PrawfsBlawg

Universal consent decrees

Two U Conn students who were prosecuted and sanctioned by the university for violating the school policy against "disruptive behavior" for uttering a racial slur have filed suit in the District of Connecticut, claiming the school sanctions violate the First Amendment. (H/T: Eugene Volokh). The case should be easy as a First Amendment matter--the students seem to have shouted the slur into the ether, not directed at anyone and not accompanied by any threatening conduct.

But it is procedurally interesting, potentially complicated, and seemingly wrong. After the jump.

In 1990, U. Conn. entered a consent decree in a lawsuit brought by a then-student named Nina Wu, who was sanctioned for saying "no homos" on a board on her dorm-room door. The consent decree permanently enjoined U. Conn. from enforcing a provision of its student code "against this plaintiff or any other student." This is a universal injunction, protecting the universe of U. Conn. students (or it is at least non-particularized). I would argue the court cannot and should not issue such an injunction. The completeness of Nina Wu's remedy is unaffected what might happen to do students 30 years later--that is, students who were not born at the time of the injunction. On the other hand, U. Conn. could have entered the consent decree with Wu, then voluntarily altered its conduct and declined to enforce the provision against any other student (which is what usually happens). But this case offers a third option--U. Conn. voluntarily bound itself to non-enforcement as to non-parties as a matter of an enforceable judicial order. Can a defendant do this? Can the court do it if the defendant agrees? Can a court enforce it as it would a properly scoped injunction?

The plaintiffs frame their case, at least in part, as an attempt to enforce the consent decree. They allege in ¶ 8 that they have standing to enforce the decree because of its stated scope. But then the procedural posture makes no sense--why (and how) can a plaintiff file a new lawsuit to enforce a judgment in a different action, even if in the same district and assigned (under a local related-case rule) to the same judge. It seems to me that the proper course have been to move to intervene or join as plaintiff in Wu and to move the court with jurisdiction over the injunction to enforce or modify. Filing a new lawsuit before a new judge is proper if asking for a new injunction protecting these plaintiffs as to these defendants.

Impeachment and the Direct Election of U.S. Senators

My thanks to Prawfsblawg for permitting me this guest writing stint. As a long-time reader, I have enjoyed others’ insights and now hope to contribute a few worthwhile nuggets during the next few weeks.

What type of impeachment trial can we reasonably expect in a Senate constituted by directly elected senators? As other commentators have observed (e.g. Jonathan Adler and Carissa Byrne Hessick), Alexander Hamilton anticipated the possibility that the House process could degenerate into a partisan food fight where House members, laying all merits aside, rush to defend or rise to oppose, a President along party lines. Nonetheless, Hamilton thought the Senate, constituted as a court of impeachment, would act as "a tribunal sufficiently dignified, or sufficiently independent" to save the process from a crassly partisan fate ruled by political bosses.

The impeachment of a President entails different political calculations than impeachment of a judicial officer, and the case of presidential impeachment probably more sorely tests the procedure's limits than the relatively lower stakes of a U.S. district court judge. It's unsurprising that many judicial impeachments, say, of an Alcee Hastings, a Walter Nixon, or a Thomas Porteous, occasion little partisan fanfare.

In contrast to lower court impeachments, we are about to witness a presidential impeachment trial where the Senate majority leader has publicly pledged “total coordination” with the White House Counsel’s office to kill the Trump impeachment. And House leadership, recognizing that reality, stalled transmitting the articles and attempted to secure an agreement on how the trial should proceed in the Senate. Political prognosticators regularly consult the Cook Senate Race report to guess which senators might be peeled away from the GOP majority and which Democratic senators might feel pragmatically obliged to side with Republicans due to close races. Notwithstanding oaths, senators today have strong structural incentives to behave as partisans, disappointing Hamilton's expectation of a sufficiently dignified, sufficiently independent process.

When Hamilton wrote Federalist No. 65, he didn't know that in the late 19th century, Oregon and other states would informally adopt popular direct election of U.S. senators by straw poll popular elections or that in 1913 we would formalize and lock in direct senatorial election with the 17th Amendment. As Todd Zywicki has explained (Hein online subscription required), this change had important consequences for bicameralism by making both chambers subject to direct election.

Importantly, direct election means the relevant voting audience is no longer a body of roughly 120 state legislators, conveniently gathered in a single location for a senatorial vote. Instead, voting is done by (rationally) politically ignorant voters who only variably show up to vote. Moreover, successful direct election campaigns now must reach millions of dispersed voters through costly campaigns. And these campaigns facilitate contributors gaining significant influence over their senatorial candidates. Of course, several indirect election pathologies, including corruption, were offered to justify direct election, but the direct election remedy entailed substantial tradeoffs.

My posts, while acknowledging a range of views about the 17th Amendment and its probable effects, will question skeptically whether the benefits were really worth the changes in how the Senate today discharges its constitutional functions.

Political grass is always greener . . .

Thursday morning, I read this Atlantic piece from Lee Drutman (New America Foundation) arguing that a pure ideological two-party system had broken the Constitution. It produced the situation that Washington, Hamilton, Madison, and others feared of the "alternate domination of one faction over another." Drutman urges Congress or states to institutionalize multi-party democracy and proportional representation; he argues that Madison's Federalist No. 10, "with its praise of fluid and flexible coalitions," envisioned some form of multi-party system.

Thursday evening, I read this Tablet piece from Neil Rogachevsky (Israel Studies and Political Thought at (Yeshiva), arguing that multi-party democracy and proportional representation is what has placed Israel in its current political predicament, with no party able to form a government. He hopes that Benjamin Netanyahu might be able to push first-past-the-post as a parting gift to the country.

There are no right answers.

How does a descendent of Huguenots, son of a fur trader . . .

The 2019 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary begins, as always, with an historical ditty. This year, it is the Doctors Riot in New York in 1788 as the reason that, as the lyrics in Hamilton tell us, "In the end, they wrote eighty-five essays, in the span of six months/John Jay got sick after writing five/James Madison wrote twenty-nine/Hamilton wrote the other fifty-one." Kudos to Roberts for the line "perhaps if Jay had been more productive, America might have rewarded him with a Broadway musical."

The theme this year is civic education and the essential role of individual judges, the courts, and the judiciary in providing that civic education. Roberts writes:

It is sadly ironic that John Jay’s efforts to educate his fellow citizens about the Framers’ plan of government fell victim to a rock thrown by a rioter motivated by a rumor. Happily, Hamilton, Madison, and Jay ultimately succeeded in convincing the public of the virtues of the principles embodied in the Constitution. Those principles leave no place for mob violence. But in the ensuing years, we have come to take democracy for granted, and civic education has fallen by the wayside. In our age, when social media can instantly spread rumor and false information on a grand scale, the public’s need to under-stand our government, and the protections it provides, is ever more vital. The judiciary has an important role to play in civic education, and I am pleased that the judges and staff of our federal courts are taking up the challenge.

Three other things are sadly ironic. One is that the Court is poised to resolve cases involving congressional subpoenas that should be easy in a democracy--Congress can investigate a President, including through subpoenas of unconnected third parties, however it sees fit--but that seem to be genuine toss-ups given current political divides. Two is that the current President has done more to use social media to spread rumor and false information on a grand scale and the Court, when pressed, has fallen in line and may do so again.

Three, and away from the politics of the day,  Roberts does not mention the role that video or audio-recording-with-speedier-release of arguments could and should play in this civic education. He mentions courts posting opinions* online, giving the "public instant access to the reasoning behind the judgments that affect their lives." Wouldn't "instant access" to the public arguments leading to the "judgments that affect their lives" provide a similar public civic-education benefit?

[*] He does offer a nice description of the distinction between an opinion and a judgment--"judges render their judgments through written opinions that explain their reasoning." That distinction is key to judicial departmentalism and the non-judicial branches engaging in meaningful constitutional interpretation. More on that later.

Constitutional small claims court

Clark Neily at the Cato Blog proposes a constitutional small-claims court for low-level constitutional violations. Neily's starting example is a cop citing a woman for disorderly conduct for saying "bitch" in public, an obvious constitutional violation, then ordering away (on the silent threat of arrest) an attorney who attempted to intervene. Neily's proposal would create a small-claims-court/traffic-court hybrid, with small-money damage awards paid from an escrow fund established by each department. Neily acknowledges the major structural departure, but says it is better than the current approach, "which is to collectively shrug our shoulders at the vast majority of relatively low-level civil-rights violations committed by cops hundreds, if not thousands, of times a day across the country."

It is an interesting idea, of a piece with other proposals to enable recovery on small violations. In my Civil Rights class, I discuss Jim Pfander's proposal to allow plaintiffs to seek only nominal damages in exchange for eliminating qualified immunity.

There are a host of details to work out, as Neily acknowledges. They begin with whether this system is in federal or state court and what that choice says about our current assumptions about the federal judiciary and civil rights. If at the state (or municipal) level, recall that municipal traffic courts have become money-making institutions for themselves, their local governments, and their police departments, creating their own constitutional violations. We might worry about recreating that system, even with the different goal of compensating citizens against governmental overreach. Finally, should it be limited to police or should it extend to other executive officials who violate rights in a small, l0w-level way, such as the staffer in the Recorder of Deeds office?

Legislatures creating universality

As I discuss in a forthcoming piece, the combination of remedial particularity (no non-particularized injunctions) and departmentalism (the executive can ignore judicial precedent about a law's constitutional validity, at least until the matter reaches court) leaves an essential role for the legislature. The only way to stop the executive from enforcing or threatening to enforce a constitutionally dubious law, even one declared invalid by SCOTUS, is to repeal that law.

That was the task of the Commission to Examine Racial Equity in Virginia, which last month released its Interim Report identifying dozens of state laws for repeal; these include the anti-miscegination law at issue in Loving, some education laws enacted during Massive Resistance to Brown, and some laws targeting the "feeble-minded." Josh Blackman comments.

The action is symbolic, because any enforcement effort would fail. Any government official attempting to enforce would be sued for damages (qualified immunity would be lost, because the invalidity of these laws is clearly established by SCOTUS precedent), injunctive relief, and attorneys fees. And the line attorney litigating the case likely would be sanctioned (although I doubt it would be by contempt, as Josh suggests). But there is a substantive component, if read as the legislature checking the executive in some manner.

More state action and private vendettas

I wrote awhile back about a case in which police officers took private action against a citizen (trashing his car) based on a personal vendetta resulting from a professional dispute (the citizen filed a departmental complaint about them). The Seventh Circuit found no state action in an analogous case. A citizen shouted at a police officer while he was making an arrest and criticized the officer (and perhaps threatened his family) on Facebook, prompting the officer to file a criminal complaint with a fellow officer, prompting that officer to arrest the citizen. The court held that, although the original interaction came when the officer was on the job, he acted as a private citizen in filing a criminal complaint with another officer, who then pursued those charges.

The Seventh Circuit's analysis would reject the potential claim in the earlier case. I imagine the court would say the officers acted as private citizens in trashing the guy's car and it is not enough that the dispute traces to official police conduct.

Inexplicable decisions, in one post

The unifying themes of these decisions is that I heard about them yesterday and I do not understand.

• The Tenth Circuit held that officials of the University of New Mexico School of Medicine enjoyed qualified immunity from First Amendment claims arising from the school sanctioning a med student for "unprofessional" speech, because it was not clearly established that a professional school could not punish speech in the name of instilling professional values.

The court jumped to the second, "clearly established" prong of the qualified-immunity analysis, as it has discretion to do; but the court went beyond that, insisting that merits-first should be the exception, because of constitutional avoidance. But this seems problematic, generally and in this case. Generally, it will produce fewer opportunities for courts to develop constitutional law. In this case, skipping the merits no sense because the plaintiff also sought injunctive and declaratory relief, which is not subject to immunity and requires consideration of the constitutional merits. The court never explains what happened to those claims or why they do not compel the court to reach the constitutional question.

The case also reveals how courts, despite rhetoric to the contrary, demand factual overlap. As the court put it, the plaintiff “failed to identify a case where [a medical school administrator] acting under similar circumstances as [the defendants in this case] was held to have violated the [First] Amendment.” A" patchwork of cases connected by broad legal principles" is insufficient.

Also, note that the court ignored one factor weighing in favor of reaching the merits--the presence of amicus briefs from several First Amendment advocacy organizations, as well as Eugene Volokh. When the Third Circuit reached the merits and recognized a First Amendment right-to-record (while finding the right not clearly established at the time), it pointed to the presence of amici and the quality of the briefing in the case.

