I... Hate the Supreme... COURT!

Transcript

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

0:00:45 Thomas: And welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1045. I'm your host Thomas Smith. That over there is real-life attorney Matt Cameron. How you doing?

0:00:54 Matt: I'm feeling more extended than the Supreme Court's term this season. You see it's actually going to Monday?

0:00:56 Thomas: Oh geez. Do you need help? Wow. I'm

0:01:01 Matt: I could use some help.

0:01:01 Thomas: Worried about you, if that's true. Medical attention?

0:01:05 Matt: Yeah, a little stretched out, but I'm doing good, doing good. But the Supreme court is actually going to be, this is rare, this hardly ever happens, but they're going to, they just announced another day for Monday. They're going be announcing more decisions on Monday because they have not been able to get everything out. Have so much left. 9 or 10, I think, left at least.

0:01:20 Thomas: Nine or 10.

0:01:21 Matt: As of the time we're reporting, there's 9 or 10 left. So there's going to be the decision day that was already scheduled on Friday where we're expecting a few of them, but I don't think they're going to dump all those in one day.

0:01:23 Thomas: Sure. Right. Right. They just not do them, though? Can they be like, well, decide we'll this next whatever. Could do that.

0:01:35 Matt: They can hold it over to next term, but that's disfavored, obviously. There's also no particular set statutory schedule or anything. They just like to take summer or breaks. They got things to do.

0:01:43 Thomas: Yeah, that's Yeah. OK. So is very out of the ordinary for them to do this, essentially.

0:01:51 Matt: The last time it happened was during the pandemic. And I think before that, I don't know when the last Time It Went Into July was.

0:01:55 Thomas: Gotcha. Well, why don't we take a little break and then we'll get to our main stories today. Day, we've got some decisions to talk about, as well as if we have time, perhaps Steve Bannon going to jail to talk About, we'll see if we can squeeze that in. You can avoid all commercials, all ads, including this very plug that you're hearing now, if you're on patreon.com/law. So head over there. The goodies, the lot off of movies, the no ads. After this break. We'll get to it.

0:02:01 Matt: Sure do.

0:02:23 Thomas: Right, Matt, so you wanted start to with, start uh, of State v. Munoz, which is a case that was decided a couple days ago that I honestly haven't heard much coverage of. Really curious to hear what happened here.

0:02:32 Matt: But I got to talk about this because first it is a direct follow-up to the conversation we had last week about Biden's new executive order. Because there has already been some misreporting about this, and I want try to set it straight and make sure people understand what this is and isn't. The CEO of The Federalist, obviously a very smart and wonderful person, tweeted, "Is there a new leaker at the Supreme Court?" He thought it was just very suspicious that this decision about an immigrant's right to marry a U.S. citizen came down right around the same time that Biden was announcing this order. Of course, they have nothing to do with each other, but he's going on and on. This is how right-wing people talk now. This ist just like everything's Q. There's always conspiracy theories behind everything.

0:03:07 Matt: Somebody at the White House was clearly tipped off about the unannounced Supreme Court decision, which explains why the White House rushed out such a shoddily written and argued new executive order, et cetera, et et cetera.

0:03:07 Thomas: What the hell are you talking about, dude? This is way better explained by the fact that he did a really right-wing thing on immigration and then wanted to do a slightly softer thing on it. That already explains it.

0:03:17 Matt: So it's a good question. And it gets better because the position that he's talking about that came out in this decision is the position the Biden administration was asking the court to take. So now it was some kind of surprise.

0:03:34 Thomas: What an idiot.

0:03:35 Matt: This is what they're asking him to do. He's truly an absolute fool, Sean Davis, enemy of the show, for sure. Only him, though, I've seen a number of people saying, well, this just destroys the possibility of this executive order because it finds that there's no liberty interest in a U.S. citizen marrying a non -citizen. And that is true.

0:03:40 Thomas: Nice.

0:03:51 Matt: It does get there, but that doesn't actually interfere with this. And I want to step through this a little bit. And just like last week, people were surprised, I hope, to learn how difficult it can be to go through marriage as an immigrant, immigrate to that way. Gets even worse, because what we were talking about last time was largely about the right to sponsor somebody and to get a visa and remain in the United States and do it all through the adjustment process through USCIS here?

0:03:50 Thomas: I was Right away, I already, I already don't know what this decision you're talking about is, but even from what I know, the Biden EO was about, like, hey, you can stay in the country while another thing happens, like, like the court cases you're describing saying there's no liberty interest in marrying or whatever. That, I mean, it doesn't sound great. I don't know what it means, but like it doesn't seem like it would interfere with a time period that you get to stay in the United States while you're applying for something. Yeah.

0:04:34 Matt: No. The executive action of parole, which is something that is completely within the executive's power and has nothing to do with this decision. Decision has to do with consular processing. And it's actually a perfect time to talk about this, because we were just talking about how spouses have to go back and process through the consulate if they didn't come with permission. And this waiver that you have to get of the 10-year rule. But there are other things that can happen at the, the consulate. And I was actually just dealing, I've been dealing with two different consulates actually in the last week, which have been wearing me out. I mean, consulates.

0:04:43 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm. Yeah.

0:05:04 Matt: Are little kingdoms. They're just little duchies that get to do whatever they want. And they all think that every one of these consulates does things the same way, and they all have ridiculously different ways of doing things. And if you think that the domestic immigration system is a black box, is a Kafkaesque nightmare, which is, that's fair. Those are fair conclusions. The consulates are much worse because they are completely non -reviewable, as this decision has confirmed. Let me take you through the facts of this so you can see just how bad this is.

0:05:22 Thomas: Huh. Now. Sorry. For the dumb question, what are the consulates, like, as in our consulates in other countries, or other countries' consulates here, or what, what is that, okay?

0:05:34 Matt: The person here is from El Salvador. Because he came without permission, he had to return to El Salvador and go to the US consulate in San Salvador. This is crucial to understand is that he had an approved marriage visa petition. They found that he was in a legitimate marriage, but you still have to go process the visa where they examine you as a person and decide if you're you're admissible. And that can be pretty stressful if you have other factors. Now, normally, this isn't a problem in my cases. Usually, we have people leaving the country with these waivers approved, knowing they're going to be able to come back. But there's always a chance that you get the wrong consular officer on the wrong day, and they didn't have their breakfast or whatever, and it can get really bad. This is a very common problem. That's what happened here.

0:05:45 Thomas: U .S. consulate okay huh but What is in it for them? Like, that's what I don't get. Why wouldn't they be standardized? It's all us in other countries, right? It's all our thing. Like why why wouldn't there be a standardized way of kind of doing things?

