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Nice Guy Eddie

Nice Guy Eddie 13729

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Thomas has previously said that he was counseled that you didn’t have to report gifts or trips supplied by personal friends. While that may have been the practice, even Thomas went far outside informal guidelines. In an article I read but now can’t find, someone in govt mentioned how the norm was to split your personal friends in 2 groups in determining disclosures: friends before your govt nomination and those after.  Anything received by the latter definitely had to be disclosed. Even certain gifts from the former had to disclosed.

 

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Brisketexan
Brisketexan

Some people and posts above see this for the incredibly dangerous thing it is.  See the whole forest, not just the tree.  Roe is built on the bedrock of the 14th amendment and the inherent right to pr

Ghost of LL
Ghost of LL

The whole episode is pretty bad for the Court.  The leak is embarrassing.  But the decision is catastrophic. You've got a 5-4 decision to get rid of a something that has been settled as a constit

sidis
sidis

in one of the many instances in which i debunked your oversimplified, unsupported bullshit and you simply never responded, i addressed your absolutist contention that religious are more charitable tha

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Satchel

Satchel 6982

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Posted

In the wake of Dobbs, this raped kid was forced to give birth. She starts 7th grade in a couple of days:

https://nypost.com/2023/08/15/mississippi-rape-victim-13-gives-birth-after-abortion-ban/

A 13-year-old schoolgirl raped by a stranger was forced to give birth because of Mississippi’s abortion ban, according to a heart-wrenching new report.

The Clarksdale teen — identified by the pseudonym Ashley — gave birth earlier this summer to a baby boy she’s nicknamed Peanut, her family told Time.

Ashley was only 12 last fall when she says a stranger snatched her from her yard and raped her around the side of the house, her mother, Regina, told the magazine.

The then-sixth-grader did not tell anyone about the attack and did not learn she was pregnant until January, when she was taken to an emergency room for profuse vomiting.

She was so innocent, she did not even know how babies were made, according to her mom.

The family found it impossible to get her a termination because of the bans enforced in Mississippi and most surrounding states following the Supreme Court’s ruling last year overturning the constitutional right to abortion.

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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32587

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https://jezebel.com/supreme-court-will-hear-abortion-pill-case-right-in-the-1850744829

 

TL;DR.  The Supremes will hear another anti-abortion case during the 2024 term-in the middle of the 2024 Presidential campaign.  I'm sure this won't have a negative effect on juicing election turnout.

 

 

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On Wednesday afternoon, the notoriously conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals released its opinion on whether they’re going to ban mifepristone, the main abortion drug. Its ruling would restrict the medication, but a Supreme Court ruling from April, which blocked any changes to access during litigation, leaves the drug available for now. The Fifth Circuit’s ruling is expected to be appealed, which means the Supreme Court will likely hear the case (which has been brought by anti-abortion doctors) next term—in the middle of the 2024 campaign.

 

Quote

The case—which was filed strategically in an anti-abortion judge’s district in Texas—wants to ban mifepristone by revoking the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug. The Texas district ruling was appealed to the Fifth Circuit. If the Supreme Court chooses to take up the case following the expected appeal, it will all but guarantee that abortion stays front of mind for voters, even in states that aren’t actively trying to vote on abortion rights.

 

Quote

Again, mifepristone will remain available throughout the litigation process as the Supreme Court ruled in April. Despite that overruling order, the three-judge panel at the appellate court ruled on Wednesday:

The anti-abortion doctors’ challenge of the approval of mifepristone by the FDA in 2000 is “likely barred” by a statute of limitations.

The anti-abortion doctors did not demonstrate that they were actually injured by the 2019 approval of generic mifepristone.

The FDA’s changes to mifepristone, which allows the drug to be mailed, allows medical professionals beyond an doctor to prescribe the drug, allows the pills to be prescribed by telemedicine, and lets patients take it up to 10 weeks of pregnancy, are likely unlawful.

 

Spoiler

But even then, the court goes to great pains to remind the reader that its ruling against those FDA changes isn’t going into effect at this time because of the aforementioned Supreme Court ruling from April. You can still get abortion pills in America.

While it’s possible for the Supreme Court to hear emergency arguments earlier, it’s more likely the case gets docketed during its upcoming term that begins in October. This means while former President Donald Trump is dodging criminal trials and bodying Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) at presidential debates, the nation’s highest court (and therefore national media) will be focused on the anti-abortion lawsuit seeking to upend America’s most popular abortion method.

