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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Law Show. I'm June Grosso. The

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Speaker 1: focus is on Supreme Court decisions. This week, the Court

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Speaker 1: curbed federal agency power, striking down a forty year old precedent.

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Speaker 1: It limited obstruction charges against January sixth defendants, including Donald Trump,

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Speaker 1: and the Court allowed emergency abortions in Idaho for now.

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Speaker 1: In a blockbuster ruling that will constrain environmental, consumer and

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Speaker 1: financial watchdog agencies, A divided Supreme Court upended a forty

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Speaker 1: year old legal doctrine that empowered federal regulators to interpret

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Speaker 1: unclear laws. Conservatives have long targeted the Chevron doctrine in

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Speaker 1: the so called War on the Administrative State, and the

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Speaker 1: court's conservative justices reverse Chevron this week, effectively taking power

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Speaker 1: away from executive branch agencies and shifting it to the courts.

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Speaker 1: The Court has been chipping away at Chevron for years.

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Speaker 1: As Chief Justice John Roberts pointed out in the oral arguments, how.

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Speaker 2: Much of an actual question on the ground is this.

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Speaker 1: I saw some study that said we haven't relied on

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Speaker 1: Chevron for fourteen years. The three liberal justices dissented. Justice

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Speaker 1: Elaina Kagan wrote that in One Fell Swoop, the majority

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Speaker 1: today gives itself exclusive power over every open issue, no

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Speaker 1: matter how expertise driven or policy laden. Kagan had emphasized

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Speaker 1: the importance of the Chevron doctrine during the arguments.

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Speaker 3: You know, the best option is to listen carefully and

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Speaker 3: to defer if it's reasonable and if it's consistent with

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Speaker 3: everything that we know that Congress has said. To defer

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Speaker 3: to people who actually know things about these things, but

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Speaker 3: you know, to people who understand the way particular questions

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Speaker 3: fit within a broader statutory and regular time skiam.

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Speaker 1: Joining me is Michael Darff, a professor of constitutional law

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Speaker 1: at Cornell Law School. Mike tell us about the Chevron

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Speaker 1: doctrine and its importance for federal regulation.

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Speaker 4: Sure, so, as listeners probably know, the federal government includes

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Speaker 4: not only Congress, the President, and the courts, but an

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Speaker 4: alphabet soup of administrative agencies. The Federal Aviation Administration, the

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Speaker 4: Environmental Protection Agency, Homeland Security, the Justice Department, Education Department.

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Speaker 4: All of these various departments each staff by a political

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Speaker 4: appointee at the head, unless it's the so called independent agency,

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Speaker 4: in which case it's somebody who's appointed but then has

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Speaker 4: various protections. And then with lots of experts, people who

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Speaker 4: have expertise in the particular field, so scientists at the

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Speaker 4: Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Congress right statutes that are hundreds of

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Speaker 4: pages law, giving power to the agencies to regulate. So

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Speaker 4: the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is lies within

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Speaker 4: the Department of Transportation, writes rules governing safety mechanisms for

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Speaker 4: new automobiles. These statutes are often pretty detailed, but it

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Speaker 4: is in the nature of the complexity of life and

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Speaker 4: the limitations of human language that invariably situations arise in

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Speaker 4: which it's not entirely clear what some term in a

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Speaker 4: statute meant. The Chevron case announced the principle which it said,

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Speaker 4: and I think persuasively was not new in that case,

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Speaker 4: but it became the canonical citation. Announced the principle that

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Speaker 4: said that when Congress uses an ambiguous term or leaves

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Speaker 4: a gap in a statute, and it could be interpreted

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Speaker 4: in a range of possible ways, when an agency acts

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Speaker 4: to fill that gap or to resolve the ambiguity, so

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Speaker 4: long as it does so reasonably, the courts will not

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Speaker 4: invalidate what the agency has done. This was known as

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Speaker 4: the Chevron deference. Doctrine deference because agencies got deference, that is,

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Speaker 4: a court's deferred to their reasonable interpretations of ambiguous statutes.

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Speaker 1: Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion for the court,

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Speaker 1: saying Chevron was a judicial invention that required judges to

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Speaker 1: disregard their statutory duties. Explain his reasoning and why the

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Speaker 1: Conservative supermajority finally reverse Chevron.

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Speaker 4: So the Chief Justice points to two main principles. First,

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Speaker 4: he says that going back to Marborie against Madison in

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Speaker 4: eighteen oh three, famous case that establishes the principle of

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Speaker 4: judicial review of federal statute, Chief Justice John Marshall in

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Speaker 4: that case said that it is quote emphatically the province

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Speaker 4: and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is.

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Speaker 4: And so Roberts says that by deferring to agencies construction

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Speaker 4: of ambiguous statutes, the judiciary was advocating its responsibility to

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Speaker 4: say what the law is. It was giving that power

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Speaker 4: over to the administrative agencies, which are either housed in

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Speaker 4: the executive branch or quasi independent of the executive branch,

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Speaker 4: suggesting that there is a problem there in terms of

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Speaker 4: the checks and balances or the separation of powers set

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Speaker 4: up by the Constitution. But that's the first basic idea,

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Speaker 4: that it's the judiciary's function to say what the law is,

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Speaker 4: not that of administrative agencies. The second claim he makes

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Speaker 4: is he says that the Administrative Procedure Act, which is

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Speaker 4: a federal statute that governs basically judicial review of agency action,

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Speaker 4: says that courts are supposed to review decisions of agencies

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Speaker 4: with respect to the law. And that means he says

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Speaker 4: that it's up to the court, not the agency, to

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Speaker 4: say what the law is. That is to say, he

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Speaker 4: interprets this provision of the APA to give effect to

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Speaker 4: what he says is this principle from Marbarie against Madison,

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Speaker 4: And therefore he concludes, for the last forty years, the

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Speaker 4: courts have not been living up to their obligation. They've

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Speaker 4: been giving away authority that is properly invested in the

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Speaker 4: judiciary to administrative agents.

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Speaker 1: The three liberal justices in Descent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote,

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Speaker 1: the majority disdains restraint and grasps for power is. She

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Speaker 1: write that with this case the descent the three liberal

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Speaker 1: justices in Descent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote, the majority disdains

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Speaker 1: restraint and grasps for power. Is she right that with

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Speaker 1: this case the Supreme Court is giving more power to

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Speaker 1: itself and to federal courts.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I think she has a pretty good point right.