• The Fifth Circuit continues to be the only circuit to categorically reject state-created danger as a basis for substantive due process liability. The case involves  the mishandling of a 911 call--including waiting for officers to volunteer to respond and later refusing to help family members enter the victim's house unless they confirmed with local prisons and hospitals that she was not there, as well as the responding officers stopping at 7-Eleven before proceeding to the scene.

• More standing/merits overlap (or confusion) in this Sixth Circuit affirmance of denial of a preliminary injunction. Plaintiffs are parents of a child with autism, who placed him in a private therapy program instead of public school; although he improved in private therapy, the state convicted the parents of truancy. They then enrolled him in a state-approved private school. But they are concerned that he may regress, that they may want to pull him out, and that they again will be prosecuted for truancy. So they sued for an injunction. The court of appeals affirmed the denial, agreeing that the parents could not show irreparable harm without the injunction because the hypothetical threat of enforcement was not "certain and immediate," but "speculative or theoretical," dependent on ifs (if the son regresses, if they pull him out of the current school, if they cannot find a new option, if the state decides to prosecute).

Assuming the court is correct about imminence, why is that not a standing problem--the family is not suffering a concrete and particularized injury because they have not shown "an intention to engage in a course of conduct" proscribed by statute for which there is a credible threat of prosecution. The course of conduct (pulling him entirely out of school) may not occur, depending on too many variables. But that seems to be precisely what the injury-in-fact prong of standing asks. The answer should not be different at the standing analysis than at the injunction analysis--if the injury is sufficiently imminent to establish standing, it should be sufficiently imminent to satisfy the irreparable harm requirement. This is why irreparable harm is often assumed in constitutional cases--the violation of rights (or threatened violation, sufficient for standing) qualifies as irreparable harm unless the injunction issues.

As a normative matter, it is interesting to consider whether the plaintiffs might have fared better had they sought a declaratory judgment rather than an injunction. They would not have had to show irreparable injury (although the court almost certainly would have moved this immediacy analysis up to standing and dumped the case on that basis--see above). This illustrates the type of case Sam Bray argues is appropriate for a declaratory judgment--the plaintiffs need an explication of rights but do not need judicial oversight or supervision going forward. The plaintiffs wanted and needed  guidance and certainty--to know where they stood and what they could (and could not) do as they tried to create the best opportunities for their son; they did not need a court order prohibiting government officials from acting at this time.

Leavenworth, Breaking News

The following is by my FIU colleague Eric Carpenter, who has been live-blogging the Starz documentary.

Yesterday, President Trump pardoned Clint Lorance, along with Major Matthew Golsteyn (charged with the summary execution of a detainee). He also ordered the promotion of Special Warfare Operator First Class Edward Gallagher to the grade of E-7, the rank he held before he was court-martialed for murdering a detainee (he was acquitted of that charge but convicted of another charge, and the grade reduction was punishment for that other charge).

This was a terrible decision. He basically ignored the advice of his military counselors and followed the advice of Sean Hannity, thereby politicizing a justice system that already has issues with public confidence. The current coverage (and the coverage from when he thought about doing this earlier in the year but backed down) lays out many of the reasons why this was a bad decision. Further, by taking these actions, Trump may have committed a war crime.

All that aside, the press release announcing this decision shows that those giving Trump advice don’t really understand the military justice system. When the test balloon for the pardons was floated last week, the first idea was that Trump would disapprove the findings in Lorance’s and Gallagher’s courts-martial. An odd feature of the courts-martial is that the authority who convenes the court-martial must later approve the findings. This is a vestige from when a court-martial provided non-binding advice to convening authorities. The convening authorities would then approve or disapprove of those findings. Until 1916, commanders could send back acquittals or light sentences for a retrial. All of that has now gone away and the act is largely ceremonial. Here, the convening authorities had already approved these findings. The President could not undo that.

Someone must have figured that out because Trump looked to other presidential powers so that he could act on these cases. The President can pardon, and what he did with Lorance was within that power.

I am in the camp that the President can only pardon those who have been convicted, and so what he did with Golsteyn was not within that power. (This is one of those exercises in mental gymnastics, as we will never know the answer until a later administration tries to prosecute someone that an earlier administration has granted a pre-emptive pardon.)

He has another legitimate source of authority, though. Golsteyn’s case was still active. The President, as commander-in-chief, can withhold and dismiss any court-martial charges. Unlike what we see with the Department of Justice where the President is supposed to stay hands-off, there is no norm that the President should not get involved in court-martial proceedings. He is the commander-in-chief, and courts-martial are a tool of discipline. He is not allowed to unlawfully influence a court-martial or otherwise violate a service-member right to due process (for example, he is not allowed to tell subordinate commanders to take harsh action in a case or tell panel members to return a verdict of guilt), but anytime he disagrees with how a case is being handled, he withhold the case to himself and take whatever action he feels is appropriate.

He could have done that here. He could have then discharged Golsteyn, thereby ending the military’s jurisdiction over Golsteyn, which would prevent a subsequent president from reinstating the charges.

Turning to Gallagher, the President can grant clemency to Gallagher and reinstate his rank that way. Why he thought he had to order that Gallagher be promoted is beyond me, and Congress may have limited his authority to do that, anyway.

I think that is what happens when you ignore the advice of the experts and instead rely on talking heads to solve these problems.

 

Daily Northwestern gets pummeled--some thoughts (Updated)

I am a graduate of Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism, although I never worked at The Daily Northwestern and never pursued journalism as a career. I am following and interested in the scorching negative reaction to the paper's apology for its coverage of a campus speech by Jeff Sessions last week, at which protesters gathered outside and some protesters attempted to force their way into the lecture hall, where they were confronted and restrained by campus police.

It appears the paper overreacted and that its reporting, including the photographs it took and posted online, followed appropriate journalistic standards. It also appears that some of the sharp reaction to the apology reflects the "these damn snowflakes" annoyance with millenials, such as the paper's suggesting that it harmed and "retraumatized" student protesters by reporting on them (which is what the protesters seem to charge). And the paper seemed to be motivated by the possibility that its photographs and reporting could be used as a basis to identify and sanction student protesters--Northwestern does not provide amnesty for protesters who violate university rules (such as sneaking into the reserved lecture hall) and students are not excused from attendance policies because they were out protesting.

On the other hand, I would like to see more criticism of NU President Morton Schapiro, who uttered the following (according to The Daily) in a speech he gave to visitors over parents-weekend (my friend whose kid goes to Northwestern did not attend the speech).

Although Schapiro said he supports Sessions’ right to speak on campus and NUCR’s right to invite him, he questioned whether the former attorney general was “the right speaker” for NU. He said that on a campus as liberal as Northwestern’s, there is little opportunity to share conservative thought in a way that starts dialogue.

Schapiro — who said he is personally “not a fan” of Sessions — said NUCR missed a chance to do so by inviting him rather than a different conservative speaker.

“They had an opportunity and they didn’t use it,” he said. “All it was was polarizing. All it was was making the campus more unhappy. All it did was blow up and make things even worse.”

I await Schapiro's list of conservative speakers who would be "right" for NU, sharing conservative thought in a way that starts a dialogue but that does not make the campus unhappy. Say what you will about Sessions--and he apparently criticized the protesters in his speech, while paying lip service to freedom of speech. But Sessions was Attorney General of the United States and compared with the current occupant of the office, he looks like Nicholas Katzenbach. So what speaker would have been more acceptable to this crowd?

Finally, a thought on civil disobedience. Part of the debate is whether students should be sanctioned for breaking rules or obligations when protesting--skipping class to attend the lecture, sneaking into the closed hall in an attempt to interrupt Sessions' speech, etc. NU does not excuse such violations, taking the position that there are trade-offs and that students must make choices and bear responsibility for their actions. The Associated Student Government called on the university to change those policies, at least for "students with marginalized identities."

It seems to me the dispute here is over what civil disobedience means. NU students (the protesters, the ASG, the Daily editors) appear to believe that there is a free-speech opt-out from the rules--that if you are protesting, then university rules about attendance or closed spaces do not apply. But the idea of civil disobedience is that you peacefully violate a law--and accept the consequences for that violation--to call attention to the injustice of that law or something else. There is no right to interrupt the speech within the reserved hall; if you believe it is important to interrupt anyway, civil disobedience means you will do it anyway--and you accept the consequences.

The fascinating thing is how much has changed in 30 years. I would not have described NU as a particularly liberal place when I was there.

Update: A statement from Medill Dean Charles Whitaker. It is a strong statement that: Defends the Daily's coverage of the protests as consistent with journalistic standards; takes student activists to task for threatening paper staff and insisting that journalists should not have covered disadvantaged communities in a public protest; criticizes the editors for apologizing which, while well-intentioned, sends a chilling message about journalism; and calls on angry alums to give them a break, reminding them that these are students who are learning and dealing with a unique firestorm.

State-level universality

Much of the controversy over "nationwide" or "universal" injunctions has arisen in suits challenging federal las and regulations. But the reason for finding and using the appropriate nomenclature is that the real problem--injunctions protecting beyond the plaintiffs--can arise in challenges to all laws at all levels.

A divided Eighth Circuit addressed this in Rodgers v. Bryant, a challenge by two individual beggars (their term) to Arkansas's anti-loitering law. The district court granted a preliminary injunction prohibiting all enforcement and the majority of the court of appeals affirmed, relying on the district court finding that the law is "plainly unconstitutional," so it should not be enforced against anyone. Even the courts most willing to issue non-particularized injunctions in challenges to federal law have advanced beyond "the law violates the Constitution, so it can't be enforced against anyone" rationale.

Dissenting, Judge David Stras gets it perfectly right--the district court granted a universal preliminary injunction, prohibiting state police from "enforcing the law against anyone, anywhere, at any time based on the harm faced by two individual plaintiffs." It is "universal" in that it protects the universe of people who might be subject to Arkansas law-as universal as the travel ban, only applicable to a smaller universe.

Stras examines the history equity to conclude that such non-particularized relief was not proper in individual actions and that equity's representative actions are now reflected in FRCP 23. Stras also hits the essential point that there is no reason to believe (and neither the district court nor the majority found) that "safeguarding Rodgers’s and Dilbeck’s right to speak somehow depends on preventing enforcement of the anti-loitering law against anyone else." The plaintiffs, he argued, sued to vindicate their own rights, so they obtain "complete relief" from an injunction protecting them from arrest under the statute.

Leavenworth Ep. 3, Judgment

The latest from Eric Carpenter of FIU on the series. Episode 3 featured Eric and his Military Justice class.

After you are convicted of an offense, one option is to blame your defense attorney for that result instead of the facts. Another is to come up with conspiracy theories to explain what happened. In this episode, we see Lorance use both options. I’ll talk about some issues related to those options and comment on some of the unusual features of the military justice system (why wasn’t Lorance in pretrial confinement leading up to the court-martial? why did he have a civilian defense counsel?) that come up in that context.

First, the ineffective assistance of counsel (IAC) claim. To start, every military accused, indigent or not, gets a military defense counsel. Military defense counsel work for a stove-piped, independent defense organization, are licensed members of a state or federal bar, and are well-trained and supervised. I was a military defense counsel for four years, and I have full confidence that military defense counsel, even though they are often junior attorneys, provide extraordinary service to their clients.

An accused also has the right to hire a civilian defense counsel (CDC) at his own expense. Here, Lorance did that. Many people in the system do not trust the system, and if they or their families have money (usually a court-martial defense costs $10-20k), they often hire a CDC.

After the conviction, Lorance filed an IAC claim on appeal, asserting (among other things) that his CDC did not meet with him frequently and didn’t show up to Fort Bragg, NC, until the day before the court-martial. One thing that did not come out in the episode is that Lorance also had several military defense counsel working for him who were doing a ton of work.

When someone hires a CDC, the military counsel stay on the case but take on a second-chair role. Often, the CDC will do the opening statement and closing argument and will handle a lot of the guilt-phase witnesses. The military counsel will do the sentencing case (in the military, the sentencing case is as intensive as the merits case). Even with this division of labor, the military counsel meet frequently with the client and do a lot of the prep work for the guilt-phase witnesses. Lorance’s defense team divided up labor along those lines. Viewers should not come away with the impression that Lorance did not have an active defense team.

The producers interviewed Lorance’s defense counsel for this project (I am going to assume he got a waiver from his client—the Army has rules of professional conduct that are essentially the same as the ABA’s). His attorney said that he thought he made a mistake by not asking for instructions on lesser included offenses to specific intent murder, like manslaughter. However, under the facts of this case, that was not a mistake.

The military does not have degrees of murder. It just has murder, but six types: premediated, specific intent to kill, intent to inflict great bodily harm, wanton disregard (the same thing as abandoned and malignant heart or implied malice, akin to super-recklessness), and felony. Premediated and felony are capital-eligible. Lorance was charged with specific intent murder, and the facts are that he intended to kill the men on the motorcycle when he ordered a soldier to shoot at them.