“We will continue to use our company’s legal and regulatory tools to ensure access to mifepristone, which is essential to the health of many in the United States,” GenBioPro CEO Evan Masingill, who is the manufacturer of generic mifepristone, said in a statement. He added the company “remain concerned about extremists and special interests using the courts in an attempt to undermine science and access to evidence-based medication, as well as attempts to undermine the [FDA’s] regulatory authority.”

The anti-abortion hostility of the panel of judges jumps off the ruling’s page. In the third paragraph, the opinion parrots a popular anti-abortion talking point: “Many women face severe complications as a result of taking mifepristone.” This is false. Mifepristone is safer than low-risk drugs like penicillin and Viagra. Mifepristone has a death rate of 0.0005 percent (5 deaths per every 1 million people who used it since 2000), per the FDA. “The risk of death is almost non-existent,” according to an amicus brief filed by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and 11 leading medical organizations.

Abortion access is far from safe. We’ve been living in the fall-out of a post-Roe world for more than a year now, but at least people have had access to medication abortion in some way. If the Supreme Court chooses to ban the drug? It would be utter chaos, completely of the Republican Party’s making.

 

 

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Mdhorn

Mdhorn 6166

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On 8/11/2023 at 10:02 AM, Horn Under a Bad Sign said:

image.thumb.jpeg.73a626600dc7348f6257a86e685498dd.jpeg

What I absolutely hate about this is now everybody knows, and they still won't do anything about it.  And if they can't tell the difference between wrong and right, and what's considered bribery, then they shouldn't be judges.  The other's should be fighting over who's going to expel or charge him, but silence makes them all complicit.  

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TDunk

TDunk 590

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On 8/11/2023 at 12:39 AM, Grade of D as in David said:

Any chance that uncle Clarence ever rolled down the driver's window of his fancy RV, honked the horn, and yelled "I'm rich bitch"

Uncle Thomas seems much more apropos.  Or did I miss the memo? 

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Gap03

Gap03 3386

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1 hour ago, HenryJames said:

This is just a monumentally shitty legal take, seemingly aimed at owning the libs by turning a pro-environment concept against them.  Once again, conservatives show that they really suck at analogies.  In short:

zoidberg-you.gif

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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32587

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2 hours ago, Aqua Buddha said:

And Ozympic.  

 

It's a minor miracle, I guess, to see at least a dozen women I know, 40 or older, who have lost an astonishing amount of weight since last fall.  Sure, they all could  have in theory changed their diets and implemented some sort of workout regimen.....but I doubt it.

 

 

 

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Horn Under a Bad Sign

Horn Under a Bad Sign 20914

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My niece is a teacher in Alaska. She told me that she's not allowed to accept any gift from a parent that exceeds 25 dollars in value as it might cause her to show favoritism to that parent's child. Isn't it crazy that teachers can't accept gifts because of the appearance of impropriety but supreme court justices can jet all over the world as friends of billionaires?

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Aqua Buddha

Aqua Buddha 14806

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Posted
3 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

 

It's a minor miracle, I guess, to see at least a dozen women I know, 40 or older, who have lost an astonishing amount of weight since last fall.  Sure, they all could  have in theory changed their diets and implemented some sort of workout regimen.....but I doubt it.

 

 

 

Wonder how many were anti vax?  More than a few, I'd guess.

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Satchel

Satchel 6982

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On 8/16/2023 at 8:45 PM, Satchel said:

In the wake of Dobbs, this raped kid was forced to give birth. She starts 7th grade in a couple of days:

https://nypost.com/2023/08/15/mississippi-rape-victim-13-gives-birth-after-abortion-ban/

A 13-year-old schoolgirl raped by a stranger was forced to give birth because of Mississippi’s abortion ban, according to a heart-wrenching new report.

The Clarksdale teen — identified by the pseudonym Ashley — gave birth earlier this summer to a baby boy she’s nicknamed Peanut, her family told Time.

Ashley was only 12 last fall when she says a stranger snatched her from her yard and raped her around the side of the house, her mother, Regina, told the magazine.

The then-sixth-grader did not tell anyone about the attack and did not learn she was pregnant until January, when she was taken to an emergency room for profuse vomiting.

She was so innocent, she did not even know how babies were made, according to her mom.

The family found it impossible to get her a termination because of the bans enforced in Mississippi and most surrounding states following the Supreme Court’s ruling last year overturning the constitutional right to abortion.

