ABOLISH SCOTUS

The Supreme Court has curtailed EPA's power to regulate carbon pollution – and sent a warning to other regulators


Patrick Parenteau, Professor of Law, Vermont Law School

THE CONVERSATION
Thu, June 30, 2022 

Smokestacks at the coal-fired Mountaineer power plant in New Haven, West Virginia. 

Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

In a highly anticipated but not unexpected 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled on June 30, 2022, that the Obama adminstration’s Clean Power Plan exceeded the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s authority under the Clean Air Act.

The ruling doesn’t take away the EPA’s power to regulate carbon emissions from power plants, but it makes federal action harder by requiring the agency to show that Congress has charged it to act – in an area where Congress has consistently failed to act.

The Clean Power Plan, the policy at the heart of the ruling, never took effect because the court blocked it in 2016, and the EPA now plans to develop a new policy instead. Nonetheless, the court went out of its way to strike it down in this case and reject the agency’s interpretation of what the Clean Air Act permitted.

Having said what the EPA cannot do, the court gave no guidance on what the agency can do about this urgent problem. Beyond climate policy, the ruling poses serious questions about how the court will view other regulatory programs.
Remaking the electricity sector

The Clean Power Plan would have set targets for each state to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from electric power plants. Utilities could meet these targets by improving efficiency at existing coal-fired power plants and by “generation shifting” – producing more power from natural gas and renewable sources like wind and solar.


In the EPA’s view, this sectorwide shift to cleaner sources represented the “best system of emission reduction,” a statutory term in the 1970 Clean Air Act. Coal companies and Republican-led states contended that the changes the agency envisioned exceeded its authority.

Chief Justice John Roberts framed the issue as a “major question,” a doctrine that the court has invoked in only a handful of cases. It holds that agencies may not regulate on questions of “vast economic or political significance” without clear directions from Congress.

In the most prominent example, in 2000 the court invalidated the Food and Drug Administration’s attempt to regulate tobacco. The ruling held that this had never been part of the agency’s mission, no law gave the FDA clear authority over tobacco, and Congress had not directed the FDA to take such action.

The major question doctrine builds on a more established but increasingly disfavored principle of administrative law, Chevron deference, which requires courts to defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute. In my view, however, the Supreme Court is using the major question doctrine to take on authority to decide what Congress meant, without regard to the agency’s expert views or policy judgments.
A rebuke to EPA

In one sense, the majority opinion is fairly narrow. As Roberts writes: “[T]he only interpretive question before us, and the only one we answer, is … whether the ‘best system of emission reduction’ identified by EPA in the Clean Power Plan was within the authority” of section 111 (d) of the Clean Air Act.

The majority’s answer was no.

Citing its ruling in a 2014 air pollution case, the court said that the EPA’s interpretation of “best system of emission reduction” amounted to a “claim to discover in a long-extant statute an unheralded power” representing a “transformative expansion in its regulatory authority.” Essentially, the majority found that the EPA had proposed a sweeping national makeover of the electric power industry.

Roberts characterized section 111 (d) as a “backwater” provision of the Clean Air Act that had never been used to adopt a rule as broad and with such “vast economic and political consequences” as the Clean Power Plan.

Although West Virginia and the others who sued argued that the EPA had no authority to regulate emissions “beyond the fenceline” of individual plants, the Court did not constrain the agency that tightly. Roberts also noted that the EPA’s authority was not limited to plant-specific technological controls. This suggests that the court is leaving the door open for some regulation beyond the fenceline.

In a lengthy and acerbic dissent, Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, argued that the text, context, history and purpose of the Clean Air Act, as well as common sense and the scientific imperative of dealing with climate change, supported the EPA’s position. “The Court appoints itself – instead of Congress or the expert agency – the decisionmaker on climate policy. I cannot think of many things more frightening,” Kagan concluded.

Putting regulators on notice

What can the EPA do now? Its options appear limited. The agency can require existing coal-fired plants to operate more efficiently, but that would extend the plants’ useful lives, with negative effects on nearby communities from pollutants that the plants emit.

Theoretically, the EPA could require every coal-fired power plant to install carbon capture and storage technology. This is the kind of technological control that the agency has long required for air pollution sources. But the costs, especially for retrofitting existing plants, are prohibitive, and utilities would surely challenge the technology as not “adequately demonstrated,” as required by section 111 (d).

Another option would be to require retrofitting coal plants to allow co-firing with natural gas – burning a mix of these fuels, as some plants already do. But relying on natural gas brings its own problems, including methane leaks from wells and pipelines. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas and a major driver of short-term climate warming.

