SCOTUS Watch

[Holman]

SCOTUS news today is that Clarence Thomas did not attend today's court session where the rest of the Justices were hearing arguments. Neither he nor the court has offered an explanation.

Is this something that sometimes happens, or is it truly unusual? (Rampant speculation is of course that Thomas is dead or off enjoying a billionaire-funded vacation.)

[LawBeefaroni]

SCOTUS news today is that Clarence Thomas did not attend today's court session where the rest of the Justices were hearing arguments. Neither he nor the court has offered an explanation.

Is this something that sometimes happens, or is it truly unusual? (Rampant speculation is of course that Thomas is dead or off enjoying a billionaire-funded vacation.)

I don't think missing a day of work is that unusual but not giving a reason is.

[disarm]

Don't worry, I'm sure we'll all get an explanation eventually...and it will likely involve him being on the private yacht of one of participants in the hearing. But that's business as usual, so nothing to worry about.

[Smoove_B]

So weird that he would be absent today:

Justice Samuel Alito at one point even outright declared Snyder — not by name — irrelevant to the larger question of whether federal law prohibits the payment of after-the-fact "gratuities" to state and local public officials, and other people associated with entities receiving federal funds, on the same basis as bribes paid in exchange for specific acts.

"We didn't really take this case just to decide whether this particular case was correctly decided. We took it to explore the meaning of this provision," Alito said. "I don't want to talk about the circumstances of this case. I want to talk about what the law means and what the government's position has been."

[Smoove_B]

And I'm not even sure what to make of this:

The Supreme Court handed down a strange set of opinions on Monday evening, which accompanied a decision that largely reinstates Idaho’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors. The ban was previously blocked by a lower court.

None of the opinions in Labrador v. Poe spend much time discussing whether such a ban is constitutional — although Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion does contain some language suggesting that he and Justice Amy Coney Barrett will ultimately vote to uphold the ban.

Rather, seven of the nine justices split into three different camps, each of which proposes a different way that the Court should handle cases arising on its “shadow docket,” a mix of emergency motions and other matters that the Court decides on an expedited basis — often without full briefing or oral argument. The Labrador case arose on the Court’s shadow docket.

Indeed, Idaho’s lawyers did not even attempt to defend its restrictions on gender-affirming care on the merits. Instead, they argued that the lower court went too far by prohibiting the state from enforcing its ban against any patient or any doctor.

A majority of the justices agreed with the state, ruling that the ban cannot be enforced against the actual plaintiffs in this case, two trans children and their parents, but that it can be enforced against anyone who has not yet sought a court order allowing them to receive gender-affirming care.

[Carpet_pissr]

Don't worry, I'm sure we'll all get an explanation eventually...and it will likely involve him being on the private yacht of one of participants in the hearing. But that's business as usual, so nothing to worry about.

Apparently he was being transported to a FSV safe house, hog-tied and gagged, in the back of an agent's car. His handler thought he needed a little re-education about staying out of the news so he could continue his work. Assets need to be more careful, etc.

[Holman]

He was back in session today, presumably because he needed to minimize the J6 insurrection for Ginni's sake.

[waitingtoconnect]

It’s good to see we are spending tens of millions of dollars to deny what must be a tiny number of trans children in Idaho the right to medical care for religious and political reasons.

Now we just need a constitutional amendment to show kids that Jesus only cares about true American values.