OA649: Respect for Marriage Act Advances in the Senate!

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:01:18 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 649. I'm Thomas. That's Andrew Torres. How you doing, sir?

0:01:24 Andrew: I'm fantastic, Thomas. How are you?

0:01:26 Thomas: I'm very fantastic, Andrew. You could say that I'm roughly twice as fantastic as is the normal amount of Opening Argument. The

0:01:34 Andrew: Now, that's a very specific number. Now, why would you be twice as fantastic as usual? I know, I know. It's because I'm less echoey.

0:01:43 Thomas: Yeah, it is actually that end of announcement Oh, boy, look, not, I, I, I appreciate everybody chiming in. You don't need to tell me that Andrew sounds echoey. Like there's

0:01:44 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. This is a hundred percent on my fault. People, what I am doing for you is I, I had an area behind my garage converted into a studio. It's been a long time. It is going to be soundproofed. And literally the only thing that is left is to put stuff up on the walls that prevents the echoes. Um, but you, contractors, and so I recorded the last episode, last two episodes plus cleanup, in, uh, what is apparently an echo chamber. I apologize. Please stop emailing, Thomas. This is my fault. Thomas did everything on earth possible to make, make it sound like I was not yodeling into the Grand Canyon. It's going

0:01:52 Thomas: No, the most important thing Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

0:02:31 Andrew: To be better. I promise.

0:02:33 Thomas: I sicked my, uh, expensive software on it for the D reverb, and it's like, I can't do it, Captain, it just was, you know, smoke was coming out of my computer. Peter?

0:02:40 Andrew: That was not a bad Scotty. That was pretty good.

0:02:41 Thomas: Yeah, no, that's okay. That's not the announcement, appreciate but it. It's just, you have ears. If ever you hear something like that, it's not because I haven't heard that it's a problem. It's because there's no way to fix it and we're stuck with it. Just in general,

0:02:55 Andrew: Yeah, Ever you hear something in the audio, just assume that it's Andrew's fault and

0:03:01 Thomas: But no, more exciting things, Andrew. More exciting announcements. I cannot even believe it. So here's the thing. I don't even remember when we set this goal or why we set the goal or if it was just a goof, Andrew, just a prank or a fun joke. But way back when we setup the Patreon for this show Hillary was about to be elected president. We had handlebar mustaches, bell bell bottoms, you know, and well, I

0:03:22 Andrew: Mutton chops, I was I was, you know, bell bottoms and mutton shops, yeah, that's that's the look I was rocking.

0:03:30 Thomas: I was doing handlebar moustaches and bell bottoms. But, you Know, either way, we're mixing it up. Um, so we set a goal of like daily OA just for fun, like, and I think that was a practical joke. I don't even know if it was, uh, achievable, anything we meant, but here's the thing. We're actually kind of almost to that goal. We got a notification that was like, you're 75% of way to your daily OA or something like that. And I was like that's news to me. What are you talking about, computer? And it's actually true. And here's the thing. We could also just ignore it and not do it and pretend it never happened. That's one solution.

0:03:30 Andrew: Yeah. Yep. That's

0:04:03 Thomas: But we we have long wanted to find a way to produce that kind of thing, but the problem is the, the way, you know, make a living on this show is through Patreon, is through people paying per episode. That's the way, that's always been the kind of the the financial model of the show, and there was no way, we already are twice a week show, there's no way we were going to like hit up our patrons, you know, three more times, it's that was never going to happen, so it always, we're trying to find a way to make the model work, but it always was like, well, we could do an insane amount of work and make no more money. It's like Andrew's already just smokes coming out of his ears trying to get everything done in the week anyway. But because of the new way that ads, um, seem to be working, the ad industry for podcasts is going a different way. You may have noticed, if you're a patron, by the way, you don't know any

0:04:03 Andrew: A good one. Nope.

0:04:28 Andrew: Never gonna happen

0:04:51 Thomas: Of this, and that's great. So patreon.com/law, if you would like to continue to know nothing about how ads work for podcasts, um, but but they're going with a new kind of dynamic ad thing. So you may have heard more of those ads that just come in that aren't us reading. And that seems to be the way that it's going. And we realized the other day, we were talking about it, and Andrew and I realized that that actually unlocks an opportunity to find a way to make the economic model for a more frequent OA make sense. And so I think we're going to make it happen, Andrew.

0:04:52 Andrew: I I Think that's right. So here's what's gonna happen, uh, you hate advertisements, uh, patron at any level, you'll never hear an ad, ever, period. Uh, patreon.com/law give us a buck. If you're an existing patron, nothing will change, you

0:05:33 Thomas: Nothing will change. Well, you will get a lot more stuff, but nothing money-wise will change, yeah.

0:05:36 Andrew: Nothing will changed, yeah, in terms of how you were built. You will be billed for mainstream episodes exactly as much as it was before. But, and if you were a listener, either way, you're going going to get the Friday, uh, rapid response Friday. You're going to get the Tuesday deep dives. Uh, those episodes aren't going to change. What we're goingto do is we're gonna bring you episodes on, on Mondays and Thursdays. You so will get OA in your ear holes, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. And I'm very, very excited to bring that to we're you. Still working on, you of how to align the segments, right, uh, but this, um, is going to enable us to bring, because there are just so many stories that I research and I tell you. And if you're a patron at the three dollar and up level, you get my handwritten, hand typed notes, so you know that like I've done five pages of research on a story

0:05:41 Thomas: The exact same stuff.

0:06:28 Andrew: It never airs, know, like a hundred people get to read it, um, but but you know the show never air. I've done all the work.

0:06:28 Thomas: That's true. I cannot tell you folks listening how many times, I feel and so bad because I have to be the bad guy. Andrew has prepared so much and we'll be at like, you know, 90 minutes and I'm over there thinking I have turn this around in four hours. Like, yeah, I have somehow to turn this round the same day. And I just have to feel like, Andrew, I know you have a masterpiece, you know, like you've painted just an absolute assisting chapel of notes. It's amazing, but I have to be like, Andrew, please stop talking, and I hate it. I hate having to do that because it'd be great to give you so much more.

This is going to allow us to do that, and we're also going to move stuff around in a way I think will make much more sense, so, it's going to be really cool. We'll give you the details or, you know, we might just launch it and you'll hear the details. But it's going be a slightly different format. But the important things that Andrew already said, nothing's going change for patrons billing-wise, except you're getting way more stuff. And it's actually to allow us to do more on the main episodes, because we're going to shift a few things to the shorter, quicker episodes that we're adding. I'm really excited. It's gonna be so cool. We figured let's not launch this on Thanksgiving week,

0:06:49 Andrew: Like four hours. Yeah, I know. Yep. Yeah.