Market conditions are shifting electricity production away from coal and toward cleaner, more cost-effective sources like wind and solar. Indeed, the Clean Power Plan’s original goal of reducing the electric power sector’s carbon emissions by 32% below 2005 levels by 2030 has already been exceeded. But this transition is not moving as quickly as climate science suggests is necessary to avoid catastrophic impacts from warming.
Broader impacts

Beyond climate policy, I expect this ruling to affect how the EPA and other regulatory agencies interpret laws that have been on the books for many years. Regulators may shy away from advancing policies that the court could view as marked departures from past interpretations and actions with big economic and political consequences.

For example, the Securities and Exchange Commission recently proposed a new rule to require publicly traded companies to provide more robust disclosure of the financial risks that climate change poses to their balance sheets. The agency is also moving to more vigorously police greenwashing by companies claiming to be committed to a net-zero carbon future.

In my view, it is clear that the U.S. has entered a new era of administrative law, with an activist court asserting its power to curtail what it perceives as the excesses of regulatory agencies – and not always waiting for those agencies to complete their work.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Patrick Parenteau, Vermont Law School.

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Supreme Court curbs EPA authority to regulate fossil fuels

Alexis Keenan

·Reporter

Thu, June 30, 2022 

The U.S. Supreme Court handed down a highly anticipated opinion on Thursday that curbed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s power to regulate fossil fuels.

The decision in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency is expected to prove consequential for both U.S. and global ambitions to reduce carbon emissions.

In a 6-3 vote, siding with Republican-led state and coal companies, a majority of the court’s justices held that the EPA lacks broad authority, absent explicit authority from Congress, to cap fossil fuel emissions from the country’s existing power plants.

"There is little reason to think Congress assigned such decisions to the Agency," Chief Justice Roberts wrote in the majority opinion, later adding: "We also find it 'highly unlikely that Congress would leave' to 'agency discretion' the decision of how much coal-based generation there should be over the coming decades." Roberts was joined by justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett.

The court’s holding is a victory for the state of West Virginia, the country’s second-largest coal-producing state, which sued the EPA along with 17 other states that joined the litigation — Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming, and Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves.

A coal miner wears a T-shirt prior to the start of his afternoon shift at a coal mine near Gilbert, West Virginia May 22, 2014. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith

Georgetown environmental law professor William W. Buzbee told Yahoo Finance Live that the high court’s ruling, despite narrowing the EPA’s authority, didn’t take away the EPA’s general power to regulate climate change and left in place flexibility for polluters and states to figure out how to comply with environmental law.

“Generally, EPA is going to have to look at the best thing that plants are doing on their sites,” he said, explaining that the court rejected the Obama-era rule that required plants to use the most cutting edge technology to reduce carbon emissions.“But with technological progress that remains possible.”

The ruling is in part a preemptive instruction for the EPA because the agency currently lacks rules that specifically regulate power plants.

The administrations of Barack Obama and Donald Trump expanded and contracted the EPA's authority, respectively. Under the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, energy producers were required to shift away from fossil fuels to more sustainable sources such as wind and power. Those rules were relaxed under the Trump-era Affordable Clean Energy Rule, which an appellate court vacated, finding its requirements "arbitrary and capricious."

The new decision is expected to frustrate the Biden administration's goal to slash U.S. greenhouse gas emissions up to 52% by 2030 and decarbonize the country’s electric grid by 2035. Behind China, the U.S. is the world’s second-largest contributor to carbon emissions.

"Some coal interests and coal states had hoped the court would preclude flexible, cost-effective compliance strategies, because those tend to hurt things like coal plants, and the court does not do that," Buzbee said. "It does reduce the likelihood that the federal government will be pushing things in a protective direction."

QUOTES-Reactions to U.S. Supreme Court ruling on carbon emissions

Thu, June 30, 2022

(Updates with more reactions)

June 30 (Reuters) - Here are reactions to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Thursday limiting the federal government's authority to issue sweeping regulations to reduce carbon emissions from power plants.

WHITE HOUSE SPOKESPERSON ABDULLAH HASAN

"This is another devastating decision from the Court that aims to take our country backwards. While the Court’s decision risks damaging our ability to keep our air clean and combat climate change, President Biden will not relent in using the authorities that he has under law to protect public health and tackle the climate change crisis."

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

"We are reviewing the Supreme Court’s decision. EPA is committed to using the full scope of its existing authorities to protect public health and significantly reduce environmental pollution, which is in alignment with the growing clean energy economy."

