Are you a Californian who feels like your views on politics in California are not popular? Do you feel like no one will agree with you? Feels like when you meet someone who does agree you are part of a secret underground club of people who think like you? Then join us on the California Underground Podcast to hear others who share your views and solutions to save our beautiful state.
On this episode, we dive into some of the recent decisions from the Supreme Court including affirmative action, student loan forgiveness, and religious freedom.
Links Mentioned in Show
Affirmative action
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf
Religious freedom
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/22-174_k536.pdf
Student loan forgiveness
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/22-506_nmip.pdf
This episode was recorded on 7.11.23
*The California Underground Podcast is dedicated to discussing California politics from a place of sanity and rationality.*
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If you're What's going on?
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Everybody? Thanks for tuning to another
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episode of the California Underground Podcast.
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I'm your host, Phil, as always with me, my trusty cohost, the
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best and fastest researcher in the West Camille.
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How are you doing on this hot night in Southern California?
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Exactly. I'm melting, but otherwise fine.
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How are you? Also a little hot down here,
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Summer kind of like flicked on in Southern California.
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I feel like it went from like June gloom to really hot really
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fast so. But like I said, we complained
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about our like nine months of winter and I was like, as soon
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as it's hot, we're all going to be complaining about that.
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Yeah, I feel like there was a point where we were complaining
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about it always being cold and rainy and foggy, and now we're
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at the point where we're like it got a little warm today.
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It's like 78 degrees. That's gross.
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I don't want that. So here we are did.
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You get your free Slurpee. Here's a free Slurpee. 711 Day.
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No, I didn't even think about that Free Slurpee.
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You still have time. I'll just run it.
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We're good. You go.
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Okay. I'll be back.
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Camille's going to run the show. She's going to give her whole
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dissertation on these three Supreme Court decisions.
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So have fun at everybody. I'll see you in a little bit.
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Bye. I I don't think that would fit
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into what my trainer wants me to be.
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Eating or indulging right now is just melted sugar or icy sugar.
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So. But, you know, it's only once a
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year. Yeah, so.
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The point of tonight's show is we're going to be talking about
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the Supreme Court cases that came out.
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Not necessarily California related, but again, it does
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affect California tangentially. But either way, I like to talk
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about these cases and I like to nerd out about these cases.
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I love constitutional law. I've practiced a couple
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constitutional law cases in my time.
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So I like to keep up on this stuff.
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I'm probably one of the only people I know who.
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Actually looks forward to sitting down and reading these
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decisions and kind of highlighting and taking them
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apart. But we're only going to be
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talking about 3:00 tonight. We're going to be talking about
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the student loan forgiveness. We'll be talking about
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affirmative action and religious freedom in terms of compelled
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speech and stuff like that. I encourage anybody who is
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watching in the chat right now. Please feel free to ask any
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questions or anything like that if there's something you guys
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don't really understand. Just ask me.
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And again, disclaimer, this is only my opinion.
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This is not to be construed as legal advice.
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Us as attorneys, we're we're just kind of conditioned.
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We always have to do that wherever we go, whenever we
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speak publicly, we kind of have to tell people it's not legal
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advice. We're just telling you our
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opinion. So don't go somewhere and be
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like, hey, this guy on a podcast told me this was what I could do
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constitutionally. So therefore I'm going to do it.
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That's legal advice, right? And racial.
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Purposes only. This is not to be construed as
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legal advice. Exactly not an.
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Attorney So. Exactly.
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And any dissemination of this podcast without the written,
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informed consent of MLB will be no, That's a different thing.
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All right. So, Camille, I asked you, I
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think we kind of set it up where you're going to be like asking
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me questions and interviewing me in a sense, not like
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interviewing, but like. I'll let you lead the discussion
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and ask questions about these cases, and I'll do my best to
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answer so that I'm just not sitting here rambling.
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Since you're kind of leading the show, which one do you want to
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start with? I was going to ask you that same
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question actually. Let's go with affirmative
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action, which actually I feel like is most closely related to
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California because California banned affirmative action when a
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couple. Of years ago.
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Yeah, I I feel like we should have pulled up specifically what
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proposition, but if you don't remember, a couple years ago
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California voted down affirmative action to be
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enshrined in our constitution. It was basically the way it was
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worded was it would allow under the California Constitution for
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you to discriminate based on race.
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And I think people picked up on it really quickly and we're
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like, no, that doesn't make any sense.
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So it got voted down by like a large margin.
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So even in super blue progressive California,
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affirmative action was voted down by a large margin.
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But yeah, we can definitely start with affirmative action
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that was. A first first you did at least
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used to call yourself a constitutional attorney.
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Is that still the case? Yeah, I agree.
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Whenever the whenever the opportunity presents itself, I
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should say they're kind of few and far between constitutional
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cases, ones that people really have like a strong claim.
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A lot of people will contact me and be like, oh, I have this
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claim, I want to do the XY&Z. I'm like that's not really a
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constitutional case. But yes, yeah, it's still open.
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So what would make you a constitutional attorney?
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Any cases involving questions of law under the US or California
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constitution. So that could be First
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Amendment, could be Second Amendment, could be separation
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of powers, abuse of power. Those are usually the big ones.
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First Amendment, Second Amendment.
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Criminal defense is usually referred reserved like 4th
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amendment, 5th amendment. That's all criminal defense
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stuff, but other than that those are like the big ones that
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people usually get involved in. OK.
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And I can say from my own experience that you're the best
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attorney that I've ever worked with in all the land.
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Well, I appreciate that. I hope maybe I'm the only
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attorney you've ever that was. That was not part of the deal
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tonight. But yeah, I try my best cuz I
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nerd out on this stuff. So let's hop into affirmative
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action. Are there any questions right
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off the bat? I know someone had asked on
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Instagram. They had a direct message.
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If they if I could just explain right off the bat like the court
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system how it works. So real quick, how does we're
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going to, there's going to be a lot of Schoolhouse Rock in this
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episode. How does a case get to the
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Supreme Court? Well, usually a case starts if
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it's a question under the US Constitution, it starts in
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federal court. They start in what are called
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district courts because those are like the trial level courts.
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There's three levels to courts. Let me start there.
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There's the trial level, there's the appellate level, which is
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second, and then there's the Supreme Court.
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Most of these cases started at a District Court in some federal
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jurisdiction. It then went up to some circuit,
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for example, in the religious freedom, when it went up to the
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10th Circuit, which was the appeals court.
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They didn't like that ruling, so then they appealed it to the
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Supreme Court. To get it to the Supreme Court,
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you have to file this thing called a writ of Cersei or I,
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which is Latin to basically say, like give us permission to go in
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front of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court looks at your
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case. They grant what they call cert
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or grant writ, grant cert, and then Supreme Court hears it and
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they come out with a decision. So that's how these cases happen
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or the other way I could have. That word in the chat.
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Cersei or I, Yeah, I feel like if you can spell Cersei or I.
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Without looking it up, don't go Google it.
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And the Supreme Court, they get about 7-8 thousand cases and
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they only hear like, what, 80 a year?
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Yeah, they don't hear a lot. Like the chances of you getting
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hurt at the Supreme Court are very, very low.
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Most of the time they don't listen to your case.