0:07:38 Thomas: Next week, because I think people will be gone and won't even listen. So we're going to launch it the week after that. Expect the new format, um, I'm so excited, well, I'm also excited because we haven't, we also still have a way to do, Andrew, so double triple the excitement, let's, let's gets to it.

0:07:47 Andrew: Me too, all right, well, let's do that, yeah.

0:07:55 Clip: Why are you laughing? This is terrible news! Well, I, I, you told me, I was just trying to soften the blow.

0:08:04 Thomas: So, uh, election didn't go quite as positive as maybe it was looking like for a minute? What's our final kind of midterm update here.

0:08:12 Andrew: The Republicans have officially, uh, captured 218 seats in the House for the next, uh, session. We told you all along that was the most likely outcome. And, and here are the status of of uncalled races. So Republicans control 218 seats, that's a bare majority in House. Democrats control 213. Those four uncalled races that are still out there, all lean Republican. If there's no change, that would be a nine-seat majority, 221 to 213, I think probably most likely is going to be at least one of them flips, which which would be 221 to 214, which would be a seven-seat lead. One more flips and it's just a five-seat lead. So, you know, each one counts double.

0:08:41 Thomas: Jeez. Yeah, no kidding.

0:08:56 Andrew: Are those four uncalled races. California's 13th district, Adam Gray trails John Duarte by less than 1,000 votes with 91% in. So just there's no way to tell on that. Slightly blue blue district. And, looks like gray could come from behind Colorado three. That's the Lauren Boebert race. California does not have an automatic recount provision. So yeah, candidates have to pay if they want to recount. Um, if gray loses by less than a thousand votes, his his, candidacy, you Know, they may pay for the recount, that may be worth it. Um. In Colorado, if you're within half a percent, it triggers the state pays for an automatic recount. The And Boebert race is headed for that automatic recount. Again, she leads by one thousand one hundred and three votes. And we just will not know that until December. Recounts typically don't change a thousand votes. They can change a couple of hundred.

0:09:03 Thomas: Oh, really? Wow.

0:09:46 Thomas: Plus the

0:09:46 Andrew: So and all of that.

0:09:47 Thomas: Ballot curing, as I've said, you

0:09:49 Andrew: And let me just add one more parenthetical. Demonstrating Boebert's weakness is really, really significant, significant even if she narrowly scrapes by to a victory here, she's got to run again in two years, that's that's going to bring challengers out in the Republican primary who are like, um, hey, I'm not a goddamn lunatic and maybe I won't risk losing the seat.

0:10:12 Thomas: So optimistic. It could be, hey, this person's not lunatic enough. I'm even crazier.

0:10:12 Andrew: Right. It could be, but unlike, like Marjorie Taylor Green's district, right, which is, you know, Republican plus 30, you can be like not just as stupid as you want to be, but like the dumber you are, the better that is with your primary electorate. Here, Republicans are pretty strategic and being able to say, this candidate is so bad that even in this Republican district, she almost lost, vote for me, is, is a real thing that will happen. And there will be because there are lots of, you young up and coming politicians in Colorado that are looking for an opportunity.

That's a really, really good opportunity. And I imagine Adam Frisch and other Democrats will run again, particularly if Boebert survives out of the primary and will say, hey, this is an even better opportunity to knock off Lauren BoeBERT. Adam Frish now has really good name recognition in the district. He's run a competent campaign and is going to get way more funding from the DCCC and outside groups the next time around. This is the model that led to Michelle Bachman retiring from Congress. Right. She went on MSNBC and said some unspeakably stupid thing.

0:10:43 Thomas: Yeah.

0:11:27 Thomas: I know it's hard to think of which thing it was. Speaking of witches, wasn't there some witchcraft in the, oh, really?

0:11:29 Andrew: Right? Yeah, that that was Christine O'Donnell in Delaware. I'm not a witch. Yeah, it was great. Great.

0:11:36 Thomas: Oh, okay. I blended my wackos.

0:11:39 Andrew: Fair. There's a lot out there. Yeah. What passed for disqualifying 10 years ago and no longer? And again, that produced you a million dollar surge in donation for her opponent right at the finish line, which he was unable to translate into a victory. But it led to exactly kind of the cascade of events that I've described. So even if we don't pick up Boebert this time around, it's a good unraveling. So those are two seats. Then there are two more. And these have been long shots all along. These are two More California congressional districts, the third in which Kermit Jones trails his Republican opponent by nine thousand votes. That's four and a half percent with 60 percent in. So, you know, who knows? Right. And then California 22, in which the Democrat Rudy Salas trails David Valadao by 4000 votes.

0:11:39 Thomas: Yeah,

0:12:27 Andrew: But because of lower turnout, that's five and a half percent with two thirds of the vote in. So is there enough time to make up those? There is. These races have been tightening in favor of the Democrat all along. You you still probably bet on the Republican outcome. But but those those are the last races. It's going to be a slim Republican majority in the House no matter what.

0:12:48 Thomas: I was gonna say, what do you think is the best case now for Democrats? I mean, there's no longer that any chance of a majority, right? I mean, it's even, even under the most optimistic, but like, it's either one, three, five, seven, nine, you know, like, what how low do you thing is realistically possible for that majority?

0:12:56 Andrew: That's right.

0:13:07 Andrew: Realistically, I think if if they were to swing two of those four seats, right, that would be at at the kind of the far end of plausible. Right. That would be 220 to 215. And know

0:13:16 Thomas: Yeah. Five, still five. That's a bet. Dang. I was hoping it would be like one or three. Yeah, five is, I mean, it's still good.

0:13:23 Andrew: One or three would be great. And the reason that the one or two or makes the difference is because, you as we've mentioned, you if somebody is indicted or dies or whatever, uh, that seat goes goes, to a special election. That's exactly right.

0:13:35 Thomas: Yeah say for sex trafficking or you know anything like that. Yeah yeah

0:13:41 Andrew: You do not, unlike the Senate, you can't appoint an interim member of Congress. And so, you switching a D for an R is is a minus one on one end plus one on the other end, Uh, is a two vote switch. But when somebody just, you dies, then all of sudden that, that creates a one vote gap. So, um, yeah, I, we all would have liked to kind of draw to the inside straight. It didn't happen, um, hopefully you weren't too invested in that happening, yeah.

0:14:04 Thomas: Well shoot. I don't know. I still feel like maybe the the Boebert one. I mean who knows with the bet with the efforts going on. I I mean there's still a chance with the ballot curing in the recount, right?

0:14:10 Andrew: There who knows is still

0:14:15 Thomas: All more optimistic on that one. Well, no, I'm not really optimistic. I just like to have something to hope for.