Is the state of Mississippi going to care of this child’s child. She’s not in Arkansas and thus is not allowed to work in a poultry factory.

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Biff Tannen

Biff Tannen 46165

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Saw that ol Uncle Clarence finally disclosed some trips in 2022(?) from Harlan Crowe.  Then a CNN R strategist/apologist tried to say that it was a partisan witch hunt.  

 

Now, my question is, if this all (not just SCOTUS, but all the witch hunt claims) is just a both sides, all politicians are crooked, Dems are just mad thing:

 

WHY ARE REPUBLICANS NOT COMING UP WITH THE SAME SHIT FOR DEMS?

In terms of SCOTUS, shouldn't they be coming up with documents showing the Dem justices taking lavish vacations and bags of cash from billionaires?  I know there are some Dem billionaires.  Why aren't they bribing SCOTUS too?

Are the Rs just incompetent?  If this is so pervasive, why are Rs the only ones that keep getting caught?  They were in COMPLETE control for two years and came up with

200w.gif?cid=6c09b952mmwlm91rqj8t6bv5mxg

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Dahobbs

Dahobbs 18319

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Posted
18 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

Saw that ol Uncle Clarence finally disclosed some trips in 2022(?) from Harlan Crowe.  Then a CNN R strategist/apologist tried to say that it was a partisan witch hunt.  

 

Now, my question is, if this all (not just SCOTUS, but all the witch hunt claims) is just a both sides, all politicians are crooked, Dems are just mad thing:

 

WHY ARE REPUBLICANS NOT COMING UP WITH THE SAME SHIT FOR DEMS?

In terms of SCOTUS, shouldn't they be coming up with documents showing the Dem justices taking lavish vacations and bags of cash from billionaires?  I know there are some Dem billionaires.  Why aren't they bribing SCOTUS too?

Are the Rs just incompetent?  If this is so pervasive, why are Rs the only ones that keep getting caught?  They were in COMPLETE control for two years and came up with

200w.gif?cid=6c09b952mmwlm91rqj8t6bv5mxg

One could argue that Dem judges that fail to get lavish gifts are actually the incompetent ones. 

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YGIFS

YGIFS 19458

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Like many members of Congress or SCOTUS/D.C. Circuit, most folks live in either Maryland or Virginia for a good portion of the year.  I know that most, almost all, Congressional members cast ballots remotely in their home state/district or take a ceremonial trip back on election day for media purposes.  Keeping a lower profile traditionally, federal judges in/around the D.C. Circuit/SCOTUS...they typically cast quietly in their second home in Maryland or Virginia.  Maryland has a party-specific primary, where you have to be registered to draw a primary ballot.  Virginia is open, like ours.  You could FOIA it, but not a fun use of time.  Justice Kennedy once indicated to our class that for a long, long time...they mutually agreed to just not vote so they wouldn't be spotted at polling places or have media inquiries figure out their primary registration (he used to vote back in Sacramento), or anything like that.  All to keep up the tradition of staying off the radar when not in session.  I wish I could ask him about that now because it seems that's all gone out the window.  We're a few years away from having SCOTUS judges openly campaigning for Trump or some other half-tard.  

Crow's people indicated Ted Cruz is supposed to attend his pre-OU event at his home.  ONly a matter of time before a federal judge is in there as well to elicit bribes to swing a higher education case one way or the other.  This is the new way.  

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C-Man

C-Man 27779

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Posted

Didn't know where to park this so I chose this thread: https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/06/us/washington-football-coach-pray-resigns/index.html

Quote

A Washington state high school football coach who won a Supreme Court case in 2022 after he lost his job for praying at the 50-yard line after games has resigned from his position.

The nation’s top court ruled the Bremerton School District violated coach Joe Kennedy’s First Amendment rights, saying prayers amounted to private speech and could not be restricted by the school district.

On Wednesday, Kennedy announced his resignation on his website, saying multiple reasons factored into his decision, including taking care of an ailing family member out of state.

“I believe I can best continue to advocate for constitutional freedom and religious liberty by working from outside the school system so that is what I will do,” Kennedy said. “I will continue to work to help people understand and embrace the historic ruling at the heart of our case. As a result of our case, we all have more freedom, not less. That should be celebrated and not disrespected.”

“As I have demonstrated, we must make a stand for what we believe in,” he continued. “In my case, I made a stand to take a knee. I encourage all Americans to make their own stand for freedom and our right to express our faith as we see fit.”