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So yeah, it's a very select few that actually make it to the US
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Supreme Court. The other way it can come to the
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Supreme Court is if you appeal it from a state Supreme Court.
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So that's the other way. So if you go through like the
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state courts get all the way up to your state, Let's say you sue
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someone here in California in Superior Court, you go all the
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way up to the California Supreme Court.
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You don't like their decision? Oh jeez, my thing is falling
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over. If you don't like their
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decision, you can appeal it to the US Supreme Court.
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So. Okay.
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So obviously that happened in these cases.
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Right. And.
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I'm trying to fix my. Microphone.
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I didn't write down the there was affirmative action was.
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I believe there was actually 2 cases involved in this a student
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organization. See.
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I didn't write this down and I showed up student organization
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and then was it something against the University of
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Nebraska? No, no.
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So there were two different there.
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There were two different cases. They were sort of consulted
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together. It's University of North
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Carolina and Harvard were the two schools that were sued.
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But the decision was basically the same.
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The only difference was just as Cantonji Brown, Jackson had to
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recuse herself from the Harvard case because she sat on the
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board of trustees for Harvard, So she had to recuse herself
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from that case. But she did write a scathing
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dissent. In the UNC case.
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And Justice Thomas, which I'll talk about in a little bit,
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really kind of legally gave it back to her and kind of
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eviscerated her in his concurrence.
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So do a little interesting spat going on between those two.
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Katanji Brown, Jackson's obviously the Supreme Court
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nominee, from Joe Biden, which is ironic.
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She had so much to say about affirmative action.
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When her pick in selection to the Supreme Court was almost
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like an affirmative action pick because Joe Biden basically came
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out and said I'm only going to pick a black female, not I'm
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going to pick the best judge to sit on the court.
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It's you have to be a black female.
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So, kind of ironic, but all right, where should we start on
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affirmative action? Well, I guess a little bit of
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background or a little bit of info.
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Yeah. The, the, I mean the the quick
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summary of it is let me look at my notes right here.
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Basically what happened there was these groups that one of
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them I believe was an Asian American group that sued Harvard
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and UNC for affirmative action because they were being denied
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admission and they lost a seat or an opportunity to get to
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their school because of affirmative action.
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And this is sort of been an argument that has been going on
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for like, I don't know how many decades that Asian Americans are
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often some of the biggest victims or those who suffer the
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most under affirmative action because they're not part of the
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minority. That affirmative action seeks to
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select an uplift, even though they are a minority.
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So they sued. They brought it to federal
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court. It was these groups.
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Long story short, it got all the way up to the Supreme Court.
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The Supreme Court ruled 6 three. I believe all these cases were
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63 religious. Freedom was unanimous.
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Sorry. What's that?
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The religious freedom one was actually, I can't say that word,
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unanimous which. I was.
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I was. Thought about that.
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No, I believe it was, is it? Not OK, We'll get to that.
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Sorry, seven to seven to two. No, that was the Colorado case.
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Yeah, there were, there were dissents in the religious
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freedom one. So they didn't, they didn't all
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agree on the religious freedom one.
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Justice Sotomayor had a really crazy dissent in that one
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anyway. So affirmative action, you need
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to go back a little bit. There was this case, Gretter V
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Bollinger, which is around 2003. The court ruled that there is a
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constitutional argument. To allow for race to be a
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deciding factor in school admissions in certain cases.
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There were, I think, who was on the court at that time.
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William Rehnquist was the Chief Justice at that time.
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He dissented. He basically made the argument
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that now these conservative judges are making, which is that
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this is a constitutional farce, to believe that affirmative
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action is somehow protected under the Constitution.
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Sandra Day O'Connor, which was you know one of the more popular
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judges at the time. She wrote that this is okay and
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this is fine because it's a compelling state interest but it
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would have to sunset after like 25 years.
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So in Sandra Day O'Connor's I'd mind like affirmative action is
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fine for a certain amount of time to kind of rectify racial
00:13:23
inequality and but at a certain point we had we as a society
00:13:27
have to get past it Now some of the more liberal judges.
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Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the notorious RBG, said this should
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never go away. We should be able to have this
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forever. Fast forward to now.
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These groups sued. Basically, let's see, after the
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lower courts, they upheld North Carolina.
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At Harvard's admission, they came to the Supreme Court and
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they granted cert. Justice Roberts gave the
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majority opinion. So.
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What that means is when you give the majority opinion, it's the
00:14:01
majority of the judges. 1. Judge usually writes the
00:14:03
opinion. Now you can write concurring
00:14:05
opinions and you can write dissenting opinions, which we'll
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get to. Basically, this one was pretty
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straightforward in terms of how the court came about determining
00:14:19
their ruling. There's the 14th Amendment,
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which is the Equal Protection Amendment, which basically says
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that all individuals, regardless of race and whatever, have to.
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Be treated equally under the law.
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The justices all basically came. The six justices came to the
00:14:34
same agreement. We can't pretend that the equal
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protection is we can't uphold the Constitution and the 14th
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Amendment and what it what it stands to provide for equal
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protection while also allowing for racebased affirmative action
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because you're treating different races differently.
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So that's how they Roberts basically came to it.
00:14:59
But the interesting part I wanted to really talk about and
00:15:02
stop me if I'm you have any input or questions.
00:15:06
The interesting thing I really want to talk about was Justice
00:15:08
Thomas's concurring opinion. Obviously Justice Thomas, the
00:15:14
one male black justice who's been on the Supreme Court for a
00:15:18
long time, grew up in the South, made his way through the upper
00:15:22
echelon to get into the Supreme Court.
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He's kind of taken on the firebrand, I guess you could say
00:15:32
He's like the firebrand that Scalia was.
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He took on that role after Scalia passed away and he wrote
00:15:39
really the scathing, concurring opinion and he goes into history
00:15:42
and he talks about it and he he does really good historical
00:15:45
concurring opinions in brewing. He wrote incredible majority
00:15:50
opinion talking about history and self-defense.
00:15:55
And this one he talked about how, OK, now we're going like
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really, really far back. So hold on for the history
00:16:01
lesson. We're going down to history
00:16:03
lane. So after the Civil War, Congress
00:16:09
passed and the the states ratified the 13th Amendment.
00:16:14
13th Amendment abolished slavery.
00:16:16
So no more slavery in America. They thought that was going to
00:16:20
be enough. It wasn't because what happened
00:16:22
was is a lot of Southern states. Decided to enact what they were
00:16:26
called Black Codes. And this is Justice Thomas going
00:16:28
through the history. So Black Codes basically were
00:16:31
different laws for freed blacks, meaning you couldn't engage in
00:16:35
business, you couldn't go in certain restaurants, you
00:16:37
couldn't own firearms. So basically they boxed in a lot
00:16:41
of freed blacks where they couldn't even exercise a lot of
00:16:43
their rights. Congress came up with the Civil
00:16:46
Rights Act of 1866. They thought that would work.
00:16:50
It didn't have enough teeth. That was trying to basically say
00:16:55
you can't discriminate against people based on race.
00:16:58
That didn't work. The states kind of just didn't
00:17:00
listen to it. So the last thing they could do,
00:17:03
which is the ultimate power, is pass a constitutional amendment.