0:14:15 Andrew: A chance with you, I'm, but there, you going, that'll be our last politics update I apologize to our, our international listeners. Now you get to hear some more about American law.

0:14:25 Thomas: All right, no. The international listeners are more into these elections than we are.

0:14:33 Andrew: That is very, very true.

0:14:34 Thomas: Anytime we travel abroad, they are more informed than I am

0:14:35 Andrew: Yeah. Is crazy. Just And as a general rule, like, you ask yourself how much you know about, you the Constitution of Italy. And then I promise you every single one of our Italian listeners knows more about the U.S. Constitution than,

0:14:52 Thomas: I know they have own their fascism going, their resurgence of fascism going. I know that much, so I'm sure we'll talk about it. All Right. Well, a little disappointing, but thanks for the update, Andrew. And we'll continue to hope for that smaller and smaller majority, maybe. This episode is brought to you by the Jordan Harbinger Show. You need another podcast in your life, and let's face it, we all do. The Jordan Harbinger Show features in-depth interviews with some of the world's most fascinating minds, diving so much deeper than any other interview that you've usually heard with those people. It's so clear that Jordan really goes into the weeds preparing for the interviews, and there are way too many interview-style podcasts I would never recommend or are kind of a waste of time, but this one is not. Every Friday, Jordan also releases a Feedback Friday episode to respond to listener questions, covering everything from conventional problems like leaving a dream job to doozies like helping someone escape an abusive relationship. Here's recent show I love. It is 745 Dave Farina. He's the Professor Dave Explains YouTube channel. Great stuff.

0:14:57 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yep.

0:15:55 Thomas: I love his book. It's called Is This Wi-Fi Organic? A Guide to Spotting Misleading Science Online. So check out that one if you'd like to get into the show. All that and so many more episodes. There's something for everyone on on The Jordan Harbinger Show. So search for The Jordan Harbingers Show. That's That's A-J-R-B as in boy. I-N as in Nancy G-E-R on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

0:16:21 Clip: Down the law, down the law.

0:16:25 Thomas: All right, Andrew, the, you may have seen the, viral headlines that Mitch McConnell, despite being in an interracial marriage, voted against codifying the right to interracital marriage, which a hell of a way to, to ask for a divorce, you know, like maybe it's, it's way to avoid asking for a divorce. Oh, sorry, just can't, we can't legally do it anymore. No, but despite McConnell's best efforts at a weird way to divorce his wife, uh, this passed, the Respect for Marriage Act passed in the Senate, um, and I'm sure it was a hundred nothing, right? Because it's, well, no, okay, Mitch McDonald's, it must have been 99 to 1, because it's about codifying rights that everybody would assume we should definitely have, right? So, 99. So, to 1?

0:17:06 Andrew: Did 62 to 37. So, yeah, the yeah, that is what? Eighty five percent of the Republican Party is still against it. It has also been it has weirdly drawn some ire from some progressives. So I think it's worth talking about.

0:17:09 Thomas: 37! Wow. Hmm. Yeah.

0:17:25 Andrew: This is a a great bill. It has I'm going to talk about the four things I wish it didn't have in it. But those four things, let me be absolutely clear here, are certainly not a reason to oppose the bill. They're not really even a reason To Damper Your Enthusiasm much. And I want to talk about it. And I think maybe that's come about because some outlets have characterized this because, you know, you want to simplify your messaging, right? One of the at the top of the the Democratic agenda is codifying Roe into law.

0:17:55 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:17:56 Andrew: And Right. So this has been characterized as codifying Obergefell. And it does not do that. Right, that's not an accurate description of what this does. So let me explain what the bill does. Again, 62 to 37, 12 Republicans voting in favor of it, along with every single Democrat. So, almost as if there's a difference between the parties.

0:18:02 Thomas: Hmm.

0:18:16 Thomas: It's almost like voting in Democrats. Yeah. That's

0:18:20 Andrew: Yeah. Uh, this was co-sponsored by Kyrsten Sinema, um,

0:18:20 Thomas: Weird. You're not going to get me to say anything good about that fact. I don't care.

0:18:28 Andrew: Fair enough, uh, spearheaded by Tammy Baldwin, a genuine progressive, right, and pulled in, a bipartisan you vote. Um, here's what you need to know in order to understand this context and obviously this being enacted in full view of an activist raging right-wing Supreme Court. So let's turn the clock back to 1996. 1996 was the aftermath of the bloody midterms for president Clinton that were avoided here in which, uh, Democrats lost both the house and the Senate. They lost, you know, 60 plus seats in the house. They Lost eight Senate seats. Uh, it completely derailed the progressive agenda and any chance for universal healthcare and caused Clinton to rapidly swing to the right, uh, in an effort to secure reelection.

0:18:55 Thomas: Hmm.

0:19:26 Thomas: Sorry, I couldn't hear it. Could you say all that again? I was getting my Discman to work with my... I popped in a Sublime CD. And

0:19:32 Andrew: It was also, yeah. The era of the worst music ever made, but but me, that's fair.

0:19:33 Thomas: Oh Shut Up, that Would work coming from anyone but you, who is saying the 10 Years prior to that was the best music of all time, according to you Uh No That's not true.

0:19:42 Andrew: Yeah. Yes. Uh, indeed. States like in, In 1996. 25 years. 25 not pre-Ali McBeal, but still at A time period that is, in, for a lot of us, recent memory. Um, there were, there were zero states in 1996 that had, uh, marriage equality that recognized Uh, same-sex marriage. There were handful a of states like Hawaii and Vermont that allowed for civil unions.

0:19:54 Thomas: Yeah Barely, right Civil Unions. I remember that was Kind of the debate back then, sure.

0:20:13 Andrew: Yep. Yeah. And that was the track that people thought, you we were sort of going down. And in anticipation of that, anticipatory bigotry kicked in with a bill called the Defense of Marriage Act, which was indefensible at the time and is indefensible now. And DOMA did two things. So Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act was codified at 1 U.S.C. 7 of the United States Code and made a federal definition of marriage and spouse. And it says, in determining the meaning of any act of Congress or of any ruling regulation or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the word marriage means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife. And the word spouse refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.

0:20:26 Thomas: Oh. God.

0:21:05 Andrew: Yeah, codified into law. That was overturned by the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was, again, mainstream conservative back then, sensitive but to civil rights issues, particularly on orientation and related issues. And so Anthony Kennedy, 5-4, joining with the then four liberals on the court in 2013, that decision was called U.S. versus Windsor. It struck down that definition of marriage as unconstitutional. But there's a second provision of the Defense of Marriage Act, which has never been challenged at the Supreme Court.

