Josh Gerstein
@joshgerstein

JUST IN: 5th Circuit, en banc, upholds injunction against Biden #COVID19 vaccination requirement for federal employees. (Fixing circuit no. in earlier tweet.) Doc:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23721556-govuscourtsca52063093041

On Wednesday, a judge in the deep-red state of Wyoming temporarily blocked a state law that would make performing nearly any abortion in that state a felony. She relied on a 2012 amendment to the state constitution that was intended to spite then-President Barack Obama.

Obama’s early years in office were marred by a scorched-earth political campaign Republicans wielded to try to thwart what became the Affordable Care Act. Obamacare’s opponents warned of a “government takeover of health care” that would strip many Americans of their ability to make their own health decisions.

In many states, opponents of Obamacare effectively took the GOP’s talking points and turned them into state constitutional amendments protecting patients’ ability to obtain health care that the government might not want them to have. Wyoming’s amendment, for example, provides that “each competent adult shall have the right to make his or her own health care decisions.”

According to Quinn Yeargain, a law professor at Widener University, similar amendments are on the books in several other states.

It remains to be seen whether the highest courts in these states, some of which are extremely conservative, will ultimately agree that these anti-Obamacare amendments prohibit abortion bans. And, in at least some cases, the amendments contain language that could mitigate their impact. Wyoming’s amendment, for example, also provides that, under certain circumstances, the state legislature may “determine reasonable and necessary restrictions on the rights granted” by the health care amendment.

But abortion advocates have had two early successes: the Wyoming judge’s order temporarily blocking that state’s abortion ban, and a similar decision by a trial judge in Ohio.

Maren Morris is taking a stand against Tennessee's controversial drag show bill.

While performing at Nashville's Bridgestone Arena Monday night for "Love Rising," an all-star benefit concert for LGBTQ causes, the country singer said: "I introduced my son to some drag queens today. So Tennessee, (expletive) arrest me."

Love Rising also featured performances by Grammy-winning artists like Sheryl Crow, Jason Isbell, Hayley Williams and Brittany Howard alongside drag performers and trans and queer singer-songwriters.

"He's growing up here as a Nashvillian, and I just want to leave this world for him a little bit better than the one we're in right now," Morris said of her son. "And I feel like nights like tonight help do that."

The following night, the effort continued with a second show, We Will Always Be, featuring a showcase of LGBTQ artists in collaboration with Black Opry.

Ticket proceeds for the show benefited local advocacy groups including Tennessee Equality Project, Inclusion Tennessee, OUT Memphis, the Tennessee Pride Chamber. Donations were being matched by foundations created by Grammy-winner Brandi Carlile and the family of the late Nashville singer-songwriter John Prine.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s independent funding through the Federal Reserve is constitutional, the Second Circuit ruled ahead of a US Supreme Court case challenging the agency’s funding.

The unanimous Thursday ruling from a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit came in a case where a New York debt collection law firm, the Law Offices of Crystal Moroney PC, is attempting to escape a civil subpoena the CFPB issued in June 2017. A lower court ruled in the CFPB’s favor in August 2020.

The law firm argued in part that the CFPB’s funding through the Fed and outside of the Congressional appropriations process violates the Constitution’s Appropriations Clause and nondelegation doctrine. The Second Circuit panel rejected that argument.

The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments in its upcoming October term in the CFPB’s appeal of an October 2022 ruling in the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that the CFPB’s funding violates the Constitution and the agency should be subject to Congressional appropriations.

The Second Circuit said in its Thursday ruling that “cannot find any support” for the Fifth Circuit’s ruling on the CFPB’s funding in Supreme Court precedent.

Garnet Henderson
@garnethenderson

BREAKING: A Wyoming judge has issued a temporary restraining order against the state's total abortion ban.

The state's much-publicized medication abortion ban doesn't go into effect until this summer, so abortion service should be able to resume immediately.

The legislature overstepped in attempting to legislate away a constitutional right, she said, violating the separation of powers. The court needs to further investigate constitutional issues at play—namely whether abortion is or isn't health care—so TRO is granted.


Judge says from the bench that the TRO is effective immediately. Short written order to come by 5pm mountain time with a longer, more detailed order to come.


This is the same judge who blocked the Wyoming trigger ban from going into effect this summer. The constitutional issues are pretty much identical here so this was the expected outcome!


And in the fun facts department, the judge is the daughter-in-law of my childhood orthodontist. How’s that for small town

Elián González, the Cuban boy found clinging to an inner tube near Florida shores who became the center of an international child custody dispute as well as a political battle between Cuba’s late leader Fidel Castro and Cuban exiles in Miami, is set to become a member of the island’s National Assembly after Cubans go to the polls Sunday.

González, 29, was proposed as a candidate for the municipality of Cárdenas, in Matanzas, where he lives and works as assistant director of AT Comercial Varadero, a food import company run by the Cuban Ministry of the Armed Forces.

Married and father of a 2-year-old girl, González said in an interview with the Juventud Rebelde newspaper that he had been encouraged by the Castro brothers to enter politics and thought Fidel Castro “would be proud” of his nomination. He has sometimes spoken in the past about how Cuba’s population has lost confidence in government institutions.

But in many of his recent interviews with state media about his future role, one way or the other he always comes back to his personal story.

And because Cuba’s electoral system is designed in a way official candidates face no competition and only need a small percentage of the vote to get elected, there’s little doubt that González, who as a boy was at the center of one of the most emotional stories in Miami’s history, will become a member of the same government his mother tried to escape from.

Security guards at a Florida strip club are being hailed heroes after authorities say they disarmed a masked man who was attempting to enter the venue and potentially stopped a mass shooting.

Surveillance video taken early Sunday shows a man in a red and black devil mask appear to casually walk up to the Mons Venus club in Tampa with a gun and flashlight in his hands before a fast-acting security guard stopped him.

Police said Michael Rudman, 44, had two fully loaded magazines in his pocket as well as additional ammunition, knives and firearm accessories in his truck. The words “KILL” and “DARKK ONE” were written on his arms.

https://twitter.com/TampaPD/status/1638229193996509185

Security guard Manuel “Manny” Resto was standing outside the front entrance when he first noticed Rudman’s truck blocking cars in the parking lot, he said.

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Abortion-rights supporters filed an amended lawsuit Tuesday seeking to block Wyoming’s new abortion pill ban from taking effect.

A group hoping to open what would be the state’s second clinic offering abortions filed the amended lawsuit days after Republican Gov. Mark Gordon signed what is the nation’s first explicit ban on abortion pills. Absent court intervention, that ban would take effect July 1.

Abortion-rights supporters already were seeking to block a separate sweeping abortion ban that took effect Sunday in Wyoming without the governor’s signature. That law seeks to overcome objections that prompted a judge to suspend a previous ban.

The abortion pill ban and the sweeping ban conflict and create confusion about what is and isn’t permissible under the new laws, according to the lawsuit. If they’re allowed to be in effect, “the fundamental rights of Wyoming women and their families will be taken away by the state government and those rights will cease to exist,” the amended lawsuit said.

Both of the new Wyoming abortion bans make exceptions to save a pregnant woman’s life and for cases of rape or incest that are reported to police.