WEST VIRGINIA ATTORNEY GENERAL PATRICK MORRISEY

"Huge victory against federal overreach and the excesses of the administrative state. This is a HUGE win for West Virginia, our energy jobs and those who care about maintaining separation of powers in our nation."

CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR GAVIN NEWSOM

"SCOTUS sided with the fossil fuel industry, kneecapping EPA's basic ability to tackle climate change. CA will lead this fight with our $53.9 BILLION climate commitment. We’ll reduce pollution, protect people from extreme weather & leave the world better off than we found it."

YAMIDE DAGNET, DIRECTOR FOR CLIMATE JUSTICE, OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATIONS

"This is an incredible bad week for the global climate movement. From a weak G7 stance to an incredibly undemocratic SCOTUS ruling; it seems to me that backsliding is now the dominant trend in the climate space. To renew confidence in its leadership, the U.S. will need to swiftly pivot and keep its targets on track, while seeking to raise ambition."

MICHAEL BLOOMBERG, U.N. SPECIAL ENVOY FOR CLIMATE AMBITION

"This decision marks the second time in a week that the Supreme Court has turned back the clock to darker days that have dangerous implications for public health. The decision to side with polluters over the public will cost American lives and cause an enormous amount of preventable suffering, with the biggest burden falling on low-income communities and communities of color."

U.S. SENATOR SHELLEY MOORE-CAPITO, WEST VIRGINIA REPUBLICAN

"Today's decision by the Supreme Court is welcome news and further proves that EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) overstepped its authority by imposing enormously burdensome regulations on states to reconfigure our electric grid despite Congress's rejection."

JODY FREEMAN, HARVARD UNIVERSITY LAW PROFESSOR

"This is a lifeline to extending the use of coal."

U.S. SENATOR KEVIN CRAMER, NORTH DAKOTA REPUBLICAN

"Today’s ruling reaffirms Congress never intended the federal government to regulate greenhouse gas emissions for the states."

LEAGUE OF CONSERVATION VOTERS

"This is an outrageous decision that will jeopardize our communities and planet in favor of polluters and their far-right allies."

SENATE MAJORITY LEADER CHUCK SCHUMER, A DEMOCRAT

"Just like last week’s dangerously misguided and abhorrent decisions on gun safety and abortion, the extremist MAGA Court’s ruling today in West Virginia v. EPA will cause more needless deaths – in this instance because of more pollution that will exacerbate the climate crisis and make our air and water less clean and safe."

SENATE MINORITY LEADER MITCH MCCONNELL, KENTUCKY REPUBLICAN

"This ruling will have a significant impact on the Commonwealth. Even as energy prices spiral out of control and experts warn of electricity blackouts, the Biden Administration has continued the Left's war on affordable domestic energy and proposed to saddle the electric power sector with expensive regulatory requirements.

NEW YORK GOVERNOR KATHY HOCHUL

"Make no mistake: today's decision by the Supreme Court is a major setback in our fight against climate change."

SENATE FINANCE COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN RON WYDEN, OREGON DEMOCRAT

"The Republicans on the Supreme Court are not going to allow any meaningful administration efforts to combat climate change. It’s crystal clear. The only way to tackle this problem is through congressional action, which is why it’s so important that Congress pass our clean energy tax credit package.”

TEXAS ATTORNEY GENERAL KEN PAXTON

"With Biden in the White House, the radical left has re-captured the levers of environmental power and are forcing their green agenda on the nation. Today, we stopped him."

(Reporting by Washington bureau; Editing by Howard Goller)

We must ‘walk the talk.’ We can only save ourselves and our planet by confronting climate change | Opinion

Collen Vixen Kelapile

Thu, June 30, 2022

Climate change has become the enemy of human progress and a threat to humanity’s survival. We see its devastating consequences daily. No country is immune.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, the Atlantic hurricane season is ready to hit hard again with heavy rains and floods, possibly destroying homes, displacing people, damaging crops and disrupting livelihoods. The Asia-Pacific region is confronted with sea-level rise. Meanwhile, in the horn of Africa, vulnerable populations are suffering a humanitarian catastrophe as drought’s severity increases. My own country, Botswana, a landlocked and already predominantly arid country in southern Africa, is suffering the severe impacts of dry conditions and deforestation. The United States faces another record-breaking wildfire season as several states experience a heightened threat of heat waves.

The explanation for these trends is clear. We are aware of what is happening, and why. We have become experts at documenting the multifaceted factors and nature of climate impacts. Scientists, citizens, indigenous communities and young people around the world are raising their voices.