0:06:30 Matt: A great question, Thomas. They're all just little outposts. They've just little representatives of the United States, and along with the local culture and the local government. They form sort of their own way of doing things. And so something as simple as getting a medical exam and how you get that to the consulate, something as simply as which documents you have to bring and where you have bring them and how do you do an appointment. And it's just every one of these consulates does things so completely differently. But that's not even the problem here. That's just procedural. The problem is this incredible amount of power that each consular officer has.

And like a lot of people who are given this kind of power, you get a lot of people that just use it in mysterious and arbitrary ways. And so in this case, we're talking about the U.S. citizen here is named Sandra Munoz, and she's actually an employment and civil rights lawyer in California. And she's married to a man named Luis Asencio Cordero. And they married in 2010. They have a child together.

Had to go through the waiver process that I was just telling you about last week. Of course, it took a little while, and it didn't take as long back then as it takes now. It took about two years, whereas it's more like four or five now. And he went back to the consulate in San Salvador. Now I work with a lot of Salvadorans, so I'm very familiar with the issues that he experienced here. Mr. Asencio Cordero has a number of tattoos, as do quite a lot of people in this country.

0:06:33 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm. Okay. As does everyone. Have you gone outside lately? Everyone but me and Lydia has 1500 tattoos.

0:07:43 Matt: Yeah, no, this is important. The tattoos included the Lady of Guadalupe, which is a fairly common Latino tattoo, Freud, which was kind of a cool thing to have in your body, I guess.

0:07:54 Thomas: Not a very common tattoo,

0:07:56 Matt: No, not at all.

0:07:57 Thomas: I would think.

0:07:57 Matt: Some Sort of tribal thing, which is pretty normal, and theatrical masks with dice and cards. Now, I'm pretty sure it's that last one they had the problem with, but the consular officer, at first, without explaining them at all, think about about how, I after all of these years of knowing that they can do this, there's a provision in 8 U.S.C. 1182(a)(3)(A) in which they can decide that any alien who a consular officer knows or has reasonable ground to believe seeks to enter the United States to engage solely, principally, or incidentally in any activity to violate any law of the United States relating to certain things or any other unlawful activity. So you're talking about somebody with

0:07:57 Thomas: But

0:08:31 Matt: No criminal record who has no indications at all in his life that he's here to commit criminal activity. He's been here for plenty of time, has US citizen family, has been working.

0:08:38 Thomas: If You think he looks crimey? Great. But What is in it for that guy at the consulate? Because, like, that's what I'm not understanding, what Is it to them, them, to like keep someone in that country for bullshit reasons that doesn't want to be there? There some incentive I'm missing, or is it just purely the you, whims of some person who has too much power?

0:08:40 Matt: Exactly. And don't either.

0:08:59 Matt: Is pretty much that. I mean, personally, I couldn't live with myself if I know that I had chosen to separate a from his wife and young child. That happens all the time for all kinds of arbitrary reasons. And sometimes it's not even just separation, it's just delay, right? And they'll just impose these ridiculous delays. As simple as, for example, if you admit that you have smoked marijuana within the past year to the doctor who does your medical exam, now, even if it's in a place like Massachusetts where you can go buy it in the marijuana store, that can get you excluded for a year. You just have to wait outside the country for a years just because of that, because you admitted that you once smoked marijuana. Not even joking. This is how bad it can get. So these consulates have just unlimited authority. It's generally been found, and was confirmed in this case, that they they can't really be reviewed. We try to get members of Congress involved sometimes when they're especially bad, and sometimes they can help, but there's very little review of any of this. So

0:09:06 Thomas: I Hope it's corruption. That would make me feel better, you know, like

0:09:49 Matt: No. I wish it

0:09:50 Thomas: I'd rather it be like, oh, no, it's correction, somebody, they're extorting them to keep, like, they're like, hey, your family needs to pay us money, otherwise we're keeping you here. Or that would make me feel better than just like, I'm going to ruin your life because, you know, like, that's that's worse somehow.

0:10:06 Matt: I think think that they're being very well -meaning and that they are protecting the United States. And I will say in San Salvador, in particular, they're concerned about gang activity. There is a serious gang problem in El Salvador that right.

0:10:16 Thomas: But like if you're protecting America from a guy who admitted to smoking marijuana once, that's

0:10:24 Matt: Nothing at all.

0:10:23 Thomas: Nothing. Sorry, that'S absolutely nothing.

0:10:25 Matt: Agree. And I don't, I think gang that stuff is dramatically overblown too. And, and, I want to talk about way that the immigration system uses gang membership another time, because that's, that's another episode, but it is bad. I mean, that they can really use it to justify anything, and it's people who are, like, literally, you have, like a mixed, a mixed CD in your car that is, like you rap, like Spanish gangster rap. That's enough for that kind of I think you'd be a gang associate. Tattoos, if you have tattoos that they think might resemble gang signs. Now, think about this. You've just been denied a visa, and the consular officer doesn't even really have to tell you why. He just has to point to this part of the statute. Amy Coney Barrett in the decision said she doesn't think they even have to tell you which part of statute you were denied under, which is, just as a lawyer, that is shocking. I mean, that's a horrible thing to say. I think she's wrong about that.

0:10:37 Thomas: Wow.

0:11:06 Thomas: Because they're not a citizen, it's like, oh, we don't have to. You don't have the same rights at all okay

0:11:11 Matt: No rights. Once you've left the country, no constitutional rights to anything. But the question becomes, how much of a right does your citizen spouse have? Because there is now a line of cases, which I'm a little concerned about, as is Justice Sotomayor at this point, there's a lineof cases up to Obergefell saying that there is a constitutional right to marriage. And this seems to be interfering with that a little bit because they're saying that there is no constitutional liberty interest in a visa. Now, were not told they had to fight for three years and they had to go to a district court. They had to extract get this information out of the Department of State. It's a lot of work. I've tried to do it myself.

0:11:13 Thomas: Yeah so And so they were denied, or they're denied or delayed, which was it?

0:11:49 Matt: Denied.

0:11:49 Thomas: Denied.

0:11:50 Matt: Complete.

0:11:50 Thomas: Wow, completely denied because of tattoos that might have been like, maybe they're into theater.

0:11:56 Matt: There's all kinds of reasons. But the laugh -cry mask is possibly gang -related, but it's also just kind of cultural. There are a lot of things like that, very much like we were talking about with Young Thug Trial, about sort of the culture around gangster rap in this country. It's not that different. So he had to guess, as Coney Barrett pointed out, this man had to try to figure out why he was denied. And the best he can come up with is that he's got these tattoos. So that was confirmed about three years later. The Department of State, they had to go through all of this massive fight just to get them to tell them why so they could try to have it reconsidered. And so this comes up to the Supreme Court, which there is already a line of cases pretty well saying that consular decisions are unreviewable, but they're making a due process argument and saying, look, you took all this time to even tell us why you're denying the visa. I, as a U.S. citizen, have a constitutional liberty interest in seeing this thing through.