Like most jurisdictions, murder can be mitigated to voluntary manslaughter if the killer acted under adequate provocation. The provocation must have been adequate to excite an uncontrollable passion in a reasonable person. Words alone are not enough. Here, the problem is that there was no provocation. The men on the motorcycle did not do anything to Lorance or his unit. Even if the CDC asked for this instruction, the military judge should not have read it—the defense did not raise sufficient evidence of that issue. Failing to ask for it was not a mistake.

The military also has involuntary manslaughter (culpable negligence) and negligent homicide (simple negligence). Neither of those mental states (examples of unintentional homicide caused by risk-taking or failing to recognize a risk) occurred here. It is uncontroverted that Lorance intended to kill those villagers. The military judge should not have read an instruction on these offenses, either.

The only thing the CDC could have hoped for was that the military judge would read one of these instructions and then possibly the panel would have compromised on something that is legally illogical—basically, hoping nullification would trump reason.  Failing to do something that relies only on jury nullification to work is not IAC.

I went through the trial transcript in preparation for my interviews, and I am confident that his CDC did a competent job. His cross-examinations of the witnesses were pretty good. Lorance just had bad facts.

Now to the conspiracy theories. The director exposes us to some of these, but my sense is that he does that to show their absurdity rather than to give them validity. Here are some of them: the CDC was in cahoots with the Army; the Army knew what the result was going to be all along; the Army was doing this to appease the Afghan government in partial response to another mass murder than was committed by an American soldier; and, senior officers were doing this to protect their careers.

Of these, only one holds any reflection of the truth. One of the reasons we prosecute soldiers who commit crimes within the host country is to show the people of that country that we hold our soldiers accountable. That is a legitimate reason (among other reasons) for prosecuting soldiers who commit crimes.

There were a couple of facts that need some explanation. First, the names of the dead men were initially written on the charge sheet, then prosecutors lined through those names and wrote in something like “adult male.” The conspiracy theory is that had to do with a cover-up or hiding the fact that they may have been enemy combatants. The better explanation is, things like that happen all the time in the military on charge sheets and it is allowed, provided the defense gets proper notice.

Proving the name of an Afghan is difficult. For most Afghans, there are no birth records or death records. But proving that two men died was easy: there were aerial photographs of their bodies. The names were not legally required to be on the charge sheet. By crossing through the names, the government did not have to try to prove the names. They just needed to prove two dead bodies, and they can point to the photos for that. 

The other fact is that one of the people on the motorcycle may have had some contact with the Taliban. The government did not disclose this to the defense ahead of trial. The conspiracy theory is basically the same: the government knew Lorance did the right thing but scapegoated him to appease the Afghan government.

The defense raised this on appeal as a Brady issue. Under Brady, the government must disclose evidence that is favorable to the defense. If they don’t, the error is tested for prejudice: if the evidence was material to the defense (essentially hyper-relative), then the error requires reversal.

Here, there was no error. The only way this information could be favorable is if Lorance knew about it before the shooting. If he knew that information, then it could factor into the self-defense reasoning. But he didn’t. It was irrelevant to his decision making. (The Army appellate court decided this issue the same way).

Further, even if the men on the motorcycle had been known Taliban, under the Rules of Engagement (ROE) Lorance was operating under, he would not have been able to shoot them on sight. He would still have had to have perceived a hostile act or imminent threat. (Under the laws of war, you can shoot the enemy on sight, even if they are not shooting at you. Those were not the ROE in effect in Afghanistan, though).

One side note. Viewers may have been surprised to see that Lorance was not in jail pending the trial or during the trial. He rode to the courthouse every day in a van with this family.

For the most part, service members do not go to jail before trial. There is no bail in the military. You either go into pretrial confinement, or you don’t. The unit commander makes that decision, but the rules are weighted heavily in favor of not putting soldiers into pretrial confinement.

To do so, there must be probable cause that the service member committed the offense (this is usually apparent). Next, confinement must be necessary because it is foreseeable that (1) the accused is a flight risk OR will engage in future serious criminal misconduct, AND (2) less severe forms of restraint are inadequate. Here, Lorance was not a flight risk and there is no indication that he would commit a violent crime or engage in obstruction of justice. Like many accused, he spent his time before trial doing productive work in his unit.

Allen v. Cooper argument review

My SCOTUSBlog review of Tuesday's argument. It seems pretty clear the Court is going to reverse--only Justice Alito pushed petititoner's counsel and he seemed just as suspicious of the arguments from counsel for the state. Four justices--Ginsburg, Breyer, Kagan, and Kavanaugh--all expressed different versions of a suspicion that the state was asking for a license to violate rights.

A few interesting stray comments and exchanges from the state's side. The first was his assumption that sovereign immunity only bars claims for damages but no injunction relief; this is true in effect because of Ex Parte Young, but not true as a matter of formal sovereign immunity doctrine. The other was the Court's response to the state's argument that, even if the state cannot be sued, the individual infringing officers can be sued, while conceding they will be indemnified and may enjoy qualified immunity. That last point raised the Chief's hackles--he did not seem to buy an individual suit as an alternative if the officer would be immune; counsel for the state argued that the showing for an intentional infringement (and thus a due process violation) is the same as the showing for clearly established, so any officer claiming immunity likely did not violate due process. Anyway, that was the most exorcised the Chief has been about an officer enjoying qualified immunity.

And, of course, I could not resist some pirate jokes.

Fun with diversity (Updated)

Two fun news stories on diversity.

1) President Trump announced yesterday that he was changing his domicile from New York to Florida, although he insists he enjoys living in the White House and plans to continue to do so for another five years. The jurisdiction essay for spring 2017 had Trump attempting to remove Summer Zervos' lawsuit; the best answer was despite having moved to Washington and owning property in Florida at which he spent a bit of time, he remained a New York citizen and was barred from removal by the Forum Defendant Rule.

So has Trump affected a change of domicile with his announcement, seeing as how he owns property and spends some part of the year in Florida? Or does he need to be present there more permanently after leaving the White House? Better still, does his stated desire to remain the White House five more years suggest an intent to remain (and thus a change to DC), at least for now?

2) I got a call from a journalist about this one. An insurance company filed suit against a Washington, D.C.-based law firm (a limited partnership). The firm moved to dismiss because it has a London office and a partner a U.S. citizen) who moved to London to staff the office, has been there for five years, and intends to remain in London for the foreseeable future, while keeping his U.S. citizenship. Because that London partner is domiciled in the U.K. while remaining a U.S. citizen, he is "stateless" for diversity purposes. And because a partnership takes on the citizenship of all partners, the partnership is stateless for diversity purposes. Thank you, Elizabeth Taylor.

I could not tell the reporter whether this was unusual or whether it was an increasing trend. The firm's motion cites a 1990 case from the Second Circuit holding that Sullivan Cromwell could not be sued in diversity because of its U.S.-citizen partners staffing overseas offices.

What I cannot figure out is why the firm (which filed its own suit in state court) would rather be in NC state court against a NC-based insurer. It is both an outsider to the state and a defendant, the two groups who generally want to be in federal court.

Leavenworth, Ep. 2: Casualties, part 1.

The following is by Eric Carpenter (FIU), who is live-blogging the show

We get to the actual shooting in this episode. I think the facts in the case, as I have learned them, convincingly show that Lorance is guilty of specific intent murder. I was wondering how the director was going to portray the facts, and it appears the director thinks so, too. Again, this is basically a self-defense case. In this post, I’ll go over a few of those facts and discuss an issue with the investigation that came up in the show. In the next post, I’ll give a quick discussion on how military law deals with the problem of when a superior gives an illegal order to a subordinate.

The director left out a couple of facts and didn’t emphasize the significance of another event. To start, right when Lorance took over his platoon, he threatened a villager and his child. That farmer came up to the observation post and, understandably, asked Lorance if he would move a role of barbed wire that was making it difficult to work his field. Lorance’s response was to threaten the kill the man and his family.

The next day, Lorance ordered his men to shoot harassing fire at the village (think of a scene from a Western movie where an outlaw shoots within feet of someone to make that person dance). That was clearly illegal and beyond the bounds of the Rules of Engagement (ROE). Lorance did this to get the villagers to show up to a meeting later in the week where he would apparently start building a good relationship with them. Some villagers came up to the observation post the next day to complain about the harassing fire and then Lorance threated to kill them, too. The day after that was when the patrol killed the two villagers. All of that in three days.

The director does a pretty good job describing the actual shooting, and the facts show that the unit was not facing a hostile act or hostile intent from the men on the motorcycle. As the motorcycle was approaching at a moderate pace on a washed-out road, Lorance had a soldier shoot at it. The soldier missed (maybe intentionally). The motorcycle kept going down the road, and afterwards Lorance said that because it kept going, it showed a hostile intent. The problem with that is that after those rounds were fired, the villagers stopped, dismounted, and went over to talk to members of the Afghan National Army who were part of the patrol. They then went to wait by their motorcycle. That is when Lorance ordered the shooting.

Those Afghan soldiers knew that the villagers did not pose a threat. So did the members of the American platoon. A fact I did not know about before I watched this episode is that another sergeant in the platoon, the one responsible for the gun truck, had told his soldiers earlier not to fire unless he told them to because he was concerned about some things that Lorance had said. In the moments leading to the shooting, he and Lorance were arguing on the radio, with Lorance telling the soldiers in the gun truck to fire and the sergeant telling those soldiers not to. The soldiers in the gun truck followed Lorance’s order and opened up with a medium-weight machine gun, killing two of the villagers.

Add to that a bunch of evidence of consciousness of guilt and the case seems pretty tight. Lorance told a soldier who was specially trained on gathering intelligence from dead combatants not to do the assessment and instead had two untrained soldiers do it. When they did not find any evidence that the villagers were Taliban, Lorance ordered some soldiers to report to headquarters that the bodies were dragged away before they could be searched. Those soldiers refused that order so Lorance made the report false himself.

The facts were pretty bad for Lorance, and his defense team had to have been in a tough spot. We get a hint of the defense strategy at the end of the episode. After the shooting, the company commander called the platoon back to the company area, put the soldiers in a tent, and had them fill out sworn statements about what they had seen. (The statements were all consistent.) The defense counsel suggests that they spent their time getting their stories straight.

That process may seem a little odd. Usually law enforcement (and not a commander) would do the investigation from the start. In the military, though, commanders are supposed to do an initial investigation. Rule for Courts-Martial 303 says that when commanders receive a report of misconduct, the immediate commander shall conduct a preliminary inquiry. The discussion to the rule says that these investigations are often informal, but also says that in complex cases, the commander should seek the assistance of law enforcement.

Here, it looks like the commander wanted to quickly find out what happened, brought the soldiers in, and had them give statements. That is what the rule contemplates. The commander then brought in formal law enforcement once he had a sense that something bad really had happened. The facts suggest that the soldiers sat quietly filling out the statements and were not getting their stories straight.

This rule can cause problems. Commanders can sometimes get wind of misconduct (say, drug use), do a preliminary inquiry, and then mess up a larger, undercover investigation that law enforcement is conducting. Or commanders might interview potential suspects without giving proper rights warnings. Or, the initial witness statements might be sparse or off-point and those statements can later be used to impeach those witnesses. Of those, maybe the last one will be implicated in this case.

Here, the director implies that the defense will be saying that the platoon got together to tell a story so that they could get rid of this new platoon leader they did not like. And I think he will say, they did not like him because he was gay.

The first part of the episode discusses how Lorance came to terms with his sexual identity, and how his parents could not come to terms with it (adopting the, “Hate the sin, love the sinner” approach). We also learn that even though Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell had been formally appealed, Lorance tried to keep his identity secret. This appears to have caused some issues in his relationship with his partner. While Lorance was deployed, his partner went on a family support group Facebook page to post a message to Lorance. Lorance was able to keep the post from going live, but the page manager appears to have spread a rumor that he was gay. That rumor made it to the headquarters unit he was serving with; however, it does not appear to have reached the platoon. We may find out in the next episode if that rumor become relevant.

Judging Lawyers Based On Their Clients

Yesterday the New York Times published a lengthy story on external work that Elizabeth Warren did while she was still a law professor.  The story, which is titled “Elizabeth Warren’s Days Defending Big Corporations” focuses on a few different themes—the amount of money that Warren made off of these external gigs, the fact that her campaign’s summaries of these representations is overly simplified, and the identity of the clients she represented. 