We need action. Everyone needs to do their part — first and foremost, the biggest polluters, including the wealthiest countries in the Group of 20. This is the year to walk the talk. The U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP27) in November in Egypt needs to be a milestone in delivering impactful outcomes for people and our planet. Let us turn this year into one where the international community rallies around robust and more ambitious climate action.

Alarming trends

With the global average temperature at about 33.98 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels today, the climate crisis has truly arrived and its impacts are being felt across the world. The latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicates that global temperatures are likely to rise by more than 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of this century — the limit at which runaway climate change will begin to upend life as we know it.

According to the U.N.’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs, global emissions are set to increase by almost 14% over the current decade. This threatens the lives and livelihoods of millions. The oceans are getting warmer, more acidic and holding less oxygen. More than half of the world’s marine species may stand on the brink of extinction by 2100.

Forest degradation and deforestation are responsible for the further loss of biodiversity and species. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations stressed that deforestation has led to the loss of 1 billion acres of forest between 1990 and 2020.

At the same time, millions of people around the world have been pushed deeper into extreme poverty. Public investments in social-safety nets, education and climate resilience must be promoted to reduce fragility to future shocks.

Inequality is rising. The gap between developed and developing countries is growing. The Sustainable Development Goals — the commitments made by world leaders in 2015 to end extreme poverty, inequality and climate change by 2030 — are in crisis and in need of a renewed sense of urgency.

These trends have unfolded alongside the COVID-19 pandemic, reversing decades of progress toward sustainable development. This is compounded by the impact of the war in Ukraine — driving refugee flows, causing severe disruptions of global supply chains for essential commodities and contributing to food insecurity. The recent United Nations World Economic Situation and Prospects (WESP) report stressed that, as countries look to expand energy supplies amid high oil and gas prices, fossil-fuel production is likely to increase in the short term.

Solutions within our grasp

Time is running out to preserve a livable planet. A business-as-usual approach no longer is an option. We need to do more to change how we live, produce, consume and interact with nature.

The solutions to the climate challenge are clear: We must end our addiction to fossil fuels. This means phasing out coal and moving from oil and gas to renewable sources of energy, such as wind and solar. Renewables, in most cases, already are cheaper than fossil fuels today. We need to put them to work, urgently, at scale and speed.

But in order to transform energy systems everywhere, and at the same time build resilience and adapt to the inevitable impacts of climate change, the climate finance commitments presented at the COP26 Climate Conference in Glasgow last November must be honored. We must protect the most vulnerable people, communities and nations bearing the brunt of the climate impacts.

Accelerating action on climate change and driving progress toward the Global Goals must go hand in hand. They cannot be pursued in isolation. We can do it. We can mobilize the huge power of science and technology, change our mindsets and behaviors and drive the transformations we need for a fairer, safer and greener world.

At the upcoming U.N. High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) in New York in July, I will work with countries to scale up ambition, commitments and results to tackle the climate crisis and deliver the goals for both people and planet.

Collen Vixen Kelapile is president of the U.N.’s Economic and Social Council.

1955 warrant in Emmett Till case found, family seeks arrest

JAY REEVES and EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS

Wed, June 29, 2022

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A team searching a Mississippi courthouse basement for evidence about the lynching of Black teenager Emmett Till has found the unserved warrant charging a white woman in his 1955 kidnapping, and relatives of the victim want authorities to finally arrest her nearly 70 years later.

A warrant for the arrest of Carolyn Bryant Donham — identified as “Mrs. Roy Bryant” on the document — was discovered last week by searchers inside a file folder that had been placed in a box, Leflore County Circuit Clerk Elmus Stockstill told The Associated Press on Wednesday

Documents are kept inside boxes by decade, he said, but there was nothing else to indicate where the warrant, dated Aug. 29, 1955, might have been.

“They narrowed it down between the ‘50s and ’60s and got lucky," said Stockstill, who certified the warrant as genuine.

The search group included members of the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation and two Till relatives: cousin Deborah Watts, head of the foundation; and her daughter, Teri Watts. Relatives want authorities to use the warrant to arrest Donham, who at the time of the slaying was married to one of two white men tried and acquitted just weeks after Till was abducted from a relative's home, killed and dumped into a river.

“Serve it and charge her,” Teri Watts told the AP in an interview.

Keith Beauchamp, whose documentary film “The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till” preceded a renewed Justice Department probe that ended without charges in 2007, was also part of the search. He said there’s enough new evidence to prosecute Donham.

Donham set off the case in August 1955 by accusing the 14-year-old Till of making improper advances at a family store in Money, Mississippi. A cousin of Till who was there has said Till whistled at the woman, an act that flew in the face of Mississippi's racist social codes of the era.