00:17:06
So they passed the 14th Amendment, which provide equal
00:17:09
protection under the law. And then away we go, there are
00:17:14
several landmark cases using the 14th Amendment Equal protection
00:17:19
plus you first because versus Ferguson was one.
00:17:23
Which said that it was separate but equal.
00:17:25
That was later obviously overruled because that was
00:17:29
incredibly racist for him to say.
00:17:30
Separate but equal. Those are like the old
00:17:32
historical photos of you see, you know the the water founds
00:17:36
where it says blacks only whites only they thought that was okay.
00:17:40
Supreme Court later determined separate but equal.
00:17:43
Unconstitutional and Brad versus Board of Education.
00:17:47
All right, enough history. Here we are now we're all the
00:17:51
way up to date. In 2023 and Justice Thomas
00:17:55
basically goes on this long discussion about how how can we
00:18:02
as a society say that we value all races and everyone's equal?
00:18:08
How do we live up to these ideals of the Declaration of
00:18:11
Independence? How do we live up to this while
00:18:15
while also promoting these policies that pick and choose
00:18:18
people only on basis of their skin?
00:18:22
He also went on to talk about how in terms of diversity, lies,
00:18:28
educational. You know, institutions like
00:18:32
Harvard and UNC all say we need to increase diversity.
00:18:36
He said that the respondents who are the schools in this matter
00:18:41
couldn't provide any evidence to show that there what that
00:18:45
diversity had any positive impact on any of the any of the
00:18:50
other students. And his argument was we need
00:18:53
more diversity of thought in educational institutions and we
00:18:56
don't need just so much diversity of skin color.
00:19:00
So any questions so far or anything to add at this point?
00:19:06
Not yet. Okay, okay.
00:19:12
I'm trying to think so, Yeah. His whole point was that you
00:19:18
can't base people. Solely on their skin color,
00:19:23
because skin color is not determinative of your
00:19:26
experience, of who you are, what you think, what's your
00:19:29
background, he said. There could be a white kid from
00:19:33
the city and a white kid from rural country could have
00:19:37
completely different diverse backgrounds and different
00:19:40
diverse ways of thinking. Is that not diversity?
00:19:43
Same thing. If there was someone who is
00:19:45
black from the city and someone who's black from the rural
00:19:47
areas, would they not be different?
00:19:51
Should we not be exposing students to those different
00:19:53
ideals? And also, he went on to talk
00:19:56
about the checked boxes in college admissions because you
00:20:00
have, what, Caucasian, African American, Hispanic and Asian.
00:20:07
You really only have five choices.
00:20:08
And he brought up, well, how do you determine if you're Hispanic
00:20:12
but you're Mexican? How do you determine if you're
00:20:14
Asian but you're Indian or Filipino like?
00:20:18
How do you just sum up people into such small boxes and
00:20:20
categories? It's more racist to kind of go
00:20:23
through these stereotypes. I'm trying to think of what, oh,
00:20:29
the other point he brought up, which I thought was incredible.
00:20:32
He brought up this idea that affirmative action actually
00:20:36
hurts people in a certain way because sometimes students get
00:20:41
into schools that they are not well equipped for.
00:20:46
And I was thinking about this before the show.
00:20:47
And I was like, I read this book and I had to remember it.
00:20:50
It was David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell.
00:20:53
There's a whole chapter on this in his book where he talks about
00:20:56
someone who gets into, I think it's the University of Maryland
00:21:01
because of affirmative action, and they barely make it into
00:21:06
University of Maryland because of affirmative action.
00:21:08
But they also were accepted, like full ride at a local state
00:21:11
school. They end up going to the
00:21:13
University of Maryland. They eventually quit their
00:21:18
major. Their major was something like
00:21:20
bioengineering. That could be wrong, but it was
00:21:22
something really complicated because it was too tough for
00:21:25
them. And the the question Malcolm
00:21:27
Gladwell had is if that person had gone to a more suitable
00:21:32
school for them that was more on their level and intellect, would
00:21:36
they have done better? Would they've ended up being a
00:21:37
bioengineer and that's sort of justice.
00:21:40
Thomas's argument is that kids are being put into schools.
00:21:45
Where they may not fit, they may not excel solely based on those
00:21:49
color of their skin. And that's not doing them any
00:21:51
service at all because then they may end up dropping out, they
00:21:54
may end up quitting, they may end up not pursuing their
00:21:57
profession even though they're really smart and really
00:21:59
talented. So that's basically it for that
00:22:03
one he went in on on Justice Cantanji Brown Jackson, where he
00:22:07
said basically he kind of called her out for her saying like her
00:22:11
worldview is warped and it's upside down for.
00:22:15
Believing that everybody who has the same skin color all thinks
00:22:18
the same and everybody's a victim just because of the color
00:22:21
of your skin. And he said that's dangerous to,
00:22:26
you know, people in the in this country.
00:22:27
He basically said it's dangerous to believe that just because of
00:22:31
the color of your skin, you won't be able to accomplish
00:22:32
stuff and you need affirmative action to get where you're at.
00:22:35
And he kind of took personal offense to it because he's
00:22:38
gotten to where he is because of.
00:22:41
Hard work in his merit and he doesn't believe the color of his
00:22:44
skin had anything to do with it. So.
00:22:47
Right. So when I was reading about it,
00:22:50
correct me if I'm wrong, I thought I read something about
00:22:52
with affirmative action. But they're they're taking into
00:22:54
account that like some kids weren't given the opportunity
00:22:59
growing up, like they they weren't necessarily living in
00:23:02
the best place, therefore didn't get to go to the best schools.
00:23:06
And therefore it's kind of, it's not their fault, circumstantial
00:23:08
stuff. And therefore they should be
00:23:10
given this chance at these better schools based on, you
00:23:13
know, those things, or at least take them taking those things
00:23:16
into account. And as I was reading that, I
00:23:18
thought, well, isn't that a great argument for school
00:23:21
choice? And I know that's off topic.
00:23:24
But if that's such an issue, shouldn't we then be starting at
00:23:30
the bottom instead of like waiting till this is a real
00:23:32
problem? Let's fix the problem at the
00:23:35
bottom. The Foundation.
00:23:37
Yeah. And allow these kids to have
00:23:39
school choice. Yeah.
00:23:40
I mean, that would be a perfect argument to say instead of using
00:23:44
affirmative action when you get to college, why don't we give
00:23:47
kids the choice when they're little so they can start to
00:23:50
excel and make it to these prestigious institutions on
00:23:54
merit, not because of skin color or solely because of skin color.
00:23:59
Yeah, I think that's a fair argument to derive from what
00:24:02
they're saying in this. OK.
00:24:06
Thank you. Just curious, do you want to
00:24:10
talk about how California, well, you kind of touched at the
00:24:13
beginning, but it's kind of funny to see all the liberals
00:24:16
here crying about it. And it's like it's been in our
00:24:19
constitution for however long, 20-30 years, something like
00:24:22
that. And yeah, like they could have
00:24:25
had all the opportunities to have overturned it.
00:24:28
Yeah, the the weird thing about these three cases as I was
00:24:32
reading them. Is it's like we're living in
00:24:35
bizarro land where you have a lot of pundits in newscasters
00:24:40
who are like, oh, this is going to set us back and we're going
00:24:44
back to like the Jim Crow era. And we're like, now it's going
00:24:47
to be separate but equal. And I'm like, OK, First off.