As I explained last spring, when the Washington Post wrote about the fees that Warren collected for this work, the amount of money that Warren made for these representations seems to be within the range of what other professors with comparable experience and profiles charge.  And while I think that we could have a fruitful and worthwhile conversation about the desirability of law professors taking on this paid external work, that doesn’t seem to be the upshot of the Times or WaPo stories. 

The Times does point out that the summaries that the Warren campaign put out of these representations are overly simplified.  And as someone who generally expects candor and nuance from other law professors (even former law professors), I was sorry to see that Warren’s campaign isn’t holding themselves to that standard.  But the Twitter horde’s response to the story seems to be one of outrage: How dare Warren have any corporate clients? Corporations are, by definition, evil!!  In light of this weird, kneejerk response, I understand the campaign’s decision—even if I don’t approve of it—to oversimplify in order to push back against this lack of nuance in public opinion.  And the Times headline suggests that the editors at the paper at least know about this rabidly anti-corporate viewpoint (and perhaps share it themselves).

I won’t rehash here the argument that I made on Twitter – which is that even a non-simplified description of Warren’s work for corporations shows that she was, in all of these, cases pushing for a robust bankruptcy system in which the bankruptcy process fully and finally discharges all debts and liabilities.  (In other words, according to the Times’ own reporting, Warren’s work for corporate clients was consistent with her academic principles—principles, which she undoubtedly believes are important to protecting ordinary people.)  Instead, I’d rather talk about why it’s newsworthy to talk about the identity of Warren’s clients.  Because there is no denying that it is the identity of Warren’s clients—i.e., that they are corporations—that folks who support other candidates in the Democratic primary seem to be most worked up about.

I think this is a topic worth talking about because it is part of a larger question—namely whether to judge lawyers based on the identity of their clients.

 

Whether to judge lawyers based on their clients is, of course, hardly a new issue.  The issue is even mentioned in the ABA Rules of Professional Responsibility, which say that “A lawyer's representation of a client, including representation by appointment, does not constitute an endorsement of the client's political, economic, social or moral views or activities.” I’d always assumed that this rule represented the conventional wisdom within the legal community, but I’m no longer so sure.

My doubts started when I saw a number of lawyers and law professors that I know criticize Jamie Gorelick for her decision to represent Jared Kushner.  Gorelick is a long-time Democrat who served in Bill Clinton’s DOJ.  My doubts grew as Harvard Law School’s Ron Sullivan faced heavy criticism by other lawyers for representing Harvey Weinstein.  Some people defended Sullivan (and criticized Harvard’s actions), but other lawyers and law professors who I admire joined the chorus of Sullivan’s critics.

The criticisms about Gorelick and Sullivan seemed to fall into two related but different categories:  The first was about the professional choices that the lawyers were making.  Specifically, the argument was that high-profile lawyers can pick and choose among their clients.  Every client that a lawyer represents comes with opportunity costs—if you represent client A, then you may not have the time to represent client B.  Because lawyers must choose between clients, so the argument goes, their choices should account for whether clients or causes are worthy of their time.

The second argument was about the fact that these clients could choose between lawyers.  Because Kushner and Weinstein could afford to pay for an attorney, the ordinary arguments about how everyone needs a lawyer didn’t apply.  Their wealth was going to buy them a lawyer, the critics argued, and so people like Gorelick and Sullivan didn’t have to take the case in order to ensure that justice was done.  In some ways I think that this argument was made defensively.  If the argument is about whether clients can pay, then it distinguishes the Kushners and Weinsteins of the world from the indigent criminal defendants who are accused of horrific crimes.  Those indigent clients can’t pay, the critics argued, and so the access to justice argument still has force.

I raised the question of judging lawyers for their clients in my Professional Responsibility class earlier this semester.  The students were pretty split.  Those who students who see lawyering as a way to bring about change in the world seemed more open to criticizing those who choose to represent the Kushners and Weinsteins.  But others argued that the distinction between clients who can pay and those who can’t is unable to take the weight of the argument—they seemed to think that the worldview that endorsed judging lawyers for their paying clients is all too likely to bleed over into judging lawyers for their non-paying clients.

Personally, I’m not really sure what to think.  My inclination is that we should judge lawyers by the quality of their arguments, rather than the deeds of their clients.  But I am hardly confident about that view, and I’d be interested to hear from others.

As for law professors in particular, I think that the issue is probably more complicated than we’d like to think about.  It’s tempting to say that this external work is entirely discretionary, and so we ought to feel more comfortable judging law professors for their clients.  But for some law professors—especially those who live in expensive cities or who don’t come from family money—I’m sure that they take on this work, at least in part, because they are trying to pay their mortgage or pay their kids’ tuition bills.  And, in any event, if a law professor is using external representation or consulting as a way to change the law—especially to change the law in a way that is consistent with her scholarship—I’m not really sure that it matters who the client is.  The law is, after all, generally applicable. And the fact that a change in the law might benefit people or companies that we don’t like hardly seems like a good reason not to improve the law itself.

Leavenworth, Ep. 1: Soldiers.

This post is by my FIU colleague Eric Carpenter, a retired Ranger and JAG attorney. He is covering the HBO documentary for us. Episode 1 aired last Sunday; Episode 2 premieres tomorrow.

If Clint Lorance had not deployed to Afghanistan, he would have never committed a crime like murder. By all accounts, he was a productive member of society and joined the military for honorable purposes. In Episode 1 of Leavenworth, the director appears to start his argument for why a law-abiding, disciplined soldier would commit a crime like this. His basic thesis will be, I think, that Lorance was overcompensating for several factors and felt he had to quickly establish himself as a tough leader who would impose his will on the enemy. Ignoring the rules of engagement (or creating his own) fit that image.

One of these factors is that Lorance was tasked mid-tour, on short notice, to replace the battle-seasoned platoon leader of a battle-seasoned platoon. The original platoon leader—the one who led the unit through the preparations for combat and the initial part of the deployment—was wounded in an improvised explosive device (IED) explosion. This platoon leader appears to have been well-respected by his soldiers and was Ranger-qualified.  

The platoon was battle-seasoned, too. The platoon had already been in firefights and, presumably, had already been awarded the coveted Combat Infantryman Badge (CIB). Two other members of the platoon were also seriously wounded in combat. And the director brings in a social psychologist to explain how people bond in situations like these.

Replacing that platoon leader in that platoon would be a tough leadership task for anyone to undertake. Lorance had some strikes against him.

To start, he did not graduate from Ranger School. In the Army, having bells and whistles on your uniform matters. Lorance walked into the unit without a Ranger Tab and without a CIB.

After new lieutenants graduate from Infantry Basic Officer Leadership Course, they go to Ranger School. If they graduate from Ranger School, they can expect to be a platoon leader in a light infantry unit. If they do not, they often go to a mechanized infantry unit, or go to a light infantry unit but serve in a headquarters element. Lorance did not graduate from Ranger School and so was serving in a headquarters unit. When I deployed, I was a judge advocate and served in a headquarters unit. An anacronym exists for people in headquarters elements: REMF. Rear-echelon . . . 

So not only did Lorance show up without the right bells and whistles, he had been, up to that point, a REMF. He may have thought that he had something to prove.

Plus another factor. I have been following this case for a while, and I did not know about it.

Lorance is gay. He grew up within a conservative family, as a Pentecostalist, in Hobart, Oklahoma, itself a very conservative area. The director leads us to believe that his family was not accepting of his sexual orientation. As I think through how that fact might be relevant to the story, I expect the director will argue that he felt he had to overcompensate within what many would consider to be a hyper-masculine society.

Congress repealed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) on September 20, 2011. The repeal was supported by a large number of senior military leaders. I was a student at the Command and General Staff College in the period leading up to the repeal. We routinely heard from senior leaders in government as they talked about complex problems. One of the best comments I heard was from Admiral Mike Mullen, then the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He said that his turning point was when he recognized that the policy ran contrary to one of the military’s key values: integrity. His point was, “How can we say that we value integrity, and then turn around and tell a service member that they have to lie about who they are?”

Those who opposed the repeal warned of dire consequences (primarily, that unit cohesion will fall apart), but in the part of the Army where I served, none of the dire consequences came about. From the perspective of many straight service members, nothing really changed. (I was against the policy and glad for the symbolic meaning of repeal.) There were LGBTQ service members in the military during DADT, everyone knew it, and most people did not care. People cared about whether you were good at your job.

I recognize that those in the LGBTQ community must have had a completely different experience under DADT, and even if 95 out of 100 service people treated them with dignity and respect (I am making that number up), they would still have to constantly deal with the 5 out of 100 who didn’t.

Lorance took over his platoon in 2012. DADT was only a year in the grave, and I don’t know what the experience during this period was like for members of the LGBTQ community. Further, I don’t know what the culture was like in infantry units at the time. I expect the director will fill us in.

Aaron Sorkin wrote Donald Trump, Example No. 31

I have argued before that Aaron's Sorkin's The West Wing reflects and lauds the politics practiced in the Trump White House, albeit in service of different substantive policy ends. The latest example is the announcement that the White House would cancel subscriptions to The New York Times and Washington Post and was ordering agencies and departments to cancel their subscriptions.

In one episode of The West Wing, President Bartlet and C.J. Cregg are mad about coverage of the administration by reporter Danny Concannon and his paper (I do not remember if it was the Post or a fictional paper). In a meeting among the three, Bartlet announces that he is canceling "our" subscription to Danny's paper. C.J. applauds the move as a way to damage the paper financially. Bartlet then reveals that he was speaking only of his personal subscription, not the governmental subscription, which disappoints C.J.

The point is that Sorkin liked the sort of politics in which the government punishes critics financially, in a way that would worsen the effectiveness of government (if we believe that staying abreast of the news is important for government officials). C.J. is the POV character in that scene and she is incensed that Bartlet will not do more to sanction and financially injure the paper and his critics.

Nor does this explanation cut it:

The difference is that Bartlet was a good president, who was prone to being occasionally snitty. In contrast, Donald Trump is an awful president who routinely displays the immaturity of an infant.

That cannot be right. Either it is ok for a President to lash at his critics in this way or it isn't. Either it is ok to call political adversaries names or it isn't; either it is ok to strip press credentials from critical reporters or it isn't. Neither the political position nor perceived quality of the President and administration should make a difference.

Why not standing?

The problem with standing is not only that it is an improperly constitutiuonalized merits inquiry. It also is the inconsistency in the movement between standing and merits. Take this unpublished Third Circuit decision. Plaintiffs are anti-choice advocates who with to engage in sidewalk counseling through one-on-one conversations with entering clinic patients. The court performed a limiting construction on the statute, reading it (as it had done a similar ordinance in another case) as not reaching one-on-one sidewalk counseling.

But then shouldn't the result have been that the plaintiffs lacked standing? The conduct in which they intended to engage was not prohibited or regulated by the statute (as interpreted), so they were not suffering an injury-in-fact fairly traceable to the conduct of enforcing that statute, since that statute could not be enforced against them. At least that is how some courts resolve similar cases. And if not standing (as, normatively, it is not), that should mean that all of this is a question of the scope of the challenged law and the scope of constitutional rights?

Leavenworth: Prologue

The following is by my FIU colleague Eric Carpenter. It is the first in a series of regular posts blogging the new Starz documentary "Leavenworth." Eric teaches Crim, Evidence, and Military Justice at FIU and served in Army JAG before coming to law teaching. He covered the second season (Bergdahl) of "Serial."

Thank you, Howard, for the opportunity to provide some running commentary on another true-crime docuseries that covers a military justice case. Leavenworth follows the story of Lieutenant Clint Lorance, an American infantry platoon leader who ordered his soldiers to open fire on three Aghans who were riding a motorcycle, resulting in two deaths. In this blog series, I hope to explain some of the peculiarities of the military justice system that will pop up. As I expect the director will offer criticisms of the system, I will give my thoughts on those, too.

I also hope to discuss some of the bigger themes that this case raises. First, this case is nested among several others where service members allegedly committed or did commit crimes against host-nation nationals (Navy SEAL Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher, Major Matthew Golsteyn, for example) and then had their causes championed by Sean Hannity and others. Trump had considered stopping the prosecutions or granting pardons last Memorial Day but changed his mind after facing significant criticism.  One of my questions is, what explains that support?

Are we placing service members in complex situations where the enemy looks like the local population and does not play by the rules, and then forcing our troops to choose being buried by six or tried by twelve? If so, that might explain it. It is just not fair to prosecute them. Or are servicemembers well-trained on the rules and counter-insurgency operations, and Lorance (and the others) just ignored the rules? If the second is true, why are some still championing their cause?

