 articles): The bill has serious and obvious First Amendment defects (many First Amendment people would call it "blatantly unconstitutional"). And those constitutional defects cannot be raised or adjudicated in offensive pre-enforcement litigation, because they define the elements of a private right of action for damages; speakers must sue and raise the First Amendment as a defense. Some defamation defendants might have the option of removing the private action to federal court on diversity grounds, an option unavailable to SB8 defendants.

Here are the bill's lowlights, all of which should raise serious First Amendment problems.

• Statewide (or near-statewide) venue for defamation actions. One of the key ways SB8 supposedly stacked the deck.

• Fee-shifting for prevailing defamation plaintiffs, plus removing defamation action from offer-of-judgment fee-shifting. This runs against the trend of granting fees to prevailing defendants to deter performative defamation actions (even absent full application of a state SLAPP in federal court).

• Limits on when someone can become an accidental, involuntary, or limited-purpose public figure. In particular, non-elected public officials (read: cops)  do not become public officials solely by virtue of employment and no one becomes a public figure by denying accusations of wrongdoing. This is enables police officers involved in excessive-force incidents to use defamation suits to silence critics--they can go on a media tour to deny the allegations and neither their government job nor media access renders them public figures.

• Identifies situations in which actual malice is presumed. These include relying on "unverified anonymous reports," repeating something that is "inherently implausible," and failing to validate. The irony, of course, is DeSantis seeks to target the people who picked on Nick Sandmann, Kyle Rittenhouse, etc. But this language is more likely to enable claims by Dominion against election deniers and other conspiracy theorists who repeat nonsense that only a crazy person or reckless person could believe.

• An allegation that someone discriminated on all sorts of bases constitutes defamation per se, with statutory damages of $ 35k. This should not fly because such an allegation or report of an allegation may be opinion or hyperbole, either of which is protected.

• Where that allegation of discrimination is because of sexual orientation or gender identity, a plaintiff cannot prove truth if the defendant relied on religious or scientific beliefs. This exacerbates the viewpoint-discriminatory nature of most defamation. But it shows how the accusation of discrimination is non-provable opinion--both involve competing, non-falsifiable "beliefs" rather than facts. Nevertheless, it may have a chilling effect in reporting and reporting on widespread discrimination--especially around LGBTQ+ status--in the state.

• A statement by an anonymous source is presumptively false. And where the defendant refuses to disclose the identity of the anonymous source, the plaintiff (including a public figure or official, it appears) need only prove negligence.

As I said, each bullet point will draw serious First Amendment scrutiny and many should be declared invalid. Much depends on how much of the First Amendment defamation edifice is constitutionally compelled. That is, how much leeway does a state have to define the scope and application of actual malice in its defamation law and what limits does the First Amendment impose from above. For example, can a state shift the burden to prove truth in anonymous-source cases or does the First Amendment place the burden on the plaintiff? Can a state define who qualifies as a public official/public figure required to prove actual malice or does the First Amendment control?

Regardless, it again demonstrates that what Texas did with SB8 was not new; it reflected a specific application of a state's longstanding ability to define torts and private rights of action. Again, decry Florida's blatant disregard for free speech. Do not treat the process as unprecedented or problematic.

Making a hash of pre-enforcement offensive litigation

In Fund Texas Choice v. Paxton, a First Amendment challenge to three sets of Texas laws a purporting to prohibit funding and facilitating legal out-of-state abortions--SB 8, HB 1280 (a trigger law that took effect 30 days after Dobbs), and pre-Roe zombie laws. Some blame for the hash rests with justiciability doctrine, some rests with the district judge.

To demonstrate the hash, I will identify the key legal or mixed principles, then identify the court's holding in the case, then show where (I believe) it goes off the rails.

Legal Principles and Findings:

    • No public enforcement of SB8.

    • The attorney general lacks power to enforce pre-Roe laws; enforcement rests with local DAs. Nevertheless, Paxton made numerous public statements about his intent to enforce those laws.

    • The attorney general has the power to enforce HB 1280 and made numerous statements indicating an intent to enforce the law with respect to out-of-state abortions.

    • HB 1280 has no extra-territorial effect and the attorney general's public-but-informal hints and suggestions, falling short of a full statement of intent, do not overcome the law's text.

    • Texas repealed its pre-Roe laws by implication. Based on binding Fifth Circuit precedent and undone by legislative findings in SB8, the post-Roe regulatory scheme for legal abortion cannot co-exist with the pre-existing bans on virtually all abortions.