0:21:06 Thomas: So I didn't remember that, so that, what's the distinction between that DOMA being struck down but gay marriage not being, same-sex marriage not being kind of made okay everywhere, like

0:21:54 Andrew: So DOMA said, as a matter of federal law, we will not recognize any state that recognizes a same-sex marriage, but did not require, all 50 states could still, this was no longer the case in 2013 by the time the Windsor case came up, it was free at the state level to decide, are you going to have it or not? The remaining, and still good law today, put scare quotes around that, is DOMA's Section 2, which allows states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages performed under the laws of other states. Now, that has been superseded

0:21:54 Thomas: Oh. Okay. Okay. Gotcha. Yeah.

0:22:20 Thomas: Wow. Yeah.

0:22:32 Andrew: By the Obergefell decision, Because right? Now there are no states that can refuse to recognize same-sex marriage. But that sort of hypothetical question, right, of suppose Alabama defines marriage differently than Maryland, do the states have to recognize, right. Those marriages.

0:22:50 Thomas: Isn't That like a basic constitution-y thingy?

0:22:53 Andrew: It's called the full faith and credit clause. If it were to remain on the books and remain challenged, it would be an interesting constitutional question. But you know where that would go with this right-wing activist Supreme Court.

0:23:04 Thomas: Right. I just mean, like, if we still had, you know, real Supreme Court, is that something that like, in your opinion, should be an easy, like, knockdown case of, yeah, obviously the Constitution guarantees that you're going to respect marriages the of another state, or is it more complicated than that?

0:23:21 Andrew: The reason it becomes more complicated is because you have to to imagine a constitutional regime in which there is no right under the 14th Amendment, fundamental personal right to marry whomever you want. But there is still sort of this question of, OK, well, how do we make sense of the patchwork of how states handle. That's it? What would add the question to it, because there's a very obvious, like the reason that Obergefell is correctly decided is when you say, hmm, a state conveys a set of privileges that says, Andrew, we will authorize you to have certain tax benefits, certain visitation rights, and all of the other packages that go along with marriage, so long as you're married to a woman.

0:24:08 Andrew: But if we were to take a woman, we would deny the right for her to do the exact same thing. And that's as obvious a discrimination on the basis of sex for no reason as you could possibly get. So I can't imagine how any fair-minded jurist, no matter how conservative, could overturn Obergefell. And then the key adjective there is, of course, fair-mind.

0:24:20 Thomas: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

0:24:29 Andrew: So that section, section two of DOMA is 28 U.S.C. 1738 C. And it says the following: No state, territory, or possession of the United States or Indian tribe shall be required to give effect to any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other state, territory, possession, or tribe respecting a relationship between persons of the same sex that is treated as a marriage under the laws of such other state, territory, possession, or tribe, or a right or claim arising from such relationship. Okay, that is still a law on the books right now, again, has never been challenged because Obergefell superseded that, It challenged state definitions of marriage.

0:25:08 Thomas: Right. But it's sort of like those abortion laws where it's like once, yeah, yeah. Once Roe struck down, then it's, like, oh, there's this thing from 1890 that all of a sudden is in effect.

0:25:13 Andrew: It could spring back into effect. Yep. And this is 1996. So it's less preposterous to think of it as springing into effect that is exactly right. So here's what the just passed, uh, HR 8404 does. Number one, it repeals that section. So even if that's all you did, this would be good legislation. Number two, it replaces it with two provisions, each with a couple of sub-points. It says, A, no person acting under color of state law may deny, one, full faith and credit to any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other state pertaining to a marriage between two individuals on the basis of their sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin of those individuals. Again, recognizing that, you Loving v. Virginia could be at risk in the Supreme Court. Or two, a right or claim arising from such a marriage on the basis that such marriage would not be recognized under the law of that state. So in other words, if you get married in Maryland and you are traveling to Alabama, Alabama has to recognize that marriage. They cannot say, "No, that's not a legal marriage in Alabama, so we don't care."

0:25:20 Thomas: Cool. Yeah. Oh, nice. Yeah.

0:26:28 Andrew: And so if you get in a car accident, the hospital in Alabama must afford your spouse all of the rights that attend to a spouse in the state of Alabama, regardless of how bigoted Alabama is. And I'm sorry I'm picking on Alabama, but, you it is. Notice, by the way, that what they've replaced it with is much more expansive and more bulletproof than the original 1738 in reverse, So right? It applies to any person acting under color of state law, right, so that means state officials, that means police officers, that means, you university staff, right. Like, if you are acting under color of State law, you must respect marriage from other states, even if your state restricts it. It. That's an unambiguously good

0:26:46 Thomas: Nah. That's justified. Oh, yeah? Yeah.

0:27:17 Andrew: Thing. The third thing, it recognizes a private right of action. It says any person harmed by any violation of that new Section 1738C may bring a federal action in federal court for declaratory and injunctive relief. So somebody won't let you in to see, you know, you're married in Maryland, traveling through Alabama, and a state official will not allow you into the hospital to visit your wife, you can run into court and say, hey, the fact that I'm woman doesn't matter.

Under federal law, I want an injunction that says, let me in to see my sick wife. That's a great provision. And then number four provides for a new definition of marriage in 1 U.S.C. 7. And it says, it for says, purposes of any federal law, rule, or regulation in which marital status is a factor, an individual shall be considered married if that individual's marriage is between two individuals and is valid in the state where the marriage was entered into, or in the case of a marriage entered into outside of any state, if the marriage is between individuals and is valid in the place we're entered into, and the marriage could have been entered into in a state.

So again, it says we are making clear that for federal purposes, we're going to use the most expansive definition of marriage possible between two individuals. And that then leads to the four things that are in the bill that I wish were not in the the bill. And let me start with the most obvious. And again, know, we've answered this question on Q&As. It explicitly says there is no recognition of polyamorous marriages, which it calls polygamous marriages.

0:28:51 Andrew: I'm sorry about that. Strikes me that there will be a time in the future, maybe even in the relatively near future, in which we look back And that seems as bigoted as some of the provisions that were in the Defense of Marriage Act or don't ask, don't tell or whatever. I want to tell you that this issue is not teed up in the state or federal courts. It is not teed up among the political parties. And expanding a contract from a bilateral arrangement to a multi-party arrangement will add complexities that are just not present. And so this does not—let me be very, very clear. I think the law ought to recognize polyamorous marriages. Don't I think there's any defensible reason.

0:29:27 Thomas: Mm-mm.

0:29:38 Thomas: Yeah. Mainly under the legal reasoning of who gives a shit.

0:29:41 Andrew: Of who gives a shit? Yeah, exactly right. There is no valid reason not to. But that being said, I do not believe that this materially sets back that cause, right? Right. I would say, I'm very, very sorry that the state of recognition for polyamorous relationships is probably not well developed right now. And this probably feels like a punch. And this was added, by the way, by Republican amendments.

