"If she wins, the flood of reverse discrimination claims will be like nothing we’ve ever seen. Straight, White people everywhere could be filing."

Said Johnny C. Taylor Jr., chief executive of the human resources association SHRM.

Quoted in "Her claim of anti-straight bias could upend discrimination law/The Supreme Court will hear a case that could unleash a wave of workplace bias claims by Whites, men and people who are straight" (WaPo).

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Wednesday in [Marlean] Ames’s bid to revive her case, which was stymied in the lower courts because of past rulings that set a higher legal bar for men, straight people and Whites to prove bias in the workplace than for groups that have historically faced discrimination. That higher standard is unconstitutional, her suit says.... 

Some worry a ruling for Ames could chill workplace diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs at a moment when President Donald Trump has made it a priority to roll back such initiatives across the country and squash “anti-White feeling.”

I went to that internal link and didn't see the phrase "anti-White feeling." Why is that in quotes? I can only infer that Trump said it, but it's odd to put it in quotes — and odd to capitalize "White" and to use the verb "squash" here. You know, I stick closely to mainstream news reports, especially The NYT and The Washington Post, and I believe I'm seeing an abrupt decline in quality, and it feels like an effort to get Trump.

Live argument in the TikTok case is about to begin.

You can stream it here.

LII has a good, easy-to-read summary of the arguments here. 

ADDED: The NYT live blogged it, here, wherethe headline is now: "Supreme Court Seems Poised to Uphold Law That Could Shut Down TikTok" (free access link). From the conclusion:

Even as several justices expressed concerns that the law was in tension with the First Amendment, a majority appeared satisfied that it was aimed at TikTok’s ownership rather than its speech.

The government offered two rationales for the law: combating covert disinformation from China and barring it from harvesting private information from Americans. The court was divided over whether the first justification was sufficient to justify it. But several justices seemed troubled by the possibility that China could use data culled from the app for espionage or blackmail....

Arguing on behalf of the government: Elizabeth B. Prelogar, the solicitor general, countered that the act does not violate the First Amendment. “All of the same speech that’s happening on TikTok could happen post-divestiture,” she said, adding, “All the act is doing is trying to surgically remove the ability of foreign adversary nation to get our data and to be able to exercise control over the platform.” ...

"You mentioned fertility and regret, and I'd like to take both of those concerns head-on."

Said the Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar, arguing against state law that restricts access to puberty blockers and hormones as a treatment for gender dysphoria. Full transcript here. Audio here.

I do want to acknowledge that there is evidence to suggest that gender-affirming care with respect to hormones can have some impacts on fertility. Critically, puberty blockers are -- are -- have no effect in and of themselves on fertility, so I don't think that concern can justify the ban on puberty blockers, which is just pressing pause on someone's endogenous puberty to give them more time to understand their identity. With respect to hormone use, there are some effects on fertility, but the court found that many individuals who are transgender remain fertile after taking these medications. They can conceive biological children. 

"Supreme Court Will Hear Challenge to Tennessee Law Banning Transition Care for Minors."

The NYT reports.

The Biden administration had asked the justices to take up the case, United States v. Skrmetti, arguing that the measure outlaws treatment for gender dysphoria in youths and “frames that prohibition in explicitly sex-based terms.”

In the government’s petition to the court, Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar wrote that the law bans transgender medical care but that it “leaves the same treatments entirely unrestricted if they are prescribed for any other purpose.”...

"Would pulling a fire alarm before a vote qualify for 20 years in federal prison?"

From yesterday's argument in Fischer v. United States, the case about charging January 6th defendants with violating a federal statute that arose out of the Enron scandal and was aimed at the destruction of documents.

What fits the statute under the government's interpretation?

JUSTICE GORSUCH: Would a sit-in that disrupts a trial or access to a federal courthouse qualify? Would a heckler in today's audience qualify, or at the state of the union address? Would pulling a fire alarm before a vote qualify for 20 years in federal prison?

The fire alarm scenario must allude to the Jamaal Bowman incident, but of course, the Solicitor General proceeds smoothly and professionally, and calls it a "hypothetical":

GENERAL PRELOGAR: There are multiple elements of the statute that I think might not be satisfied by those hypotheticals, and it relates to the point I was going to make to the Chief Justice about the breadth of this statute. The -- the kind of built-in limitations or the things that I think would potentially suggest that many of those things wouldn't be something the government could charge or prove

Bully.

I'm reading "White House’s Efforts to Combat Misinformation Face Supreme Court Test/The justices must distinguish between persuading social media sites to take down posts, which is permitted, and coercing them, which violates the First Amendment."

This is Adam Liptak's piece in the NYT about the case that's up for oral argument in the Supreme Court.

[A 5th Circuit panel] said the [Biden administration] officials had become excessively entangled with the platforms or used threats to spur them to act.... [The administration argues] that the government was entitled to express its views and to try to persuade others to take action.

“A central dimension of presidential power is the use of the office’s bully pulpit to seek to persuade Americans — and American companies — to act in ways that the president believes would advance the public interest,” Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar wrote.