00:24:49
And I think like Newsom said something about it as well,
00:24:52
like, you know, like we're going backwards and it's Jim Crow all
00:24:57
over again. It's like, OK, calm the rhetoric
00:24:59
down. But if you actually read the
00:25:01
arguments from Justice Roberts and Justice Thomas, you'd sit
00:25:06
there and be like, wow, yeah, this is like, really racist what
00:25:10
they're doing. And I'm glad that the Supreme
00:25:12
Court is striking this down. And all the arguments make
00:25:16
perfect sense, which is if you're picking winners and
00:25:19
losers based on skin color alone and you don't look at the person
00:25:23
as a whole, that's racist. Because you're not.
00:25:28
You know, everyone likes to bring up the Martin Luther King
00:25:30
quote, which is the content of your character, not the color of
00:25:33
your skin. Which is very true, which is
00:25:36
what they're trying to say here, is we're all equal, regardless
00:25:40
of race and all that and gender and the other classifications.
00:25:49
But we're we should be long past this at this point where we just
00:25:53
look at people in terms of color of their skin and we should
00:25:55
really be looking at people based on their on their merit.
00:25:58
And it's it's odd that the descent for example like Kentaji
00:26:03
Brown Jackson wrote sounds so incredibly racist where it says,
00:26:10
I mean her whole thing is you know if we don't keep this,
00:26:14
they'll be no way, you know. Black and Hispanic kids will
00:26:18
ever get into these institutions again.
00:26:20
It's like, wow, what a racist thing to say.
00:26:22
You don't think any black or Hispanic kid could make it to
00:26:25
Harvard on their merits? You think that they just, they
00:26:28
need this leg up. Like that's it's such a
00:26:31
condescending way to look at people.
00:26:35
And this is one of those cases where you read it and then you
00:26:37
hear the pundits on on the news and you go.
00:26:40
Am I living in bizarre? Like what?
00:26:41
You're arguing to keep something that is clearly racist and the
00:26:46
court is saying this is racist, we should get rid of it.
00:26:49
So yeah, it's definitely an odd, it's an odd argument.
00:26:55
And it watching people on the left twist themselves into
00:26:59
pretzels to try and argue for affirmative action has been fun
00:27:03
these past couple weeks. But yeah, so this is one that I
00:27:07
definitely. And was like, this doesn't make
00:27:10
sense for leftist to be arguing against but projection on their
00:27:14
part. So I don't know if that answered
00:27:16
your question. It did.
00:27:19
Last comment on this, I actually remember you saying, I think a
00:27:23
couple years ago, like obviously you're white and you said
00:27:25
something about you were never handed.
00:27:28
Things weren't just handed to you.
00:27:29
School like you worked hard to get where you're at to get
00:27:32
yourself to the law school and no one should look at you and
00:27:36
go, oh, he's just alert cuz he's white.
00:27:38
That's unfair. You obviously worked your way up
00:27:42
there, took out student loans and everything to get where you
00:27:46
are, not because if you were privileged and white and
00:27:51
everything was handed to you. Yeah, I hate that argument
00:27:54
because I've definitely had people call me out and be like,
00:27:57
well, you're white and you're privileged and you don't
00:27:58
understand. It's like, I mean, Justice
00:28:02
Thomas talked about this as well.
00:28:03
He said if there was a poor white kid.
00:28:06
Versus a black kid who lived in a wealthy family, how, you know,
00:28:10
how do we equalize that in that terms?
00:28:15
And it it is kind of prejudicial to just look at people and say,
00:28:18
oh, because you're white, you've just lived a privileged life,
00:28:20
You're automatically privileged. And it's like, yeah, you know,
00:28:23
I've gone through some hard times.
00:28:24
My family's gone through hard times.
00:28:26
I hate to work to get here and no one handed me anything.
00:28:30
I think my wife's probably a better example, you know, being
00:28:34
a Hispanic female. Growing up in Mexico, making it
00:28:38
to be one of the only female directors of her company, first
00:28:42
Hispanic female director. Like she got there because she
00:28:45
worked for it and she would never want to be told that you
00:28:50
only got there because of the color of your skin or because
00:28:53
you're a minority. And we had to feel like we had
00:28:56
to promote you. Like, I think she wants to know
00:29:00
she made it to where she is because she worked her ass off
00:29:04
and I think she feels. It's kind of condescending and
00:29:07
racist to think she only made it because the color of her skin.
00:29:10
So yeah. And I think it's odd that the
00:29:14
left is trying to hold on to something where you can still
00:29:18
discriminate based on skin color.
00:29:20
And it's amazing. California, well, I don't think
00:29:23
it's really that amazing. California has a weird way of,
00:29:26
like, voting for propositions that are conservative but not
00:29:29
politicians that are conservative.
00:29:32
I mean, we can go over that on another episode, but there's a
00:29:35
weird historical trend where, like, people in California vote
00:29:38
conservatively on propositions, but they don't vote for
00:29:40
conservative politicians. That could be a problem with the
00:29:43
fact that the California GOP is all messed up and you know, you
00:29:46
have bullies like Carl de Mayo running small county parties,
00:29:51
but that's a whole different episode anyway, Speaking of
00:29:55
student loans and working your way up.
00:29:57
Let's go with the. Loans, since we'll just flow
00:30:01
with the school theme. Okay.
00:30:05
All right. A little background on this one
00:30:09
and then we'll get into what the court really decided back in.
00:30:16
Well, we have to go all the way back to like, I think 2003
00:30:20
Congress passed this Heroes Act. I will hand it to Congress.
00:30:26
They are very good at naming things so that it sounds really
00:30:29
good. I wanna make sure I get this.
00:30:32
Is that a job? Do you think there's like one
00:30:33
specific person that has that job and as soon as they start,
00:30:37
they lose their creativity, They're like, all right, we
00:30:39
gotta get in a new person. Yeah, I mean, it's a great job
00:30:43
because they have to come up with these huge acronyms that
00:30:46
sound great. It's something like the higher
00:30:48
education and it comes out to Stand for Heroes Act.
00:30:53
I can't find it right now. But anyway, Education
00:30:56
Opportunities for Students act. There you go.
00:31:01
Glad you got the notes on that. So yeah, this was enacted way
00:31:05
back after 911 basically as a way to allow the Secretary of
00:31:12
Education to give relief to those who are going and fighting
00:31:14
overseas. I guess they thought it probably
00:31:17
wouldn't be a very popular move to be charging people going
00:31:20
overseas to fight in these these wars overseas in the Middle
00:31:23
East. You know, probably wouldn't be a
00:31:25
good idea to be charging them student loans for that.
00:31:28
So the court, the Congress, cave this authority that they could
00:31:31
suspend payments in times of emergency.
00:31:34
Fast forward to COVID 2020. Betsy DeVos, who was the
00:31:39
Secretary of Education under President Donald Trump started
00:31:42
to suspend student loan payments and anyone who knows and has
00:31:47
student loan payments with the government, which should be
00:31:49
everybody because Obama centralized all of student loans
00:31:53
into the government. Should know that for the past
00:31:56
two years the Trump administration, the by
00:31:59
administration have just been extending the suspension.