0:30:07 Thomas: Yeah.

0:30:07 Andrew: Right. This Like is Republicans want to use you as a punching bag. You know that already. And I'm sorry that they use that to get in a shot here. But that's not a reason, you not to move forward on this. Rest of it, the other three are exactly what you would think. There's a specific section, again, added by Republicans that says we will interpret this consistent with the Constitution. And then it includes the words and federal law. And that means RFRA. And

0:30:07 Thomas: Yeah, Why does RFRA still exist? Can't we get rid of that?

0:30:37 Andrew: We certainly should. Um, but, uh, it's never going to happen. So yeah, this is gonna tee up some Kim Davis asshole who says, uh, I have a masterpiece cake shop kind of argument and I don't want to issue a marriage license to, and we're gonna have to fight that battle. I wish we didn't have to fight that battle. But I would rather build in these protections and at least kind of fight that battle on those grounds, and what this will do is drive home for Democrats that just building in religious exemptions is not a thing you can do anymore.

0:31:10 Thomas: I know You said it's never going to happen. Well, why not? Are we not to to the point where Democrats can run on, like, hey, let's get rid of this piece of crap law, this is not good, who believes this is a good thing, everybody? Yeah.

0:31:10 Andrew: Yep.

0:31:20 Andrew: To be there. Take a look. But right now, I think we're probably about. And then two other sops to religious institutions, one that says no nonprofit religious entity will be required to provide services, accommodations, facilities, or goods for the solemnization or celebration of a marriage, there's nothing in the act that would interpret that as saying, hey, your church has to gay marry people now. And I wouldn't be in favor of that. And by the way, you're getting married, maybe don't get married at a church. Maybe don't

0:31:53 Thomas: I I will never understand. Look, I, I get it. I mean, maybe this is some people who, you are really wanting this. But I seriously, if you, if the only way you could get married within a church that you belong to is if the long arm of of the law comes and make some person who hates you do it. Is that how you want your beautiful wedding day to go? I just, it's like weird to me. I look, I get that there, plenty there of, queer people who, for whom religion is still important to them, but this feels, it feels weird to be, I feel like, um if they're that bigoted against you, you maybe think about your membership in that church.

0:32:26 Andrew: That. Endorse that 100%. And then finally, a section that says there will will be no impact on anything that's not marriage, including tax status, scholarships, and accreditation. So, you know, you can still have your private Christian schools that are going to teach that, you now, bigotry. And this law will not revoke the status of those private schools. By the way, like, separate episode, Liberty University should not be accredited, But, longer you episode that we don't have time for. So put that all together. This does not codify Obergefell in the sense that if the Supreme Court activist reverses ObergefELL and gets rid of the 14th Amendment protection for marriage equality, that will mean that states, I've been using Alabama because I'm sure they would be on the front lines to do this, will be able to go back and pass individual state-level marriage amendments that will codify bigotry into state law. And they will not be protected by the Constitution.

0:32:44 Thomas: All

0:33:29 Andrew: This is a dereliction of duty of the Constitution, it would be one of the most grotesque things that the Supreme Court can do. But it would rank right up there rank right Yeah, it's probably on the on the near horizon. This absolutely takes steps to protect people who have existing marriages and to prevent that kind of internecine warfare in which states say, well, we're not we're going to recognize a Maryland marriage now. And is unambiguously a good thing. And anybody telling you it's not a good thing, I think is either way over emphasizing the, you know, sops to Republicans that were given out or they're just mistaken about it. This And is a thing that we should celebrate. And I do celebrate it.

0:34:26 Thomas: It's good. Take a good thing. Again, yeah, yeah.

0:34:28 Andrew: There you go. It And passed. It's passing as a law. Like, we talked about, you know, how difficult it's going to be to get rid of RFRA. Like, this will be a difficult thing to get rid of. That's a good thing.

0:34:38 Thomas: Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Raycon. Folks, be honest, have you started shopping for the holidays yet? No? Well, why not? You know, most gifts don't go bad and. I'll tell you, we are actually getting on top of because it, a certain baby is coming 12-23, which means Christmas is gonna be a little disrupted, so we're getting on the of this. And if you get it done early, you're avoiding those crowds at the mall, to find the parking, a bunch of Karens holding you up manager, all with those things. But here's what you can do. You can shop early, skip the stress, and snag some of the best deals of the season on something everyone will love, premium audio products from Raycon. When you're looking for a gift everyone needs or a stocking stuffer that's not a candle or something boring, Raycons are the way to go. Speakers offer premium sound, useful features, custom comfortable 54 hours of battery life.

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0:36:46 Clip: We're putting the people of Florida first, and we're going to do what's in their best interest, not whatever the delusions of some wealthy, woke CEO wants to do.

0:36:57 Thomas: We're joined by Liz Die once again, welcome to the show for a second time, Liz, how's it going? I'm I hear you're going to explain to us what's going on with the Stop Woke Act, um, did they stop the woke, is it stopped?

0:37:02 Liz: How are ya? They did. It is asleep. It's sleeping like a baby.

0:37:10 Thomas: Oh. Good. Okay. Thank god.

0:37:14 Liz: A little white baby.

0:37:15 Thomas: They should call it Sleep the Woke Act, a little, no, I What's happening with the, with the, well, I, I consider myself pretty woke, so I'd better stop, I guess I better just freeze.

0:37:21 Liz: Angelic. Okay. So in April, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the so-called Stop Woke Act to, as he put it, stand up against discrimination and woke indoctrination. And the law makes illegal it to espouse, promote, advance, inculcate, or compel students or employees to believe in eight specified concepts, which is actually a pretty funny echo of George Carlin's seven dirty words you can't say on television. I don't think that they did that on purpose, but it is funny.

0:37:48 Thomas: Yeah.

0:37:54 Andrew: Parallelism, yeah.

0:37:55 Liz: Exactly. So you can't say that members of one race or sex are morally superior or I mean, cool, or that anyone race is inherently oppressive or privileged,

0:38:00 Andrew: I agree with that part, right?

0:38:06 Thomas: Inherently, yeah.

0:38:07 Andrew: Those are not opposites.

0:38:09 Thomas: It's

0:38:08 Liz: Right, Right, you can't say that one race bears responsibility for oppressing another or should receive special treatment to redress past wrongs, or that anyone should feel guilty about things their grandparents did. And you can't say that, quote, "virtues as merit, excellence, hard work, fairness, neutrality, objectivity, and racial color blindness are racist or sexist, or were created by members of a particular race, color, national origin, or sex to oppress members of another race, color, national origin, or sex."