Evidence indicates a woman, possibly Donham, identified Till to the men who later killed him. The arrest warrant against Donham was publicized at the time, but the Leflore County sheriff told reporters he did not want to “bother” the woman since she had two young children to care for.

Now in her 80s and most recently living in North Carolina, Donham has not commented publicly on calls for her prosecution. But Teri Watts said the Till family believes the warrant accusing Donham of kidnapping amounts to new evidence.

“This is what the state of Mississippi needs to go ahead,” she said.

District Attorney Dewayne Richardson, whose office would prosecute a case, declined comment on the warrant but cited a December report about the Till case from the Justice Department, which said no prosecution was possible.

Contacted by the AP on Wednesday, Leflore County Sheriff Ricky Banks said: “This is the first time I've known about a warrant.”

Banks, who was 7 years old when Till was killed, said “nothing was said about a warrant” when a former district attorney investigated the case five or six years ago.

“I will see if I can get a copy of the warrant and get with the DA and get their opinion on it,” Banks said. If the warrant can still be served, Banks said, he would have to talk to law enforcement officers in the state where Donham resides.

Arrest warrants can “go stale” due to the passage of time and changing circumstances, and one from 1955 almost certainly wouldn't pass muster before a court, even if a sheriff agreed to serve it, said Ronald J. Rychlak, a law professor at the University of Mississippi.

But combined with any new evidence, the original arrest warrant “absolutely” could be an important stepping stone toward establishing probable cause for a new prosecution, he said.

"If you went in front of a judge you could say, ‘Once upon a time a judge determined there was probable cause, and much more information is available today,’" Rychlak said.

Till, who was from Chicago, was visiting relatives in Mississippi when he entered the store where Donham, then 21, was working on Aug. 24, 1955. A Till relative who was there, Wheeler Parker, told AP that Till whistled at the woman. Donham testified in court that Till also grabbed her and made a lewd comment.

Two nights later, Donham’s then-husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, showed up armed at the rural Leflore County home of Till’s great-uncle, Mose Wright, looking for the youth. Till's brutalized body, weighted down by a fan, was pulled from a river days later in another county. His mother's decision to open the casket so mourners in Chicago could see what had happened helped galvanize the building civil rights movement of the time.

Bryant and Milam were acquitted of murder but later admitted the killing in a magazine interview. While both men were named in the same warrant that accused Donham of kidnapping, authorities did not pursue the case following their acquittal.

Wright testified during the murder trial that a person with a voice “lighter” than a man’s identified Till from inside a pickup truck and the abductors took him away. Other evidence in FBI files indicates that earlier that same night, Donham told her husband at least two other Black men were not the right person.

___

Reeves reported from Newnan, Georgia.

I had a miscarriage in Ecuador, where abortion is illegal. Women like me are treated as criminal suspects by doctors.

Erin Van Rheenen

Fri, July 1, 2022 

• I was living in Quito, Ecuador, when I found out I was pregnant while having a miscarriage.

• My bleeding was heavy, so my boyfriend and I went to a hospital for help.

• There, doctors and nurses treated me as if I had attempted an abortion at home.

I bled as the doctor chatted with the nurse. My boyfriend and I perched on plastic chairs, scared and confused. The nurse rolled her eyes in my direction. The doctor's mouth curled in a sneer. I heard the word "aborto" — "abortion" in Spanish. Then they turned from us to exchange some leisurely banter.

I'd been in Quito, Ecuador, for over a year. My Spanish was good, but I'd never learned the word for miscarriage. "I'm not pregnant anymore" is what I managed to say.

Hours earlier, I'd woken to sheets dark with blood and cramps worse than any I'd ever experienced. Looking at the sheets, I knew this was no ordinary heavy period, but I didn't know I'd been pregnant.

When the bleeding didn't stop, we went to the hospital. I gazed out the car window at Quito's colonial-era buildings. I loved this city so high in the Andes. I had a vague idea about abortion being illegal, but I didn't think that had anything to do with my situation.

I was wrong.

I learned that because abortion was illegal in Ecuador, many women underwent unsafe abortions or tried to self-abort. When things went wrong, they'd go to the hospital as a last resort to stop the bleeding or treat the infection, claiming to be miscarrying to avoid legal prosecution. In 2014, deaths from these abortions accounted for 15.6% of all deaths in the country, Reuters reported.

I became a criminal suspect

Women who, like me, experience incomplete miscarriages may require medical intervention to stem bleeding and make sure all of the tissue passes from the uterus. The treatment for an incomplete miscarriage is the same as the treatment for an elective abortion.

