Chris Geidner
@chrisgeidner

BREAKING: Oklahoma GOP AG to #SCOTUS about Richard Glossip’s case: “Absent this Court’s intervention, an execution will move forward under circumstances where the Attorney General has already confessed error—a result that would be unthinkable.” Background:

Oklahoma’s top criminal court ignores Republican AG in Glossip case

#SCOTUS filing, in which the OK AG’s office is joined by Paul Clement. https://supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22A941/265824/20230501154508421_2023.05.01%20Response%20Stay-Final.pdf

An important brief, with an essential task in front of #SCOTUS: “In those unprecedented circumstances, this Court should grant the application for a stay of execution.”

With the future of abortion rights in Florida potentially hinging on the case, attorneys for abortion clinics and a doctor are pushing back against arguments that the state Supreme Court should reject decades of legal precedents about a privacy clause in the Florida Constitution.

The attorneys late Friday filed a 24-page brief urging the Supreme Court to block a 2022 state law that prevented abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. But the stakes of the case soared last month when Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a new law that would bar abortions after six weeks.

The six-week limit is contingent on the outcome of the challenge to the 15-week law (HB 5). In the 15-week case, the state contends the Supreme Court should reject more than 30 years of legal precedents and rule that a privacy clause in the Constitution does not protect abortion rights.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys in Friday’s brief wrote that the Supreme Court should stick with the longstanding interpretation that the Constitution protects abortion rights, saying the 15-week limit “openly flouts that protection and decades of this (Supreme) Court’s precedents.”

In a March 29 brief, Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office argued that past rulings on abortion rights were “clearly erroneous” and that decisions about abortion restrictions should be left to the Legislature.

With the future of abortion rights in Florida potentially hinging on the case, attorneys for abortion clinics and a doctor are pushing back against arguments that the state Supreme Court should reject decades of legal precedents about a privacy clause in the Florida Constitution.

The attorneys late Friday filed a 24-page brief urging the Supreme Court to block a 2022 state law that prevented abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. But the stakes of the case soared last month when Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a new law that would bar abortions after six weeks.

The six-week limit is contingent on the outcome of the challenge to the 15-week law (HB 5). In the 15-week case, the state contends the Supreme Court should reject more than 30 years of legal precedents and rule that a privacy clause in the Constitution does not protect abortion rights.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys in Friday’s brief wrote that the Supreme Court should stick with the longstanding interpretation that the Constitution protects abortion rights, saying the 15-week limit “openly flouts that protection and decades of this (Supreme) Court’s precedents.”

In a March 29 brief, Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office argued that past rulings on abortion rights were “clearly erroneous” and that decisions about abortion restrictions should be left to the Legislature.

A school district in Pennsylvania must allow students to convene an After School Satan Club, a federal judge ruled on Monday.

“In a victory for free speech and religious freedom, a federal court has ruled that the Saucon Valley School District must allow the After School Satan Club to meet in district facilities,” the ACLU announced.

In a Monday filing, issued in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and shared by the ACLU, a judge found that “here, although The Satanic Temple, Inc.’s objectors may challenge the sanctity of this controversially named organization, the sanctity of the First Amendment’s protections must prevail.”

The school district must allow the After School Satan Club, which is sponsored by The Satanic Temple, to meet during the school year on three previously agreed-upon dates, but it won’t have to distribute permission slips for the club for students to take home, according to the filing.

Mark Joseph Stern
@mjs_DC

A new emergency application at the Supreme Court asks the justices to halt bans on assault weapons that Illinois and Naperville enacted after a shooter slaughtered seven people with an assault weapon in Highland Park on July 4. https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23793879/22a948.pdf

U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin says he won’t seek reelection next year, ending a nearly 60-year run in Maryland politics and creating a scramble to fill a rare vacancy in the closely-divided Senate.

“It’s time,” the 79-year-old Democrat told The Baltimore Sun in an interview at his Pikesville home in advance of his anticipated announcement Monday. “I always knew this election cycle would be the one I would be thinking about not running again, so it’s not something that hit me by surprise. I enjoy life. There are other things I can do.”

In his career, Cardin, whose third six-year Senate term ends in January 2025, has emphasized international human rights and assisting Baltimore and the Chesapeake Bay.

ACLU
@ACLU
BREAKING: The ACLU of Montana is suing to challenge the censure of state representative Zooey Zephyr.

The efforts to silence her violate both her First Amendment rights and the rights of her constituents to representation in state government.

Mark Joseph Stern
@mjs_DC

Here is a link to the complaint! https://wp.api.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/ZZ-Compl.-FINAL.pdf

Gillian Branstetter
@GBBranstetter

The complaint is joined by a TRO application which, if granted, will be immediately delivered to Montana House leadership. The state has already ignored a series of court warnings in our challenge to its ban on birth certificate changes for trans people.

aclu.org
Marquez v. State of Montana | American Civil Liberties Union