00:32:03
It's set to expire in October. Thanks to this decision,
00:32:07
payments are going to resume. But during this time they kept
00:32:11
suspending kept suspending and President Biden and his
00:32:14
secretary of education decided we're going to forgive student
00:32:18
loans now. This was a big campaign promise
00:32:21
by Joe Biden that he was going to forgive student loans.
00:32:25
And then he kind of walked it back after he became president,
00:32:27
You know, he said I'm going to forgive student loans.
00:32:29
And then he walked it back. Then it was, you know, $50.
00:32:32
There was $20. And I think at the end it was
00:32:34
like, we'll throw you $10. Here you go, kid.
00:32:37
Thanks for playing like ice cream.
00:32:40
Yeah. He got distracted by ice cream.
00:32:43
And so they, they came out with this plan and they said we're
00:32:46
going to enact it. The secretary of education has
00:32:48
his power under the HEROES Act to modify and.
00:32:53
All of this comes around the idea that they thought they had
00:32:56
the idea to waive or modify laws and regulations governing the
00:33:00
student loan programs. All right, forewarning.
00:33:04
This is going to get really wonky for people.
00:33:07
This is not going to be as straightforward as affirmative
00:33:09
action or maybe as sexy as religious freedom.
00:33:16
There was a Supreme Court case just last year where it was EPA
00:33:21
versus West Virginia. That was all around this idea of
00:33:28
the major questions doctrine. Okay.
00:33:31
Let me back up even more more Schoolhouse Rock.
00:33:35
We have 3 branches of government, correct?
00:33:37
We have the legislature, we have the executive, and we have the
00:33:41
judiciary. I argue that there is a fourth
00:33:45
branch of government. I call it the administrative
00:33:47
branch. Those are all the agencies that
00:33:50
enact. Help enact the laws because the
00:33:54
executive is supposed to execute the laws that Congress passes.
00:33:59
So when Congress passes a law, sometimes they leave a little
00:34:04
wiggle room for agencies to kind of fill in the gaps.
00:34:08
Because Lord knows we have enough dumb people in Congress
00:34:12
that they're not experts on everything.
00:34:13
So you can't expect them to be experts on military and.
00:34:18
Education and EPA and all of this stuff.
00:34:20
So they kind of passed these general laws and give a lot of
00:34:23
power to these agencies to figure it out and fill in the
00:34:25
blanks. So that's where this comes from,
00:34:29
is where they passed this HEROES Act and they gave this power to
00:34:32
waive or modify laws and regulations for the student loan
00:34:35
programs to the Secretary of Education related to any sort of
00:34:38
emergency. So they argued.
00:34:43
The Biden administration, the secretary of education.
00:34:45
They argued that waiver modify under the Heroes Act gave them
00:34:50
the full power and authority to forgive all the student loan
00:34:55
debt which would have equaled 490 five $100 billion.
00:35:02
This was brought up. Missouri sued.
00:35:05
They had standing. That's a whole different nerdy
00:35:07
issue. Don't worry about that.
00:35:09
Got to the Supreme Court. And then they talked about this
00:35:12
question of how much can Congress delegate to these
00:35:15
agencies and how much power can they give them?
00:35:20
You can delegate some power to these agencies, right?
00:35:24
You can't give these agencies unfettered power.
00:35:26
You can't sign a law and be like I.
00:35:29
We give the power, all the power regarding, I don't know,
00:35:34
something or other to this one agency.
00:35:37
And they're going to decide and they're going to make up all the
00:35:39
rules and regulations. Congress has to kind of be
00:35:41
specific, at least that's the view of this conservative court.
00:35:46
They decided this last year, EPA versus West Virginia, where
00:35:50
there was all the regulation that was trying to be enacted.
00:35:53
The court determined EPA doesn't have that much power, scaled
00:35:57
back their power. Same sort of question here.
00:36:01
Major question doctrine involves when it is a of substantial
00:36:05
economic or political importance.
00:36:08
So agencies can't really go off and be rogue when it comes to
00:36:13
these major questions that involve big economic or
00:36:16
political issues. And the court basically said,
00:36:21
you don't have this power, you were never granted this power.
00:36:25
You're going way beyond what Congress wanted you.
00:36:27
If Congress wanted you to have the power to forgive student
00:36:31
loans, Congress should have wrote that into this Heroes Act.
00:36:35
And in fact, if Congress wants you to forgive student loans,
00:36:38
and Congress should just pass a law that says you can go ahead
00:36:40
and forgive student loans because the idea is Congress is
00:36:44
your representatives. They're beholden to the people.
00:36:46
Agencies or not, they shouldn't be allowed to do whatever the
00:36:49
heck they want. The one quote I like is that the
00:36:57
plan modify student loan laws and regulations, Robert
00:37:00
suggested. Only in the same sense that the
00:37:02
French Revolution modified the status of French nobility, it
00:37:06
abolished them and supplanted them with a new regime entirely.
00:37:10
So that's how Roberts kind of struck it down.
00:37:12
I just. Read that.
00:37:15
So any questions off the? Bat.
00:37:24
I don't think so. Any questions from the chat if
00:37:28
anybody is has any questions? Trying to think of what else to
00:37:34
talk about this. How many of these are going to
00:37:36
be on the the bar exam? Just kidding.
00:37:44
The First Amendment will be on is always on a bar exam.
00:37:47
They always ask the 1st Amendment, but this stuff will
00:37:49
not be on the bar exam. This stuff will all be on the
00:37:51
quiz. So I hope you guys are all
00:37:53
taking notes. There's going to be a quiz at
00:37:54
the end of this podcast, so that's basically that one.
00:37:59
It's kind of wonky. But the the major take away I
00:38:05
think people need to learn from this is that agencies, and
00:38:10
especially under this court, this Supreme Court has really
00:38:15
chipped away at the power of the agencies, which is great.
00:38:19
It chips away at this administrative state, really
00:38:21
reduces their power, forces Congress that they have to be
00:38:25
very specific in how they write laws.
00:38:27
Congress can't just delegate. All this power off to the
00:38:30
agencies. I mean Congress members like to
00:38:33
do that so they can't be beholden to like certain laws
00:38:36
and how things are done. They can't be like, Oh well, you
00:38:38
know, I didn't have any hand in that.
00:38:40
That's the agency who did that and there's so many rules and
00:38:44
regulations anyway. So the big take away is they
00:38:49
overstepped their bounds. I think every legal scholar even
00:38:52
like left-leaning legal scholars saw what Biden was doing and
00:38:56
they were like and. I don't think this is
00:38:59
constitutional, so I think everybody expected this one to
00:39:02
go down in flames trying to see if there was anything.
00:39:07
He's trying to push for something else a little bit
00:39:09
less, Yeah. Under some, I don't know.
00:39:14
Do you, do you know, like he's, he's gonna try to push for
00:39:19
something under the rules of this or that?
00:39:21
Yeah, yeah. I haven't heard any of his
00:39:26
announcements. I know he wants to try something
00:39:28
else. So I mean, I'm sure unless it
00:39:33
they Congress writes a law, I don't think there's much he can
00:39:35
do anyway. I mean is that I think he could
00:39:38
suspend payments indefinitely. Like that's one thing they can
00:39:42
do, but to just forgive and write off $500 billion, half a
00:39:48
trillion dollars worth of student loans?