A related theme is that there is nothing new under the sun. The problem of using force in counter-insurgency warfare is not new. I start my military justice class by playing the movie Breaker Morant, a true story from the Second Boar War in South Africa in 1902 (available for free in Kanopy and well-worth the watch). The basic issues in Lorance are the same as those faced by those British and Australian soldiers. U.S. service members dealt with these problems in Vietnam. While the Lorance shooting cannot be equated to the My Lai massacre (where several hundred civilians were killed), the facts leading into both are similar. Nothing is new. We just forget.

Several years into the war in Iraq, the American military finally recognized that it was fighting a counter-insurgency. David Petraeus (featured in Leavenworth) then wrote a manual on counter-insurgency operations that rejected the colonial “use force to get them to do what we want” approach and instead recognized that we need to provide the local population with security from insurgents. He put that doctrine into action while commanding forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. But adopting that strategy involves having soldiers assume risk that they did not have to before. And that is the world that Lorance worked within. Perhaps his champions’ real issue is with that assumption of risk and the rejection of the colonial approach.

The main legal issue will feel familiar: did Lorance act in self-defense of his unit? While he was deployed to Afghanistan, the rules of engagement were basically the same as the elements of common law self-defense. These rules are unclassified. The force has to be necessary: if unit commanders are on the receiving end of a hostile act, they can fight back; if they are moments away from facing a hostile act (they see a hostile intent), they can engage before the other side has a chance to act on that intent. The force used must be proportional, and if unit commanders can de-escalate the situation without using force, they should.

There are some interesting side issues. Lorance didn’t pull the trigger. Someone else did. If that soldier—the one who pulled the trigger—were put on trial, would he have a defense of obedience to orders? If he refused the order, could he be tried for failing to obey an order? I use the Lorance appellate case when teaching that defense and that crime to my military justice students. I hope to unpack those along the way. It turns out that some soldiers refused his orders to commit crimes and others did not. (Most were granted immunity to testify.)

Last, and in keeping with Prawfs origin story, I hope to share some lessons I learned while participating in this project. I gave a four-hour interview and the producer filmed my criminal law class and evidence class as they discussed issues in the case. I have no idea how the director put these scenes together, though. We’ll learn together.

Universal injunctions and mootness

A divided Ninth Circuit affirmed the preliminary injunction prohibiting enforcement of the new regulations regarding the ACA contraception mandate. One issue in the case, which the court ordered briefed, is whether a universal injunction issued by a different district court (and affirmed by the Third Circuit) moots this case. Because the plaintiffs are protected by the other injunction, a Ninth Circuit ruling will not change their situation. (H/T: Brian Cardile of the Daily Journal).

The majority held the case not moot, although some of its analysis does not capture the issue. The court began by discussing the risk of conflicting injunctions, which is not the issue here--the denial of the injunction in the Ninth Circuit would not conflict in the sense of creating competing obligations--the Third Circuit injunction obligates (or restrains) the government from acting as to anyone in the universe, so nothing the Ninth Circuit does changes that. The court also spoke about the territorial limits about its injunction, ignoring that the issue is not geographic where but party who. It said that the injunctions "complement each other and do not conflict." In fact, however, it is not that they complement--it is that they repeat one another, because the Third Circuit universal injunction, which protects the California plaintiffs, renders a second injunction unnecessary.

The majority avoided mootness by applying capable-of-repetition-yet-evading-review. The Third Circuit injunction is preliminary (thus of limited duration) and before SCOTUS on a cert petition, both of which could result in the vacatur of its injunction or at least of its universality. The injury would not be capable of repetition only if the Third Circuit turned this into a universal permanent injunction, which is speculative and far off.

Judge Kleinfeld dissented on mootness, standing, and the merits. As to the different injunctions, he gets it:

That nationwide injunction means that the preliminary injunction before us is entirely without effect. If we affirm, as the majority does, nothing is stopped that the Pennsylvania injunction has not already stopped. Were we to reverse, and direct that the district court injunction be vacated, the rule would still not go into effect, because of the Pennsylvania injunction. Nothing the district court in our case did, or that we do, matters. We are talking to the air, without practical consequence. Whatever differences there may be in the reasoning for our decision and the Third Circuit’s have no material significance, because they do not change the outcome at all; the new regulation cannot come into effect.

This is correct and a proper recognition of what happens when courts take universality seriously.

I am not sure if the proper conclusion is that the appeal becomes constitutionally moot (I am not a fan of justiciability doctrines). Or, as Sam Bray argues, this is a good reason the Ninth Circuit should have stayed its hand.

Update: I took a quick look at the Third Circuit decision affirming the injunction. It misses the point, talking about people who work in different states than they live and the problem of geographic limitations. Again, however, the problem is not where. A protected plaintiff (including a state) is protected everywhere.

A progressive SCOTUS short list

The progressive group Demand Justice has issued a Supreme Court Shortlist, offering 32 names for SCOTUS appointments by a new Democratic President. It is an interesting list.

It contains only two federal court of appeals judges--Jane Kelly (8th Circuit, a short-lister for the Garland nomination), and Cornelia Pillar (D.C. Circuit). And not Patricia Millett of the D.C. Circuit, who had become the left's darling with her opinions in the undocumented-immigrant-abortion cases.

The list consists of 17 women and 13 men. Besides the two court of appeals judges, thirteen do some sort of public-interest representation, seven are in the academy,* four are on a state court (three on the Supreme Court of California, including Goodwin Liu, who Obama tried to put on the Ninth Circuit), four serve in elected or appointed office, and two serve on a federal district court. The organization expressly sought to move away from the former prosecutors and law-firm partners who have dominated among Trump appointees.

[*] Sharon Bloch (Harvard), James Forman, Jr. (Yale), Pam Karlan (Stanford), M. Elizabeth Magill (Provost at UVa, former dean at Stanford), Melissa Murray (NYU), Zephyr Teachout (Fordham), and Tim Wu (Columbia). Plus, Sherrilyn Ifill of the NAACP LDEF was on the faculty at Maryland and Rep. Katie Porter (Cal) was on the faculty at Iowa and Irvine.

The list is short on federal judicial experience, making it a throwback to a time when judicial experience was not regarded as essential to a SCOTUS seat and when service on a state court was respected judicial experience for that position. I wonder if this is a SCOTUS shortlist or a good place for a Democratic President to begin filling lower-court seats.

I am surprised our own Steve Vladeck did not make the cut. The combination of his scholarship, public advocacy, and recent litigation experience places him within the legal milieu reflected on the list.

Virginia has jurisdiction over Twitter in Nunes suit

It must be awful procedure day. In addition to whatever the Second Circuit did, a Virginia trial court denied Twitter's motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction Cong. Nunes' suit against Twitter, a Twitter user, and Devin Nunes' Cow.

The court found "general personal jurisdiction" over Twitter, based on its being registered to do business in Virginia, having a registered agent in Virginia, deriving a large amount of revenue from there, and having many users in Virginia, "sufficient minimum contacts to confer jurisdiction." Perhaps in 2005, but not since Good Year, Daimler, and BNSF did away with general jurisdiction based on a company doing a lot of business in a state and seemed to limit general jurisdiction to state of incorporation and principal place of business. The court discussed BNSF to distinguish it based on the injury occurring in the forum state, but ignored the other two cases. It also emphasized that Nunes suffered an injury in Virginia (because that is where the tweets were sent from and read), while not mentioning that locus of injury is not sufficient and Twitter did not direct any activities (not deleting the tweets) at Virginia in relation to this case. Even if knowledge of the plaintiff's location were sufficient (it is not, after Walden), Twitter's assumption would have been that Nunes was in California or Washington, D.C., not Virginia.

The court also rejected a forum non conveniens argument, because it was not clear there was an alternative forum. It was not clear there would be jurisdiction in California, even though both Nunes and Twitter are from there and the individual defendant consented to jurisdiction there. (Nunes does not want to be in California, where he must deal with its SLAPP statute).

Someone said the judge has a reputation as being pretty good. This is not his best work.

District court abstains in Trump subpoena case (Fast Update)

The Southern District of New York abstained under Younger from a federal lawsuit by the President seeking to stop enforcement of a New York grand-jury subpoena seeking 8 years of Trump tax returns and financial records. The court abstained in a meticulous Younger analysis, then explained why the President did not enjoy immunity warranting a preliminary injunction even if it kept the case. The Younger analysis is almost certainly correct. The President's attempt to create an exceptional-circumstances exception by analogizing his immunity to double jeopardy (which some courts have held as a basis for not abstaining) was interesting, but I think properly rejected.

Given Steve's thesis that Trump and his DOJ cannot stand passing through the court of appeals, next step SCOTUS on a petition for cert before judgment?

Quick Update: The Second Circuit stayed the decision. But what did it stay and what does it mean to stay it? The district court abstaining? It makes no sense to "stay" a decision declining to hear a case. The denial of the preliminary injunction, which was arguably dicta? What does the stay of the denial of an injunction do--it can't create the injunction, which was never issued (because the district court lacked the power to issue it). What the Second Circuit wanted to "stay" is the state-court subpoena, but it has no power to do that. Ah, procedure.

Further Update: The Second Circuit order states

Appellant has filed a motion seeking an order temporarily staying enforcement of a subpoena to his accountant. Because of the unique issues raised by this appeal, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that a temporary administrative stay is granted pending expedited review by a panel of the Court.

So the court did stay the subpoena, not the district court order. I have had some conversations with Civ Pro colleagues and the general view is this makes no sense. Administrative stays are routine  as a precursor to turning the stay to a motions panel. But there is nothing to stay here. The court cannot "stay" a dismissal of an action or the denial of an injunction. Now there are mechanisms for the court to do this, namely under the All Writs Act as in aid of the court's appellate jurisdiction. But that is not what Trump asked for (it requested a stay) and the court did not do the (I expect) more complex analysis required before issuing a writ. It seems as if the court took the usual approach to an unusual case. In the routine case, the district court enjoins enforcement of a law or reg and the court of appeals stays that injunction; here, it rotely applied that procedure in a situation that does not match.

Tea leaves on the abortion case

SCOTUS granted cert in two related cases challenging Louisiana's admitting-privilege law. The Fifth Circuit had declared the law valid despite Whole Woman's Health, in which the Court declared invalid a similar Texas law, drawing some arguably specious distinctions. The Court (with the Chief joining Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan) stayed the Fifth Circuit order and reinstated the injunction in February.

I have to think this is a reversal, because there is no meaningful way to distinguish this law from the Texas law in Whole Woman's. If Roberts wanted to take the air out of WWH and let the law take effect, he would have denied the stay and voted to deny cert. Now perhaps he is setting the Court to overrule Whole Woman's and this is a power move--"only we can ignore or overrule our precedent." But I would expect that Roberts values "institutionalism" enough that he would not want to overrule a three-year-old decision.

The Court did grant a cross-petition in the case to consider whether medical providers can so easily assert third-party standing on behalf of all current and potential patients. This was a point in Thomas's WWH dissent.

Asylum injunction stayed, everyone confused

Sam Bray and I agree on the impropriety of universal injunctions--I am the NAIA version of Sam as opponent of universality. But I disagree with Sam's suggestion that Thursday's SCOTUS order staying the asylum regulations portends the end of universal/nationwide/whatever injunctions. This case is too confused and too much of a procedural and analytical mess to be that vehicle or even the canary in the coal mine.

First, the unstayed injunction that reached SCOTUS had been narrowed in the court of appeals to be circuit-wide rather than nationwide. So nationwideness should not have been an issue in this case. The court was staying a narrow injunction against a federal regulation.

Second, both lower courts had entirely conflated the issues and analysis, I believe because they continue to use the wrong nomenclature. The result was a mess. The modified-but-unstayed injunction that reached SCOTUS protected the named plaintiffs (immigration-rights advocacy organizations) within the Ninth Circuit, making it over- and under-broad. It was overbroad  because it purported to continue to protect non-plaintiffs; it was under-broad in focusing on geography, thus failing to provide sufficient protection to these plaintiffs by not barring enforcement against them everywhere they might operate and be affected by the challenged regs. In fact, Tuesday's order from the trial court reimposing the "nationwide" injunction (by supplementing the record that the Ninth Circuit found failed to support nationwideness) applied the appropriate analysis: It focused on the extra-circuit activities of the four named plaintiffs, that they operated and were injured outside the Ninth Circuit, and thus needed protection in other states; no mention made of protection for non-parties, which is the real problem. And the Ninth Circuit one day later limited that new injunction to the Ninth Circuit--inappropriately, as there were findings that the organizations work outside the Ninth Circuit and thus needed the protections of the injunction outside the circuit.*

[*] The result of this circuit-only approach is that one plaintiff who operates in multiple states must bring multiple actions to obtain complete relief. What should happen is that one plaintiff should have to obtain one injunction for itself, protecting everywhere. The further litigation should be by other plaintiffs, obligated to obtain their own judgment and remedy.