0:12:06 Thomas: Yeah, interesting. So I people think, in other countries don't enjoy our constitutional rights entirely. That's kind of reasonable. Like, it's not As though, you - sure, that would be untenable if everyone in the world somehow had the same constitutional rights as we had in with respect to what what our government is doing. Anyway, but so the wrinkle here is, though, yeah, but the person who's, trying you to get their significant their their, guess, husband or wife, it's because they have to be married. Right. To get them into this country. They have a right of some kind. They have an interest of some type and Just outright denying this without even telling them why has got to violate some sort of something for the citizen who's in this country? So is that kind of do I have that right? Like, that's the question here. Yeah.

0:12:46 Matt: Right. Right. Sure. Sure.

0:13:20 Matt: That's it. If there were any other kind of benefit, it would be a big Fifth Amendment problem, serious due process problem. Justice Sotomayor starts her dissent by quoting a Bergefell directly about the right to marry as fundamental as a matter of history and tradition, because you won't believe this, but when Amy Coney Barrett writes a majority decision, she's rooting it in history and traditionally, which when you're talking about the immigration system, it's just about as bad as when you are talking about history and traditions of race relations in this country. I mean, it is race relations. That is the history of the immigration system. This decision from Amy Comey Barrett is a mess. I really do not like it. It's really disturbing if you actually see what she's doing here, which is that she's going through and she's using the Dobbs language about the deeply rooted right. She's saying, well, let's look and see if there's been a deeply rooted Right to bring your spouse to this country. Oh, look, there hasn't been because it turns out that at one point, we completely excluded Chinese women with no exception for wives.

0:13:24 Thomas: Wow. Yeah. Oh.

0:14:01 Thomas: For Fuck Good, so

0:14:07 Matt: Right, because we're excluding

0:14:07 Thomas: That's So we Can do that forever there Also Was Slavery, by the way, so I guess that is that Should we, yeah

0:14:09 Matt: All Chinese people. Yes. Slavery had only been abolished a couple decades before we excluded the Chinese. And of course, the Chinese Exclusion Act was a massive racist mistake. It's generally viewed as one of the worst things we've done. And she doesn't even get that right, because I happen to know that there was. The courts created a right to bring your spouse, even under the Chinese Exclusion Act, but it just wasn't statutory.

0:14:32 Thomas: Well And for a lot of history, correct me if I'm wrong, I am bad at history admittedly, but wasn't there just barely any immigration laws at all? Like, you just came, people just came here and they're like, ah, this land is mine. Doesn't matter who already was here. I now have it. Was like, that's got to be a significant chunk of our history, right?

0:14:45 Matt: That's right. That. She actually says we had relatively open borders until 1882. But of course, we didn't have a visa system, anything resembling a visa system until 1921. And she misquotes James Madison, completely takes him out of context to try to say that there's no rights, that it's only a favor and we can do whatever we want with any of this.

0:15:08 Thomas: So which history and tradition do you get to respect? Why is it when it's the second amendment, it's like, well, just go back as far as possible and we do an interpretation of it that doesn't even make sense. But when it'S immigration, it'S like some hybrid, well we're going to pick the times that that we think makes sense. Not the time where anyone could basically come here at all and it's fine. That's not the history and tradition somehow. It's just nonsensical.

0:15:10 Matt: It's always the question, isn't it?

0:15:30 Thomas: Don't let me misrepresent it. If I'm missing something, please correct me.

0:15:29 Matt: No, you're on. History and tradition of visas is only about 100 years old as it is. And as you may or may not know, I hope people know this, the 20th century visa system was directly based in racial quotas. It was completely racist. So even citing that as a history and tradition is about as bad as citing citing something like slavery or Jim Crow, right? You're talking about built -in discrimination. So this decision, and again, from people that claim to respect marriage to the ultimate, right, that talk about how important it is to respect traditional families and nuclear families. Thing is, as As Gorsuch says, and as Sotomayor agrees, they didn't have to go that far, right?

0:15:43 Thomas: Yeah.

0:16:06 Thomas: Can you step back then? I don't feel like I know that. So what was essentially the action? Whom and what were they looking for and what's the procedural history here? Because

0:16:14 Matt: So the spouse, Sandra Munoz, is suing to, first of all, just to say that there's a due process issue with this entire thing, that they took way too long to tell her what this is about, that they should still have a right to review it. It's tricky because the consular reviewability is pretty well established, but there still have to be exceptions. There still have to be places where you can say that you do this and it can't be completely arbitrary. It's interesting to note too that I think every member of the court begrudgingly has to agree. The doesn't really want to, but they have to agree that they can't necessarily change this outcome based on existing case law and the way that the law is written. But Sotomayor is making the point that there is a due process problem here, that this should be remanded so that the courts can decide how much of a due process violation this was to withhold this information for so long.

The thing is that she was taking a new tack. There's a new strategy here taken by the plaintiff to try to argue that there is this constitutionally protected liberty interest that's based in the same line of thinking in case law as a Bergefell. Think it's a good try because it been held that a visa petition is your property, that it's something that belongs to you as a petitioner, as a spouse.

And it just makes sense that if you have a property interest in that, you should have a proper interest in its outcome when you don't drop the ball at the point at which you go to the consulate. So I see where she's coming from. I think it makes sense, and I think this could have gone the other way in finding that there is. But Barrett worries about all kinds of collateral consequences if they find that there actually is this special liberty interest. But it's cruel.

It really brings out how difficult the entire consular system is. And I mean, again, if you're talking about history, I do want to make this point before we move on that there was a point at which, this is completely true, I'm not exaggerating this, there was a point in which US women marrying foreign men lost their

0:16:32 Thomas: Yeah, Yeah,

0:17:52 Matt: US citizenship because they married foreigners, but men marrying women did not. That was just in the law.

0:17:57 Thomas: History and tradition meant wow.

0:18:00 Matt: Yep. And, know, this actually wasn't much of a problem back then because women couldn't vote. And there was generally just nobody was really challenging it. But, I mean, to the point that during World War I, women married to Germans had to register as enemy aliens because they weren't U.S. citizens. Yeah. I mean, it's really bad. This is not a history and tradition we want to touch. We want to get anywhere near. Year. Very disturbing to me to see this kind of originalism approach to immigration. Really don't like it. Do not like this outcome. And I think it is extra cruel, as Sotomayor points out, to go this extra distance and

0:18:28 Thomas: The, I don't know what the extra distance is. I'm, they trying to get the decision reversed and try, or in the alternative, trying to say at least like there should be some due process here or what were, what was Muñoz asking for and then what was, was ultimately the decision, okay?