0:38:34 Andrew: Okay, just to jump in there, concepts such as neutrality, objectivity, and racial colorblindness were, in fact, invented by white people. So, keep

0:38:35 Liz: Okay,

0:38:36 Thomas: A lot there, yeah.

0:38:44 Liz: So this law basically bans all DEI programming, and furthermore, it threatens to yank educational funding if schools teach that structural racism exists, or that it confers advantages on people who've been on the receiving end of its benefits for hundreds of years. So like, that's not great. So the law was immediately challenged by a a consortium of academic and student plaintiffs led by history professor Adriana Novoa at the University of Southern Florida, and a student who's enrolled in one of her courses, which covers these so-called woke concepts.

0:39:13 Thomas: Plus, anyone who remembers that we have the First Amendment could also chat.

0:39:18 Liz: I mean, that's like also a thing, right, right. Okay. So that's not great, but you, you as a person who remembers the first amendment do not have standing whether no, whereas professor Novoa and her students do. So this case landed on the docket of Judge Mark Walker in the Northern District of Florida, an Obama appointee. And he's written this like delightfully pissy opinion, just devastating DeSantis' position. I right? I mean, DeSantis' position is that he is somehow banning discrimination and preventing a hostile work environment with this ridiculous law. And, he claims to be striking a blow against indoctrination by preventing um... college professors from expressing their opinions. Like, how do you claim you're against censorship when you're out there literally banning speech.

So this is all culture war bullshit about college students being snowflaked, but these guys are the ones passing laws to prevent their delegate undergraduate and even graduate years from finding out that redlining's bad and maybe actually had some tail end effect on wealth distribution today. So that's what's happening here. A fun quote from the very first paragraph.

Walker says, to confront certain viewpoints that offend the powers that be the state of Florida passed the so-called Stop WOKE Act in 2022, redubbed in line with the state's doublespeak, the Individual Freedom Act.

0:39:20 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, I don't, okay.

0:39:39 Thomas: Yes. Yes.

0:40:33 Liz: The law officially bans professors from expressing disfavored viewpoints in university classrooms while permitting unfettered expression of the opposite viewpoints. Defendants argue that under this act, professors enjoy, quote, academic freedom so long as they express only those viewpoints of which the state approves. This is positively dystopian, And it is. It is positively dystopian, I mean, right? For all the rights carping about Marxism and George Orwell, they're the ones passing speech codes and calling them stuff like the First Amendment Celebration and Protection Act or whatever bullshit Okay. So the state's argument is basically that they're the employer and they get to set the curriculum and control what professors say, which is kind of true, but not dispositive because the case hinges on the difference between viewpoint discrimination and content discrimination.

0:40:52 Andrew: Good start.

0:41:20 Andrew: Right.

0:41:20 Liz: So. So theoretically, the law allows professors to teach about topics that they're not allowed to endorse. So law school professors can teach about affirmative action which is, after all, under consideration at the Supreme Court, But by the state's own admission, they can't say affirmative action is good. And so if they like invited Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor to address the class, and she said, as she does say in her biography, affirmative action helped me and was good, that would count as hate speech jeopardizing the law school's state funding. Like the state could then come in and cut all the funding for University of Florida Law School if it invited Justice Sotomayor. So that's ridiculous. And also a perfect illustration of the difference between content and viewpoint, right? Because content is affirmative action is X, Y, Z, and viewpoint is affirmative action is good.

0:42:08 Liz: You're allowed to do one, but not the other, and there is an 11th Circuit case on point here. It's a 1991 decision known as Bishop v. Aronoff, in which a physiology professor in Alabama was reprimanded for inserting his religious beliefs into his lectures. And actually, it was worse than that. He had these like so-called optional sessions right before an exam to discuss intelligent design theory. So I don't know whether you're, do your viewers like intelligent design theory?

0:42:30 Andrew: No. Yeah.

0:42:34 Liz: So, right. So no. So it wasn't really subtle. So, right, right. You're teaching biology or physiology and you say the human eye is proof that God exists because it couldn't possibly have come from evolution, that's you inserting, your you viewpoint. Point. The court in that situation said there was a three-part balancing test to see whether the state could regulate this speech. The first prong is the context. The second prong is the university's position as a public employer, which may reasonably the speech rights of employees, particularly that content imparted during class time. And the third prong is the strong predilection for academic freedom as an adjunct of the free speech rights of the First Amendment, right? So there's the court acknowledging students and teachers in a university context have First Amendment rights,

0:42:34 Andrew: And This was, again, all at the college level. Yeah.

0:43:22 Andrew: So what was the result of the Aronoff decision?

0:43:25 Liz: He was not allowed to host these kind of prayer meetings that were optional right before the exam, standard, as Judge Walker says, does not lead to the same result here, right, because the first prong here, the context, text, Judge Walker notes that the state is trying to impose its own speech code on university professors, and that will chill speech. And as to the second prong, right, the university's interest in regulating speech of employees, this is not a content regulation. This is an attempt to stifle speech by kind of making these facially bullshit claims to be protecting minorities and preventing workplace discrimination. And by workplace discrimination, remember, they mean acknowledging acknowledging that racism is bad and it impacts some people more than others. You're not allowed to say that. So here's a fun little Orwell quote from The Opinion that likens the woke panic of today to World War II's admiration of Stalin that was kind of the standard of the day.

0:43:29 Andrew: Just

0:44:22 Liz: So Judge Walker says, it is not lost on this court that Mr. Orwell, in the original preface to his iconic political satire of the rise of Joseph Stalin, Animal Farm, was responding to liberal elites of his time. According to Mr. Orwell, the censoring of Animal Farm was merely a symptom of the fashionable orthodoxy of that era, namely an uncritical admiration of Soviet Russia.

0:44:44 Liz: So to here, the state has responded to fears of woke indoctrination in university classrooms, but rather than combat woke ideas with countervailing views in the marketplace of ideas, the State has chosen to eliminate one side of the debate. This only highlights the the problem with viewpoint discrimination. In the name of combating, quote, indoctrination of one perceived orthodoxy, the state allows for indoctrination in its preferred orthodoxie. I think he might be likening Ron DeSantis to Stalin. I don't know. I mean, it's possible.

0:44:43 Andrew: I Way to go, I, you. Don't, we don' get too many opportunities to shout out judges on the show. Usually we're, uh, we're criticizing. So, so that's great. Let me see if I can't you reconcile, um, these two cases, because I think, right, that the average listener is probably sitting there thinking like, yeah, I agree with Bishop versus Aronoff. If all of a sudden, even college, if, you know, my son's biology teacher, teacher at, you know, at university level, if I found out that right before the exam, he was having like, you know, secret optional sessions in which you came in and like, it was like, hey, if you want to put that this is all bullshit on the final, like, that's cool with me, and just put Jesus did it, like, that, that would be a problem, even at the university level. Even when we've sort of been cavalier about like, how university courses, law school graduate courses can have, you know, a distinct viewpoint and a political bias.