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Speaker 4: The theory behind Chevron was never that agencies should be

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Speaker 4: saying what the law is. It was always that when

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Speaker 4: Congress says what the law is, it doesn't have perfect

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Speaker 4: foresight and so it leaves open certain questions. And then

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Speaker 4: the question is when Congress has done that, either through inadvertence, incompetence,

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Speaker 4: sometimes deliberately because there was a compromise, sometimes deliberately because

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Speaker 4: they didn't trust themselves. Whenever it's done that, who should

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Speaker 4: it be assumed, was meant to be the recipient of

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Speaker 4: the discretion to fill in the statutory gaps and ambiguity.

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Speaker 4: And what Justice Kagan says and what Chevron had been

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Speaker 4: based on for the last forty some MyDD years, was

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Speaker 4: that we should assume Congress would prefer that an expert

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Speaker 4: agency decide what these often technical terms mean using their expertise,

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Speaker 4: and in some circumstances, insofar as these ambiguities implicate policy questions,

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Speaker 4: because the agency is ultimately accountable through the secretary of

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Speaker 4: the agency and then to the president, there'd be a

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Speaker 4: political input as opposed to judges who typically don't know

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Speaker 4: much about the underlying regulatory issue and who are not accountable.

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Speaker 4: And just to give you a kind of poignant example

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Speaker 4: of this issue, the Supreme Court just issued an opinion

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Speaker 4: in a case called Ohio against EPA, in which Justice Gorsuch,

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Speaker 4: in his majority opinion, incorrectly referred to one of the

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Speaker 4: key chemicals as nikes oxide, which is laughing gas, rather

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Speaker 4: than the correct chemical name, showing that judges are not

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Speaker 4: experts in all of the scientific and technical questions that

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Speaker 4: regulators are experts in how could they be, and that

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Speaker 4: therefore it's not surprising that sometimes the judges will get

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Speaker 4: it wrong, and we are better off when they are

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Speaker 4: these ambiguities having the experts at the agency's fill them out,

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Speaker 4: and if they get it wrong in some sense or objectionable,

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Speaker 4: Congress can always amend the statue.

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Speaker 1: Chevron was initially applauded by conservatives like the late Justice

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Speaker 1: antonin Scalia. Why did conservatives come to loathe it so much?

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Speaker 2: So?

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Speaker 4: I think there are three things worth saying about that. First,

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Speaker 4: the original Chevron case upheld a deregulatory environmental program by

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Speaker 4: the Environmental Protection Agency under the Reagan administration. That is

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Speaker 4: to say, there was a rule by the Reagan EPA

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Speaker 4: construing the statutory term stationary source in a way that

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Speaker 4: allowed more pollution than had been allowed under the previous

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Speaker 4: Parter administration, and what the Chevron case did was to

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Speaker 4: say that rule was okay. So you're right that as

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Speaker 4: a basic matter, there is nothing inherent in the Chevron

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Speaker 4: doctrine that conservatives would dislike. There are cases in which

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Speaker 4: it actually helps them get to the results they want,

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Speaker 4: which is if we assume generally conservatives are more skeptical

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Speaker 4: of regulation than liberals. The second thing I'll say, though,

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Speaker 4: is that over the long run, if you sort of

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Speaker 4: average out over all cases, it's probably true that Chevron

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Speaker 4: leads to more liberal results than conservative results. Because most

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Speaker 4: of the cases that end up going to court coming

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Speaker 4: from agencies are cases in which somebody from industry is

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Speaker 4: challenging a regulation of them, and then the question is

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Speaker 4: do you defer as a court to the agency's regulation.

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Speaker 4: That is to say, Chevron was an unusual case in

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Speaker 4: which there was deference to a deregulatory action. In most cases,

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Speaker 4: it's a matter of deferring to regulation. And so conservatives,

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Speaker 4: insofar as they have an objection to regulation in general,

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Speaker 4: came to dislike Chevron because they saw it as building

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Speaker 4: up the administrative state. Think about, you know, Steve Bannon's

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Speaker 4: attacks on the administrative state or even the so called

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Speaker 4: deep states from Donald Trump by this idea that we

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Speaker 4: are being regulated by bureaucrats. So in so far as

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Speaker 4: Chevron gave some additional power to bureaucrats, to experts, to

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Speaker 4: the agencies who are not necessarily directly controlled by politics

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Speaker 4: and who are going to be regulating, they didn't like that.

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Speaker 4: Third thing I'll say is I don't think it is

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Speaker 4: from the perspective of the conservatives who support this move

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Speaker 4: I don't think it is a bug so much as

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Speaker 4: it is a feature. That it gives more power to judges,

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Speaker 4: because if they look around, they will observe that conservatives

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Speaker 4: dominate the federal judiciary in a way that they certainly

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Speaker 4: don't dominate the executive branch. During a democratic administration, and

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Speaker 4: even during Republican administrations, agencies can take actions at lower

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Speaker 4: levels that are regulatory. So all of that suggests that

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Speaker 4: a tightly disciplined conservative movement that is opposed to regulation

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Speaker 4: would want to get rid of Chevron. And you saw

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Speaker 4: that even before this decision in efforts by Republicans in

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Speaker 4: Congress to introduce bills to elimination Chevron deference.

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Speaker 1: I've heard a lot of doomsday scenarios about the end

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Speaker 1: of the Chevron doctrine. That it will paralyze federal agencies,

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Speaker 1: that will undermine important protections for the public, from the

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Speaker 1: environment to workplace, that will open the floodgates of litigation.

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Speaker 1: And that's just to name a few of the warnings.

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Speaker 1: What do you think the effects will be?

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Speaker 5: So?

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Speaker 4: I think the concern is a little bit overblown, but

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Speaker 4: mostly because the Supreme Court at least was already raining

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Speaker 4: in the agencies using other tools, the most powerful of

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Speaker 4: which was created a while back but has been transformed

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Speaker 4: in recent years, and that's the so called Major Questions doctrine,

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Speaker 4: which was used, for example, to strike down the Biden

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Speaker 4: administration OSHA mandate or vaccinations in the administration. They used

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Speaker 4: the Major Questions to do that. They've used it to

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Speaker 4: strike down environmental regulations, and that basically says that if

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Speaker 4: Congress doesn't give an agency specific marching orders and the

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Speaker 4: agency tries to do something quote major, then the courts

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Speaker 4: will assume that's beyond the power of the agency, and

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Speaker 4: that was already in place without overruling Chevron. Moreover, as

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Speaker 4: to Justice Roberts says in his opinion, the Supreme Court

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Speaker 4: itself hasn't applied Chevron deference in several years anyway, so

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Speaker 4: they were already in effect not deferring to the agency.

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Speaker 5: Now.

