CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Abortion bans set to take effect this week in Wyoming and North Dakota have been temporarily blocked by judges in those states amid lawsuits arguing that the bans violate their state constitutions.

A judge in Wyoming on Wednesday sided with a firebombed women’s health clinic and others who argued the ban would harm health care workers and their patients, while a North Dakota judge sided with the state’s only abortion clinic, Red River Women’s Clinic in Fargo.

The Wyoming law was set to take effect Wednesday. The North Dakota law was set to take effect Thursday.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Ninety people, including a 12-year-old girl, spoke about West Virginia’s restrictive abortion bill during a public hearing Wednesday.

The state legislature is consideringHouse Bill 302, which would ban abortions in almost all cases — with limited exceptions for victims and rape or incest, thanks to the passage of an amendment on Wednesday — and allow for prosecution of physicians who perform abortions.

Gov. Jim Justice (R) asked the legislature to “clarify and modernize” the state’s abortion regulations, after a judge blocked an abortion ban from before Roe v. Wade. (Disclosure: The ACLU of West Virginia brought forward that case, and this reporter’s husband was part of the legal team.)

Speakers at Wednesday’s public hearing were given 45 seconds each. The youngest, a girl who identified herself as 12-year-old Addison Gardner from Buffalo Middle School, gave impassioned remarks against the bill.

“I play for varsity volleyball and I run track. My education is very important to me, and I plan on doing great things in life,” she said. “If a man decides that I’m an object, and does unspeakable, tragic things to me, am I, a child, supposed to carry and birth another child?”

“Am I to put my body through the physical trauma of pregnancy? Am I to suffer the mental implications, a child who had no say in what was being done with my body?” she continued. “Some here say they are pro-life. What about my life? Does my life not matter to you?”

Vice President Kamala Harris
@VP
United States government official

Welcome back, @POTUS.

The Supreme Court has once again started the summer by upending many Americans’ understanding of what rights are afforded to them under the Constitution. Our 50-year experiment with something resembling sex equality was dashed aside in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Our 200-year, already-rapidly-failing experiment with maybe not getting shot in public came to a screeching halt in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. Examples abound.

Already, people are hurting because of the Court’s decisions. Drafting another blog post complaining about the vacant logic the conservatives on the Court use to impose their minoritarian ideology feels, to a certain extent, like throwing a water balloon at a forest fire. But despite what the David Frenches of the world might tell you, the work of this radical Supreme Court is not done. That’s because the Court’s use of “originalism” doesn’t just compel the most conservative result in every case; it also lets the justices tee themselves up as the only people in this country capable of answering the call.

Whenever the conservatives want to dispense with a constitutional argument they view as protecting “liberal” causes, they follow a pretty straightforward playbook

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration filed a state complaint against Miami’s R House on Tuesday that says the Wynwood bar’s weekend Drag Show Brunches expose minors to “sexually explicit drag shows.”

“The nature of the performances described above, particularly when conducted in the presence of young children, corrupts the public morals and outrages the sense of public decency,” the complaint says in an argument accusing R House of disorderly conduct.

R House ownership released a statement: “We are aware of the complaint and are currently working with the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, through our attorney, to rectify the situation. We are hopeful that Gov. DeSantis, a vociferous supporter and champion of Florida’s hospitality industry and small businesses, will see this as what it is, a misunderstanding, and that the matter will be resolved positively and promptly.”

The complaint was filed to the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, which is part of the DeSantis administration, by the agency’s Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco.

R House has 21 days to respond. It could lose its liquor license if judged to be in violation of local laws and codes.

alifornia Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed a law on Friday modeled after Texas’s anti-abortion law SB 8 — the Texas law which uses private lawsuits to target abortion providers. But there’s one important difference between the two state laws: California’s new law sends these litigious bounty hunters against gun dealers who sell certain guns, including assault weapons and weapons with no serial number.

It’s a high-stakes gambit that will test whether the Supreme Court actually meant what it said in Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson (2021), which held that because of SB 8’s unique style of enforcement, it was immune from meaningful judicial review — and thus would take effect despite very strong arguments that the law was unconstitutional at the time.

Shortly after Jackson was decided last December, Newsom announced that he disagrees with the Supreme Court’s conclusion that states can dodge judicial review of unconstitutional laws. But Newsom also said that, if the Court’s Republican-appointed majority would give this power to states, then he would use it to limit access to firearms.

The state of California, in other words, appears to be trolling the Supreme Court. SB 1327 should force the justices to either overrule Jackson and admit that they were wrong to let states evade the Constitution, or give California’s new gun ban the same immunity from judicial scrutiny that five justices gave SB 8.

That is, of course, assuming that this increasingly political Supreme Court cares about consistency.

Leslie Proll
@LeslieProll

Dale Ho was nominated to Southern District of NY on September 30, 2021. He is one of nation's most celebrated voting rights lawyers & most effective oral advocates of our time. He was recommended by @SenSchumer
. It's long past time he receive a confirmation vote. #ConfirmDaleHo

People's Parity Project
@PeoplesParity

Confirm judges who will defend our democracy. #ConfirmDaleHo