Instead, this seems an example of what Steve wrote about in his forthcoming Harvard piece (which Sotomayor cites in her dissental): The government increasingly seeking, and gaining, extraordinary relief from the Court in constitutional-injunction cases, rather than allowing litigation to proceed in the lower courts. It reflects the Court's general opposition to injunctions against federal regulations (a concern that seems to have begun on January 20, 2017 and likely will end on January 20, 2021). Scope had nothing to do with it.

Process aside, I am not sure the result--stay of the injunction--is not appropriate. I like to apply the chaos theory to the stay question--would allowing the injunction to take effect create irrevocable chaos if the lower court is reversed. On that theory, for example, stays of injunctions were appropriate in the marriage cases, lest the state have to either rescind marriages or have some same-sex couples married by the fortuity of the time that litigation takes. On the other hand, the stay of the injunction was inappropriate in The Wall case, since the harm is irreparable if government funds are unlawfully spent and an environmentally harmful wall is even partially built. As for this case, while the asylum-regs are enjoined, the government must allow this class of people to seek asylum. But there will be chaos in handling this group of people if the injunction is reversed on appeal because the regs are found to be lawful, yet some asylum-seekers are present when they should not have been and would not have been but for the erroneous injunction. I have to think more about that.

Under color?

An interesting under color question. The officers were in disguise (and thus out of uniform) and presumably off-duty. But their personal vendetta arose from their professional conduct as police officers about which the citizen-victim had complained. Could they have done this but-for their official position? Being police officers did not enable the conduct. But being police officers is the only reason they had to vandalize this guy's property.

Declaratory judgments and injunctions

The Fifth Circuit held that due process was violated by a system in which some portion of cash bail was used to fund court expenses and the magistrate deciding bail sits on the committee deciding how money should be spent. The remedies portion states as follows:

After recognizing this due process violation, the district court issued the following declaration: "Judge Cantrell's institutional incentives create a substantial and unconstitutional conflict of interest when he determines [the class's] ability to pay bail and sets the amount of [*8] that bail."

That declaratory relief was all plaintiffs sought. They believed that section 1983 prevents them from seeking injunctive relief as an initial remedy in this action brought against a state court judge. See 42 U.S.C. § 1983 ("[I]n any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer's judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable . . . .").7

That statutory requirement reflects that declaratory relief is "a less harsh and abrasive remedy than the injunction." Steffel v. Thompson, 415 U.S. 452 , 463 (1974) (quotation omitted); see also Robinson v. Hunt Cty., 921 F.3d 440 , 450 (5th Cir. 2019); Restatement (Second) of Judgments § 33 cmt. c ("A declaratory action is intended to provide a remedy that is simpler and less harsh than coercive relief . . . ."). Principal among its advantages is giving state and local officials, like Judge Cantrell, the first crack at reforming their practices to conform to the Constitution. Steffel, 415 U.S. at 470 .

One response to the declaratory judgment would be eliminating Judge Cantrell's dual role, a role that is not mandated by Louisiana law. In contrast, because Louisiana law does require that the bond fees be sent to the Judicial Expense Fund, LA. R.S. 13:1381.5(B)(2)(a) , the declaratory judgment cannot undo that mandate. Challengers did not seek to enjoin that statute, instead arguing only that the dual role violated due process. But given today's ruling and last week's in Cain, it may well turn out that the only way to eliminate the unconstitutional temptation is to sever the direct link between the money the criminal court generates and the Judicial Expense Fund that supports its operations.

I am unsure about the final paragraph. The challengers cannot "enjoin that statute" because courts do not enjoin statutes; they enjoin enforcement of statutes. The district court could have declared that the state-law mandate created the unconstitutional conflict of interest; to comply with that judgment, the defendants would have had to stop enforcing that statute, much as if they had been enjoined from enforcing.  The court issued a seemingly narrower declaratory judgment. Perhaps the point of the final sentence is that eliminating the defendant magistrate's dual role would not eliminate the constitutional violation, opening the door to an injunction because the defendants violated the declaratory judgment.

Two other cute procedural pieces in the case: It was certified as a class action, thus avoiding mootness when the named plaintiffs' criminal cases ended. The court also noted that it is not clear that the exceptions provision of § 1983 applies here, because it is not certain that the defendant judge was acting in a judicial rather than administrative capacity.

Qualified immunity and judicial departmentalism

The Sixth Circuit on Friday held that Kim Davis was not entitled to qualified immunity from a claim for damages by same-sex couples denied marriage licenses in the early weeks after Obergefell. Obergefell clearly established the constitutional right the plaintiffs sought to vindicate--to receive marriage licenses and a reasonable official should have known about that right. And Davis did not show her entitlement to a religious accommodation, as the court said:

Davis provides no legal support for her contention that Kentucky’s Religious Freedoms Restoration Act required her to do what she did. Her reading of the Act is a subjective one and, as far as we can tell, one no court has endorsed. In the presence of Obergefell’s clear mandate that “same-sex couples may exercise the fundamental right to marry,” and in the absence of any legal authority to support her novel interpretation of Kentucky law, Davis should have known that Obergefell required her to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples—even if she sought and eventually received an accommodation, whether by legislative amendment changing the marriage-license form or by judicial decree adopting her view of the interplay between the Constitution and Kentucky law.

Under judicial departmentalism, an executive official, such as Davis, is free to adopt and implement her "subjective" reading of the statute and judicial precedent. She does not need "legal authority to support her novel interpretation of Kentucky law"--the legal authority is her power as an executive official to act on her understanding of the law she is empowered to enforce. But qualified immunity is focused on precedent and the judicial understanding of precedent. So it could check executive officials going too far in a departmentalist direction, by tying them to judicial precedent on pain of damages.

More on SLAPP laws in federal court

The Fifth Circuit on Friday held that Texas's SLAPP law does not apply in federal court on diversity, following the (correct) analysis from the D.C., 10th, and 11th Circuits that the state law conflicts with FRCP 12 and 56 by adding an additional hurdle to trial. This decision complicates the circuit split because the 5th Circuit had held in 2009 that Louisiana's SLAPP law applies in federal court. The panel held it was not bound by circuit precedent. It was pre-Shady Grove, which the panel says sharpened the proper analysis. And the Texas law is different than the Louisiana law; the latter uses standards that look like summary judgment, while Texas imposes higher standards that more "manifest[ly]" conflict with the Federal Rules.

I doubt this will be the case on which SCOTUS will resolve the question, at least not immediately. The first move will be en banc reconsideration on the Fifth Circuit to resolve its internal split.

My conclusion on the overall Erie question is that the "special motion" provisions should not apply in federal court but fee-shifting provisions should. The question is whether that sufficiently protects free-speech interests, by allowing litigation to last a bit longer (until the protections of NYT can do their work in an appropriate case), but allowing the defendant to recover attorney's fees, which recoups the defendant's major financial burden.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern vote Democratic (Further Updated)

• Isn't the President's problem that Denmark is finally governed by someone who can make up their mind (about Greenland not being for sale, if not about whether to kill Claudius). I am surprised (and somewhat disappointed) by the absence of Hamlet jokes in all of this.

• I have a different take on the President's "any Jewish person who votes Democratic shows great disloyalty." I don't think he was trafficking in the dual-loyalty stereotypes that Rep. Omar was accused of. Nor do I think he was accusing American Jews of disloyalty to the United States (at least more than he would say that anyone who votes Democratic is disloyal), although the latter risks giving crazies another reason to target Jews.

I think he was calling us "Bad Jews." But this shows his ignorance more than anything else. As Julian Zelizer put it, "Judaism has revolved around debate, disagreement and deliberation;" there is no official source defining who is a good or bad Jew based on their views and ideas. And certainly not an orange-tinted shaygets.

Update: The President reiterated his point today, saying "If you vote for a Democrat, you’re being disloyal to the Jewish people and you’re being very disloyal to Israel.” So he is saying "disloyal," because it is the only word he knows. But he is really saying we are bad Jews.

Further Update: Tying together this post and the news of the day: Denmark saved 90 % of its Jews during the Shoah.

Further, Further Update: Jordan Weissmann at Slate echoes my point that this is about labeling bad Jews. It would be an odd twist on the dual-loyalty trope to stay the problem is that Jews are insufficiently loyal to a foreign country. The problem is more tied to Jewishness:

[T]hey are implying that they are disloyal to their own ethnic interests, American interests, and even the almighty’s. It’s the 2019 version of calling liberal Jews a bunch of heretics. And we all know what happens to heretics in the end.

N.C. Court blows the mulligan

I was right that the withdrawal of the original opinion in the "flip-off-the-cop" case could have been for the majority to find a new basis to justify the traffic stop without having to accept that flipping the officer off was constitutionally protected. Which it did, although now with a dissent.

The court does recognize case law (it somehow missed the first time around) that the finger is protected and less likely to constitute fighting words when directed at an officer. But the  majority offers a new theory: The officer could not tell who the defendant was flipping-off: the officer (which would be constitutionally protected speech) or another driver (which somehow would not be; if the latter, the officer could have believed that the situation between the defendant and the other driver was "escalating" and, if left unchecked, might have become disorderly conduct. Importantly, the officer needed only reasonable suspicion, not probable cause, to make the initial stop and determine if the defendant was trying to provoke another motorist.

The dissent calls out the majority for, essentially, making up facts. The officer testified that he saw the driver wave at him, then turn the wave into the middle finger directed at him; there was no testimony about the situation escalating or about concern for a gesture at another car. The dissent insists that flipping a middle finger is protected by the First Amendment and thus cannot provide reasonable suspicion. Although he does not say it, that should be true regardless of at whom the gesture was directed.

The street is never the place to argue the appropriateness of an arrest. That is what our courts are for.”

This, from the NYPD Commissioner, is scary. And it is wrong. Given modern Fourth Amendment doctrine, limits (to say nothing of arguments to eliminate) the exclusionary rule, and the expansion of qualified immunity, the courts rarely conclude that an arrest was inappropriate. And even when they find the arrest inappropriate, they more rarely provide a remedy beyond the dropping of charges, which provides nothing for the collateral consequences of the improper arrest.

What the Commish really should have said is "Don't argue the appropriateness of an arrest. Just give in to police power."

Nomenclature and the real issue on the scope of injunctions

A Ninth Circuit panel refused to stay a preliminary injunction prohibiting enforcement of new asylum regulations. But a divided court narrowed the injunction from its "nationwide" scope to the extent it applies "beyond the Ninth Circuit," because the district court had not found that beyond-the-circuit scope was necessary to remedy the plaintiffs' harm. The decision, while proper, illustrates the importance of the problems of nomenclature and the misunderstanding of what is at stake.

The plaintiffs in the action were four California-based organizations that represent asylum-seekers; the district court found they had organizational standing because they would lose clients and funding and be forced to divert resources as a result of the regulation.*

[*] The district court also found the organizations within the statutory zone of interest, although that no longer should be part of the standing analysis.

The focus of the scope-of-injunction analysis thus should have been the four organizations, not California. The injunction should have been limited to prohibiting enforcement as to these organizations. But it should have protected those organizations everywhere in the country--states within the Ninth Circuit as well as any other states in which they may represent (or seek to represent) asylum-seekers. Perhaps that means the injunction would reach California and Arizona only, if these organizations only represent clients in those states; outside-the-states application is not necessary to remedy their harm if they do not work outside those states. But to the extent they work outside California and Arizona, their harm is remedied only if the injunction protects them outside of Ninth Circuit states.

And that is why the term "nationwide" does not work. All injunctions should be nationwide in the sense of protecting the plaintiffs wherever in the nation they are--that is the only way to remedy their harm. The problem in this case (and others) is that the district court's injunction purported to prohibit the government from enforcing the regulation beyond these four organizations. The problem is that the injunction was not "particularized" to the parties to the case, but attempted to apply to the "universe" of people and organizations affected by the regulation.

The court thus should have "grant[ed] the motion for stay pending appeal insofar as the injunction applies" beyond the four plaintiff organizations in this action.

Punishing female attorneys

The Supreme Court of Missouri suspended the licenses of two female former assistant prosecutors in St. Louis who helped cover up a police officer beating of a suspect in 2014. A third female prosecutor, who was more directly involved by filing false charges against the victim, was disbarred in 2016. The officer pleaded guilty to a § 242 violation and was sentenced to 52 months.This represents the exceedingly rare case in which police and prosecutors faced sanctions for their roles in misconduct within the criminal-justice system.

But it is difficult not to notice that this rare case involved three female prosecutors. It thus echoes the fallout from the Central Park Five, in which the only people facing professional consequences (informal, but still) were two female assistant prosecutors, but no man involved in the case.