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Speaker 4: That is not to say that this decision won't have

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Speaker 4: any impact. After all, not every regulation that gets reviewed

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Speaker 4: by the court goes up to the Supreme Court. And

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Speaker 4: even though the US Supreme Court hasn't used Chevron to

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Speaker 4: defer to agencies in several years, lower courts have. So

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Speaker 4: I do think that this is going to have two effects.

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Speaker 4: One is it will license lower court to invalidate agency

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Speaker 4: actions a bit more frequently, and the other is it

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Speaker 4: will have some kind of a chilling effect on the

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Speaker 4: issuance of regulations by federal agents. I'll just say one

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Speaker 4: further thing about it, which listeners que interesting that can

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Speaker 4: find my write up of this point on my blog

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Speaker 4: that's Scorf on law, and that is that there is

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Speaker 4: some ambiguity in the majority opinion as to what the

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Speaker 4: basis for the ruling is, as I said earlier, it's

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Speaker 4: at least clear that Chief Justice Roberts and the Majority

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Speaker 4: think that Chevron was inconsistent with the text of the

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Speaker 4: Administrative Procedure Act. But Justice Thomas writes a concurrence in

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Speaker 4: which he says not only that Chevron was unconstitutional. The

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Speaker 4: Majority doesn't reject that, but they don't endorse it either.

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Speaker 4: And the reason why it matters is if Chevron is unconstitutional,

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Speaker 4: then that's it. There can never be deference to agencies

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Speaker 4: under general principle. Again, however, if the Majority was only

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Speaker 4: relying on this inconsistency with the statute and throwing in

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Speaker 4: the constitutional points about Marbury against Madison merely as rhetoric,

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Speaker 4: then there's a possibility that in the future a Congress

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Speaker 4: could pass a law reinstating Chevron. That's extremely unlucky to

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Speaker 4: happen with either House of Congress controlled by Republicans or

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Speaker 4: with the Republican president, but you could imagine a future

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Speaker 4: Democratic Congress and Democratic president wanting more robust power pre

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Speaker 4: agencies and enacting such a statute. And we don't know

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Speaker 4: after this decision whether a statutory requirement of deference would

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Speaker 4: be upheld or not.

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Speaker 1: Stay with me, Mike. Coming up next, I'm going to

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Speaker 1: continue this conversation with Professor Michael Dorff of Cornell Law School.

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Speaker 1: We'll discuss the court limiting obstruction charges against January sixth defendants.

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Speaker 1: I'm June Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg. The Supreme

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Speaker 1: Court sided with a January sixth in a decision that

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Speaker 1: will likely upend many capital riot prosecutions and perhaps even

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Speaker 1: the DC criminal case against former President Donald Trump. The

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Speaker 1: justices ruled six to three that the charge of obstructing

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Speaker 1: an official proceeding enacted in response to the Enron collapse

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Speaker 1: must include proof that defendants tried to tamper with or

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Speaker 1: destroy documents During the oral argument. Several conservative justices like

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Speaker 1: Neil Gorsuch had expressed skepticism about the scope of the

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Speaker 1: obstruction charge and the kinds of conduct it could criminalize.

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Speaker 2: Would a sit in that disrupts a trial for access

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Speaker 2: to a federal courthouse qualify? Would a heckler in today's

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Speaker 2: audience qualify? Or at the State of the Union address?

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Speaker 2: Would pulling a fire alarm before a vote qualify? For

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Speaker 2: twenty years in federal prison.

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Speaker 1: The case divided the court along unusual lines, with liberal

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Speaker 1: Justice Aie Brown Jackson joining the conservatives in the majority

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Speaker 1: and conservative Justice Amy Cony Barrett joined the two other

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Speaker 1: liberals in descent. I've been talking to constitutional law expert

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Speaker 1: Michael Dorf, a professor at Cornell Law School, Mike tell

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Speaker 1: us about the main issue in the case.

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Speaker 4: So this is a case called Fisher against the United States.

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Speaker 4: So Fisher was charged with participating in the January sixth insurrection,

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Speaker 4: and he was charged under a number of statues, one

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Speaker 4: of which is at issue in this case, and that

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Speaker 4: is a provision that says that he was obstructing from

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Speaker 4: an official proceeding. I'll read you the exact text. It says,

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Speaker 4: whoever corruptly and then it has a bunch of examples alters, destroys, mutilates,

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Speaker 4: or can feels a record, document or other objects, etc.

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Speaker 5: Etc.

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Speaker 4: Or quote otherwise obstruct, influences, or impedes any official proceeding,

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Speaker 4: shall guilty of the crime. Fisher was charged under the

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Speaker 4: second part, which says somebody who otherwise obstruct and official proceeding.

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Speaker 4: And the question in the case was whether what Fisher did,

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Speaker 4: which was basically to participate in mob violence, including against

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Speaker 4: Capitol police, whether that counts as otherwise obstructing and official proceeding. Now,

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Speaker 4: everybody in the case acknowledges that if you just take

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Speaker 4: that language in isolation otherwise obstruct. Well, sure Fisher obstructed

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Speaker 4: an official proceeding because he participated in this mob action,

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Speaker 4: and the mob action delayed the certification of the electoral

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Speaker 4: votes on January sixth, twenty twenty one. But Chief just

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Speaker 4: As Roberts writes for a six to three majority that

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Speaker 4: you can't read that term obstructs and official proceeding in isolation.

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Speaker 4: You have to read it in conjunction with the previous

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Speaker 4: sub paragraph part one, which is all about destroying records, documents,

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Speaker 4: other physical items that are going to be used in

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Speaker 4: an official proceeding, and not generally about obstructing. Now, one

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Speaker 4: thing I should say is when I say it was

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Speaker 4: six to three, listeners might assume that that was the

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Speaker 4: usual six to three. It wasn't quite. Justice Katanji Brown

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Speaker 4: Jackson joined in the majority, whereas Justice amy Cony Barrett

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Speaker 4: wrote the descent for herself and Justices Soto, Mayor and Kagan.

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Speaker 4: So in that sense, two justices sort of flipped from

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Speaker 4: what you might think of as their usual ideological or

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Speaker 4: partisan alignment. But it basically comes down to a case

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Speaker 4: decided on ideological lines, and in.

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Speaker 1: The dissent, Justice Barrett wrote, the majority simply cannot believe

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Speaker 1: that Congress meant what it said when writing this statute.

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Speaker 1: So who do you think makes the better argument, meant

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Speaker 1: the Chief or Barrett.