0:18:43 Matt: Was trying to get the court to say that there was a specific constitutional liberty interest that would raise Fifth Amendment protections and that because they were so slow in all of this that there was a Fifth Amendment violation and she should get a do-over, basically, which I think that's reasonable, and it should trigger a judicial review, even though you wouldn't usually get judicial review of this. And I know, I continue to believe there should be judicial review of so many of these consulates that are just acting completely out of pocket without any oversight, but nobody's listening to me.

0:18:54 Thomas: Sure.

0:19:10 Thomas: So this is the kind of thing where there is a range, obviously, of what they could have done if they were a compassionate court made up of Mats and Thomas's, then they would have just been like, yeah, cool, undo, and also, we let's decide that they need to have a certain amount of due process in this, try again, to. They could have just, that would have at least left kind of the status quo, right?

0:19:34 Matt: Gorsuch, in his concurrence, which is only a page and a half, he basically says we could have just stopped at saying that she did end up receiving the information she wanted. It took her three years, but she did. That's good enough. We could have stopped there. As usual, they just have to go a little further. They have to stick it to somebody.

0:19:42 Thomas: Right. Yeah. They went even further as to say what exactly?

0:19:50 Matt: We hold a citizen does not have a fundamental liberty interest in her non -citizen spouse being admitted to the country. That is concerning. That has Concerning language. It doesn't necessarily implicate anything with the Biden order. I can see how people might think it does. It is something that can certainly be used against people in the future. And also in the course of this, severely limited a 1972 case that we rely on a lot called Kleindienst v. Mandel, which was successfully used the Trump years. And that case essentially held that US citizens have a First Amendment right to associate with non-citizens and that we do have an interest. In that case, there were professors trying to bring somebody over who was known to be a Marxist and they went on for a lecture or something. And these college professors were trying to bring somebody over and said they wanted to be able to have a First Amendment right of association with them and to hear what he had to say.

0:19:58 Thomas: Wow.

0:20:35 Matt: And so the court in that case found that there should be a facially legitimate and bona fide reason if you're going to deny when there's a US citizen's interest. And Barrett limits this case down to the point that I'm not sure it even means anything anymore. I don't know where it's at anymore.

0:20:49 Thomas: So What will this mean? Does this mean that when this application process is happening, the consulate just doesn't even, like, as no, like, what will this tangibly affect, how will this go in the future because of this decision, meaning

0:21:02 Matt: Think this really puts the nail in consular viability, which was already pretty tough. Think I this might've been kind of the last line.

0:21:08 Thomas: Whatever they do is Untouchable, including How much time they take All That, yeah

0:21:09 Matt: Yeah. Which is pretty bad. Yeah, Yeah, yeah. The arbitrary decisions that can be in the hands of one person who can make that decision on pretty much whatever they want and not even necessarily have to tell you why. And Sotomayor is very concerned. And I think the reason I really want to talk about this, because she's making the point that in a Bergefell, we did find that there is a pretty serious right to marriage. She says the constitutional right to marriage is not so flimsy. The government can't banish a U.S. citizen spouse and give only a bare statutory citation as an excuse.

She's saying they're essentially ignoring Obergefell, and she makes the very important point, I'm really glad she said this, that same -sex couples, of course protected by ObergefELL, would be severely burdened by this because you're talking about somewhere like El Salvador or Haiti or somewhere else that's just not safe necessarily, especially for people who are coming from the United States, don't know anything about this culture, and are walking into a place where it might be criminalized, as it is in many places like Jamaica and Kenya, it's actually a crime to be gay at this point. So talking about banishing people to live in a place like that, and against those countries, but the extra dangers that you're picking up there,

0:21:32 Thomas: Yeah

0:22:11 Matt: And there's got to be more rights here than they're giving.

0:22:11 Thomas: The So long story short, if you are married someone who's not a citizen, basically you can f yourself here, like, you don't, there's like almost nothing, wow, do

0:22:27 Matt: This really underscores the necessity of Biden's order, because it is so much easier and you have so many more rights when you're in this country. As soon as you leave, I'm not trying to scare people. Generally, I've never had anybody permanently stuck. And all the time I've been doing this, we're very careful about letting people leave the country. You know, there are I've heard so many stories, and I've met so many people that didn't have lawyers or bad lawyers that ended up getting stuck in these kinds of situations. And the consulates are just a nightmare. So you that's something take take away from this.

0:22:50 Thomas: You Think there's anything else, um, perhaps, or that the listeners might not think of that could result from this, like, are there further, I mean, you don't have to go, like, you know, slippery slope to parade of horribles, but like, are you worried about anything else happening as a result of this finding, of this decision about

0:23:06 Matt: I don't want to be too alarmist, but Sotomayor is clearly concerned about the future of a Bergefell.

0:23:09 Thomas: Obergefell.

0:23:10 Matt: And she's Saying this could be the future of the way that we think about the constitutional right to marriage if you're finding these kinds of exceptions. And I think she's absolutely right. And I hope that that's not where we're going, but that really depends on who's on the court.

0:23:10 Thomas: Yeah.

0:23:21 Thomas: Interesting. I feel like substantively this feels to me from what you're saying that doesn't really touch on that question because this is about like, hey, a non-citizen doesn't have a right to whatever, or you don't have liberty interest in your marriage to a non-citizen. And but it's the fact that like the decision itself kind disrespects and doesn't take at into consideration what Obergefell stood for that that makes you nervous on this. Right.

0:23:47 Matt: Right. The due process rights that

0:23:48 Thomas: Do guess I'm just asking to make sure there's something like specifically in this decision that like overturns Obergefeller or anything. Thing. Okay.

0:23:54 Matt: No, certainly not.

0:23:55 Thomas: Very alarming.

0:23:56 Matt: She's right to sound the alarm, and she's right to look ahead and to think about where this could go with a different court. Even this court, so

0:23:57 Thomas: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Cool, man. Awesome. That sucks. And that was the one that I didn't even really know much about. So I can't, you've just added to the pile of horror on the court and all the cases we haven't even gotten yet. So Matt, I think we ought to take a break and then talk about more horribles.

0:24:17 Matt: We can talk about the one you already know you're angry about

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0:26:00 Thomas: This is insane, Matt. I can't wait for a deep dive from you on this because it, we've actually covered this on the show going back way back about how bad the Supreme Court for a long time has ruined any sort of anti-corruption, anti-bribery stuff. Like it's insane. I mean, my understanding is these decisions have long been bad already.