When the nurse finally put me on a gurney, I tried to convey that I wanted local and not general anesthesia. Being unconscious in an unfamiliar hospital, at the mercy of people who treated me with suspicion and disdain, scared me far more than the procedure itself.

I learned a harsh truth that day: A ban on abortion isn't just a ban on abortion. It turns every woman having a gynecological emergency into a criminal suspect.

In a sense I was lucky. As a foreigner who could pay, I likely received better care than the average Ecuadorian would. I was pretty disoriented at the time and have blocked out the details. But I think we paid $200, in cash, before they would even operate on me.

The next thing I remember is my boyfriend gently shaking me in the recovery room. "You've been out for almost an hour," he said. "I thought you were in a coma."

I was glad to be back in the US when we returned

When I returned to the US, I was relieved to be back where abortion was safe and legal, and where no one would suspect me of faking a miscarriage to get an abortion. I was back in a country where many women — myself included — got their primary care from clinics, often for free, that also provided abortions.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade throws all that out the window. If you miscarry in a US state that restricts abortion, you may face worse than I did in Ecuador. There are already examples of US women being prosecuted for miscarriages. This may only become more widespread.

I don't want to demonize Ecuador or Latin America, as abortion is legal in Argentina, Cuba, Uruguay, and Mexico, sort of. In December, Mexico's Supreme Court declared that abortion was no longer a crime, though its exact status varies by state. The difference is, in Mexico, reproductive rights are moving forward, while in the US, they're being rolled back.

Erin Van Rheenen is a writer, teacher, and traveler who just finished a novel set in Central America.

Congresswoman who wrote abortion rights bill arrested at rally near Supreme Court

Zoë Richards

Thu, June 30, 2022 

The House Democrat who introduced a bill last year to enshrine abortion rights into federal law was among more than 180 protesters who were arrested Thursday at a pro-abortion rights rally near the Supreme Court.

Rep. Judy Chu of California was participating in a civil disobedience rally on Capitol grounds, "where she was subsequently arrested alongside other activists," her office said in a news release.

A spokesperson for Chu, describing the demonstration as a “sit-in,” said she was arrested around 1 p.m., adding that she was the only member of Congress at the rally.

Chu tweeted: “The decision to march today was easy—I came out to march for the young rape survivor, the woman who cannot afford to travel to another state to access critical care, the mother with an ectopic pregnancy whose life is in danger. I came out to march for all of us.”

Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., is arrested by Capitol Police with over a hundred people during an act of civil disobedience during a protest for abortion-rights on June 30, 2022, in Washington. (Jacquelyn Martin / AP)

U.S. Capitol Police said on Twitter that they arrested 181 people for illegally blocking an intersection near the Capitol and the Supreme Court.

NBC News has asked Capitol Police for comment.

The rally was led by several abortion rights activist groups, including the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the Center for Popular Democracy and the Working Families Party.

Chu introduced the Women’s Health Protection Act in September after the Supreme Court allowed a new Texas law banning most abortions to remain in place.

The measure would codify the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision into federal law "to protect a person’s ability to determine whether to continue or end a pregnancy" and to protect health care providers' ability to continue administering abortion services, according to the bill’s text.

The House passed the bill in September in a 218-211 vote, with one Democrat joining all Republicans in opposing the measure. In a 46-48 Senate vote in February, the bill failed to clear the 60-vote threshold needed to overcome a Republican-led filibuster.

President Joe Biden said Thursday he supports an "exception" to the Senate’s filibuster rules to allow Democrats to pass abortion protections.

“I believe we have to codify Roe v. Wade into law. And the way to do that is to make sure that the Congress votes to do that, and if the filibuster gets in the way, it’s like voting rights, it should be ... an exception ... to the filibuster for this action to deal with the Supreme Court decision," Biden said at a news conference in Madrid.

Same-sex couples updating legal status after abortion ruling

JAY REEVES

Thu, June 30, 2022 

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Emails and phone calls from same-sex couples, worried about the legal status of their marriages and keeping their children, flooded attorney Sydney Duncan’s office within hours of the Supreme Court’s decision eliminating the constitutional right to abortion.

The ruling last week didn’t directly affect the 2015 decision that paved the way for same-sex marriage. But, Duncan said, it was still a warning shot for families headed by same-sex parents who fear their rights could evaporate like those of people seeking to end a pregnancy.

“That has a lot of people scared and, I think, rightfully so,” said Duncan, who specializes in representing members of the LGBTQ community at the Magic City Legal Center in Birmingham.