00:39:50
I don't think they have that power.
00:39:53
Well, they they can do that for you, Green.
00:39:56
They can do what? Just suspend.
00:39:57
They could do that for Ukraine. Just be like, hey, Ukraine,
00:40:00
yeah, like way all your. Students, what's a couple, 100
00:40:03
billion between friends with Ukraine?
00:40:05
They can whatever. Yeah, there's an accounting
00:40:08
error that ends up in Ukraine. Who cares?
00:40:10
Not a big deal. It's not like they're going to
00:40:13
turn it anyway from the descent, Kagan said.
00:40:18
Kagan is overrules Congress's decision about when and how to
00:40:21
delegate. And that is a major problem not
00:40:23
just for governance but for democracy too.
00:40:27
There's that word. It's always about democracy when
00:40:30
the supreme. And she's one of the more
00:40:31
liberal, liberal leaning. Yeah, there's only three
00:40:35
liberals left on the court. It's Justice Sotomayor, Justice
00:40:38
Kagan, Elena Kagan and Justice Kentanji Brown.
00:40:41
Jackson, Kagan and Sotomayor were selected by.
00:40:46
I believe Obama. I know Kagan was.
00:40:49
And Kagan who had never been a judge.
00:40:53
Crazy, right? Okay.
00:40:54
She was just like a professor from Harvard, I believe, and she
00:40:58
became judge on Supreme Court. Okay, that's interesting.
00:41:03
So yeah, she never actually practiced as a judge.
00:41:06
And then Kentonji Brown Jackson, who was selected by Joe Biden.
00:41:11
But yeah, there's that word democracy, obviously, the
00:41:13
Supreme Court. And again, this is more of their
00:41:16
gaslighting where they say if the Supreme Court steps in and
00:41:21
actually upholds the constitution of what the
00:41:24
Constitution's supposed to be doing, then they say it's an
00:41:26
attack on democracy, when in reality it's actually protecting
00:41:30
democracy and our constitutional Republic.
00:41:32
So that's basically it On this one, I think there's really not
00:41:37
much else to go over. I don't want to.
00:41:41
Camera this one to death, we can get to The last one, which I
00:41:43
think is probably the one that people are probably most excited
00:41:45
about is this First Amendment kind of religious freedom one.
00:41:50
So do you have any questions or anything about that?
00:41:55
Well, can I ask you, You're the one that chose these three to
00:41:58
discuss. What about them stuck out to you
00:42:01
that made you want to discuss them the most?
00:42:03
I think they're the most hot button.
00:42:08
I think they obviously grabbed enough headlines.
00:42:13
Me personally, I think the student loan one, because it
00:42:16
does limit the power of agencies, is really important.
00:42:19
I don't think people like, really understand, like how
00:42:26
important the Supreme Court is when it comes to chopping away
00:42:31
at the agency's power and like reducing the size of the
00:42:34
administrative state. Like, that's incredibly
00:42:36
important. And if we can keep this 63 court
00:42:40
that's going to keep chipping away at it for the next 1015
00:42:44
years, that'll be great because it'll really chip away at this
00:42:47
like unelected bureaucracy of, you know, agency employees who
00:42:51
just make up rules and regulations and try and run the
00:42:53
government away from the people. Affirmative action is obviously
00:42:59
historic. That's something that I think
00:43:01
people have been talking about for many years, many decades, in
00:43:04
terms of affirmative action, how in the same arguments everyone's
00:43:08
been making about how it kind of comes out, it does come off it
00:43:11
as racist. And then the religious freedom
00:43:14
one is interesting mostly because it kind of resolves the
00:43:19
issue of the the cake, it sort of, it comes out of Colorado as
00:43:27
well, so. Sounds like someone's here.
00:43:32
That's so weird. Somebody outside sounds like
00:43:35
somebody's in the house. Hello.
00:43:38
Creepy. Creepy Hello.
00:43:44
Oh no, it's my dog snoring. Everyone just was like, whoa, is
00:43:49
that? That's really creepy.
00:43:52
If if anything was in the house, I think Winnie would have
00:43:55
already been up and running at them anyway.
00:44:00
Yeah, So if everyone remembers, there was the the guy who was
00:44:03
baking the cake years ago. It was like 5 years ago or so,
00:44:08
Supreme Court ruled that they can't force him to bake the
00:44:11
cake. That was a different court back
00:44:15
then, little smaller margin. Now there's a six, three margin
00:44:19
of conservative judges and this one really dived into First
00:44:24
Amendment and compelled speech. The old case really had a
00:44:31
question of whether or not they could.
00:44:34
So they Colorado has this. What's the name of it?
00:44:37
It's gosh, now it's escaping me. They have a they have a name for
00:44:44
it. Let me pull it up.
00:44:47
That's not it. That's not the page.
00:44:50
The Colorado something or other Okay.
00:44:55
So anyway Colorado has this agency.
00:44:59
That basically says you can't exclude people based on of
00:45:04
certain characteristics like. So if it's a public
00:45:07
accommodation, a lot of states have these public accommodation
00:45:10
laws, meaning you can't deny people access to your services
00:45:13
based on race or identity or sexual orientation or anything
00:45:18
like that. So this lady Miss Smith want,
00:45:24
she does designs for websites and stuff like that.
00:45:26
She was going to start. Doing wedding websites.
00:45:30
So she never actually started her wedding business, but she
00:45:33
was afraid that if she started these websites that the Colorado
00:45:40
agency Colorado State would force her to, under these public
00:45:45
accommodation laws, force her to make wedding websites for
00:45:51
samesex marriages. She's religious, doesn't believe
00:45:56
in samesex marriages. And she was worried about this.
00:46:01
And she sued. She lost.
00:46:04
And then she went to the 10th Circuit, lost again.
00:46:08
Then she went up to the Supreme Court and they reversed.
00:46:11
So basically, the 1st Amendment protects your right to freedom
00:46:19
of speech. That's simple.
00:46:21
Everybody knows that one. The 1st Amendment also protects
00:46:25
you from something called. Compelled speech.
00:46:28
I mean, the 1st Amendment can't force you to speak in ways you
00:46:32
don't want to speak, because obviously that violates your
00:46:35
right to think freely express your opinions.
00:46:41
So you can't do compelled speech either.
00:46:44
Further, you can't force someone to compel speech and violate
00:46:49
their own religious beliefs. So this was sort of like a whole
00:46:52
bunch of things are going on here.
00:46:55
If she were to go through with these websites and then Colorado
00:47:00
comes in and says, well, no, you have to make websites for
00:47:03
samesex marriages. We don't care.
00:47:05
It's against your religious beliefs.
00:47:07
It'd be compelled speech. It's a violation of her
00:47:09
religious beliefs. So went up to the Supreme Court.
00:47:16
Supreme Court obviously reversed it.
00:47:20
They had Justice Gorsuch provided an incredible.
00:47:25
Opinion. I love Justice Gorsuch.
00:47:26
Opinion. He's been sort of an understated
00:47:29
justice ever since he's been really appointed.
00:47:31
He's been a super staunch conservative in the sense of
00:47:36
constitutionalism, originalism. His opinions are great.