0:26:02 Matt: Is Sure.

0:26:21 Thomas: Got people just absolutely to rights accepting bribes. But like technical reasons, the Supreme Court's like, yeah, it's it's OK, though. And this seems like just next level of that, because the headline that I'm seeing that I can't wait for you to explain is, well, if the pro quote, the quid, the pro quo, the squid, whichever part of it, if that happens, like after if you get a gift and you're bribed, like, after already doing something, then that's cool.

0:26:20 Matt: It's

0:26:46 Thomas: Yeah, that's just a tip for corruption, a corruption tip.

0:26:45 Matt: Just a gratuity, it's just that, that's Right. Yeah, it's like, uh, son's teacher takes a little time to tutor him and you, you buy the teacher and their partner dinner, right? Like, that's it's just like that. Like you don't want to keep that, you don't want to make that a crime, do you, Thomas? That's what Kavanaugh is saying.

0:27:01 Thomas: This seems that insane. And I want to know, are we missing something? Are we being unfair? Fair. Take us through the details here.

0:27:07 Matt: He's Yeah. So this is, I will just say this decision is terrible. And it's a good reminder of why Brett Kavanauch was put on the Supreme Court, quite frankly. It's a great reminder of who he works for and where he comes from and who he is.

Is just no coincidence at all that I think this is coming out right around the time in the last year or two that we've been finding out how many gratuities members of the Supreme Court have been accepting, because this is their lives, right? They, they get all this free stuff, and they like it. Me just break down so you can see. And I will say straight up, for anybody who really wants to understand how bad this is, Justice Jackson's dissent is fantastic.

It's an excellent dissent, very well done. Highlight a few things from it as we go here, but I'm just going to tell you the basics, which is that James Snyder was a Republican mayor of Portage, Indiana. Owed a lot of money, and he steered a million dollars in contracts for five garbage trucks for the city to buy to a trucking company, local Peterbilt dealership. And the trucking company rewarded him after getting this million dollar contract with a $13,000 payment, just straight up.

And as does not note this for some reason in the majority, but Jackson notes that it is well -established on the record that James Snyder walked into the dealership and said, "Hey, I need some money." That's what he actually said.

0:28:15 Matt: Yeah. He asked for it. They didn't just send him a check.

0:28:17 Thomas: And you would like to make illegal helping a friend with rent, Matt. That's what you would Like to make Illegal. Someone needs some money. What's next? I can't give a dollar to someone on the street who's homeless, Matt, according to you.

0:28:25 Matt: Oh, it gets even worse because, I don't know, are you a Sopranos fan, Thomas?

0:28:35 Thomas: I watched it back in the day. It's a little too disturbing for me to watch again now, but I did watch it back today. It was a very good show.

0:28:41 Matt: Of the best things ever made, for sure. It's up there with the wire.

0:28:41 Thomas: Yeah, it was a good show, Yeah.

0:28:43 Matt: You might remember that Tony Soprano's job officially, his legit job, was as a waste disposal consultant. And that is literally what they put him on the books as, the Tony Soprano job, which I thought was very funny. Nobody else seems to have noticed that yet.

0:28:51 Thomas: They're not even trying to not get

0:28:56 Matt: No, no. Maybe they got the idea from the Sopranos, for all I know. But anyway, so here's the statutes involved. Now, again, $13,000 doesn't sound like that much money in the long range of whatever, but federal prosecutors went after him because this was so obviously corruption, just so clearly. And Brett Kavanaugh, committed, committed conservative textualist Brett Kavanaugh is just twisting himself in several different directions to try to read the statute the way he wants to read it. And what I think is extra funny about this is we're going to continue to talk about it. It is 18 U.S.C. 666. So I'm just going to keep talking

0:28:56 Thomas: Caught, yeah. Probably.

0:29:30 Thomas: Yeah.

0:29:30 Matt: About 666 now. Is there a legal difference in the idea, or at least Kavanaugh's really intent on telling you that there is a little difference between a bribe, when I'm getting you to do something, in a gratuity, when I reward you for having done something.

0:29:43 Thomas: One that is a bribe, the second one's a kickback, isn't that what, like, am I crazy, okay.

0:29:46 Matt: Right, exactly. Yes. No. He's talking about the interplay of a couple of different statutes. Now there is 18 U.S.C. 201(b) and (c), have to do with bribing federal officials. And he's taking about how one of them is about bribery and one of them's about gratuities and how there's actually, I think there's a 10 -year sentence for bribery We're in a two -year for gratuities, talking about how the Congress intended there's some kind of difference.

For all kinds of reasons that don't matter that Justice Jackson points out, he's being really disingenuous about this, about the structure and the history of it. Congress changed the law in 1986. Now, this 18 U.S.C. 666 is actually about specifically corruption involving anything federally funded, which is a lot of things, obviously. And Kavanaugh alleges, I can't get my head around this number, but he alleges that about 19 million people could be covered by this, state, local, and federal officials.

That's a lot of state, federal, and local officials. Guess when you include teachers and soccer coaches and everybody else, that probably does work out, he's just saying anybody who's on a state payroll. He is obsessed with the idea that there is a legal difference between bribery and gratuities, and we can clearly see the difference, and that he's very, very concerned. And let me just read this because, again, this is another one of those things where they're lying about the facts on purpose or concealing the facts. And Jackson does a great job of just pointing out what the facts actually are. And as she points out, there is no way that these facts, like she even says, basically, if you wanted to pick a case to say this is ambiguous, why did you pick this one? The guy walked in and asked for money. Here's a little something here from Kavanaugh.

Saying that this leaves the government open to be able to prosecute people for all kinds of innocent gifts. Is a $100 Dunkin' Donuts gift card for a trash collector wrongful? What about a $200 Nike gift card per county commissioner who voted to fund new school athletic facilities? Could students take their college professor out to Chipotle for an end -of -turn celebration? Yes, the answer is yes.

If so, would it somehow become criminal to take this professor out for a steak dinner or to treat her to a Hoosiers game, right? I mean, again, this is not what we're talking about. We're talking things, as Jackson points out, that you have to look at a pretty complex statutory analysis under 18 U.S.C. 666, and you're going to sift out the stuff that is just like, thanks, public official, for doing this extra nice thing for me. And

0:30:36 Thomas: Hmm. Huh. Well, There might be a difference. Well, yeah, like, just as a prosecutor, you're going to be like, I guess I won't prosecute the person who bought their teacher Starbucks because that's insane. I feel like there's a lot in our system that's that right ever

0:32:02 Matt: Says there's never been an instance of any of the stuff you're talking, any of stuff you were worried about. It never happened, right? Right. It just doesn't happen. This is what you're talking about.