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Speaker 4: I think it's actually a hard case. So if you

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Speaker 4: put aside that this case involves January sixth, and just

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Speaker 4: think about the statute, there's I think a decent argument

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Speaker 4: on either side. Chief. Just as Robert invokes two Latin

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Speaker 4: maxims which I won't try to pronounce, that basically say

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Speaker 4: that if you have a list of things and then

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Speaker 4: you have a catch all, the catch lol is limited

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Speaker 4: by the idea behind what the specifics are. And he

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Speaker 4: gives a couple of sort of amusing examples. One involves football,

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Speaker 4: another involves sign at a zoo about not disturbing the animals,

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Speaker 4: and he says that you take the specifics and then

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Speaker 4: the catch lol means other things that are like the

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Speaker 4: specifics but not too far distant. Now, what Justice Barrett

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Speaker 4: does in it does not to deny the general principle,

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Speaker 4: but to deny that the structure of the statutory provision

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Speaker 4: parallels the examples that Chief Justice Roberts gives, and she

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Speaker 4: says that language of otherwise obstruct really does stand more

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Speaker 4: alone than he acknowledges that they're in two separate sub

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Speaker 4: paragraphs that if you parse the language, are a little different.

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Speaker 4: So I think she's right that, taken at face value,

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Speaker 4: the language does cover what Fisher and other people did

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Speaker 4: on January sixth, But I think the majority is also

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Speaker 4: right that you can't take it just at face value.

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Speaker 4: And so the hard question is on that sort of

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Speaker 4: second level of disagreement, which is, to what extent does

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Speaker 4: this statute fit the paradigm that the Chief Justice adopt

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Speaker 4: where it's a casual at the end of a specific list.

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Speaker 4: Because it doesn't fit it exactly, but it's kind of

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Speaker 4: like that, And so I think reasonable minds could differ

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Speaker 4: on that.

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Speaker 1: Question, reasonable minds that are textualists. I mean, is this

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Speaker 1: a showdown between textualist interpretations. Barrett wrote that the majority

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Speaker 1: does textual backflips to find some way anyway to narrow

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Speaker 1: the reach of the obstruction law, and Barrett has also

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Speaker 1: recently disagreed with the way Justice Clarence Thomas has analyzed

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Speaker 1: a case.

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Speaker 4: I think it's fair to say that there is a

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Speaker 4: developing risk between Justice Barrett and the other conservatives. She's

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Speaker 4: still quite conservative overall, but there's a developing rerip over methodology.

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Speaker 4: And you see this not only here where she says,

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Speaker 4: you know, you're not really doing textualism, You're relying an

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Speaker 4: awful lot on these Latin maxims rather than looking closely

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Speaker 4: at the structure of the statue. But you also see

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Speaker 4: this in her current in last week's Raheemi case. This

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Speaker 4: is the case where the court upheld, as against a

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Speaker 4: Second Amendment challenge, the federal statute that forbids people who

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Speaker 4: are under domestic violence protection orders from obtaining firearms, and

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Speaker 4: the Court upheld that eight to one. But there's a

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Speaker 4: series of concurrences. And one of the things that Justice

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Speaker 4: Barrett says in her concurrence is she distances herself from

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Speaker 4: the so called tradition approach, which I think is more

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Speaker 4: closely associated certainly with Justice Thomas and to some extent

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Speaker 4: with Justice Kavanaugh. And she wants to say that no, no,

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Speaker 4: we really as originalist textualists, want to focus on the

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Speaker 4: meaning of the word and you know what laws were

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Speaker 4: around at the time, what people's subjective intentions and expectations

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Speaker 4: that might have been might be relevant in figuring out

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Speaker 4: what the words mean, but they're not relevant in and

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Speaker 4: of themselves in the way that some of the other

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Speaker 4: more history and tradition focused conservatives seem to think. Now,

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Speaker 4: I should say that that disagreement doesn't necessarily make her

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Speaker 4: likely to be less conservative overall, but I do think

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Speaker 4: it shows her to be somewhat more principled than some

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Speaker 4: of the other conservatives, and really thinking through the consequences

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Speaker 4: of her jurisprudential methodological commitment, and that in so being principled,

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Speaker 4: she's likely more often to reach results that might be

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Speaker 4: surprising ideologically. So I do think there is some prospect

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Speaker 4: that we are going to see her be less reliably

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Speaker 4: conservative over the coming years, not so much because she's

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Speaker 4: becoming a liberal, but because she's sort of really sticking

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Speaker 4: by the implications of her methodology, which will sometimes few liberal.

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Speaker 1: In particular case, this case got a lot of attention

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Speaker 1: because the charge has been used against Trump, but Special

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Speaker 1: counsel Jack Smith has said that Trump's conduct would still

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Speaker 1: be covered even under a narrower interpretation of the statute because,

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Speaker 1: for example, it involved efforts to interfere with the electoral

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Speaker 1: college certificates arriving at the desk to be counted.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I think there's something to that. The court sends

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Speaker 4: even Fisher's case back to the lower courts to figure

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Speaker 4: out whether he can be charged under the narrower reading,

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Speaker 4: because you know, you could say that all of the

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Speaker 4: January sixth rioters were interfering with the arrival or counting

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Speaker 4: or something to do with the physical certificates. In that case,

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Speaker 4: then this case would be a bit of a sport right,

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Speaker 4: having no real bearing on the January sixth prosecutions, but

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Speaker 4: potentially having bearing on other cases rise under this statute

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Speaker 4: in totally different setting. I think Smith has a stronger

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Speaker 4: argument that Trump himself was obstructing with respect to the

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Speaker 4: particular certificates in light of the allegations about the so

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Speaker 4: called fake electors scheme, because there the goal was to

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Speaker 4: get before Congress certificates from people purporting to be electors

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Speaker 4: who really weren't, and you could say that then what

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Speaker 4: they were doing was obstructing the official proceeding with respect

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Speaker 4: to the availability for use of the real certificates. I

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Speaker 4: don't think it's a slam dunk, but I think it's

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Speaker 4: Smith has a pretty good case that even after the

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Speaker 4: Fisher decision, the allegations against Trump's stand. And it's important

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Speaker 4: to remember that Smith has charged Trump under other statutes

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Speaker 4: as well, So it's not just that even if under

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Speaker 4: this narrower view those counts against Trump are thrown out,

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Speaker 4: there's still a case. Again. Of course, all of that

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Speaker 4: would depend on the outcome that's coming down on Monday

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Speaker 4: in the immunity case, the.

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Speaker 1: Last day of the term, and the decision we've all

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Speaker 1: been waiting for on whether or not Trump will win

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Speaker 1: any part of his claim of presidential immunity. Now, as

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Speaker 1: far as the hundreds of January sixth defendants who were prosecuted,

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Speaker 1: the US Attorney's Office says this decision will most significantly

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Speaker 1: affect about fifty two people convicted of obstruction and no

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Speaker 1: other felony, with twenty seven of those defendants now serving

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Speaker 1: a prison sentence. So will their lawyers now go to

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Speaker 1: court and try to get the charges dismissed?