Overturning a nearly 50-year-old precedent, the Supreme Court ruled in a Mississippi case that abortion wasn’t protected by the Constitution, a decision likely to lead to bans in about half the states. Justice Samuel Alito said the ruling involved only the medical procedure, writing: “Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”

But conservative Justice Clarence Thomas called on his colleagues to reconsider cases that allowed same-sex marriage, gay sex and contraception.

The court’s three most liberal members warn in their dissent that the ruling could be used to challenge other personal freedoms: “Either the mass of the majority’s opinion is hypocrisy, or additional constitutional rights are under threat. It is one or the other.”

That prospect alarms some LGBTQ couples, who worry about a return to a time when they lacked equal rights to married heterosexual couples under the law. Many, fearful that their marital status is in danger, are moving now to square away potential medical, parental and estate issues.

Dawn Betts-Green and wife Anna Green didn’t waste time shoring up their legal paperwork after the decision. They’ve already visited a legal clinic for families with same-sex parents to start the process of making a will.

“That way, if they blast us back to the Dark Ages again, we have legal protections for our relationship,” said Betts-Green, who works with an Alabama-based nonprofit that documents the history of LGBTQ people in the South.

As a white woman married to a Black transgender man, Robbin Reed of Minneapolis feels particularly vulnerable. A decision undermining same-sex marriage or interracial unions would completely upend Reed's life, which includes the couple's 3-month-old child.

“I have no expectation that anything about my marriage is safe,” said Reed, a legal aide.

Reed's employer, Sarah Breiner of the Breiner Law Firm, is setting up seminars in both the Twin Cities and the Atlanta area to help same-sex couples navigate potential legal needs after the court's decision. Breiner said helping people remain calm about the future is part of her job these days.

“We don’t know what might happen, and that’s the problem,” Breiner said.

In a sign of what could come, the state of Alabama already has cited the abortion ruling in asking a federal appeals court to let it enforce a new state law that makes it a felony for doctors to prescribe puberty blockers and hormones to trans people under age 19. The decision giving states the power to restrict abortion means states should also be able to ban medical treatments for transgender youth, the state claimed.

Any attempt to undo same-sex marriage would begin with a lawsuit, and any possible rollback is years away since no major legal threat is on the horizon, said Cathryn Oakley, senior counsel and state legislative director with the Washington-based Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy organization.

“This is definitely a scary moment and people are nervous, but peoples’ marriages are still safe,” Oakley said.

Although the threat to same-sex couples feels particularly acute in conservative states, Oakley said she's heard of people all over the country in recent days seeking second-parent adoptions, which protect a family by having the names of both adoptive parents on the birth certificate. People also are completing medical directives in case one spouse is incapacitated and doing general estate planning, she said.

Ryanne Seyba’s law firm in Hollywood, Florida, is offering free second-parent adoptions, which are similar to step-parent adoptions, for qualified same-sex couples to help ease some of the stress caused by the possible ripple effects of the abortion decision.

“We realized last week when (the ruling) came out we needed to do something,” said Seyba of The Upgrade Lawyers.

A judge in Broward County plans to have a special day in August to finalize all the adoptions at once, Seyba said. If nothing else, completing the process should give nervous families more security, she said.

“If gay marriage goes away, we don’t really know what’s going to happen,” she said. “It’s better to be on the safe side.’'

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Associated Press writer Kim Chandler in Montgomery contributed to this report.

WELL THAT DID NOT TAKE LONG
Alabama cites abortion ruling in transgender medication case

KIM CHANDLER

Thu, June 30, 2022 

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states can prohibit abortion, Alabama has seized on the decision to argue that the state should also be able to ban gender-affirming medical treatments for transgender youths.

The case marks one of the first known instances in which a conservative state has tried to apply the abortion ruling to other realms, just as LGBTQ advocates and others were afraid would happen.

Critics have expressed fear that the legal reasoning behind the high court ruling could lead to a rollback of decisions involving such matters as gay marriage, birth control and parental rights.

The state is asking a federal appeals court to lift an injunction and let it enforce an Alabama law that would make it a felony to give puberty blockers or hormones to transgender minors to help affirm their gender identity.

In its historic ruling last Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court said terminating a pregnancy is not a fundamental constitutional right because abortion is not mentioned in the Constitution and is not “deeply rooted in this nation’s history and tradition."

In a brief filed Monday, the Alabama attorney general's office argued similarly that gender transition treatments are not “deeply rooted in our history or traditions," and thus the state has the authority to ban them. Alabama contends such treatments are dangerous and experimental, a view disputed by medical organizations.

Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said this is the first case he is aware of in which a state cited the abortion ruling on another issue, but added, “It won’t be the last.”

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said in the majority opinion that the abortion ruling should not cast “doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.” But Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the same legal reasoning should be used to reconsider high court rulings protecting same-sex marriage, gay sex and contraceptives.

“It is no surprise that Alabama and other extremely conservative states are going to take up that invitation as forcefully as they can," Minter said. “Justice Thomas’ concurrence was a declaration of war on groups already under attack, and we expect the hostility to be escalated.”

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court's so-called Dobbs decision, Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, in an interview with NewsNation, did not rule out defending a state law against gay sex if the GOP-controlled Legislature were to approve a new one. The previous one was struck down by the high court in 2003.

On the opposite side of the political spectrum, Massachusetts lawmakers are looking to increase state protections for gender-affirming care, in addition to abortion, in reaction to the Supreme Court ruling.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall was unavailable for comment Thursday, a spokesman said.

Jeff Walker, who has a 15-year-old transgender daughter, said this spring that it felt as if Alabama were attacking families like his with legislation targeting transgender kids' medication and dictating their choice of school bathrooms, locker rooms and sports teams. He said the state's argument in this case is worrisome for everyone.

“I think everyone should be concerned by the wording of this appeal. By this logic, any health care the state feels isn’t in line with its morals or beliefs should be banned,” Walker said.

The Alabama case could become an early test of where judges stand on the scope of the abortion ruling. The appeals court granted the state's request for an expedited schedule for submitting briefs, and a decision could come as early as this fall.

While Alabama was already appealing the injunction in the transgender medication case, the state quickly incorporated the abortion decision into its filing.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey this spring signed the law making it a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison to dispense certain medication to minors to help with their gender transition.

A federal judge in May issued a preliminary injunction blocking the measure, siding with parents who said the law violates their children's rights and their own rights to direct their youngsters' medical care.

“What’s interesting about Supreme Court decisions is they tend to have a life of their own,” said Alison Gash, a professor of political science at the University of Oregon.

Courts have generally supported the right of parents to make medical decisions for their children, including in cases where families don’t want to get cancer treatments recommended by doctors, Gash said. She said she is expecting to see more arguments like Alabama’s arising out of the Dobbs decision, and they could have a major effect on the right to make medical decisions.

“A lot of us feel like the guardrails have completely fallen off, because there is no real predictability about how relevant Dobbs will be to a whole wide range of issues that affect so many different vulnerable communities,” Gash said.

___

Associated Press writers Lindsay Whitehurst in Salt Lake City, Utah; Steve LeBlanc in Boston; and Paul Weber in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Apple Ex-Corporate Law Chief Admits Years of Insider Trading

Chris Dolmetsch and Bob Van Voris

Thu, June 30, 2022 a

(Bloomberg) -- The Apple Inc. lawyer who was once responsible for enforcing the company’s insider trading policy admitted he used his access to draft SEC filings to personally profit.

Gene Levoff, Apple’s former director of corporate law, pleaded guilty on Thursday to six counts of securities fraud between 2011 and 2016. Levoff, 48, was co-chairman of the company’s disclosure committee, which allowed him to see Apple’s revenue and earnings statements before they were filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Levoff on several occasions made trades within quarterly blackout periods, even after telling other employees that they were prohibited from trading in Apple stock, according to federal prosecutors in New Jersey. He used the information to make $227,000 in profit and and to avoid losses of $377,000, according to the government.

“Gene Levoff betrayed the trust of one of the world’s largest tech companies for his own financial gain,” New Jersey US Attorney Vikas Khanna said in a statement. “Despite being responsible for enforcing Apple’s own ban on insider trading, Levoff used his position of trust to commit insider trading in order to line his own pockets.”

Levoff’s lawyer, Kevin Marino, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Stanford Law Grad

US District Judge William J. Martini in Newark, New Jersey set Levoff’s sentencing for Nov. 10. The charges each carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, though he is unlikely to get that much time.

The Stanford Law School graduate, who joined Apple in 2008, was first charged in 2019. Apple fired him in September 2018 after placing him on leave two months earlier, according to a filing in a related lawsuit by the SEC. Over his decade-long career at Apple, he was one of the company’s most senior legal executives, reporting directly to the general counsel.

Levoff last year tried to have the case thrown out as unconstitutional, arguing that no statute specifically bars insider trading. Prosecutors called his argument a bogus “Hail Mary,” and it was rejected by the judge.

The case is US v. Levoff, 19-cr-00780, U.S. District Court, District of New Jersey (Newark).