The Bremerton School District issued a statement on Wednesday about the resignation.

“The District has received Mr. Kennedy’s resignation and it is pending board approval at tomorrow’s regularly scheduled meeting,” the statement said. “The District does not comment on personnel matters, so we will not be issuing any further statements.”

Kennedy had coached one game before his decision to step down, the First Liberty Institute, which represented Kennedy, told CNN.

His case before the Supreme Court was decided in a 6-3 vote along conservative-liberal ideological lines.

The coach began his prayer ritual soon after he was hired in 2008, but the school district grew concerned when Kennedy’s short, quiet prayers grew in 2015 as players began joining him on the field all while the crowd was still in the stands, CNN previously reported.

The school district said it never restricted him from offering silent, private prayers, and offered him an alternate place to pray off the football field after games. Kennedy refused the accommodations and was ultimately placed on paid administrative leave and suspended from the program. After the season, he was given a poor performance evaluation.

He did not seek a new contract, but instead filed suit, arguing that the school district had violated his rights under the First Amendment.

f_webp

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Bozo_Casanova

Bozo_Casanova 26848

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Posted
6 hours ago, C-Man said:

Didn't know where to park this so I chose this thread: https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/06/us/washington-football-coach-pray-resigns/index.html

f_webp

Is he kneeling in front of the Supreme Court while pretending to pray with a football? Either he has truly been paid his reward in full, or I don't have a good handle on the 6th chapter of Matthew. 

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Satchel

Satchel 6982

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Posted

Looks like the Courts may finally get a chance to settle this issue:

https://www.coloradopolitics.com/elections/colorado-voters-file-suit-to-block-trump-from-2024-ballot/article_7b0a4a92-4cd9-11ee-82e9-03f86c550ab9.html

Four Republican and two unaffiliated voters filed suit in state court in Denver on Wednesday seeking to block the secretary of state from placing Donald Trump on any future primary or general election ballot in Colorado.

A Trump spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the suit.

The lawsuit contains prominent political names on the plaintiffs' side, including former Republican Senate Majority Leader Norma Anderson and Denver Post columnist Krista Kafer among those challenging Trump's eligibility for the ballot. Former Republican legislative candidate Mario Nicolais, former solicitor general Eric Olson and the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington are part of the legal team that brought the suit.

 

"Four years after taking an oath to 'preserve, protect and defend' the Constitution," the 115-page lawsuit alleges, "Trump tried to overthrow the results of the 2020 election, leading to a violent insurrection at the United States Capitol to stop the lawful transfer of power to his successor. By instigating this unprecedented assault on the American constitutional order, Trump violated his oath."

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NWBuck

NWBuck 8629

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Posted
14 hours ago, C-Man said:

Didn't know where to park this so I chose this thread: https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/06/us/washington-football-coach-pray-resigns/index.html

f_webp

I use this story to teach first amendment stuff in the school of education... And the local coverage from the Seattle Times has been lights out.

Quote

 

This ruling sounds reasonable, as who is against short, private, personal prayer? The problem is that the only part of the phrase “short, private, personal prayer” that is accurate to what was going on in Bremerton in the fall of 2015 is “prayer.”

We know this because it all played out here. One piece of evidence in the court record was a Seattle Times article from Oct. 15, 2015.

It was an account of a news conference Kennedy gave before the team’s big homecoming game against Centralia. “Football coach vows to pray” was the print headline. It describes — in Kennedy’s own words — how he was inspired to start holding midfield prayers with students after he saw an evangelical Christian movie called “Facing the Giants,” in which a losing team finds God and goes on to win the state championship.

 

And from this week... 

Quote

 

In its 2022 ruling in Kennedy’s favor, the ultraconservative Supreme Court majority based its decision on a fictional version of the facts. The court claimed that all Kennedy sought to do was engage in “short, personal, private prayer” at midfield after games. However, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor put it in her dissent, “the record before us … tells a different story.” 

In truth, for years Kennedy sermonized the team in the locker room before games, and stood at the 50-yard line afterward, holding up the helmet of each team, beckoning students to kneel around him for prayer. During the 2015 football season, administrators learned of this practice and were rightly concerned about the pressure that coach-led prayers placed on players as well as the potential liability threatening the Bremerton School District.