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Speaker 4: Undoubtedly? Right, that is, you know, it would be incompetence

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Speaker 4: not to that is to say, anybody serving any time

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Speaker 4: for a conviction arising out of the January sixth events

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Speaker 4: under this statute, their lawyer, would you know, now make

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Speaker 4: a motion to have the conviction in sentence. They now

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Speaker 4: at that point it would be open to the Justice

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Speaker 4: Department to seek a new indictment, either under some other

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Speaker 4: statute there are lesser offenses that can be charged, or

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Speaker 4: potentially to ask to retry the defendants under this particular statute.

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Speaker 4: But trying to meet the narrower definition given.

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Speaker 1: In the Fisher case, this decision is certainly going to

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Speaker 1: make a lot more work for the prosecutors. Thanks so much,

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Speaker 1: Mike for taking us through these two major decisions this week.

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Speaker 1: That's Professor Michael Dorf of Cornell Law School coming up next.

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Speaker 1: The Supreme Court allows emergency abortions in Idaho for now.

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Speaker 1: I'm June Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg. The Supreme

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Speaker 1: Court will allow Idaho hospitals to provide abortions in medical

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Speaker 1: emergencies for the time being. Over three descents, the Court

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Speaker 1: reinstated a trial court order that insures Idaho hospitals can

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Speaker 1: perform a urgency abortions to protect the health of the mother.

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Speaker 1: Despite the state's ban on abortions unless the mother's life

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Speaker 1: is in danger. During the oral arguments, Justice Elena Kaigan

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Speaker 1: explain the clash between Idaho's strict abortion law and federal

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Speaker 1: law the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act known as MTELLA.

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Speaker 3: Where the woman is her life is not imperiled, but

435
00:30:22,840 --> 00:30:25,719
Speaker 3: she's going to lose her reproductive organs, she's going to

436
00:30:25,760 --> 00:30:29,120
Speaker 3: lose the ability to have children in the future unless

437
00:30:29,520 --> 00:30:33,400
Speaker 3: an abortion takes place. Now, that's the category of cases

438
00:30:33,680 --> 00:30:37,680
Speaker 3: in which I'm talis, says, my gosh. Of course the

439
00:30:37,760 --> 00:30:41,880
Speaker 3: abortion is necessary to assure that no material deterioration occurs,

440
00:30:42,520 --> 00:30:46,320
Speaker 3: and yet Idaho says, sorry, no abortion here.

441
00:30:46,920 --> 00:30:51,200
Speaker 1: The justices dismissed the case as improvidently granted, meaning they

442
00:30:51,240 --> 00:30:53,840
Speaker 1: shouldn't have taken it in the first place. But this

443
00:30:53,920 --> 00:30:58,520
Speaker 1: procedural order leaves key questions unanswered and likely means the

444
00:30:58,640 --> 00:31:01,760
Speaker 1: issue will come back to the court again. Joining me

445
00:31:01,800 --> 00:31:05,320
Speaker 1: is reproductive rights expert Mary Ziegler, a professor at UC

446
00:31:05,520 --> 00:31:09,200
Speaker 1: Davis Law School. Mary, this is just a temporary victory

447
00:31:09,280 --> 00:31:12,920
Speaker 1: for abortion rights. What's the importance of this decision.

448
00:31:13,440 --> 00:31:17,800
Speaker 5: It's short term significance is that it allows emergency procedures

449
00:31:17,800 --> 00:31:20,680
Speaker 5: in Idaho to continue pursu into an injunction that the

450
00:31:20,720 --> 00:31:23,840
Speaker 5: district court issued, other than that it primarily takes the

451
00:31:23,880 --> 00:31:26,560
Speaker 5: can down the road. So questions about emergency access are

452
00:31:26,560 --> 00:31:29,000
Speaker 5: going to continue to unfold in courts across the country,

453
00:31:29,000 --> 00:31:31,480
Speaker 5: and they may eventually return to the US Supreme Court.

454
00:31:31,920 --> 00:31:34,960
Speaker 1: So this case fractured the court three three and three,

455
00:31:35,520 --> 00:31:38,800
Speaker 1: sort of illustrating the three wings of the court. The

456
00:31:38,800 --> 00:31:43,160
Speaker 1: three liberal justices joined the three moderates in supporting the

457
00:31:43,240 --> 00:31:47,360
Speaker 1: decision to allow emergency abortions, and the three most conservative

458
00:31:47,560 --> 00:31:51,240
Speaker 1: justices dissented. And the Court as a whole didn't explain

459
00:31:51,360 --> 00:31:54,400
Speaker 1: its decision. So what can we glean from this split?

460
00:31:54,840 --> 00:31:56,760
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, I think that we have the best

461
00:31:56,800 --> 00:32:00,440
Speaker 5: clues from the the opinion offered by Justice Barrett that

462
00:32:00,920 --> 00:32:04,560
Speaker 5: the three kind of swing conservative justices believed that the

463
00:32:04,640 --> 00:32:07,120
Speaker 5: terms of the litigation had changed in what they saw

464
00:32:07,160 --> 00:32:10,080
Speaker 5: as consequential ways since the Court agreed to hear the case.

465
00:32:10,520 --> 00:32:13,160
Speaker 5: And I think the three were interested in this spending

466
00:32:13,200 --> 00:32:15,880
Speaker 5: clause theory that Idaho had raised, but believed that it

467
00:32:15,960 --> 00:32:18,640
Speaker 5: had never been heard by the lower courts. So I

468
00:32:18,640 --> 00:32:22,160
Speaker 5: think it stands through the proposition that maybe those justices

469
00:32:22,200 --> 00:32:24,840
Speaker 5: are willing to side with Idaho, maybe they're also interested

470
00:32:24,880 --> 00:32:26,880
Speaker 5: in some kind of what they would view as a

471
00:32:26,920 --> 00:32:30,080
Speaker 5: compromise ruling, but that in either case they weren't ready

472
00:32:30,120 --> 00:32:32,320
Speaker 5: to reach a final conclusion before the election.

473
00:32:33,000 --> 00:32:37,800
Speaker 1: The opinion by the three liberals talked about what's happening

474
00:32:37,880 --> 00:32:41,960
Speaker 1: to women in Idaho who need abortions and didn't get them,

475
00:32:42,000 --> 00:32:46,720
Speaker 1: sort of echoing what Justice Kagan said during the oral arguments.

