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.

In just a couple of days, Florida’s Supreme Court justices will weigh the future of access to abortion in the state.

The seven justices, five appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, will weigh whether Florida’s current 15-week abortion ban violates the state’s constitutional guarantee of privacy after hearing arguments from both sides on Friday. But the justices won’t just be deciding the fate of the 15-week law: If they uphold that provision, 30 days later, a six-week abortion ban will kick in across the state.

The justices deciding that fate include Charles Canady, a former anti-abortion lawmaker whose wife is a state lawmaker who sponsored the six-week bill; Jamie Grosshans, who previously was a fellow for a conservative legal group and did legal work for an anti-abortion group; and Carlos Muñiz, a former President Donald Trump Department of Education nominee whose appointment to the Florida Supreme Court was applauded by an anti-abortion group.

If the court upholds the 15-week law, it could reverse its prior precedent from the late 1980s.

In 1995, as a U.S. House of Representatives member, Canady introduced a bill called the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. Canady was an early adopter of the term, which was created by an anti-abortion group.

Another justice, Grosshans, did legal work for a group that discourages women from having abortions, an experience she left off her application to the Supreme Court.

In 2016, Grosshans wrote an article for Christian Lawyer magazine and disclosed she did pro-bono legal work for crisis pregnancy centers, which are state-funded, often religiously affiliated groups that promote childbirth and discourage women from having abortions.

In just a couple of days, Florida’s Supreme Court justices will weigh the future of access to abortion in the state.

The seven justices, five appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, will weigh whether Florida’s current 15-week abortion ban violates the state’s constitutional guarantee of privacy after hearing arguments from both sides on Friday. But the justices won’t just be deciding the fate of the 15-week law: If they uphold that provision, 30 days later, a six-week abortion ban will kick in across the state.

The justices deciding that fate include Charles Canady, a former anti-abortion lawmaker whose wife is a state lawmaker who sponsored the six-week bill; Jamie Grosshans, who previously was a fellow for a conservative legal group and did legal work for an anti-abortion group; and Carlos Muñiz, a former President Donald Trump Department of Education nominee whose appointment to the Florida Supreme Court was applauded by an anti-abortion group.

If the court upholds the 15-week law, it could reverse its prior precedent from the late 1980s.

In 1995, as a U.S. House of Representatives member, Canady introduced a bill called the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. Canady was an early adopter of the term, which was created by an anti-abortion group.

Another justice, Grosshans, did legal work for a group that discourages women from having abortions, an experience she left off her application to the Supreme Court.

In 2016, Grosshans wrote an article for Christian Lawyer magazine and disclosed she did pro-bono legal work for crisis pregnancy centers, which are state-funded, often religiously affiliated groups that promote childbirth and discourage women from having abortions.

Democracy Docket
@DemocracyDocket

NEW: Ohio voters will vote under an illegally gerrymandered congressional map for the 2024 election after the Ohio Supreme Court dismisses lawsuits challenging the districts. Despite the dismissal, new districts will be drawn for 2026.

The plaintiffs requested for the court to dismiss their challenges, reasoning that GOP lawmakers and the far-right Ohio Supreme Court could approve an even more unfair map for 2024. Ohio groups are working towards a ballot measure to enact a citizen-led redistricting commission.

democracydocket.com
Ohio Supreme Court Dismisses Lawsuits Over Congressional Map

WASHINGTON, D.C. — On Thursday, Sept. 7, the Ohio Supreme Court dismissed a set of lawsuits that challenged the state’s congressional map for partisan gerrymandering.

This decision preserves the status quo, leaving in place a congressional map that the Ohio Supreme Court previously struck down for being a partisan gerrymander. Ohioans voted under this map during the 2022 elections and will again vote under it in 2024.

Nevertheless, the pro-voting groups behind the lawsuits — who requested that the court dismiss their cases — maintain that “this is the best result under the circumstances for the people of Ohio who deserve certainty about the congressional map that they will be voting under in this cycle, at the very least.” In other words, Ohio Republicans will not have the opportunity to further gerrymander the state’s congressional map before 2024.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday temporarily halted a district judge’s order for Texas to remove from its river border with Mexico a thousand-foot-long buoy barrier put in place to deter crossings, a decision that will maintain the status quo as the appeals court considers a longer-term stay.

In documents filed on Thursday, Texas’ legal team pushed the court to issue the stay pending appeal, arguing that the state’s sovereignty and self-defense interests would be irreparably harmed — even if the court eventually ruled in favor of Texas. The state’s lawyers further argued that the barrier was necessary because the state is under “invasion” from drug cartels, leaning into a conservative legal theory that contends states have the constitutional power to enforce border security if its people are in imminent danger.

“The buoys were deployed under the Governor’s constitutional authority to defend Texas from transnational-criminal-cartel invasion,” the Texas lawyers wrote. “Moving the buoys exacerbates dangers to migrants enticed to cross the border unlawfully, and to Texans harmed by human trafficking, drug smuggling, and unchecked cartel violence.”

The Texas attorneys also criticized the district judge’s Wednesday interpretation of a law that allows the federal government to regulate waterways and ensure their navigability, which was a key part of the ruling. The judge had also argued that the barrier presented a risk to human life.

Gov. Greg Abbott’s office said on Wednesday that it was prepared to fight the case up to the Supreme Court if necessary.