0:45:16 Liz: I

0:46:09 Andrew: But I think, and just let me know if I'm down the right trail here, I think the difference would be it would be perfectly reasonable in a college biology class to talk about and then present arguments for and against intelligent design in that biology classroom. And in fact, when I took geology in college, college, a certain number of years ago, I had a professor who presented and refuted creationist flood geology in one episode, in one of the class periods. And I then met with him afterwards and I was like, but people don't really believe this thing that you shot down as a straw man in class And he was like, oh, you sweet summer child.

0:46:43 Thomas: Episode.

0:46:57 Andrew: And moreover, like, and Liz, I'm sure, you know, you saw this in in your law school classes. I took law and economics, for example, and it was presented from the perspective of law and economics at the time as a conservative legal theory that has since fallen out of fashion is a good thing. It was presented for an unabashedly kind of right-wing monetization of claims as a good idea standpoint. I also took critical legal studies, which was presented, presented from a rather opposite standpoint. Um, I don't know, am I, am I kind of hitting on the right sort of harmonization of these, or is there, is this going to come down to the third factor?

0:47:32 Liz: Well, Andrew, not everybody went to Harvard Law. Some people went to law schools where they taught you useful shit. Yeah, no, I mean, it's cool. But if those of us who went to law school where you took things like family law, and those of Us who, I mean, you and I went to a law school, maybe roughly at the same time, and we discussed things like Bowers v. Hardwick, where sodomy was still illegal and was, remember, before gay marriage. And under these kinds of codes, the state could have made it illegal for us to take the position that gay gay marriage should be legal, right? That no professor would be able to take that kind of a position. So yeah, I think you're exactly on the right track here, that there was a difference and that this is, can we discuss a thing rather than a teacher saying, wink, wink. Nudge, nudge. If you want to say that God did it, cool. So this is clearly different.

And that as the state here is trying to say, that it's fighting against indoctrination, it is in fact seeking to indoctrinate in ideas. So, And here's what right, Judge Walker said. The state of Florida says that to avoid indoctrination, the state of Florida can impose its own orthodoxy and can indoctinate university students to its preferred viewpoint.

0:47:36 Andrew: Oh, really? What's that like?

0:47:58 Andrew: Okay. Yeah.

0:48:45 Liz: This extravagant doublespeak flies in the face of, quote, the invaluable role academic freedom plays in our public schools, particularly at the post-secondary level. Okay. Know, so it's a pretty good opinion and, and And it's unstinting in its criticisms of, um, DeSantis, AKA Stalin.

0:49:00 Andrew: But, But now I have to ask the hard question, which is, okay, District U.S. District Court, Federal Court in Florida, this is now headed up to an awfully conservative 11th Circuit. We going to have you back on in six weeks to, you discuss this being

0:49:00 Liz: Um yeah,

0:49:16 Thomas: Oh, here. Allow me to be the optimist of the show. There is no, this is so bad. I can't even see a conservative circuit court holding it up, right? I mean, it's just so blatantly unconstitutional. Am I wrong? Am I too optimistic?

0:49:21 Liz: Tend to think you're not wrong. So I I do think that Judge Walker has done all that he can to make this stand up at the 11th Circuit, including referring to an opinion by then Third Circuit Judge Samuel Alito in in support of his position and also name-checking several Federalist Society papers, um, decrying judicial activism and saying he's not going to engage in judicial activism. He's going to stick with this 11th Circuit precedent. And one of those papers is by that Ilya Shapiro, who got himself cancel cultured out of Georgetown law. Remember he made those really, really gross racist statements about Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson during her nomination process.

0:50:04 Andrew: Yeah,

0:50:04 Thomas: Oh, I don't remember this. I but that sounds horrible. So this person sucks.

0:50:11 Liz: Oh, it was so, so gross. Anyway, so God, who knows what the 11th Circuit is gonna do, but we're trying, fingers crossed.

0:50:12 Thomas: Okay.

0:50:12 Andrew: It Is Yeah I I'll, take a win and trying to bulletproof the opinion. You, over, the reverse, so glad, glad we can celebrate some good news for now. Anything else we need to know about stopping, uh, the Stop WOKE Act? Stay

0:50:30 Liz: Stop Just stay woke, stay Woke, kids

0:50:32 Thomas: Can I Be what Just look, give it to me straight, can I wake up or do I need to take a nap? I don't even, I'm going to take an app just to be safe, I Think I'm Gonna, yeah All

0:50:32 Liz: Oh

0:50:33 Andrew: Woke

0:50:39 Liz: Honey It's Friday We All need a nap

0:50:40 Thomas: Right A little siesta

0:50:43 Andrew: Well, thank you so much, Liz, uh, other than, uh, on Twitter at Five Dollar Feminist, uh, where else can people find you, read your stuff? Appreciate Your Genius

0:50:51 Liz: Make A lot of words At Yeah, I make a lot of words at Wonkette and also at Above The Law Thanks

0:50:52 Andrew: Ah

0:50:56 Thomas: You Do Make a Lot of Words, very impressive, everybody check it out.

0:50:57 Andrew: Great Great Stuff, always read your stuff.

0:51:02 Liz: See you guys.

0:51:03 Clip: Oh, no associate of this firm has ever failed the bar exam. No kidding.

0:51:10 Thomas: Now it's time for T3BE. That's Thomas Takes the Bar Exam. Each week I attempt to answer a question with using only psychic powers and Uh, we'll See how, how far it gets me with this weird book that's either an easy question or the most dastardly trick question and there's no in between, so let's find out which one it is this time.

0:51:19 Andrew: Yeah, all right, Thomas, a man was charged with larceny of a coat from a barstool. The state produced

0:51:36 Thomas: Was It at night, no Never mind, that's, don't want to, oh

0:51:43 Andrew: A witness who testified that the man said before he took the coat, gosh, I'm so forgetful. I must have left this here hours ago. It could easily have gone missing. The judge declared a mistrial rather than an acquittal. Can the man be retried? A. Yes, this retrial will not offend the federal constitution B. No, under the federal constitutional retrial requires new evidence C. Yes if the man can be proved guilty or D. Yes under the Erie doctrine

0:52:15 Thomas: God, um, okay, charged, yes, produced a witness who testified that the man said before he took the coat, "Gosh, I'm so forgetful, I must have left this here hours ago, it could easily have gone missing." I don't know what I'm wondering, okay, I don't, if that's just like for fun, you just some color on the thing, I don't know why that affects the question of the retrial because the, the man who was charged with taking the coat, "I must have left this here," so he's like doing that loud, like covering for his, "Definitely my coat, everybody, let me just take that coat, better take it now, otherwise someone else could take it," so it's like that kind of thing. Judge declared a mistrial rather than an acquittal, maybe we can assume this is like a bad faith judge.