476
00:32:47,040 --> 00:32:49,640
Speaker 5: From what I've gathered, there's evidence that there have been

477
00:32:49,680 --> 00:32:52,880
Speaker 5: significant harms in Idaho, that patients have been, you know,

478
00:32:52,960 --> 00:32:57,360
Speaker 5: airlifted to other states in a handful of circumstances. We

479
00:32:57,520 --> 00:32:59,960
Speaker 5: know that there have been knock on effects in terms

480
00:33:00,160 --> 00:33:03,200
Speaker 5: of people not choosing Idaho for their medical residencies, that

481
00:33:03,360 --> 00:33:07,200
Speaker 5: having further effects on access to care for pregnantatients across

482
00:33:07,200 --> 00:33:10,640
Speaker 5: the state. I think, obviously, in terms of scholarly documentation

483
00:33:10,720 --> 00:33:13,600
Speaker 5: of that were just at the beginning. But there is data,

484
00:33:13,640 --> 00:33:17,200
Speaker 5: I think, including data cited by Justice Jackson in her opinion,

485
00:33:17,640 --> 00:33:20,200
Speaker 5: to the effect that even allowing the law to goat

486
00:33:20,280 --> 00:33:23,000
Speaker 5: into effect when it did has had real world effects.

487
00:33:23,360 --> 00:33:26,920
Speaker 1: And so it was only the three liberals who said

488
00:33:26,920 --> 00:33:33,080
Speaker 1: that Imtala requires hospitals to provide abortions that Idaho's law prohibits.

489
00:33:33,160 --> 00:33:36,120
Speaker 1: That you know, Idaho's laws preempted by the federal law.

490
00:33:36,680 --> 00:33:39,560
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I think Justice Jackson clearly wanted to

491
00:33:39,600 --> 00:33:42,520
Speaker 5: reach that conclusion. The other two liberals were willing to

492
00:33:42,960 --> 00:33:45,440
Speaker 5: go along with the idea that it was okay to

493
00:33:45,480 --> 00:33:49,480
Speaker 5: defer a decision essentially that the petition had been improvidently Granted,

494
00:33:49,880 --> 00:33:52,320
Speaker 5: it's probably fair to assume that that was, you know,

495
00:33:52,360 --> 00:33:54,800
Speaker 5: a compromise on the part of those liberal justices. But

496
00:33:55,040 --> 00:33:58,680
Speaker 5: Justice Kagan did take it upon herself to respond to

497
00:33:59,000 --> 00:34:02,320
Speaker 5: some of the conservative usice's points on preemption, and we

498
00:34:02,400 --> 00:34:04,960
Speaker 5: can certainly gather from that that she doesn't think that

499
00:34:05,120 --> 00:34:09,040
Speaker 5: the preemption arguments that Idaho had raised were very good.

500
00:34:09,600 --> 00:34:13,640
Speaker 1: Just as Samuel Alito wrote the Descent in part, echoing

501
00:34:13,680 --> 00:34:16,400
Speaker 1: his questioning during the oral arguments.

502
00:34:16,680 --> 00:34:21,280
Speaker 6: How can you impose restrictions on what Idaho can criminalize

503
00:34:21,719 --> 00:34:26,040
Speaker 6: simply because hospitals in Idaho have chosen to participate in Medicare.

504
00:34:26,080 --> 00:34:28,360
Speaker 6: I don't understand how this swears with the whole theory

505
00:34:28,760 --> 00:34:29,800
Speaker 6: of the spending clause.

506
00:34:30,080 --> 00:34:31,320
Speaker 1: So tell us about his descent.

507
00:34:31,600 --> 00:34:34,040
Speaker 5: Well, there was a lot there, and the justice Alito

508
00:34:34,200 --> 00:34:37,480
Speaker 5: wrote about the spending clause argument, he also spent a

509
00:34:37,480 --> 00:34:39,600
Speaker 5: lot of time on the fact that Antala uses the

510
00:34:39,719 --> 00:34:44,560
Speaker 5: language unborn child, which Alito suggested created express protection for

511
00:34:44,719 --> 00:34:46,960
Speaker 5: the unborn child, as he put it, and would by

512
00:34:46,960 --> 00:34:51,439
Speaker 5: definition need no emergency access to abortion for patients. That's

513
00:34:51,520 --> 00:34:55,880
Speaker 5: obviously an interesting and significant conclusion because the statue just

514
00:34:56,000 --> 00:34:59,000
Speaker 5: used the word on warnchet didn't say anything more about

515
00:34:59,160 --> 00:35:02,719
Speaker 5: unborn children than that. So Alito's conclusion seems to be

516
00:35:02,719 --> 00:35:05,840
Speaker 5: if a statute uses language like that, it suggests a

517
00:35:05,880 --> 00:35:08,760
Speaker 5: belief that an unborn child is an equal rights holding

518
00:35:08,880 --> 00:35:12,400
Speaker 5: person or patient, at least for statutory purposes. So that's

519
00:35:12,520 --> 00:35:16,480
Speaker 5: a pretty revealing reading of the statute again, even though

520
00:35:16,560 --> 00:35:19,160
Speaker 5: that isn't going to be the legal upshot, at least

521
00:35:19,160 --> 00:35:19,560
Speaker 5: for now.

522
00:35:19,880 --> 00:35:24,080
Speaker 1: Well, Alito has suggested in oral arguments and elsewhere this

523
00:35:24,320 --> 00:35:27,960
Speaker 1: concept of fetal personhood before, hasn't he Yeah, I.

524
00:35:27,960 --> 00:35:31,239
Speaker 5: Mean he's used personhood adjacent language in Dobbs, so we

525
00:35:31,360 --> 00:35:33,759
Speaker 5: know that he's been at least open to this kind

526
00:35:33,800 --> 00:35:37,040
Speaker 5: of question. He hasn't, of course, addressed constitutional questions of

527
00:35:37,040 --> 00:35:40,719
Speaker 5: personhood in the sense of the conclusion that fetuses have

528
00:35:40,840 --> 00:35:43,799
Speaker 5: Fourteenth Amendment rights clearly in any of these cases, but

529
00:35:44,120 --> 00:35:47,040
Speaker 5: the way he's approaching the question certainly suggests that he

530
00:35:47,080 --> 00:35:48,760
Speaker 5: may be open to that kind of argument.