Second Circuit revives Palin defamation suit

Decision here. I wrote about the case here.

The court of appeals correctly criticized the district court's weird use of an evidentiary procedure (testimony from the primary author of the challenged editorial) to evaluate the complaint. When a court considers information outside a complaint, it either must exclude the information and continue as a 12(b)(6) or convert to summary judgment; it cannot use the information and continue to treat the motion as a 12(b)(6). The Times argued that the testimony was background information that was "integral to" the material in the complaint; but that could not be right, because the information was obtained after the complaint was filed, as opposed to information the plaintiff could have relied on in drafting the complaint.

The problem with the decision was in holding that Palin's Amended Complaint (drafted with the assistance of that testimony) was plausible. This is bad for First Amendment purposes but procedurally interesting in two respects.

The court found that the district court had credited the editorial writer above the allegations in the complaint, which was improper. The district court had stated that the author's conduct was "much more plausibly consistent" with a mistake than with actual malice. But it "is not the district court’s province to dismiss a plausible complaint because it is not as plausible as the defendant’s theory. The test is whether the complaint is plausible, not whether it is less plausible than an alternative explanation." Twombly and Iqbal contain language that a complaint is implausible where there is a reasonable alternative explanation for the conduct (in Iqbal, the alternative was "protecting the nation after 9/11" rather than "invidious discrimination"). Lower courts have generally ignored that language; here, the Second Circuit flatly rejects that analysis, at least in this type of defamation action.

The court closed the opinion as follows:

We conclude by recognizing that First Amendment protections are essential to provide “breathing space” for freedom of expression. But, at this stage, our concern is with how district courts evaluate pleadings. Nothing in this opinion should therefore be construed to cast doubt on the First Amendment’s crucial constitutional protections. Indeed, this protection is precisely why Palin’s evidentiary burden at trial—to show by clear and convincing evidence that Bennet acted with actual malice—is high. At the pleading stage, however, Palin’s only obstacle is the plausibility standard of Twombly and Iqbal. She has cleared that hurdle.

But this raises an important point. The clear-and-convincing evidence standard has been incorporated into summary judgment, because whether a reasonable jury could find for the plaintiff must account for the standard. Should the same be true for 12(b)(6)--must it be plausible by clear-and-convincing evidence? This would twist pleading from its purposes, but Twombly and Iqbal did that in trying to make it a weed-out point. The question is whether we follow that to its logical conclusion.

The standard of proof may define how much of a problem this case will be for The Times and the First Amendment. The bulk of the analysis defines this as a case of competing factual inferences--Palin's facts show actual malice, the author says it was a mistake; if so, then this case cannot go away on summary judgment, because the court is equally prohibited from deciding witness credibility as would be required in this case--only a jury could resolve those questions.* That last paragraph of the opinion, emphasizing the standard of proof that will apply at trial and summary judgment, may have been a signal to the lower court about what should happen next.

[*] The court declined to treat the district court decision as one for summary judgment because, even as a summary judgment decision, the court impermissibly made credibility determinations.

Good guys with guns

I think Sunday's events should end the idea that the answer to bad guys with guns is good guys with guns.

Texas is an open-carry state and Wal Mart stores are happily open-carry. So there is a good chance that someone in the store was or could have been armed. No one shot back. The two "heroes" were the veteran in Wal Mart who reacted to the shooting by pulling children to safety and the guy in Dayton who wrestled the gun from the shooter. No one tried to get into a firefight with the guy. Which is smart, because the chances are that the policy would misidentify the good guy as the bad guy and shoot him (especially if he possessed certain traits).

Everyone is praising the police in Dayton for taking out the shooter in less than a minute. But in that minute, the shooter killed 9 and injured 27. The GGWG argument always has rested on the idea that some early victims will be sacrificed; we not know the BGWG until he starts shooting, so there will be a few victims until the situation reveals itself and the GGWG can spring into action. The GGWG prevents a small tragedy from becoming a big tragedy.  But in Dayton the GGWGs (the police) quickly sprung into action--and the casualties already were enormous. So the only way to prevent mass casualties is for the GGWG to act before the shooting starts, with police being hare-triggered in their suspicions about who might be a BBWG. And we know at this point that the people the police identify do not look like the people who did the shooting this weekend.

The early Republican talking point is that violent video games are causing these mass shootings, so they should be regulated (along with more compulsory school prayer and flag salutes). This is so stupid and vacuous that it should be embarrassing. And the reason I stopped watching mainstream media outlets is that they fail to challenge the stupidity and they keep inviting the same people to repeat the same vacuous talking points.

Judicial immunity can be shocking (sorry)

In the judicial immunity section of my civil rights book, I use a puzzle that I blogged about years ago: A judge in Mississippi cited for contempt and jailed an attorney for refusing to recite the pledge of allegiance prior to court proceedings. I spun that off into several hypos (inspired by a comment from Jack Preis), including the judge ordering the bailiff to tase the lawyer and the judge tasing the lawyer himself. The question is where judicial immunity runs out.*

[*] The attorney did not sue the judge, so this never became a real issue. The judge was disciplined--one of many, many disciplinary actions against him.

This story discusses the use of stun belts to control unruly defendants in court. The problem, besides the extreme pain these devices inflict, is that some judges use (or threaten to use) them not to control security threats, but to get defendants to pay attention to the judge or to stand while addressing the court. States vary as to who controls the device--the courtroom deputy acting on the judge's order or the judge herself.

So here is my hypothetical, brought to life. The arguable immunity turns on  the nature of the judge's action: Ordering the bailiff to tase the attorney would be immune, tasing the attorney himself would not be (nor would Jack's example of the judge shooting the attorney for refusing to comply. Giving orders to maintain courtroom control is a judicial function, with bailiffs and deputies executing those orders; tasing someone to maintain order is not a judicial function because not something done by a judge as judge. But at least some jurisdictions give the judge (not the bailiff) control over this device, making its use--not merely ordering its use--something that the judge is doing in her role as a judge while on the bench.

The story linked above discusses the problems in the use of these devices and how they affect criminal trials, as well as efforts to enjoin their use. No one has yet sued a judge for damages for employing the device, which is where judicial immunity would kick in. Stay tuned.

Sherry on the "Kardashian Court"

Suzanna Sherry has a new piece on SSRN, Our Kardashian Court (and How to Fix It). Sherry argues that partisanship can be reduced on SCOTUS by a law prohibiting concurring and dissenting opinions and having the Court issue one per curiam opinion, with no indication of how many Justices joined that opinion. The goal is to eliminate the opportunity for Justices to become celebrities or to push personal agendas.

This is a fascinating idea. I had the privilege of reading and commenting on an earlier draft. Some of my comments are after the jump:

• Sherry brackets whether this should extend to courts of appeals. But note that the concerns for both celebrity (Posner, Kozinski, many of the Fed Soc people that Trump has appointed) and partisanship (especially with the attention given to many of Trump’s appointees) are present on these courts. Dissents on the courts of appeals may help SCOTUS identify which cases to take, which is a positive. Otherwise, they raise the same problems Sherry identifies--celebrity and pushing individual agendas--while adding new ones, such as auditioning for SCOTUS.

• On this point: At SEALS, Donald Campbell (Mississippi College) presented a paper trying to measure how dissents and separate opinions reflect or undermine collegiality on courts of appeals, where there often is a a "norm" that judges write separately only in extraordinary cases. If collegiality is affected by dissents, then Sherry's proposal would be a welcome change for those courts, ensuring and re-enforcing that norm and that collegiality.

• Sherry would impose this by statute, so she spends time considering the separation of powers objections to such a law, concluding the law would be valid. This would be another opportunity to test concepts of judicial independence and what it means for Congress to tell the Court how to decide a case.

• The key weakness to the proposal might be that it is too late. The partisan divide is too sharp and the identities and positions of the individual Justices too well-known. Everyone would know who did and did not join a per curiam opinion overruling Roe/Casey. Had this proposal come in 1973--when Stewart, White, and Powell were the median justices and appointing party did not align with judicial ideology--it might have helped prevent us from getting to where we are now.

As Larry Solum says, download it while it's hot.

Random snippets of law

Each too short for a stand-alone post. Maybe this is why we have Twitter.

• Here is everyone's Evidence question for the coming semester: The government in the Roger Stone prosecution has moved in limine to admit the clip from Godfather Part II in which Frank Pantangeli recants his prior statement implicating Michael Corleone. The government argues this is relevant to explaining Stone's repeated references in his communications with Jerome Corsi and shows that Stone was urging Corsi to lie to Congress.

• This point is moot with the announcement by the House Judiciary Committee that it is investigating "possible impeachment." But following Robert Mueller's testimony on Wednesday, Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi stated that their preferred next step was to complete litigation over various subpoenas; if the President disobeyed an Article-III-final court order, that would be the last straw prompting a move to formal impeachment.

I did not understand why that is or should be the relevant line. Some have flagged this as the line that Nixon would not cross, so crossing it would make Trump worse than Nixon. But it is hardly the worst or most wrongful thing a President could do. And it is not obviously worse or more impeachable than the misconduct--some criminal, some representing abuses of office or prospective office--described in Mueller's report and testimony.

I would guess that Pelosi and Schiff believed that Mueller had not described, in sufficiently dramatic terms, a single flashing-red-light act that would rally the public. Or they bought the media spin that Mueller's testimony was too dull to do that. So the strategy became to wait for the next single flashing-red-light act. Or the one after that. Or . . .

Remembering Justice Stevens

Justice John Paul Stevens died Tuesday, at age 99. He is a big deal around Northwestern Law, where I went to school. The award for top GPA is named for him and his official Court portrait was on display in the library until his retirement. And in Chicago, where he was at Wrigley Field for Babe Ruth's "called shot" in 1932 and got to see the Cubs finally win the World Series in 2016.

On an instant reaction, how will Stevens be remembered as a Justice? He is the third-longest serving Justice, just shy of 35 years, trailing Douglas and Field. The easy political story is that he was a Republican appointee who became a leading liberal light on the Court, following in the shoes of Brennan and Blackmun, but on a more sharply divided Court. For purposes of one of my current projects, he spent 16 Terms as senior-most Associate Justice in frequent disagreement with the Chief, one of the longer such periods in the Court's history; this gave him the assignment power in divided cases in which a swing Justice (usually O'Connor and/or Kennedy) switched.

I wonder what opinions will define his legacy on the Court. We do not associate him with particular doctrines (as with Scalia) or particular opinions (as with Blackmun and Roe). He stuck us with Pacifica. He famously dissented in the flag-burning cases, "flipping" positions with Scalia, and in Citizens United, where the majority opinion outraged him. He wrote Reno v. ACLU, which, while not rhetorically memorable, was a more significant decision in allowing the internet to thrive as an open medium. He wrote Claiborne Hardware, which may gain new relevance in challenges to anti-BDS laws and attempts to use civil liability against Black Lives Matters protesters.

I did a Westlaw search for his most-cited opinions. He wrote Apprendi, the first move in the push to returning control over sentencing to juries. He wrote the opinion establishing Chevron deference, a doctrine in danger of overruling by the current Court, but not associated with him by name. He wrote the opinion in Sony v. Universal, which held that VCRs did not infringe copyrights. He wrote Clinton v. Jones for a unanimous Court, which had significant political consequences, but will not stick to him. And while not an opinion for the Court, his "ask me later" concurrence in Asahi means the Court did not, and still has not, solved the stream-of-commerce v. stream-of-commerce-plus problem for personal jurisdiction.

Update: In the realm of opinions that angered people, Linda Greenhouse's Times obit points out that Stevens wrote the majority in Kelo. She also suggests that Stevens' long period as senior-associate will be key to his legacy, elevating him from relative obscurity into a role that he enjoyed.

Mueller Report: The Play (Updated)

What started as a joke and emerged as parody was done as a serious piece of theater , titled The Investigation: A Search for the Truth in Ten Acts. It features A-list actors including John Lithgow, Joel Grey,* Annette Benning, Kevin Kline and Justin Long; it was written by award-winning playwright Robert Schenkkan. A video of the show (running about 1:15) is embedded in the LawFare piece and at the Law Works site.

[*] "Willkommen! Dobro Pozhalovat! Welcome!"

The author of the LawFare piece (Mikhaila Fogel) explains how dramatization shows how members of Congress should (and should not) approach next week's hearing. In short: Do ask "deliberate, narrative-driven questions about the text of the report [that] will tell a powerful and credible story;" do not rely on "[s]entiment, indignation and pontification." In other words, act like trial lawyers or judges, not grandstanding politicians.