    • The court never analyzed whether enforcement of the pre-Roe laws violates either the First Amendment or the right to travel.

Conclusions:

    • Claims against Paxton dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction based on lack of standing and sovereign immunity. Although the court does not specify, it appears to be for lack of standing and/or sovereign immunity. Because Paxton cannot enforce any of the challenged laws against plaintiffs' desired conduct (he cannot enforce pre-Roe laws and cannot enforce HB 1280 as to the plaintiffs' desire conduct), he is not a responsible executive officer and plaintiffs lack traceability and redressability.

    • Preliminary injunction granted against several named local DAs (although the court has not certified the defendant class of all DAs) from enforcing pre-Roe laws as to funding or facilitating out-of-state abortions.

Why this is all such utter nonsense:

    • Bickel defended standing and the "passive virtues" as eliminating unnecessary constitutional adjudication. But consider how much and how detailed the adjudication necessary to dismiss this case for lack of jurisdiction--to say that the court lacked the power to consider the constitutional validity of Paxton's conduct or the scope of the plaintiffs' constitutional rights. The court analyzed the attorney general's power under three sets of laws, the effect of the attorney general's grandstanding and bumptious threats, and the extra-territorial scope of new state law. But the real meaning of these conclusions (putting aside their normative correctness) should be substantive--Paxton's conduct does not and cannot violate the plaintiffs' rights because he lacks the power to impose any legal consequences on their conduct. No constitutional violation means no injunction. But the court had jurisdiction to analyze all of this.

    • Were this accurately treated as merits, plaintiffs could tailor a lawsuit such as this one. Paxton has been running around hinting about enforcing HB 1280 extra-territorially, even if he lacks the power to do so. It would benefit the constitutional system if plaintiffs could react to those hints by obtaining an express declaration that he cannot do so, whether because he lacks power under state law or because doing so would be constitutionally invalid. Instead, they have that analysis and those determinations, but without legal effect. (It might have precedential effect, as it is essential to the holding; but district courts cannot create binding precedent and jurisdictional holdings tend to carry less substantive precedential force as to any underlying constitutional issues.

    • The court drops the following footnote in dismissing the claims against Paxton:

While the Court dismisses Plaintiffs’ H.B. 1280 claims without prejudice, it recognizes that there may be certain situations where the statutory analysis changes. For example, the analysis might change if a local prosecutor imminently threatens charges for funding out-of-state abortions or an opinion from the Attorney General’s office declares it illegal. 

The court did not dismiss the claims against Paxton for lack of imminence, so I do not see why imminence has entered the mix. He dismissed them because HB 1280 unambiguously does not allow extra-territorial application. I do see why either of those events changes that conclusion. The court recognizes that Paxton is hinting at extra-territorial enforcement "for the deliberate purpose of deterring funds from facilitating out-of-state abortions." But if those hints and threats do not overcome unambiguous text, a local DA's more imminent and specific threat or a formal AG opinion should not do so. Either the executive position can overcome unambiguous text (in which case these claims against Paxton should proceed, based on his posturing) or they cannot (in which case the footnote is wrong).

    • If pre-Roe laws were repealed by implication, the claims against the DAs should have been dismissed on the same bases as the claims against Paxton. Repealed laws no longer exist as law, leaving the DAs nothing to enforce. A court cannot enjoin an executive from doing something he lacks the authority to do. DAs can no more enforce pre-Roe laws than Paxton can enforce HB 1280--in either case, no existing state law prohibits funding or facilitating out-of-state abortions and thus the target executives have nothing to enforce. In fact, the argument for lack of jurisdiction as to the DAs is stronger than as to Paxton. Paxton has an extant law he could enforce in the abstract, but the court interpreted it to be unenforceable in the current circumstances; the DAs have nothing but air.

    • Making even less sense, the court uses implied repeal as the sole basis to find likelihood of success on the merits and to grant the injunction. The court never discusses whether the pre-Roe laws violate the First Amendment or the right to travel; that the laws were repealed by implication makes them invalid and unenforceable.