0:32:12 Thomas: Happening. And this isn't some new law. Is God. This is so outrageous.

0:32:18 Matt: No. This has been around 1984. It was amended in '86, which Kavanaugh makes a big deal about. And here's the thing.

0:32:25 Thomas: Matt, finally, all the political we can release all the students who had given their teachers Starbucks gift cards. A cry from the masses just went out, Matt. A cry of relief. They're free at last, Matt, because of this decision. Amazing. Well, you'll have to tell us, do they automatically get out of jail? Or is there further action that needs to happen? I never know.

0:32:26 Matt: Yeah.

0:32:42 Matt: All right. Little known fact, this is actually why our jails are so crowded. Yeah this exact thing.

0:32:48 Thomas: Yeah. Ah, it's all student. They're still in there, like, they have their backpacks on in jail. They're so stupid.

0:32:55 Matt: Let you what a bad textualist Brett, Brett Kavanaugh is, because, again, I do not think that this is subtle. Think that this is, and just Jackson doesn't either, I think sometimes you can just look at the text and you can decide that's what it says. The part he's concerned about, "corruptly solicits or demands for the benefit of any person, or accepts or agrees to accept anything of value from any person intending to be influenced or rewarded in connection with any business transaction or series of transactions." Again, influenced or awarded.

Sounds like a a bribe, or a gratuity, right? Something that happens before the action or after the action. And Kavanaugh has this extensive explanation, which I just don't even begin to buy, about how "rewarded" isn't actually talking about things that happen afterward. Have to completely ignore what the statute says to get there. And he has this lengthy explanation about the statutory history, and he's just clearly getting to where he wants to get to. And obviously, the Supreme Court does that all the time.

The conservatives, especially in the the Supreme Court, do this all the time, but in the service of making it easier to bribe public officials, it is just so disgusting. It is so distasteful to read this. I mean, you really have to read it for yourself and at least read the dissent because it really does lay it out about how bad this is. A couple amazing of amazing burns though, I will just preview in this dissent. "Snyder's absurd and atextual reading of the statute is one that only today's court could love." That's

0:34:14 Matt: Something.

0:34:14 Thomas: That is wow.

0:34:16 Matt: Yeah, that is really direct.

0:34:16 Thomas: Coming from a Supreme court. Finally, finally, one some, of the justices is doing this. I've, asking for this for my birthday every year. I'm so glad.

0:34:19 Matt: Yeah.

0:34:28 Matt: Okay, here's the other one, just to give you a little preview how good this is. Says basically that the court had an opportunity to further clarify, and she's saying the statute isn't special. There's nothing unique about it. There is no reason to torture yourself trying to read it. Court could have had that opportunity with respect to Section 666 if it had chosen to engage in our usual method of parsing statutes.

0:34:48 Matt: Isn't that great? That's just such a passive -aggressive way to say, like, read the manual. Just actually read what's in front of you. Why are you going out of your way to not read the bribery statute correctly? It a little strange? Bad. It's

0:35:01 Thomas: I mean, just Look, as a person, the, as not a law talking guy, idea the that it's like, hey, slipping someone a hundred bucks and being like, can you, you know, make this happen? That's horrible. You should go to prison for a million years. Someone the incentive or saying, hey, maybe you do this for me. And they do it, and then giving them a hundred dollars, you're free to go. That's entirely fine. By the way, they act as though you, you could almost make an argument for this if every single case was someone who got a tip at like right before, you, they unplugged the the life heart support and then they died. But guess what? When you get a tip for doing something and you're still a public official, what's going to happen the next time? It, because the tip becomes the bribe for the next act.

0:35:51 Matt: The Court has been willfully unable, as you said at the beginning, to see what bribery actually is and how it works. If you go back to Percoco a couple of years ago, Alito had a majority where he was very concerned because in Prococco, it was actually one of Andrew Cuomo's gubernatorial aides that had made a side deal with a real estate developer. And they were finding that because the aide, even though he was probably acting in some kind of official capacity, he was still a private citizen. He wasn't an an actual public official. And so they found it wouldn't be fair to apply this to him. And Alito was very concerned that if we extended the logic that the petitioners are arguing for, that could be used to charge particularly well -connected and effective lobbyists. Just looking at the sort of how we got here, right? Which I think you were mentioning in 2016, which is the former governor of Virginia, who the Court went through what he did and decided that, you know, introducing people, setting up meetings, making some phone calls, those aren't official acts for honest services fraud.

0:36:42 Matt: Those aren't officially. You have to have a really clearly established intent to, you're like, this is a bribe that I'm going to request now, I'm and gonna hand you the bag of money.

0:36:39 Thomas: Are Sure. I Look, I guess Congress could fix this if they, were they're not going to, don't get me wrong, but like, could they just be like, hey, just in case any corrupt assholes misunderstood us, just no giving money to officials for anything. Like, just why should they even do that, like, if you're gonna be a certain level, level of public official, that, why do you get to have, accept any, there's, you shouldn't accept anything. That should be the norm. Yeah.

0:36:58 Matt: Yeah. Yeah, would love to see Democrats, if they have an opportunity, say, hey, Justice Kavanaugh, you got a problem with the statute? Sure, we'll fix it. Right? Why not? Easy enough. A couple of words.

0:37:20 Thomas: And They'll be like, well, actually there was a constitutional right to accept bribes. Unbelievable.

0:37:23 Matt: Yeah, exactly. It's This really is a good reminder. Because honestly, this term so far has been pretty tame. They've been behaving.

0:37:33 Thomas: Yeah. Because they haven't done anything. All their orders are still on the, debt, all the shit that's going to be terrible is still, they haven't hit, hit submit on it yet, Matt. Did

0:37:38 Matt: Yeah that's true. All the big stuff. That's very true. To remind everybody of what's still to remain as of now, as of time of recording. Still waiting on that immunity case. We're still waiting on the related January 6th obstruction case. The EMTALA case just dropped today. We were going to talk about EMTLA and mefepristone another time.

0:37:58 Thomas: It actually drop? Because there was the, like it

0:37:59 Matt: It did officially. Yeah, there was the leak and then there was a drop. And it wasn't so much a leak as it looks like it was a mistake. But I think from what I'm seeing, it was the same decision, nothing changed. There's Grants Pass, which obviously we've talked about with the unhoused people.