531
00:35:49,280 --> 00:35:52,759
Speaker 1: He also chided the court. He said, the Court has

532
00:35:52,800 --> 00:35:56,400
Speaker 1: simply lost the will to decide the easy, but emotional,

533
00:35:56,440 --> 00:36:01,080
Speaker 1: and highly politicized question that the case present. And on

534
00:36:01,120 --> 00:36:04,840
Speaker 1: the other side, Justice Katanji Brown Jackson said the Court

535
00:36:05,000 --> 00:36:08,600
Speaker 1: was punting on the issue. Quote, while this court dawdles

536
00:36:08,600 --> 00:36:13,160
Speaker 1: and the country weights, pregnant people experiencing emergency medical conditions

537
00:36:13,480 --> 00:36:16,959
Speaker 1: remain in a precarious position as their doctors are kept

538
00:36:16,960 --> 00:36:19,319
Speaker 1: in the dark about what the law requires.

539
00:36:20,320 --> 00:36:23,200
Speaker 5: Right. I mean, you do see that coming from both

540
00:36:23,320 --> 00:36:26,920
Speaker 5: Jackson and the conservatives, essentially that the Court took this

541
00:36:27,080 --> 00:36:31,399
Speaker 5: case and should have had the courage to definitively resolve it.

542
00:36:31,680 --> 00:36:34,640
Speaker 5: Of course, you know, neither of those wings of the

543
00:36:34,640 --> 00:36:37,600
Speaker 5: Court has the power to make that call. Though it's

544
00:36:37,600 --> 00:36:40,120
Speaker 5: a reminder of kind of where the power in the

545
00:36:40,160 --> 00:36:41,560
Speaker 5: Court lies at the moment.

546
00:36:41,960 --> 00:36:45,880
Speaker 1: The Justices took two abortion cases this term, and in

547
00:36:45,960 --> 00:36:48,480
Speaker 1: neither did they reach the merits. In the mif of

548
00:36:48,520 --> 00:36:52,200
Speaker 1: pristone abortion pill case, they went off on procedural grounds.

549
00:36:52,520 --> 00:36:56,000
Speaker 1: So I mean, why take the cases, especially this case

550
00:36:56,000 --> 00:36:59,280
Speaker 1: where they made an unusual move bypassing the Ninth Circuit.

551
00:36:59,760 --> 00:37:01,799
Speaker 5: It's it's hard to know why the Court took the case.

552
00:37:01,840 --> 00:37:05,080
Speaker 5: I imagine that at least at some point the conservative

553
00:37:05,200 --> 00:37:07,720
Speaker 5: justices thought they had the votes to side with Idaho

554
00:37:08,080 --> 00:37:11,680
Speaker 5: and then realized that they didn't, potentially because the oral

555
00:37:11,760 --> 00:37:14,120
Speaker 5: argument in the case was such a disaster for the

556
00:37:14,160 --> 00:37:17,879
Speaker 5: state of Idaho. I think obviously Chief Justice Roberts has

557
00:37:17,960 --> 00:37:21,239
Speaker 5: been concerned with the Court's reputation and the damage to

558
00:37:21,280 --> 00:37:23,840
Speaker 5: it in the years since Dobbs, and may have argued

559
00:37:23,880 --> 00:37:27,200
Speaker 5: that the time was not right given the procedural problems

560
00:37:27,239 --> 00:37:30,440
Speaker 5: and complexities of both cases, And he may have found

561
00:37:30,840 --> 00:37:34,560
Speaker 5: a more receptive audience in Justices Barrett and Kavanaugh than

562
00:37:34,560 --> 00:37:37,279
Speaker 5: he had previously. Not only that because this is an

563
00:37:37,280 --> 00:37:41,360
Speaker 5: election year, but also because there were procedural and strategic

564
00:37:41,480 --> 00:37:45,000
Speaker 5: mistakes made by the conservative attorneys in both of these cases.

565
00:37:45,440 --> 00:37:49,040
Speaker 1: So explain what happens now what this decision actually does.

566
00:37:49,440 --> 00:37:52,040
Speaker 5: Well, in the short term, this decision has the effect

567
00:37:52,080 --> 00:37:54,960
Speaker 5: of reinstating an injunction that a district judge put in

568
00:37:55,000 --> 00:37:58,880
Speaker 5: place in Idaho permitting emergency access. That litigation will continued

569
00:37:58,960 --> 00:38:01,879
Speaker 5: through the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The decision does

570
00:38:01,920 --> 00:38:04,560
Speaker 5: nothing to disturb a ruling by the Fifth Circuit Court

571
00:38:04,600 --> 00:38:08,239
Speaker 5: of Appeals upholding an injunction against the Biden administration and

572
00:38:08,480 --> 00:38:12,719
Speaker 5: allowing Texas's law to be enforced as written with its

573
00:38:12,800 --> 00:38:15,719
Speaker 5: very narrow abortion exceptions, and it doesn't do anything to

574
00:38:15,840 --> 00:38:18,080
Speaker 5: change the situation on the ground in other states with

575
00:38:18,200 --> 00:38:21,520
Speaker 5: very narrow exceptions, although there is some in Pala related

576
00:38:21,560 --> 00:38:26,200
Speaker 5: litigation potentially proceeding in some other states, like Oklahoma, So

577
00:38:26,320 --> 00:38:28,600
Speaker 5: essentially all of that will continue as if none of

578
00:38:28,600 --> 00:38:31,080
Speaker 5: this ever happened. The Supreme Court may come back into

579
00:38:31,080 --> 00:38:33,440
Speaker 5: the picture. Then again, it may not, because if polls

580
00:38:33,480 --> 00:38:35,719
Speaker 5: are correct and Donald Trump wins the twenty twenty four

581
00:38:35,800 --> 00:38:39,440
Speaker 5: presidential election, a Trump administration would almost certainly withdraw the

582
00:38:39,520 --> 00:38:42,600
Speaker 5: Santala guidance and not really try to intervene on behalf

583
00:38:42,600 --> 00:38:44,719
Speaker 5: of patients facing life threatening emergencies.

584
00:38:45,120 --> 00:38:48,680
Speaker 1: In fact, in her opinion, Justice Jackson says that the

585
00:38:48,800 --> 00:38:51,960
Speaker 1: United States has already petitioned for CIRT in the Fifth

586
00:38:51,960 --> 00:38:52,680
Speaker 1: Circuit case.

587
00:38:53,080 --> 00:38:54,920
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I think that will be going up to

588
00:38:54,960 --> 00:38:57,120
Speaker 5: the court, and I think the case from the Ninth

589
00:38:57,120 --> 00:39:00,840
Speaker 5: Circuit may too again unless Biden lose the twenty twenty

590
00:39:00,840 --> 00:39:04,080
Speaker 5: four election and Trump stops interpreting in Tala in this

591
00:39:04,120 --> 00:39:05,560
Speaker 5: way and the case becomes moot.