    • The last point arises from the court treating impliedly repealed laws differently from expressly repealed laws, a unique category subject to unique analysis. But that framing makes no sense. Had the legislature repealed pre-Roe laws, the court would have dismissed for lack of standing (what I think should be merits, but same result); again, the lack of a law on the books leaves nothing to enforce and the court cannot enjoin the executive from what he cannot do. Had the law not been impliedly repealed, it would be a Dobbs-dezombified law; the court must consider whether the living law applies extra-territorially (the court says it does) and whether it violates the First Amendment or the right to travel (the court never says). Instead, impliedly repealed laws create a third thing--extant (thus potentially enforceable, giving plaintiffs standing) but per se invalid (thus obviating analysis of their constitutional validity). I have never seen anything like this and the court does not explain or justify this category of law.

How the case should have been resolved:

    • The court should have reached the merits as to Paxton enforcing HB 1280, a live law. There ought to be consequences for executive saber-rattling, even when ungrounded in state law, having the purpose and effect of deterring conduct that is lawful under state law and constitutionally protected. The court should have addressed whether the law, if applied extra-territorially as Paxton has threatened, violates the Constitution.

    • If pre-Roe laws were impliedly repealed, it should not have enjoined the DAs. If implied repeal remains an open question, then the court should have analyzed their constitutional validity before entering the injunction.

    • Someone in the comments to Volokh's post on the decision suggests the Fifth Circuit will certify the question of implied repeal to the Texas Supreme Court. That may be a good idea. But the district court's analysis cannot stand regardless of that court's decision. If the laws were impliedly repealed, the district court erred in enjoining enforcement. If the laws were not impliedly repealed, the district court never addressed or resolved the substantive constitutional issue, which the reviewing court ought not do for the first time.

Pretty bad all around.

Visitors sue Air and Space Museum, encounter Fed Courts doctrine?

Visitors to the Air and Space Museum sued the museum, agency, and several Doe officers, alleging that the officers forced them to remove hats with the logo "Rosary Pro Life" while visiting the museum; they allege free speech, equal protection, and RFRA violations and seek damages and injunctive relief. Eugene Volokh reports that the Museum admits this happened and that it should not have. He also argues that the free speech analysis is obvious here--the museum is a non-public forum in which officials can make reasonable content-based distinctions but not viewpoint-based distinctions (such as not promoting "equality").

But I am not sure we reach those merits:

    • Plaintiffs should lack standing for an injunction. The plaintiffs cannot show this will happen again in the immediate future. Not only is it unlikely they can show concrete plans to return to the museum. And they cannot show they will suffer this injury if they do return, given the museum's response and the seeming randomness of the officers' conduct.

    • This is an extension of Bivens--the Court has never allowed a free-speech claim. And the usual special factors arise--Congress should create causes of action and has not done so and, post-Egbert, agency disciplinary-complaint procedures offer sufficient mechanism for deterring misconduct. This is not a national-security case so that over-arching factor is absent. But lower courts emphasize the new single question of "Isn't Congress is better suited to balancing the costs and benefits of causes of action?" (to which the answer is always "yes") to reject actions outside national security.

    • RFRA provides a cause of action for suits against government officials, so plaintiffs do not need Bivens for their religion claims. But plaintiffs must show this was religious rather than speech discrimination--does the word Rosary on the hats mean the officers knew the message was religious and forced them to remove the hats because of that religious (as opposed to political or ideological) message?

    • If this is religious discrimination and/or they convince the Court that no special factors counsel hesitation, they must overcome qualified immunity. There is almost certainly no case law about making someone remove a hat because of its religious or political message in a museum. The court must fall back on general First Amendment principles, the sort of high-generality analysis courts usually reject. It might be interesting to see how the court uses the museum's mea culpa--does that show that it was clearly established that officers could not make visitors remove hats and other clothing because of the message?

Younger strikes again

Florida (naturally) leads the pack of red states trying to stop (likely First Amendment protected) drag shows. It is pursuing the Orlando Philharmonic Foundation in an administrative action for producing "A Drag Queen Christmas" in December; it seeks to revoke its business and alcohol licenses, premised on a drag show involving lewd, lascivious, and sexual activity. The state is threatening a similar action against the Broward County Performing Arts Center for a similar program. The Foundation should win, because drag show should be constitutionally protected, including for children. The pleading includes photos of the event, but it is hard to take the pleading's descriptions of the event seriously when comparing it to the photos.

But the case offers yet another example of the commonality of defensive litigation, including where the constitutional invalidity of the state's enforcement efforts is obvious. An administrative proceeding, subject to state judicial review, triggers Younger abstention; this case squarely fits the second Sprint category of a quasi-criminal civil action. And while politically motivated and designed to score cheap populist points (towards a presidential run), I doubt this qualifies for Younger's bad-faith exception.

