CrossPolitic Studios

This is Toby Sumpter with your CrossPolitic Daily News Brief for Friday, August 14, 2020. Today you will hear about several new court cases created by the Supreme Court’s most recent term’s decisions, which college football conferences have testosterone left in them, Israel is making peace with one of its neighbors, and Jared Kushner is hanging out with Kanye. Did Chief Justice Roberts Leave a Message in the Bottle of His Last Rulings? https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/arkansas-abortion-florida-transgender-supreme-court/2020/08/12/588f1162-dc09-11ea-809e-b8be57ba616e_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_court-decisions-755am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans Robert Barnes writes at the Washington Post about a cluster of abortion and transgender court cases likely to land back in the Supreme Court soon: “The Supreme Court’s rulings from a momentous just-completed term already are altering the nation’s legal landscape, almost assuring that issues such as abortion and transgender rights will be returning to the high court.” Just this last week lower courts reinstated abortion restrictions in Arkansas, stopped a Vermont program that disfavored students at religious high schools and ordered a Florida school district to allow a girl, who pretends to be a boy, into a boys locker room and restrooms. Barnes points out that all of these decisions were “based on the Supreme Court’s decisions reached just weeks ago… The most consequential regards abortion, and whether Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s pivotal vote striking down a Louisiana law actually paved the way for courts to approve restrictions that have been enacted elsewhere.” Remember, Roberts was excoriated for his apparent flipflopping on his vote in the 5-to-4 decision in the Louisiana case June Medical Services v. Russo. Roberts voted with liberals to strike down a law, which Roberts said was identical to a Texas law the court had declared unconstitutional in 2016 — a decision that Roberts disagreed with. He voted against the 2016 decision, but apparently voted to disagree with himself in June Medical Services. Vice President Pence was among those calling Roberts a “disappointment to conservatives,” specifically citing the abortion decision. But liberals pointed out that Roberts based his vote on precedent alone. Barnes writes: “He did not join the opinion by Justice Stephen G. Breyer that said courts should balance the burdens imposed by state restrictions against their purported benefits in determining whether a law violates a woman’s right to an abortion.” Instead, Roberts said he continued to believe the Texas case was wrongly decided. He said courts should look only at whether a restriction places an “undue burden” on a woman’s access to the procedure. Abortion supporters smelled blood in those instructions. Roberts’s opinion “preserves the outer shell of the earlier decision while gutting its substance,” New York University law professor Melissa Murray wrote in an op-ed in The Washington Post. “And in so doing, it invites states to push the envelope on abortion legislation, secure that, regardless of the benefits to patients, courts will bless the laws so long as they do not pose a substantial obstacle.” So, a unanimous panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit cited Robert’s opinion as grounds for lifting the injunction against four measures passed by the Arkansas legislature in 2017 designed to limit abortions in the state. Is Roberts playing 4D chess or is he being too clever by half? In the same article, Robert Barnes highlights a court decision by the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit requiring a school district in Florida to allow a crossdressing girl access to boys bathrooms and locker rooms. In this case the panel cited the recent Supreme Court Bostock decision which identified workplace discrimination against sexual orientation and sexual identity as illegal under [...]