0:38:00 Thomas: Oh okay yeah, yeah that still hasn't been decided? Oh yeah

0:38:13 Matt: We still don't know what the fate is there. There is the case, which is going to have to take its own episode. We haven't even talked about that yet, but that is potentially a wrench in a lot of what I do and a lot what the government does. I know that listeners are probably generally familiar with Chevron after listening to the show for a while, but that is about how reviewable agency decisions are, and know that Neil Gorsuch is not alone in hating Chevron. He really has been on a lifetime mission to destroy it. Because is very much in the interest of the people, as we're reminded by this decision, the people that the Supreme Court primarily works for, to not have Chevron in place, to não ter essas proteções. So yeah, we will see about the of this term. I guess we will be finding out on Monday. Day. And I think we should do a number of other shows just to kind of round up this term and make sure people hear about, especially maybe some of the cases that aren't getting as many headlines, like Munoz, but

0:38:13 Thomas: Yeah Yeah, I I really, really, you know, I've been pretty busy podcasting, but I, I really hadn't seen much about that, so I'm glad we covered it. Um, that's horrible. Uh, but I was so distracted by how terrible this corruption case is, and this decision is just awful. And, and not only that, Matt, I am so mad. I'm wondering if maybe for the patrons now, the only way I can get away with this, is if this is some unedited, uncensored stuff, but I'm thinking for the patients, maybe we, we go through the Jackson dissent?

0:39:08 Matt: Yeah, truly is.

0:39:25 Matt: Yeah.

0:39:26 Thomas: What do you think?

0:39:26 Matt: It's well worth it. I think that people should hear, first of all, what a great writer she is, but also just how clearly she just eviscerates the majority. So I can give you some excerpts here. We don't need to read the whole thing, but I think the best of.

0:39:39 Thomas: Right. Well, a little quick special for the patrons because the patrons are so great. If you want to find that, go to patreon.com/law. We'll release it just after this episode. And actually, to make it easiest for people who want to pledge, I'll do it as a separate drop. That way you don't have to fast find it again in the episode you already listened to. We've got a few minutes. Why don't we cover the Steve Bannon case? Because I that I find that very interesting. And I am very hopeful that he's about to go to jail.

0:40:08 Matt: Think he is. But let's hear from House Speaker Mike Johnson first to set this up, the clip I've sent.

0:40:13 Thomas: Legal genius and whose name and face are so forgettable, I keep having to remind myself who he is. And

0:40:15 Matt: Yeah. Man of principle.

0:40:20 Clip: Joining us now with more is Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. By the way, Mr. Speaker, I understand there might be a change in position regarding the House and their stance on the January 6th committee, and it might be regarding Steve Bannon, and they have a big impact on his contempt case. Tell me what's going on. Yeah, we're working on filing an amicus brief in his appellate work there in his case because the January 6th committee was, we think, wrongfully constituted. We think the work was tainted. We think that they may have very well covered up evidence and maybe even more nefarious activities. We've been investigating the committee itself. We disagree with how Speaker Pelosi put all that together. We think it violated House rules, and so we'll be expressing that

0:40:25 Thomas: What?

0:40:55 Thomas: Oh.

0:41:09 Clip: To the court, and I think it will help Steve Bannon and his appeal.

0:41:09 Thomas: My God. Is

0:41:13 Matt: Okay, well first of all it won't. Really won't because Steve Bannon is pursuing a frivolous appeal. Let me just tell you about this. Let's back up and we'll get to how Mike Johnson got to this point. Couple of years ago, as you might remember, Steve Bannon was convicted on two counts of contempt of Congress because he did not show up to the January 6th committee. He And was supposed to be bringing documents. He was supposed to appear. He just decided not to do that. And he claims that he did that on the advice of counsel, that he was told he didn't have to go because there's an immunity question and that they could fight that out. As Elizabeth Prelogar points out in her brief that she just filed, pretty clear. You can't just say that you're relying on divisive counsel. That defense has never worked. Just have to know that you're supposed to be there and you're exposed to go. It's a pretty powerful subpoena.

0:41:15 Thomas: Well, pre- If you're allowed to just completely do this, then what power does the House even have? Like, I don't understand, like, you can be like, "Hey, we're one of the chambers, of one ofthe branches of this government, and we are telling you we're subpoenaing you, we have a word for it, to come testify, bring documents, whatever," and you can just say, "Agree to disagree," and then they're like, "Well, there's nothing we can do about that," then what do we then why would anyone ever, what would anything be?

0:42:15 Matt: Yeah. Yeah? Prelogar points out, "A uniform line of cases from this court confirms the mental state for contempt of Congress under 192 requires only a deliberate or intentional act," does not recognize a defense for good faith reliance on the advice of counsel. Like, you just can't do it.

0:42:34 Thomas: We go after his counsel, by the way?

0:42:36 Matt: It was one of Trump's attorneys who was working with him, but yeah. I don't know. That's a good question.

0:42:38 Thomas: Like, yeah, I mean, okay. So he didn't. And then he's saying, Hey, you know, my lawyer told me, Oh, okay, so your lawyers are criminal then? Like, can we hold him in contempt? Seriously? Like why not?

0:42:47 Matt: A Good question. I mean, I think he would say he had like some good faith theory about immunity and how he was going to be challenging that.

0:42:51 Thomas: Then we'd say no.

0:42:52 Matt: But no, if you didn't, then you can't tell Yeah, no, it's true. Certainly think I'd be in trouble if I told my client to completely ignore a subpoena. Sure, I would be. It's a good point. So Steve Bannon does not want to do his four months. And I think besides the fact that nobody wants to go to federal prison, I think the main reason he's stretching this out as long as possible is obviously because he thinks he's going to get a pardon and not have to go to jail. That's not going to happen. So

0:42:54 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Now Me what's, so was he sentenced of something like this? Wasn't a, hey, you're in contempt until you do it, obviously, I guess the, you know, the majority changed, so whatever, but was this some sort of punishment that was determined, like, because you did this you get four months, or was this still ongoing in terms of, like, they still want them to turn over any documents or anything or

0:43:32 Matt: Is federal criminal contempt. So yeah, these are just federal charges because he just made it so clear he wasn't complying. Peter Navarro, by the way, has tried the same defense. The Trump aide, who is also a complete idiot, has tired this defense. It didn't work. He's almost finished up his four months at this point. Is completely frivolous. There's just nothing here. So now Steve Bannon is rallying the troops, and he's trying to get this argument going that the entire January 6th committee was out of line, that it was improperly appointed.

0:43:39 Thomas: So Court's out of order.

0:44:01 Matt: And from what I can tell, I mean, of course, America First Legal, which has been getting involved in pretty much everything at this point, that's Stephen Miller's outfit. Filed something on behalf of constitutional conservative Barry Loudermilk to explain in detail about why they think that the J6 committee was unlawfully put together. Other. And from what I can tell, I mean, honestly, my eyes just started to glaze as I was reading this because it's just nonsense, as you might expect. I think that they're making a big thing. You might remember that Jim Jordan was proposed as a member, along with a couple of other idiots.