More on Warren-DeSantis and the court's ill-advised analysis

I wrote last week about the district court decision in the lawsuit between the Hillsborough (FL) County DA and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, arising from the latter suspending the former. I argued that the court made two legal mistakes: 1) Framing the case as DeSantis violating Warren's First Amendment rights in considering protected speech where he would have reached the same conclusion based on something other than protected speech and 2) Pronouncing that the suspension was inconsistent with state law while refusing on Eleventh Amendment grounds to issue an injunction ordering reinstatement. I also suggested Hinkle--whether intentionally or otherwise--provided Warren a weapon in the political controversy.

That last thing happened more quickly than I anticipated. Warren last Wednesday sent (and publicized) a letter to DeSantis urging the governor to voluntarily reinstate him. Warren frames the situation as follows: The court found as a matter of fact and law that the suspension violated the U.S. and Florida constitutions. Although not ordering Warren's reinstatement "in deference to federalism," the court called on DeSantis to "easily set [that violation] right" by recognizing that "the facts matter" and that he should not have removed Warren. DeSantis thus should follow his oath and obey the law by rescinding the suspension. This is a political stunt (as was the entire lawsuit), leading with the court's words as if they provide the final answer on these issues.

I explained where the court went wrong. But Warren's tendentious framing raises that error to another level.

The Eleventh Amendment (as courts apply it) does not create discretionary deference to federalism allowing a court to offer binding legal conclusions while declining to issue any legal remedy. It imposes a jurisdictional bar to adjudicating state-law issues. The court had no power or basis to consider the state-law validity of the suspension. It dismissed Warren's state-law claim as improper under § 1983/Ex parte Young. Nor were the state-law issues built into the federal issues. Adjudicating the First Amendment claim did not turn on the accuracy of the state law grounds--for purposes of whether DeSantis' decision rested on something other than Warren's protected speech, the question is whether DeSantis believed Warren adopted blanket non-prosecution policies, not whether DeSantis' beliefs were true or accurate.

Warren's letter treats the court's state-law analysis as akin to a declaratory judgment--the court issuing a jurisdictionally appropriate order that DeSantis violated state law, but finding that declaration sufficient and declining to issue further relief in deference to competing values. That is, the court provided a valid statement of law designed to persuade the defendant to change his behavior going forward, while reserving the "strong medicine" of an injunction for discretionary reasons and with faith that DeSantis will comply with the decision. DeSantis must "follow the law" as the court declared it.

This is wrong.  The Eleventh Amendment strips courts of jurisdiction to issue all remedies, not only injunctions. The court had no more power to issue a DJ based on violations of a state-law rights than to issue an injunction based on a violation of state-law rights. That bar precludes any consideration of state law or whether DeSantis' conduct comported with the state constitution--the court acted beyond its power in making these pronouncements and they should have no legal force. Again, this goes beyond dicta--it is a court speaking words without the power to act as a court.

But those words provide Warren's first line of attack in the press and in politics.

Jack Phillips loses on defense, no one cares

Jack Phillips and Masterpiece Cakeshop provide the response to complaints about SB 8 (and other "vigilante federalism" laws) that resist pre-enforcement offensive federal-court challenge and consign rights-holders to defensive litigation in state court--expecting the state court to properly vindicate federal rights or hoping for SCOTUS review at the end of the multi-stage process.

Phillips finds himself in that position, facing a private civil action under Colorado law from a transgender customer denied a custom cake. Phillips lost in the trial court and the court of appeals affirmed, concluding that the cake (pink on the inside, blue on the outside) carried no intrinsic message apart from how the customer planned to use it (a celebration of the anniversary of her m-to-f transition).*

[*] And Masterpiece did not know about that use when the customer ordered the cake and the store initially agreed to make it.

Phillips believes his constitutional rights are as obvious and as violated as those seeking reproductive care in the face of SB8 or trans athletes seeking to compete. Yet no one complains about Autumn Scardina using civil litigation against his (perhaps) protected conduct or acting as vigilante against Phillips. The difference remains that the people opposing SB8 and other vigilante laws disagree with his legal position and do not mind people suing him into oblivion. Procedure cannot turn on such substantive differences.