00:47:40
I'm just nerding out on him. And basically his whole argument
00:47:45
that Gorsuch was saying is that if we go down this road.
00:47:51
Whereby the government can start to compel people to speak
00:47:56
against their wishes. At what point does it end?
00:48:00
We we end up in a very dark place in this country where if
00:48:03
the government can say you can speak freely as long as we
00:48:07
approve of the speech or you're going to speak the basically the
00:48:12
narrative that we want. It's a very dark day in American
00:48:15
history when you are no longer allowed to think what you want.
00:48:19
Or say what you want or not say what you want.
00:48:22
And the the reason for the First Amendment, he argued, was that
00:48:27
we want a diverse amount of opinions, even if you find those
00:48:31
opinions misguided or repugnant or offensive.
00:48:34
Like the idea is we want all these opinions out in the in the
00:48:37
public square so that people can hear them and make their own
00:48:40
decisions. The other thing he brought up is
00:48:44
a good example is if we go down, is it any different?
00:48:47
And this is, I think, a question a lot of people ask.
00:48:50
Would it be any different if would the court view this any
00:48:55
differently if it wasn't a Christian woman?
00:48:58
But what happens if they force a Muslim filmmaker to make a
00:49:04
Zionist movie? Like, is that where we're going?
00:49:09
Or what would what if it's an atheist painter?
00:49:12
And they're forcing you to make or to paint a Christian mural.
00:49:17
Like these are things that are against people's religious
00:49:19
beliefs. Is that where we're kind of
00:49:22
going in terms of how much the government can compel you to
00:49:27
speak or or act on it? Right.
00:49:31
And like you break up, you're a devout Catholic.
00:49:34
Nobody should be forced to go to Mass, though if they're not, you
00:49:37
know, if there any other religion, Why are we forcing
00:49:40
them? To go to mass, right?
00:49:43
It should be a personal decision.
00:49:45
Right. And forced participation month
00:49:48
is over anyway. We're in July now.
00:49:51
So, yeah. And and that's sort of justice
00:49:54
course. It's just whole argument is, you
00:49:58
know, we would be in a very dark place in American history if
00:50:02
they force people to speak on behalf of stuff or in favor of
00:50:07
stuff that they don't believe in.
00:50:09
That that that violates the religious freedom.
00:50:13
He also goes after the dissent and says like the dissent
00:50:16
creates all of these. It's kind of funny.
00:50:18
He pokes a lot of holes in their argument, makes fun of them
00:50:21
basically saying they wind themselves up so much that they
00:50:24
start Catching Fire on their own arguments from all directions
00:50:28
because they have so many contracting or different
00:50:31
arguments. Obviously Sotomayor is the one
00:50:36
of the liberal judges, she basically.
00:50:39
This dark dystopian world where now all of a sudden now that
00:50:46
people, businesses can basically say we don't want to serve
00:50:48
anybody. And you know this is a setback
00:50:51
for the L GB T community, that they're now second class
00:50:54
citizens, which is not true, but again, the liberal wing of the
00:51:00
the Supreme Court making up more fantastical arguments.
00:51:07
Any thoughts or questions on that?
00:51:11
This was another 6-3. No, you said this one was 7 Two.
00:51:15
I was wrong about it. No, the old one was 7 two, That
00:51:19
was the the cake one. I think this was a six three.
00:51:24
So. So the difference, Yeah, let's
00:51:29
talk about that for a second. The difference between that one
00:51:31
is this, that one. The cake had really to do with
00:51:38
the agency itself in Colorado, the one that's named keep
00:51:41
escaping me that they could not treat someone unfairly by being
00:51:49
too hostile to a sincere religious beliefs.
00:51:51
That's basically the question of the agency, but they did not
00:51:55
determine basically your religious beliefs in terms of
00:52:00
your First Amendment right to speech.
00:52:03
And forcing people to go against that, that was not really
00:52:05
decided. So sort of a narrow victory for
00:52:09
this cake Baker back then. But this kind of this is the
00:52:13
decision I think people back then wanted to see is that you
00:52:17
can't force people to speak or act against their religious
00:52:22
beliefs. There's that old joke of like,
00:52:25
why do people just keep going back to this cake guy or this
00:52:28
graphic designer? Like, just stop bothering these.
00:52:32
Like why would you want to give people money who don't believe
00:52:35
it, like don't agree with your lifestyle?
00:52:40
There's something else I want to say, oh, I think this is the
00:52:43
other thing that's really important that people should
00:52:44
take away from this. The reason this works for Miss
00:52:50
Smith in this case is because what she was doing was
00:52:55
expressive content. So that again, I don't.
00:52:59
I've already seen tweets of like some restaurants are like.
00:53:02
Well, we we, we decide we don't want to serve this person.
00:53:05
We don't want to serve that person based on the Supreme
00:53:06
Court. Her speech, what what she's
00:53:11
doing is expressive conduct, which is classified as speech,
00:53:14
speech because she's creating websites, she's writing
00:53:17
statements about stuff, same thing as like someone making art
00:53:23
or a movie. That's First Amendment.
00:53:25
That's speech. So that's protected under the
00:53:29
First Amendment. Normal commercial products
00:53:33
wouldn't fall into the First Amendment for this to apply,
00:53:37
based on my understanding. So you can't just be selling,
00:53:41
yeah, you can't just be selling commercial products and be like,
00:53:43
well, it's against my religious beliefs.
00:53:45
I don't want to sell to gay people anymore.
00:53:47
Like that's that. It doesn't work like that.
00:53:50
You can't discriminate based on those.
00:53:52
But people can't be forced to speak and and engage in
00:53:56
expressive conduct that's against their religious beliefs,
00:53:59
so. I think that's the big take
00:54:01
away. You know, I'm sure people are
00:54:03
going to get this wrong and think like it just means they
00:54:05
can discriminate against anyone and say it's my religious
00:54:07
beliefs. That's not the case.
00:54:10
It's only in regards to the First Amendment so few.
00:54:15
Yeah, she. I think I'd even read she has
00:54:18
made websites for gay couples. It wasn't or gay people before.
00:54:24
That wasn't the issue. It was just that she didn't want
00:54:26
to be forced to. Create content that she didn't
00:54:30
believe in. Right.
00:54:32
And that was something she, she definitely talked about or she
00:54:35
made the argument that yes, she has made websites for gay
00:54:40
individuals, for nonprofits, but in terms of samesex marriages,
00:54:47
she wouldn't do it because it's against her religious beliefs.
00:54:50
So yeah, I mean she's her whole thing was she doesn't, she
00:54:54
didn't want to discriminate. It's just her religious beliefs,
00:54:58
so. I mean, big wins across the
00:55:01
board really in terms of the Supreme Court and it's going to
00:55:05
keep going like this as long as there's a six, three majority
00:55:09
there. Was another religious freedom
00:55:11
win this year with the I Wrote A Town, The Groff versus DJ
00:55:22
Postmaster. Did you read about that one?
00:55:25
I did not. What's that one about?
