A Couple Legal Developments

Aileen Cannon

A young and inexperienced judge was confirmed on November 12th, 2020. She was the new United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Trump lives in that area. How coincidental.  

Judge Cannon's handling of Trump's classified documents mishandling trial has been horrendous. She was strongly rebuked by the Court of Appeals when she appointed a special master after the FBI seized the documents.

Her decisions have not improved. Cannon's rulings repeatedly benefit the Trump side and are criticized for being shoddy. Lawyers and judges have cited her for bias. People, again not just Joe Smoes like myself, assume she is playing her cards in the assumption she will be nominated by Trump for an appellate judge slot. She should not be on the case.

A piece was co-written by Charles Savage, a veteran national security reporter, reported two of her colleagues agreed:

Charlie Savage and Alan Feuer reported that two of Judge Aileen Cannon’s more experienced colleagues on Florida’s federal bench—including the chief judge, a George W. Bush appointee—urged her to hand off the case of Trump’s retention of classified documents to someone else when it was assigned to her. They noted that she was inexperienced, having been appointed by Trump only very late in his term, and that taking the case would look bad since she had previously been rebuked by a conservative appeals court after helping Trump in the criminal investigation that led to the indictment. 

The fact that someone leaked this information underlines how concerned people are about the whole thing. Her latest pro-Trump decision, after suspending the trial indefinitely, was to refuse Jack Smith's request for a gag order after Trump lied about the FBI using dangerous lethal force when they entered his home to obtain the documents. 

I have seen multiple legal analysts insist there is nothing to be done. There simply are not likely grounds to require her to step down. If so, the law is an ass.

Louisiana Ten Commandments Law

Four civil liberties groups will sue the state of Louisiana after Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signed a law Wednesday that calls for the Ten Commandments to be displayed in school classrooms. The new rule applies to any school that accepts state money, including colleges and universities.

Kevin Kruse, who has written about Christian nationalism, discussed the law in the context of previous Ten Commandments displays. The Supreme Court upheld a Ten Commandments display law on a statehouse ground. 

OTOH, in 1980, they struck one down when placed in the classroom. The governor welcomed a challenge, thinking the current Supreme Court will go a different way. 

A fractured Court that still had Ginsburg generally accepted religious monuments in public places. The plurality opinion set forth multiple categories and school displays were separate. Since then, the "Lemon test" was firmly deemed overruled. Nonetheless, bad facts or not, the case officially dealt with private speech. (Coach Prayer Case.)

Some judges over the years have pointed to the secular purpose of Ten Commandment displays, including as a symbol of our legal origins. This claim is particularly hard to believe in this case, when backers of the law blatantly discuss the religious significance of the document.  

The other wrinkle, which might pick up a few votes, is that some justices question the standing to sue in many of these display cases. The justices think an "offender observer" does not have the appropriate legal harm. Again, how this will apply in the more sensitive area of minor school children, who have traditionally been treated differently, is unclear. 

Legal wrangling aside, the law is clearly unconstitutional and unwise. A blatant problem -- even if Scalia handwaved it -- is that there are multiple versions of the commandments. The state here crafted its own, inspired by the Ten Commandments displays created in honor of the 1950s motion picture. Religious people should be horrified. 

We shall see what happens. Litigation can take years. 

The law is part of a package of horrible bills described as "bills that will transform our education system and bring back common sense in our classrooms." 

Two other laws, likely also litigation bait, target student pronouns not matching their biological sex and the use of chaplains in public schools. The Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Liberty has been vocal about the latter. 

Another law is entitled "Prohibits discrimination based off vaccination status." As the BJC discussion shows, these laws (anti-trans laws are clearly a national menace at this point) are not only a problem in Louisiana. 

One More Thing: Japanese Reproductive Liberty

They must already have children and prove that pregnancy would endanger their health, and they are required to obtain the consent of their spouses. That makes such surgeries difficult to obtain for many women, and all but impossible for single, childless women like Ms. Tatsuta.

I won't analyze it in detail, but the NYT has an interesting article concerning a legal challenge in Japan about the right of women to obtain sterilization. It underlines the fundamental nature of reproductive liberty worldwide.

The challenge also has LGBTQ aspects since one litigant considers herself genderless and pregnancy appalls her. (I use the terms cited in the article.)  

One notable thing about Japan's legal system is that it is one of the few countries that has an active death penalty.