0:44:01 Thomas: Sure. Oh. Yeah. And he didn't do it because

0:44:31 Matt: Rightly, was like, no, you're just going to throw in a troll. This is not somebody who's going to participate in this process. And we have a right to exclude people. It's our committee. You want to put forward members who might actually want to participate in the committee. And of course, Liz Cheney ended up on it. Yeah, I think they're trying to say something about how the minority was excluded and how it's completely illegitimate and whatever, but this is desperate.

0:44:38 Thomas: Though They had Republicans on it, they had Liz, Liz Cheney and, uh, it was Kinzinger, uh, Kinziger.

0:44:52 Matt: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Republicans we don't like, I guess. That's the problem. Again, I don't even...

0:44:55 Thomas: Yeah. Hard to imagine that being the rule. Oh no, but you didn't pick the right one. So the whole thing is out of, there couldn't be committees then. Right. I mean, that would be pretty, yeah.

0:45:04 Matt: Right. The worst ones. We want the worst ones, yeah. When you're getting to the point where you're saying this this whole committee is out of order, you know, as you're trying to desperately avoid your sentence. Because the D.C. Circuit has already declined to state his sentence. And the only thing left to do is just to foil in front of the Supreme Court, which is what he's trying to do. And so for Mike Johnson at this late hour to come in and say, yeah, we're going to support our guy, Steve Bannon, we're gonna argue that this House committee that put in an enormous amount of work and did things so completely thoroughly and such a, I thought, just having watched some of the proceedings, read some of their report, very thorough, creating a historical record that we desperately need for such an important event. It's very concerning that the Speaker of the House is now saying that we're going to withdraw our previous position, that it was okay, and we're gonna go after this idea that it was illegitimate. In the general sort of fascism watch sense, that's bad. That's another tick here.

0:45:56 Thomas: We'll switch the color coding on the fascism watch from, oh wait, Matt, it's just completely solid red. It's just the reddest of red. We don't have another color on the fascism watch. Sorry, darn it's been the clock has been at midnight for the, if there's no, you can't, okay, we'll go to midnight oh one, I don't know, does that mean anything, that doesn't mean anything, yeah.

0:46:07 Matt: Smokey the Fascism Bear is very concerned. Again, these people have no interest in governing or passing laws or cooperating with anything. Compromise certainly isn't in the vocabulary. I mean, this is worse. This is, again, this ist a continuing slow -moving insurrection. Interaction. So I just hope people see what it is. I don't really care what Mike Johnson has to say or what he's going to file, but I'm sure we'll take a look at it. But there's no way that Steve Bannon is getting out of this. I mean, I can't think that the Supreme Court is going to take this seriously because, again, this is a frivolous argument. It's already not worked.

0:46:40 Thomas: When does the rubber meet the road and he actually runs out of time, has to report to jail, oh July 1st, baby.

0:46:46 Matt: July 1st, Monday. Yeah. And the Supreme Court has other things to do right now, as we've just talked about.

0:46:50 Thomas: I know. I was going to say

0:46:51 Matt: So a little busy.

0:46:51 Thomas: That he's going to get screwed by the fact where I'm sure Alito is like, hey man, I'd love to help you because you know me, I'm all in for the cause. Do you have any flags, by the way, for your cause that my wife was asking if there's any, I can fly those. But we're just behind on our term paper, man. There's something we haven't, We got, we've got so much homework to do. We'd love love to help you out yeah we

0:47:03 Matt: Sure. Yeah, we already asked for an extension for the weekend, right? And I'm like, that must have been a grim moment when they realized they had to get the extension

0:47:15 Thomas: Asked the professor they were kind enough to give us an extension to Monday, but like I don't think we can squeeze this in, man.

0:47:18 Matt: Yeah It's like 10 term papers that are all incredibly consequential. I'm a little concerned that the immunity one just wasn't banged out immediately. That is, I still think it's I'm

0:47:25 Thomas: Oh, boy. That is very concerning, Matt. That's incredible that's so easy I could do that. Do they need help? Hey, buddy, I'll do your homework, Court. I could doing it for you. No, just a bit, just a big - give me the, I'll take the official, a letterhead, but it'd just be like, um, "Not only no, but hell no, this is stupid," and then end of case.

0:47:34 Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That should have been it, uh, that could have come out weeks ago, but we're waiting till the last possible minute. Yeah. Well, I think it's, it's going to come out fine. I think they're just delaying it, but

0:47:53 Thomas: Oh, boy, that scares me, but it still is weird, though, isn't it, like in especially when you're behind by this much, wouldn't you be like, as the group project leader, wouldn't be like, "Well, just, just do this one right, like, this is the easy, you know, like this," that's the easy part of the group paper that you're like, "Well, we can, this is just like a description of some obvious things, like, like someone type that up right now, release it, and then the pressure is off of us."

0:48:00 Matt: Weird.

0:48:19 Matt: You can do that before the coffee run. You don't need coffee before you write that one. Come on.

0:48:20 Thomas: Yeah. So that's making me nervous. I agree with you that it seems like it couldn't possibly go any other way, but there's got to be some reason. Maybe there's like a, you know, a really weird dissent someone wants to write or what? Like what would, anyway,

0:48:33 Matt: Supreme Court politics are just constantly mysterious. I

0:48:36 Thomas: Okay. Well, that sucks. And we can look forward to more suckage from the Supreme Court in a very small, tiny time. Which, as you say, maybe that means we we get some some full deep dives of some of these cases to time. But in the meantime, that's it for this show, except for you find patrons on Patreon dot com slash law. We're going to go through that amazing dissent in a little extra bonus, bonus the and again contractually the only way I'm doing this is if I do absolutely no editing, so that's my policy because I don't have time to do the even the editing that I need to do, Matt. But Uh, that should be a lot of fun, so you know where to find it, everybody. Patreon.com/law. Otherwise, thanks so much for listening and we will see you for the Monday deep dive.

0:49:06 Matt: Let's do it. I wish everyone a great weekend except specifically six people on the Supreme Court.

0:49:19 Clip: This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media, LLC, All Rights Reserved. It is produced and edited by Thomas Smith, who also provided the fabulous intro and outro music used with permission.

0:49:36 Matt: The time that people are listening to this, he might already be there. July 1st is his report date. Yep. So, well,

0:49:39 Thomas: Thank god Wait, July No, it's June 27th today, man.

0:49:46 Matt: I'm just saying, I think some people may not listen the day it comes out, right? Right? I don't always listen to podcasts the day they come out, but just saying.

0:49:50 Thomas: Okay. Okay. So