The district required him to stop praying with his players, but repeatedly sought to accommodate Kennedy’s desire to pray, even on duty, in a way that did not exert pressure on players and did not interfere with his official school duties — in other words, short, private, personal prayer. Kennedy insisted through lawyers at First Liberty that he would continue to pray publicly at midfield

 

. 

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C-Man

C-Man 27779

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, DigglerontheHoof said:

Goddamnit, this picture makes me want to fucking destroy this cunt with a beatdown of epic proportions. 

It really is infuriating. This is why I made sure to cut-and-paste the picture even though you would've found it at the link.

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safe sex

safe sex 12006

Posted
Posted

The Supreme Court’s Fake Praying Coach Case Just Got Faker

Quote

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a high school football coach’s right to engage in “brief, quiet, personal” prayer—despite photographic evidence that his prayers were drawn-out, loud, and extremely public. At the time, the decision was embarrassing enough, as it rested on the fiction that the coach, Joe Kennedy, was reprimanded for “private religious expression” when he was actually establishing huge prayer circles in the middle of the field. Since then, the situation has only further exposed the shameful artifice of the ruling. At first, Kennedy appeared to have little interest in taking back his old job, which was supposedly what he was fighting for. Then he acknowledged that he had sold his house and moved across the country, with no plans to move back. Finally, on Friday, Kennedy returned to coach one football game. Then he quit, as the Seattle Times reported on Wednesday. He has no evident desire to exercise the rights that his lawyers fought for over years of litigation. Those lawyers, however, will walk away with $1.775 million in attorneys’ fees, paid out by the school district.

This final chapter of the “Coach Kennedy” saga was foreseeable—inevitable, really—well before the Supreme Court handed down its decision in June 2022. Kennedy has lived in Florida for years, which the court knew but ignored in its race to use his case as a vehicle to expand prayer in public schools. It’s the mirror image of 303 Creative v. Elenis, the big religious freedom case handed down this June, which also rested on allegations that ranged from tenuous to outright bogus. The problem here is simple: Conservative litigators want this Supreme Court to expand a vision of religious liberty that abolishes the separation of church and state while granting Christians a freewheeling right to discriminate, often with public funding. They are seizing upon any case that will give the court this opportunity, with little concern for the truth of the underlying claims. And the Republican-appointed justices seem eager to twist reality into whatever shape necessary to give them what they want.

If these justices cared to look, they could have forecast the twists that followed their decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. The case was built on a shaky foundation: Kennedy and his lawyers, led by Paul Clement and the far-right First Liberty Institute, alleged that the school district instructed him to stop praying on the field during and after football games, and fired him when he refused. These prayers, he said, were hushed, personal expressions of faith that players were free to join or ignore. In truth, the prayers were a spectacle. Kennedy would gather students around him in a large circle, lift a helmet, and lead them in overtly sectarian prayer; non-Christian players felt coerced into joining, assuming (quite reasonably) that their coach would show favoritism toward those who participated.

This kind of coercive religious conduct strikes at the heart of the First Amendment’s establishment clause, which guards against sectarian indoctrination at public schools. In a 6–3 decision, though, the Supreme Court found that Kennedy’s prayers were protected by the First Amendment’s guarantees of free speech and free exercise. To reach this conclusion, Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion rewrote the facts, depicting Kennedy’s prayers as fleeting, muted, and unobtrusive. Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent repudiated this lie with pictures of the sprawling prayer circles, which Gorsuch disregarded. He instead embraced what one lower court judge decried as “the Siren song of a deceitful narrative of this case spun by counsel.”

There was, all this time, another huge red flag in Kennedy v. Bremerton: Coach Kennedy said he wanted an injunction forcing the school district to rehire him—but he lived thousands of miles away. Bremerton School District is in Washington State, where Kennedy lived when the case commenced. As it dragged on, though, he sold his home in Washington and relocated to Florida with his wife. When the school district’s lawyers discovered this move, they advised the Supreme Court that the case had become moot, arguing that Kennedy clearly did not want his job back.

Kennedy’s lawyers filed an incensed response avowing that their client craved a return to Washington. “He remains ready, willing, and able to return to his job just as soon as his constitutional rights are vindicated. It is really that simple,” they wrote. “The relocation to Florida is not permanent, and Kennedy stands ready, willing, and able to move back to Bremerton as soon as humanly possible should he prevail in this litigation and be permitted to resume his coaching duties.” Indeed, they continued, he is “champing at the bit” to “resume the job he loves.” Attached was a declaration from Kennedy stating that, if he prevailed, he “would return home to Bremerton immediately.” He attested: “I am ready and willing to resume my coaching duties in Bremerton, WA. I can do so within 24 hours of reinstatement, if I am still temporarily residing in Florida.”