00:55:27
So he had taken he's a mailman I think going way back and at the
00:55:36
time when he took the job they did not have mail service on
00:55:40
Sundays and he's a Christian and he believes in the 7th day is
00:55:45
the Sabbath day and keep a holy and like they then a few years
00:55:50
into the job or like 10 years ago or whenever it was when
00:55:52
Amazon started. When they teamed up with the
00:55:55
Postal Service to deliver on Sundays, he would, he was able
00:56:00
to like have someone else cover his shift or whatever when he
00:56:03
was asked to work. But then he was starting to get
00:56:06
kind of punished, like disciplined at work because he
00:56:09
wasn't working Sundays. And so they were considering him
00:56:12
to be, I don't know, a difficult employee and they were making it
00:56:16
difficult on him as far as the whole job.
00:56:20
And that ended up going all the way.
00:56:23
I believe he quit or retired, but the case ended up going all
00:56:26
the way to the Supreme Court and they ruled in his favor that he
00:56:30
was not creating a hardship for the company, for the job and
00:56:34
therefore he has a right to have his religious day off.
00:56:39
That's interesting. I feel like that's already been
00:56:41
decided, that you can't force people to work on what they view
00:56:47
as religious holidays as long as it's so there's this old case.
00:56:53
Not old case, but another Supreme Court case, and I can't
00:56:57
remember the name of it, but it had to do with peyote.
00:57:03
I think that's why everybody remembers this case because it
00:57:05
had to do with peyote. The person went all the way to
00:57:08
Supreme Court and basically said I have the right to do peyote
00:57:11
because it's part of my religion and peyote is obviously illegal.
00:57:16
I think it was in New Mexico. And the Supreme Court said it
00:57:21
has to be like a sincere religious belief.
00:57:23
Like has to be in a sincerely held religious belief.
00:57:27
So you can't just be like, oh, I'm part of the I worship the
00:57:31
spaghetti, the flying spaghetti monster.
00:57:32
And therefore, like, I get to do whatever I want.
00:57:36
Yeah, so I. Just texted you this.
00:57:39
It keeps you're interesting because this was just ruled on
00:57:41
but. Yeah.
00:57:42
So I think that was what that one was about and.
00:57:47
As far as I remember, you can't force people if they have a
00:57:50
sincere religious belief, you can't force them to act against
00:57:54
that. That's sort of like you can't
00:57:56
make Jewish people work on like Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashanah.
00:58:01
Those are religious holidays. So yeah, it's interesting that
00:58:06
this was actually a case that they had to go over again, like
00:58:09
you can't force people or or penalize them for exercising
00:58:13
their religious belief because. As far as I know, you can't.
00:58:18
You can't retaliate against someone for any for exercising
00:58:23
their religious beliefs. I know you don't have time to go
00:58:27
over it now, but there's probably something in there
00:58:28
that'll be the difference between this case.
00:58:30
In that case, just like the cake versus the website thing, yeah.
00:58:34
But yeah, a lot of times these cases hinge on like one or two
00:58:38
things. And that's the interesting thing
00:58:39
about the Supreme Court is that, like, a decision will be handed
00:58:42
down. And people review it and be
00:58:44
like, oh, it's a narrow victory. That's not what we wanted.
00:58:48
So like the cake case, I think a lot of religious freedom
00:58:52
advocates were very disappointed that they didn't go all the way
00:58:55
with it. So in terms of this case, right
00:58:58
now, this is the case, this is the ruling that they wanted to
00:59:00
get. So there's always something
00:59:01
distinguishing and they, they won't hear, the Supreme Court
00:59:05
won't hear cases and issues that have already been decided unless
00:59:09
there's something new that they need to bring up.
00:59:10
So that's why. That's why they only give cert
00:59:14
to 80 cases out of thousands of cases because it has to be new
00:59:17
and novel and something they haven't really discussed before.
00:59:21
If it is then they'll just decline cert and send it back
00:59:24
down to the lower court. So I think we that's it.
00:59:28
I think we got all three of them so.
00:59:32
So do you have any interest of being a Supreme Court judge
00:59:34
justice? No, I don't meet.
00:59:38
I don't meet the pedigree. You have to go to like, Harvard
00:59:42
and Yale and all that stuff to be a Supreme Court judge.
00:59:45
I think that I missed the boat on that a long time ago, so I
00:59:48
would. Have.
00:59:50
Had. Don't think.
00:59:51
You have to, isn't it? Like 8 of them went, but I don't
00:59:53
know where the third, the last one went.
00:59:58
I thought there was one who didn't, but I don't know where
01:00:01
they went or who it is. It might be Justice Amy Comey
01:00:04
Barrett. She I don't think she went to
01:00:06
any of the big Ivy League schools.
01:00:09
Did she go to Michigan? Why?
01:00:13
Why is Michigan ring a bell? But everyone else went to, you
01:00:17
know, Kagan was Harvard, Yale, Contangion Brown.
01:00:23
Jackson was Harvard. So yeah, there's a certain
01:00:25
pedigree to be a Supreme Court judge.
01:00:29
It's not easy. And there's only been what how
01:00:32
many since the dying of our country?
01:00:36
I know. But yeah.
01:00:39
I'll just, I'll just read the articles for or I'll just read
01:00:42
the decisions and make my own little opinions.
01:00:46
But yeah I think final thoughts like I said I think these are
01:00:49
are big wins if you're a conservative and and disclaimer
01:00:55
people always say like conservative judges versus
01:00:58
liberal judges like as if they're like politicians it's
01:01:02
not really the way to look at. Judges, yeah, I think you could
01:01:08
say like some are more socially conservative and maybe they lean
01:01:10
traditionally conservative versus like progressive.
01:01:15
But it's really judicial philosophy in terms of the six
01:01:20
conservative judges are what you would call originalist or
01:01:22
textualist, meaning they look at what the law is, what the
01:01:26
Constitution is, what the original intent of laws in the
01:01:29
Constitution are. The liberal judges will take
01:01:33
laws and kind of. Bend them to what they want,
01:01:37
they'll kind of take laws and regulations and expand them as
01:01:40
big as they want. And which is ironic that Kagan
01:01:45
was making the argument and it was the student loan case where
01:01:49
she said, well, the Supreme Court steps in.
01:01:50
They start to become makers of national policy when it's more
01:01:56
likely liberal justices would be makers of national policy
01:01:59
because they'd be creating law out of nowhere.
01:02:03
And that's what a lot of. Leftist want, they want to be
01:02:06
able to like send it over to the Supreme Court and the Supreme
01:02:09
Court will go, sure, absolutely you could do this.
01:02:12
This is absolutely fine. It's kind of like the Obamacare
01:02:14
case where like they ruled in favor that you can tax people
01:02:21
for Obamacare. So that was making law.
01:02:25
That wasn't what Congress intended but they were making
01:02:27
law from the bench. So just the one little caveat,
01:02:31
so. All right, all right.
01:02:36
Great job. On that I understand.
01:02:38
This more. On that, I hope everyone
01:02:41
understands it more. I like talking about this stuff
01:02:44
and diving into it, but next week we'll be back to California
01:02:49
stuff. We're getting Josh Hoover on the
01:02:50
program, so he'll be on and I think he'll be more than primed
01:02:55
and ready to talk about SB14. So that should be fun so all.
01:03:02
Right and. We are all just going to
01:03:05
continue melting here in Southern California.
01:03:07
Yeah, stay cool out there. So as we always end the show,
01:03:13
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01:03:26
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