On the merits, this case bolsters my thoughts after the 303 arguments: These cases superimpose a complicity element on compelled speech. The messages made by the challengers--"Jack and Jack are getting married," "pink-and-blue cake"--carry no political message. It is what the customers do and say with that message after it is made--something untouched by the challengers--that matters. So the First Amendment argument must be that an anodyne, identical message is put to an end with which I disagree. That differs from the core compelled-speech case.

Bizarre (and arguably advisory and ultra vires) opinion in Warren v. DeSantis (Slight edit)

The case arises from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis suspending Hillsborough County (Tampa) State's Attorney Andrew Warren. The court held that DeSantis considered six things in suspending Warren--three impermissible under the First Amendment and three permissible under the First Amendment. DeSantis would have suspended Warren based on the latter permissible grounds had he not considered the former impermissible grounds; therefore Warren's retaliation claim fails under Mt. Healthy. DeSantis violated Florida law in suspending Warren, because those federally permissible grounds were impermissible under state law, because the facts did not show incompetence or neglect-of-duty. But the Eleventh Amendment* prohibits federal courts from granting relief against state officials for state-law violations. Thus, although the court makes a big production of announcing that DeSantis violated state and federal law, it grants no remedy and dismisses Warren's claims.

[*] Really the limits of § 1983, but that ship sailed.

This is a bizarre decision.

• I doubt it is proper for the court to say DeSantis "violated the First Amendment." Constitutional violations occur with adverse enforcement action, not with thoughts or ideas not acted upon. The adverse action here was suspending Warren. If DeSantis would have taken that adverse action regardless of anything related to Warren's protected speech, he did not violate Warren's constitutional rights, at least as we define the scope of the First Amendment in this context. Compare a racist cop who arrests a Black person on a charge for which he has probable cause; the arrest is valid because of probable cause, regardless of any racist ideas or statements the officer makes. We may disagree with that doctrine. But it, for the moments, defines when a government official violates someone's constitutional rights.

• The court should not have declared the state-law validity of the firing. This goes beyond mere dicta or even an advisory opinion. Warren brought a state law claim, which the court dismissed under Pennhurst (again, better if § 1983, but whatever). The propriety of the state-law reasons were not before the court. Worse, if the Eleventh Amendment, as elaborted in Pennhurst, strips courts of jurisdiction over state-law issues, the court pronounced on issues beyond its jurisdiction.

• I said the court should have abstained under Pullman and Hinkle's approach to the opinion confirms this. The case always turned on the suspension's state-law validity; the First Amendment provided a sideshow. The court did what Pullman seeks to avoid--passed on unnecessary federal constitutional issues in the face of controlling state-law issues.

• It is hard not to read this as a political shot for Warren to use in the media. He can wave the opinion and say a federal court backs his view that DeSantis ran roughshod over his First Amendment rights. It also represents a political shot at the Florida Senate, which will hold a "trial" on the state-law propriety of the suspension, affirming DeSantis' decision or reinstating Warren. Hinkle has created a detailed legal and factual record, particularly finding that DeSantis' insistence that Warren had a blanket non-prosecution policy was nonsense and that he knew (or at least should have known, had he looked) it was nonsense. This helps Warren in the press and in the public should he lose before the Senate. Warren can compare this opinion to any Senate decision finding the suspension warranted and use it to argue that the Florida Senate made an incorrect, politically motivated decision--"see, we know the Senate made a politically motivated decision, because here is a federal judge showing why the suspension violates federal state law." Hinkle hints at this motive by referring to the "heavily partisan Florida Senate."

GEICO can intervene over sex-in-car case

The story of the woman who sued her former partner for infecting her with HPV during a sexual encounter in his car gained attention in June. I offered the case as the latest example of journalistic malpractice in covering the court, where stories snickered about the prospect of a multi-million judgment over car sex, ignoring that the case involved a narrow procedural question--whether GEICO should have been allowed to intervene in the state action to affirm the arbitration award, without (at this point) considering whether sex is an ordinary use of a car triggering coverage..

The story returned to the news last week, when the Supreme Court of Missouri ruled that the trial court erred in denying intervention. GEICO moved within 30 days of receiving notice that it (rather than its insured) was the litigation target and before the trial court entered judgment; state law grants intervention as of right.

The case returns to the trial court, with GEICO able to argue that it is not required to cover. GEICO's federal DJ action, also seeking to avoid coverage, remains pending. Both courts must decide whether sex constitutes an ordinary-and-expected use of a car triggering insurance. Let the snickering resume.