0:53:07 Thomas: Who's like, "Oh no, this is devastating to my case," and it's like clearing the guy, and so rather than the judge being like, well, yeah, I'm gonna, you I mean, I don't think the judge would have declared an acquittal unless it's a bench trial, mistrial, but whatever, um, rather than that the judge is like, "No, we'll do mistrial so we can get him again," so, okay, okay, this is maybe not as, this might be a little more difficult than I thought because you would want there to be some protection against just being infinite retried because a judge has it out for you or something, but I feel like that's not very plausible, and also you draw a different judge every time probably, I, would, don't that be a big enough problem for them to have written in a rule that that would specify, like if the, mistrial if was inappropriately declared, then you can't have a retrial.

0:53:56 Thomas: That's what I, that's what, I would have to exist in the way I'm reading this question. Can the man be retried? Cause my first instinct was, yeah, of course a mistrial means you can retry them. That's just how mistrials work. Otherwise you would be incentivized to just get a mist trial every time. And then you're free to go. I don't think that's how it works. So, A, yes, this retrial would not offend the federal constitution. So, a, I think is a plausible, for sure, plausible answer. The only no answer is B, no, under the federal Constitution, a retrial requires new evidence. And the problem is there's no way that's true. A retrial does not that doesn't require new. I mean, there's mistrials all the time. Like if, you know, if like the defendant falls over and his pants fall down or something and it's like, ah, retry, mistrial because the jury saw that, you know, like stuff can happen inappropriately in front of the jury.

0:54:47 Thomas: That's not really anyone's fault, you that just ends in a mistrial, it's not like you have to say, "Well, we need new evidence in order to retry," unless I'm really missing something. So that sucks because that eliminates the the only no answer, which is B. C, yes, if the man can be proved guilty, that there's no way, well, if the man can be proved guilty, I mean you could argue, but that's just going to be prosecutorial discretion, that's not going to be like a rule, you know, so I think no on C, and D, yes, under the Eerie doctrine, so that's the wild card.

So for that, for D to be true, it's almost like it'd have to be a double bluff, it'd be like there is a reason that he shouldn't be able to be retried, but there's an Eerie doctrine that allows him to be, uh, that could be, I mean this could be one of those huge trick ones, um, we've, we've been on a streak of straightforward ones, so I'm, I'm tempted to just pick D because it's weird, but I mean, I think I'm gonna have to go A, yes, if there was a better no answer I could go for it, if there's a no answer that was something like, you no because, you know, it can be proven that the, the, the judge was, was inappropriately declared a misdraft, I don't know, something like that, like I could see going for that no answer, but I'm between A and D, and D would be a dastardly trick that I just cannot get right, um, and I think it's not worth the, the probability of just guessing that for, for shits and giggles, so I'm going to go A, but it could be D, my second answer.

0:56:04 Andrew: Alright, and if you want to play along with Tom Ashina how to do that just share out this episode on social media, include the hashtag T3BE, include your guests, your reasons therefore we will pick a winner and shower that winner with never ending fame and fortune Fame and Fortune, not guaranteed.

0:56:18 Clip: And thank you, Let's go!

0:56:20 Thomas: And now it's time to thank our new patrons at patreon.com/law. By, and the way, Andrew, I feel like it's maybe a better time than ever to become a patron because you're about to, pretty soon, within a week or two, get a ton of extra stuff as a patron, a ton of extra content with absolutely no extra cost and no extra ads because you don't get any ads. So probably a really good time to go on patreon.com slash law and become

0:56:43 Andrew: And we just we just did a Q&A that is being released. We do all sorts of great stuff.

0:56:48 Thomas: Yeah. The audio is out for patrons, all sorts of good stuff. Why don't you start us off, Andrew, thanking our new patrons on patreon.com/law.

0:56:51 Andrew: Yep. Big thanks to Dinosaur Sheriff, Ryan Flannery, Stephen G., Paul McMenamin, kevin mullins. I'm attracted to lawyers because they are always appealing. Thank you. Mary Vogt, Ryan Bell, Aletheia485, Something Creative Here. Alexandra N. Castro Navarro. David, Hi, I'm white lady. Hi, White Lady, Gregory F Ladle, and Robert. Thank you all so much for supporting the show. And Thomas, take it away.

0:57:26 Thomas: Thank you to Alex Jones, a wholly owned subsidiary of Newton Public Schools, that's a good one, PerfectlyPanda, David Maayan, Greg, Ritka, Sam, timdufresne, Alexander Wikner, Hades, oh good, we got Hades. Sweet, finally. Let's open up a new market for us, I think.

0:57:32 Andrew: Nice. Oh, nice. I think we would do well in the underworld.

0:57:49 Thomas: I was going to say, and if there's people who hate our podcast, you know, they might have to listen as a punishment. Yeah.

0:57:55 Andrew: Also good, yeah.

0:57:56 Thomas: Eric Stratton (Adnan Syed is Obviously Innocent). Yeah, okay, sure.

0:58:00 Andrew: There we go. Hey, we'll read it.

0:58:02 Thomas: Aya Mastan, A Cat Named Yonder, Aaron Holmes, Ellen, Andrew J Dufour, and JoeP. Thanks, new patrons. Hope you enjoy the ad-free content and pretty soon the tons of extra stuff. And that's our show. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks to Liz Dye, as always. She's fantastic and hoping for more Liz Dye in our future we'll see Andrew and we'll see everybody for the again normal format next week but week after that extra stuff can't wait we'll See You Then

0:58:12 Andrew: All right.

0:58:33 Andrew: All

0:58:34 Clip: I move for a bad court thingy. You mean a mistrial? Yeah, that's why you're the judge and I'm the law talking guy.

0:59:08 Clip: www.openargs.com. Be sure to join the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Yodel Mountain and follow us on Twitter at OpenArgs. This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media LLC, all rights reserved. It is produced with the assistance of transcriptionist Heather Leverage, production assistant Ashley Smith, and additional contributions from Morgan Stringer and Debra Smith. Special thanks to Teresa Gomez, who runs our live shows and heads up the OA Wiki, follow at OA Wiki on Twitter. Additional thanks to the moderators of the Opening Arguments Facebook community, Emily Waters, Alicia Cook, Eric Brewer, Natalie Newell, Brian Ziegenhagen, and Teresa. And finally, thanks to Thomas Smith, who edits the show and created the fabulous theme music, which was used with permission.