Update: Having watched watched the performance (from late June), I see Fogel's point about melodrama. But if House Dems see themselves as speaking to the American People--specifically those portions of the American People who are neither convinced of Trump's culpability nor unpersuadable that Trump did anything wrong--there is a nice legal question of how to understand that audience. Is it a jury or a panel of judges? And does that affect how you ask the questions to present the case? And should it?

Also: If a similar reading  of the Starr Report had been staged in 1998, imagine the accompanying soundtrack.

It's the district court order, not the SCOTUS affirmance

On the eve of Friday's hearing on the next steps in the census case, more thoughts on nomenclature: The concern about the should not be framed as "The President is disobeying a Supreme Court decision."* The concern should be framed as "The President is disobeying a court order."

[*] Decision is an imprecise word, in any event. The court issues a judgment/order and the court issues an opinion explaining that judgment. I suppose a decision encompasses both of those. But when the judgment/opinion distinction matters, as it does, the specific words are preferable.

The key is that an injunction, entered by the district court, is in place and prohibits the printing and use of a census form with a citizenship question. That order prohibits the government from proceeding with a census containing that question and that order is what the President, Commerce, et al. violate if they proceed with the question.

That the Supreme Court affirmed the district court injunction is beside this point. SCOTUS affirmance means the government has nowhere left to turn within the judiciary. But it does not add greater force to the district court's injunction. Government officials violate the order by proceeding with the census-with-citizenship-question--whether they had proceeded the day before SCOTUS affirmance or the day after SCOTUS affirmance.

Independence Day is not military

The President has added military elements (including tanks that may damage the bridges into the district) to the Independence Day celebration on the National Mall. Many argue that this reflects the ostentatious military parades staged in the former Soviet Union, North Korea, and other authoritarian regimes trying to convince their people and the world of their power and greatness (which they usually lack in reality).* Unfortunately, these are the governments and leaders the President likes and respects and wishes to emulate.

 [*] As Tom Nichols puts it in The Atlantic, Trump "has blown through the romance of Bastille Day and past the stodgy opera of the Soviet May Day reviewing stand, and is now squarely in the North Korean 'Because I feel like it' mode." 

I want to offer a different criticism: A  military display does not reflect what we commemorate and celebrate on Independence in the U.S. The signing of the Declaration was an expressive and political act. And it was nominally grounded in theoretical and philosophical terms of consent of the governed, the law of nations, the purposes of government, and human rights--all decidedly non-militaristic ideas. This holiday should not be celebrated in militaristic terms because it does not mark an historic military action.** I reacted the same way several years ago when the m.c. at the small-town celebration I attended announced that the day was about the men and women in the military.  The evolution of the world from 2011 to 2019 can be seen in the evolution of this militaristic conception from the uninformed remarks of the speaker at a celebration at the Delaware beach to the President commandeering the Capitol concert and fireworks for his own display of military force, while threatening to ignore court orders.

[**] France's historic act of independence was a military event, so it makes some sense to celebrate with a parade. The equivalent for the U.S. might be commemorating Yorktown, the culmination of the military force that was necessary to secure what we mark on the 4th of July. But we do not do that. Or it might be Lexington and Concord, somewhat analogous to the storming of the Bastille. But Boston celebrates that by running a long race and playing a baseball game.

Rather than tanks and planes, the best move would be to return to Mark Twain's suggestion that public celebrations include a reading of the Declaration.

More action on the census (Edited)

The citizenship-question case is heating up, following a tweet from the President denouncing as fake news reports that the administration had stopped pursuing efforts to place the citizenship question on the 2020 census. This despite DOJ attorneys having represented that fake news to plaintiffs' counsel and the district court as the government litigation position. This did not sit well with Judge Hazel (D.Md.), who held an on-the-record telephone conference to find out what is going on (as was the attorney for the government).

Judge Hazel questioned whether the government attorneys were speaking for their client at this point. He responded skeptically to the plaintiff's suggestion that he enjoin government officials (presumably including the President) from tweeting or otherwise speaking contrary to the government's litigation position or to requiring the Census Bureau or Commerce Department to publicly counteract any contrary tweets from the President.

The court gave the parties until Friday to submit either a stipulation that the citizenship question will not appear on the census or a scheduling order for litigating the equal protection issues (denying, with a sharp "no," the government's request to have until Monday). Meanwhile, Judge Hazel confirmed that the injunction prohibiting the government from printing questionnaires with a citizenship question remains in place, meaning the President is flirting with ignoring (or ordering underlings to ignore) a court order. On the other hand, government attorneys suggested they may go back to SCOTUS for a motion "clarifying" (or "undercutting," from the plaintiffs' standpoint) the Court's remand decision.

The court declined to do anything to get a firmer answer on whether June 30 (last Sunday) remains the drop-deadline by which the government must have the census form finalized (as the government has insisted throughout the litigation-he suspected "we're not going to get a useful answer to that question." But the court made clear that he did not blame the attorneys for this confusion.*

[*] Another way departmentalism remains in check, at least with a normal President. DOJ lawyers do not like getting yelled at when the executive officials they represent go off the rails. With a normal President, the attorneys can try to exert some control over the client. Or, with an abnormal President, they could resign or refuse to carry out his inappropriate wishes. Neither is happening here.

Judicial departmentalism and overbroad injunctions in the news

First, the Fifth Circuit reversed the contempt citation against a Carmen Alvarez and her attorneys for attempting to enforce the Department of Labor's overtime regs in a private action following a universal injunction prohibiting DOL from enforcing those regs in an action brought by Nevada and other states. The court held that there was no privity between DOL and Alvarez or her lawyers, because there was no evidence of an express or implied relationship among them that is necessary for one party to adequately represent the interests of another. The court stated that Chipotle's theory that "DOL represents every worker’s legal interests through its enforcement of the FLSA so as to bind every worker in the United States to an injunction where the DOL is the only bound party lacks authoritative support." Like Title VII, the private right of action under labor laws and regs leaves room for private persons to claim injuries and remedies distinct from those established in government enforcement.

Second, Texas GOP Representative Chip Roy took to Twitter to urge the President and the Commerce Department to ignore the lawyers "Completely. Print the census with the question - and issue a statement explaining why - “because we should.” Done." Such action could not be defended as judicial departmentalism, which allows executive disregard of precedent but not particular orders in particular cases; those most be obeyed unless reversed or modified. The President, the Commerce Secretary, and the other federal officials involved would be violating a court order prohibiting the use of the citizenship question* and would be subject to contempt and contempt sanctions for that action.

[*] Another example of indivisible remedies, giving an individual injunction universal scope. The government cannot print or use multiple census forms, so an injunction protecting individual plaintiffs spills over to protect everyone.

Another remedy in The Wall

Judge Gilliam of the Northern District of California issued two orders on Friday declaring invalid President Trump's efforts to divert funds for building The Wall. In Sierra Club v. Trump, the court permanently enjoined three acting cabinet officers and "all persons acting under their direction" from "taking any action to construct a border wall" in certain areas using certain funds. In California v. Trump, the court declared the use of the same funds for some of those sections unlawful, but declined to grant a permanent injunction. The court also ensured that the cases could be appealed together by certifying California for FRCP 54 appeal, along with the immediately appealable injunction.

Sierra Club does not speak to the scope of the injunction, because this is a case of indivisible relief and remedy. The court cannot enjoin the use of funds for the wall as to the plaintiffs but not to non-parties; any prohibition on the use of funds unavoidable inures to everyone's benefit, even if the injunction is formally particularized to the plaintiffs.

The court justified denying the injunction in California by pointing to the injunction in Sierra Club prohibiting use of funds on the same sectors of wall. California (and New Mexico, its co-plaintiff) would suffer no irreparable harm, because the injunction protects them in effect if not in name. This provides an interesting example of when declaratory relief may be sufficient and an injunction unnecessary--when an injunction protects the D/J plaintiffs, so the declaration is sufficient. It also answers the Ninth Circuit's question about whether a universal injunction in one case moots another--it does not moot the case because a declaratory remedy may be effective, although an injunction is not warranted. (Not that courts should issue universal injunctions--but this is the practical effect if they do).

Democracy and judicial review

Chief Justice Roberts' decision for the Court in the partisan gerrymandering cases accepts that partisan gerrymandering is a bad thing, but insists that it must be left to popular and political processes. He emphasizes the numerous bills introduced in Congress over the years that would address this. Justice Kagan's dissent nails him with the obvious: "[W]hat all these bills have in common is they are not laws" and not likely to become laws, because the politicians who would make these bills into laws are not going to undo the partisan gerrymandering from which they benefit.

I am going to give Roberts a small credit for implementing a neutral theory: These bills have not become law because legislators have not acted because the courts were available as a backstop against the problem. This is a version of the criticism that judicial review worsens the legislative process, because legislators need not take their obligations seriously knowing that the courts will clean up their mess. With the federal courts out of this game, Congress will now take seriously its obligation to address what everyone recognizes is a problem.

Of course, this credit assumes that Roberts would not read "Legislature thereof" in Article I, § 4 to preclude federal action limiting districting just as he read the term to prohibit redistricting commissions.

Whither Cohen?

In Iancu, Justice Alito's concurrence and the Chief's partial dissent both assert that Congress could constitutionally prohibit trademarks for vulgar or profane words (The Chief argues that Congress did so in the word "scandalous," while Alito argues Congress must amend the statute to do so). Alito goes so far as to argue that the word fuck, as hinted at in the F-U-C-T mark, "is not needed to express any idea and, in fact, as commonly used today, generally signifies nothing except emotion and a severely limited vocabulary."

But neither Alito nor the Chief cites Cohen. (Neither does Justice Kagan's majority opinion, because "scandalous" is not limited to vulgarity or profanity, so it does not matter to her analysis). And Cohen answers Alito's argument that profanity signifies nothing except emotion--emotion is an essential and inseparable part of the message.

Only Justice Sototmayor's partial dissent (joined by Justice Breyer) addresses that case. She argues that, at best, Cohen means that a restriction on profanity is viewpoint-neutral content discrimination. Profanity "tweaks" or "amplifies" the viewpoint, such that the message is without the profanity is "not quite the same" as with it. But targeting profanity does not target the viewpoint expressed in the message--California would not have allowed a jacket with "Fuck Draft Protesters."

I see Sotomayor's point, although I am not sure I agree. First, consider Justice Alito's plurality (which Sotomayor did not join) in Matal v. Tam, in which Alito argued that the "disparaging-mark" provision was viewpoint-discriminatory. Alito called it a "happy-talk clause" that prohibited registering any mark that criticized, whether the target was racists or anti-racists. A "clean-talk clause" should be equally problematic.

Second, if Sotomayor is correct, it gives short shrift to the possibility of the trademark program as a public forum, specifically a "limited public forum." A limited public forum is supposed to be a designated public forum (government space, opened for speech), although limited to specific speech or speakers. The limitations on the forum must be defined in viewpoint-neutral terms, although the terms can be content-discriminatory (e.g., a forum can be limited to political speech, but not to conservative political speech). Once that forum is established, any content-based restrictions on speech otherwise within the forum must survive strict scrutiny. Unfortunately, the Court has never explained well how to identify the definition of the limited public forum (which merely must be viewpoint-neutral) and exclusions from the established forum (which must be content-neutral, unless able to survive strict scrutiny). Sotomayor believes that, if the trademark system is a forum, the prohibition on "scandalous" (interpreted as "profane") marks makes it a limited public forum for non-scandalous (meaning non-profane) marks. But it as reasonable to see the trademark system as a limited public forum for "marks related to products offered for sale in interstate commerce." In that case, the limitation on scandalous/profane marks, being content-based under Cohen, must survive strict scrutiny.

Maybe this issue comes back around when Congress amends the trademark law to expressly prohibit profane marks.

Justice Alito takes on SJWs and foreigners

From the first paragraph of Justice Alito's concurrence in Iancu v. Brunetti:

Viewpoint discrimination is poison to a free society. But in many countries with constitutions or legal traditions that claim to protect freedom of speech, serious viewpoint discrimination is now tolerated, and such discrimination has become increasingly prevalent in this country. At a time when free speech is under attack, it is especially important for this Court to remain firm on the principle that the First Amendment does not tolerate viewpoint discrimination. We reaffirm that principle today.

It is impossible to read that as anything other than an attack on progressives who would like hateful and discriminatory speech prohibited, especially on campus. Or an attack on Twitter and Facebook for their supposed anti-conservative bias in banning certain users. Or a potshot at European countries such as France and Germany, which maintain democracies committed to free speech while prohibiting viewpoints such as Holocaust-denial.

The idea that "free speech is under attack" has migrated from the Intellectual Dark Web to the U.S. Reports.