On Wednesday, Mexico’s Supreme Court struck down all federal penalties on abortion, saying that the national regulation was an unconstitutional violation of women’s rights and that criminalizing abortion was “gender-based violence and discrimination.” The ruling will require all federal health institutions to offer abortions to anyone who requests them. A patchwork of state restrictions remains, with 20 states still criminalizing abortion, but the ruling is a massive win for Mexican activists in the Marea Verde or “Green Wave” movement, whose supporters wear green bandanas.

The decision also highlights just how extreme the United States has become on abortion in the eyes of the rest of the world. In the last three decades, about 60 countries have expanded abortion rights, while only four countries have rolled back access: El Salvador, Nicaragua, Poland, and the U.S.

The decision also highlights just how extreme the United States has become on abortion in the eyes of the rest of the world. In the last three decades, about 60 countries have expanded abortion rights, while only four countries have rolled back access: El Salvador, Nicaragua, Poland, and the U.S.

It’s all the more striking to read that statement when you remember that Mexico is a predominantly Catholic country. However, experts have noted that abortion restrictions are more correlated with creeping authoritarianism than they are with religion. A 2021 New York Times analysis contained this chilling sentence: “Curbs on women’s rights tend to accelerate in backsliding democracies, a category that includes the United States, according to virtually every independent metric and watchdog.”

After a federal judge ruled Texas must get rid of a 1,000-foot barrier designed to deter migrants from crossing the Rio Grande, Gov. Greg Abbott said he'd appeal the decision — and wouldn't get rid of the floating barrier unless SCOTUS tells him to.

On Wednesday, Judge David Ezra of the US District Court in Austin ordered the removal of the barrier and required Texas to foot the bill, pushing back on Abbott's decision to install it back in July "without authorization of any kind," ruling the buoy system is "an obstruction to the navigable capacity of that waterway" and a "threat to human life."

"Governor Abbott announced that he was not 'asking for permission' for Operation Lone Star, the anti-immigration program under which Texas constructed the floating barrier. Unfortunately for Texas, permission is exactly what federal law requires before installing obstructions in the nation's navigable waters," he said.

Abbott swiftly responded, declaring plans to appeal. "Today's court decision merely prolongs President Biden's willful refusal to acknowledge that Texas is rightfully stepping up to do the job that he should have been doing all along," his office wrote, adding that "Texas is prepared to take this fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court."

Chris Geidner
@chrisgeidner

Monique Worrell sues DeSantis, as she should. The second elected prosecutor DeSantis has attempted to oust, Worrell’s suspension order was even more vague than the one issued against Andrew Warren.

Chris Geidner
@chrisgeidner

Monique Worrell sues DeSantis, as she should. The second elected prosecutor DeSantis has attempted to oust, Worrell’s suspension order was even more vague than the one issued against Andrew Warren.

The Résumé

Brantley Starr came up in Texas, graduating from a Christian college in Abilene and the University of Texas School of Law, where he joined (drumroll please) the local chapter of the Federalist Society. Don’t let the fact that a sitting federal judge is named “Brantley” distract you from his last name: He is the nephew of Ken Starr, the former special counsel who worked alongside Brett Kavanaugh to breathlessly report on the sexual misconduct of President Bill Clinton, and then, as president of Baylor University, utterly failed to protect Baylor University’s students from sexual assault. (Kavanaugh, to the best of my knowledge, was uninvolved in that chapter of Starr’s career.)

Ken Starr’s uncle magic and connections to powerful Republicans in the conservative legal movement paid off for young Brantley. After graduation, he was able to spend nearly his entire career in the soft embrace of right-wing state government offices: He worked for two different Texas Supreme Court justices (including The Posting Justice, Don Willett, whom Trump later put on the Fifth Circuit) and worked his way through the ranks of the Texas Attorney General’s office. That’s where Brantley was when Trump appointed him to serve on the District Court for the Northern District of Texas in 2019.

The Opinions

The Northern District of Texas is a premiere venue for judge-shopping, which is when parties try to file cases in specific courts to get their preferred judge. That’s because this particular court, unlike most federal courts, assigns judges to specific geographic areas. For example, nearly all cases in Amarillo are assigned to Matthew Kacsmaryk, an anti-abortion crusader whose decision “suspending” FDA approval of a drug commonly used in medication abortion was recently upheld in part by the Fifth Circuit. About half of all cases in Fort Worth are assigned to Reed O’Connor, who has repealed Obamacare from the bench an estimated 7,000 times, only to be overruled by the Fifth Circuit or the Supreme Court.

Unlike those lucky judges, Brantley was assigned to Dallas, where he only has a 1-in-8 chance of getting assigned any given case. This means that when he gets the type of culture war-adjacent case that Trump judges crave, he really needs to let his freak flag fly to stand out. For example, in a case from earlier this year, a Texas company fired an executive after he refused on religious grounds to get the COVID-19 vaccine. After the executive was hired by a company in the same field, his old company sued to enforce his non-compete agreement.

Non-competes are increasingly controversial, and Texas law allows judges to refuse to enforce them in many cases, which is what Brantley did—but only after starting his opinion with a rant about the mistreatment of religious Americans at the hands of heathens everywhere. “At a legal conference three years ago, a professor pulled me aside,” he wrote. “He confided that he was an atheist, he knew I believed in God, but he wanted to apologize for the treatment people of faith in America are receiving.”