In response, lawyers for the states wrote that the administration had violated the First Amendment. “The bully pulpit,” they wrote, “is not a pulpit to bully.”

As we await today's argument, let's take a moment to consider what the "bully" in "bully pulpit" means. In 1909, President Theodore Roosevelt exclaimed: "I suppose my critics will call that preaching, but I have got such a bully pulpit!" First, clearly, he was using "bully" — as he often did — to mean very good or excellent. And he used the word "pulpit," because he knew he was preaching, that is, proclaiming righteous opinions in public.

Pressuring people behind the scenes is not preaching. You're not in a metaphorical pulpit. You're in the metaphorical backroom. And you're not proclaiming righteous opinions, you're exerting power, intimidating people. It's not "bully" in the sense of excellent.

The OED entry for "bully pulpit" is clear that "bully pulpit" originates with Theodore Roosevelt. It explained "his personal view of the presidency." It is — as the OED puts it — "A public office or position of authority that provides its occupant with the opportunity to speak out and be listened to on any issue." 

We're also told: "In later use sometimes understood as showing bully n.1 II.3a." That meaning of "bully" is:

Originally: a man given to or characterized by riotous, thuggish, and threatening behaviour; one who behaves in a blustering, swaggering, and aggressive manner. Now: a person who habitually seeks to harm, coerce, or intimidate those whom they perceive as vulnerable; a person who engages in bullying.

If "bully pulpit" is sometimes understood that way, it's risky to argue "A central dimension of presidential power is the use of the office’s bully pulpit...."

The riposte was predictable: "The bully pulpit is not a pulpit to bully."

I want to add that what is said behind the scenes is not from the pulpit at all. A pulpit is an elevated and conspicuous platform. One thing about social media posts is that they are out there, in public, and perfectly conspicuous. If the President (or the shadowy people behind him) want to use the"central dimension of presidential power" that is the "bully pulpit," let them step up onto a conspicuous platform and proclaim opinions they intend us to find righteous.

In this case, the opinion that was conveyed behind the scenes was that social media platforms ought to take down posts on various political topics — coronavirus vaccines, claims of election fraud, and Hunter Biden’s laptop — that people wanted to debate. If it's pulpit-worthy, express that opinion outright and clearly to all of us. Don't go behind our back and intimidate the social media giants upon whom we, the little people, depend to slightly amplify our tiny voices.

"For more than 40 years, our nation’s military leaders have determined that a diverse Army officer corps is a national-security imperative..."

"... and that achieving that diversity requires limited consideration of race in selecting those who join the Army as cadets at the United States Military Academy at West Point.... A lack of diversity in leadership can jeopardize the Army’s ability to win wars.... [D]ecades of unaddressed internal racial tension erupted during the Vietnam War...."

Wrote Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar, quoted in "Supreme Court Won’t Block Use of Race in West Point Admissions for Now/The court rejected an emergency request to temporarily bar the military academy from using race in admissions while a lower-court lawsuit proceeds" (NYT).

The recent Harvard and UNC cases did not determine the outcome. When it comes to the military, there is different potential to articulate a compelling government interest in race-based admissions.

Remember this passage from Grutter v. Bollinger (2003)(overruled in the Harvard and UNC case):

"The Supreme Court on Friday said it would... decide whether laws passed in Texas and Florida can restrict social media companies from removing certain political posts or accounts."

"Tech industry groups, whose members include Facebook and Google’s YouTube, asked the court to block Texas and Florida laws passed in 2021 that regulate companies’ content-moderation policies. The companies say the measures are unconstitutional and conflict with the First Amendment by stripping private companies of the right to choose what to publish on their platforms.... 'The act of culling and curating the content that users see is inherently expressive, even if the speech that is collected is almost wholly provided by users,' Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar told the justices. 'And especially because the covered platforms’ only products are displays of expressive content, a government requirement that they display different content—for example, by including content they wish to exclude or organizing content in a different way—plainly implicates the First Amendment.'"

From "Supreme Court to decide landmark Texas, Fla. social media cases and more" (WaPo).

"Conservative Supreme Court justices on Friday appeared skeptical that the Biden administration has legal authority to impose a broad vaccination-or-testing requirement on large employers."

"They seemed more in agreement with private businesses and Republican-led states that such policies need to be approved by Congress or implemented by state governments than a federal agency — in this case, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. was among the conservative justices, who make up a majority of the court, to wonder whether Congress had given authority for agencies 'to enact such a broad regulation.' The Biden administration’s solicitor general, Elizabeth B. Prelogar, said Congress had given just such a power for the agency to enact emergency standards to protect workers in the midst of an unprecedented pandemic."

WaPo reports.

I listened to much of the oral argument, and I thought Prelogar was superhumanly great. I don't think I have ever heard someone speak so quickly for so long without sacrificing any lucidity, terseness, or enunciation. Here's her Wikipedia page. I see that she was Miss Idaho in 2004, she's fluent in Russian, and she has sons who are named Blaise and Beckett (which I'm just guessing is a tribute to Blaise Pascal and Samuel Beckett).