592
00:39:05,920 --> 00:39:09,200
Speaker 1: Do you surmise that in these cases the justices or

593
00:39:09,280 --> 00:39:12,400
Speaker 1: some of the justices are considering that there's an election

594
00:39:12,600 --> 00:39:14,480
Speaker 1: coming up and they don't want to rock the vote

595
00:39:14,560 --> 00:39:16,760
Speaker 1: At this point, it's hard.

596
00:39:16,600 --> 00:39:21,880
Speaker 5: To say certainly that's a reasonable assumption, given that John Roberts,

597
00:39:22,000 --> 00:39:25,160
Speaker 5: the Chief Justice who is in all of these coalitions,

598
00:39:25,760 --> 00:39:28,680
Speaker 5: is a well known institutionalist to spend concerned about the

599
00:39:28,800 --> 00:39:31,800
Speaker 5: hit the Court's reputation has taken since the Dobbs decision.

600
00:39:32,080 --> 00:39:34,640
Speaker 5: At the same time, there were actual flaws in all

601
00:39:34,719 --> 00:39:38,040
Speaker 5: of these cases that gave the Court an out. There

602
00:39:38,080 --> 00:39:42,120
Speaker 5: were actual grave standing problems in the Alliance for Hipocratic

603
00:39:42,200 --> 00:39:47,360
Speaker 5: Medicine case. There were reasons that this litigation was unsettled

604
00:39:47,480 --> 00:39:50,799
Speaker 5: enough for the Court to refrain from intervening early. So

605
00:39:50,840 --> 00:39:52,839
Speaker 5: I think this is a scenario where the Court had

606
00:39:52,880 --> 00:39:55,920
Speaker 5: plausible deniability, although it's reasonable to assume that the election

607
00:39:56,040 --> 00:39:57,560
Speaker 5: definitely played a part.

608
00:39:57,880 --> 00:40:01,759
Speaker 1: What conclusions can we draw from this term where the

609
00:40:01,800 --> 00:40:06,200
Speaker 1: Court took two abortion cases and decided neither on the merits.

610
00:40:06,920 --> 00:40:09,319
Speaker 5: Well, we can't conclude a lot about what's going to

611
00:40:09,320 --> 00:40:12,640
Speaker 5: come from the Supreme Court. You know, we know that

612
00:40:12,680 --> 00:40:15,960
Speaker 5: there are some divides within the court about abortion, but

613
00:40:16,040 --> 00:40:18,759
Speaker 5: they concern primarily how much further to the right to

614
00:40:18,840 --> 00:40:22,520
Speaker 5: move the court and how much federal intervention to limit voters'

615
00:40:22,560 --> 00:40:25,879
Speaker 5: ability to decide for themselves which abortion rights protections they want.

616
00:40:25,960 --> 00:40:28,600
Speaker 5: How much in that direction the court is going to head.

617
00:40:28,880 --> 00:40:31,279
Speaker 5: We know that that's on the table. We don't know

618
00:40:31,400 --> 00:40:34,520
Speaker 5: which way the court ultimately is going to go, because again,

619
00:40:34,640 --> 00:40:38,000
Speaker 5: so many of these substantive questions were deferred. We can

620
00:40:38,200 --> 00:40:41,880
Speaker 5: conclude obviously that the federal courts are not going to

621
00:40:42,400 --> 00:40:45,600
Speaker 5: remove themselves from the equation. This is not a question

622
00:40:45,640 --> 00:40:47,560
Speaker 5: that is going to be returned to the states. It's

623
00:40:47,600 --> 00:40:49,879
Speaker 5: a question that the federal courts and the executive branch

624
00:40:49,920 --> 00:40:52,640
Speaker 5: are very much going to have a say in. And

625
00:40:52,680 --> 00:40:55,439
Speaker 5: beyond that, I think much remains to be seen.

626
00:40:56,360 --> 00:41:00,080
Speaker 1: So as far as looking back at this term, what

627
00:41:00,120 --> 00:41:03,600
Speaker 1: conclusions can we make about abortions.

628
00:41:03,360 --> 00:41:05,839
Speaker 5: Well, I think we can conclude. You know, we know

629
00:41:06,000 --> 00:41:09,000
Speaker 5: that there are some divides within the court about abortion,

630
00:41:09,560 --> 00:41:12,239
Speaker 5: but they concern primarily how much further to the right

631
00:41:12,320 --> 00:41:15,080
Speaker 5: to move the court and how much federal intervention to

632
00:41:15,160 --> 00:41:19,080
Speaker 5: limit voters' ability to decide for themselves which abortion rights

633
00:41:19,120 --> 00:41:21,959
Speaker 5: protections they want. How much in that direction the court

634
00:41:22,040 --> 00:41:24,440
Speaker 5: is going to head. We know that that's on the table.

635
00:41:24,880 --> 00:41:27,319
Speaker 5: We don't know which way the court ultimately is going

636
00:41:27,360 --> 00:41:30,480
Speaker 5: to go, because again, so many of these substantive questions

637
00:41:30,520 --> 00:41:31,160
Speaker 5: were deferred.

638
00:41:31,960 --> 00:41:36,719
Speaker 1: Speaking about voting, which states have abortion measures on the

639
00:41:36,800 --> 00:41:38,480
Speaker 1: ballot for November?

640
00:41:38,920 --> 00:41:46,120
Speaker 5: There I think are four states that have confirmed ballot initiatives. Colorado, Florida, Maryland,

641
00:41:46,400 --> 00:41:49,760
Speaker 5: and South Dakota are all guaranteed to be on the ballot,

642
00:41:50,000 --> 00:41:53,440
Speaker 5: and there are several others where they have submitted signatures

643
00:41:53,480 --> 00:41:56,880
Speaker 5: to get on the ballot and where they're further signatures

644
00:41:56,920 --> 00:42:07,600
Speaker 5: being gathered. So several other possible, including Arizona, Arkansas, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada,

645
00:42:07,640 --> 00:42:08,920
Speaker 5: and Pennsylvania.

646
00:42:09,080 --> 00:42:12,120
Speaker 1: And voters have sided with abortion rights every time the

647
00:42:12,200 --> 00:42:15,680
Speaker 1: issue has been directly on the ballot. Thanks so much, Mary.

648
00:42:15,960 --> 00:42:19,600
Speaker 1: That's Professor Mary Ziegler of UC Davis Law School. And

649
00:42:19,640 --> 00:42:21,800
Speaker 1: that's it for this edition of the Bloomberg Law Show.

650
00:42:22,120 --> 00:42:24,480
Speaker 1: Remember you can always get the latest legal news on

651
00:42:24,520 --> 00:42:28,799
Speaker 1: our Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,

652
00:42:29,000 --> 00:42:34,040
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