By that point, Kennedy had joined the conservative speaking circuit, pivoting away from his coaching career. When a court ordered the school district to rehire him, the Seattle Times’ Danny Westneat reported, they initially did not get a response. While Bremerton students were preparing for a new season of football, Kennedy was meeting with former Vice President Mike Pence. On the night before their first game of the season, he was awarded an engraved rifle at an American Legion convention. Meetings with former President Donald Trump, and later, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, crowded his calendar. (Kennedy dined with DeSantis but remains loyal to Trump.) And then there was the problem of housing: Kennedy had none in Bremerton, or the state, or the region. When he finally returned for his one and only game last Friday, he crashed at a friend’s place. Kennedy no longer says he is “temporarily residing in Florida”; the Sunshine State is his home. Kennedy’s previous claims otherwise were clearly a total fiction that the court bought lock, stock, and barrel

It’s all too reminiscent of 303 Creative. In that case, a website designer named Lorie Smith said Colorado’s nondiscrimination law forced her to make wedding websites for same-sex couples—if asked. But she was never asked! Smith’s lawyers at Alliance Defending Freedom claimed that one gay couple, Stewart and Mike, indicated some vague interest in engaging her services. They seized upon this allegation as proof that Smith might imminently discriminate, break the law, and face penalties. One day before the decision, though, the New Republic’s Melissa Gira Grant reported that Stewart and Mike do not exist. They were made up. Smith’s entire business, too, had tenuous roots in reality; it seemed to exist largely to serve as a test case for Alliance Defending Freedom. Mission accomplished. None of these deceptions stopped the court’s hard-right supermajority from siding with the web designer.

ADF has a history of relying on shady or fictional clients as an excuse to get into court, as Supreme Court litigator Adam Unikowsky has documented. In 2019, ADF claimed to represent a calligraphy company that refused to make wedding invitations for same-sex couples (though it was never asked). The company emerged shortly before ADF filed a lawsuit on its behalf, and disappeared shortly after the Arizona Supreme Court ruled in its favor. Its website was then taken over by an Indonesian casino. ADF also represented a supposed videography company in Minnesota, Telescope Media Group, that did not want to film weddings for same-sex couples. (You guess it: None ever asked.) In 2019, an appeals court issued a preliminary injunction granting it the right to discriminate.

Rather than throw in the towel, Minnesota decided to pursue its hunch that Telescope Media Group was, essentially, not real. It sought discovery that would, among other things, reveal the company’s origins and ongoing business practices, if they existed. ADF abruptly moved to dismiss the case, stating (for the first time) that Telescope Media had pivoted away from wedding videos (it’s unclear if they ever even filmed one). Minnesota resisted, declaring its intent to test ADF’s “highly fanciful allegations” and prove that the group had taken “advantage of the judicial system” and now wished to “avoid the merits of this case.” ADF was so desperate to dodge discovery that it then moved to dismiss the case with prejudice, formally killing it—despite the fact that ADF had won once and was almost guaranteed to win again. Due to this desperate maneuver, the ADF lost out on hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorneys’ fees. This was done, seemingly, to avoid any more facts coming out about the true nature of its client’s business.

We should expect nothing less from the organization that lied so shamelessly about medication abortion in pursuit of a nationwide ban on mifepristone. But we should expect more from the courts, which sided with the fabulists in each of these other cases. The Constitution limits the federal judiciary to live controversies, and the ADF strategy shows one reason why. When interest groups can manufacture cases, they give courts a chance to make sweeping policy announcements with ambiguous applications in the real world. The Supreme Court’s decisions in Kennedy and 303 Creative did not provide meaningful relief to the ostensible plaintiffs. Rather, Kennedy gave the greenlight to more school-sponsored prayer, while 303 Creative rolled back the rights of same-sex couples by denying them equal access to the market.

ADF will now find (or engineer) new clients to push the limits of those rulings. Coach Kennedy moved on from his own litigation long ago, but there’s an endless supply of culture warriors who will gladly serve as the protagonist of ADF’s next fictional case. By playing along with these illusory cases, the Supreme Court shows itself to be an easy mark—or, perhaps, an all- too-willing dupe.

Love that we'll be stuck with these fucking bullshit discriminatory decisions that were built on LIES probably for the rest of my life

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