Mark Joseph Stern
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mjsdc.bsky.social
Mark Joseph Stern
@mjsdc.bsky.social
150K followers 710 following 2K posts
Senior writer at Slate covering courts and the law. Co-host of the Amicus podcast. Dad.
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mjsdc.bsky.social
The Supreme Court will review an objectively insane 5th Circuit decision that prohibited states from counting ballots that were mailed before Election Day but arrive shortly after. (More than half the states have such laws.)
www.supremecourt.gov/orders/court...
CERTIORARI GRANTED 24-1260 WATSON, MS SEC. OF STATE V. REPUBLICAN NAT. COMM., ET AL. The petition for a writ of certiorari i
November 10, 2025 at 2:44 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
Justice Gorsuch argues that the Supreme Court should overturn precedent that gives Congress near-absolute power over the internal affairs of tribes. Only Justice Thomas—who typically disagrees with Gorsuch on these issues—joins him. www.supremecourt.gov/orders/court...
GORSUCH, J., dissenting SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES QUENTIN VENENO, JR. v. UNITED STATES ON PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT No. 24–5191. Decided November 10, 2025 The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied. JUSTICE GORSUCH, with whom JUSTICE THOMAS joins, dissenting from the denial of certiorari. Petitioner asks us to grant review in this case to reconsider United States v. Kagama, 118 U. S. 375 (1886). Kagama helped usher into our case law the theory that the federal government enjoys “plenary power” over the internal affairs of Native American Tribes. It is a theory that should make this Court blush. Not only does that notion lack any foundation in the Constitution; its roots lie instead only in archaic prejudices. This Court is responsible for Kagama, and this Court holds the power to correct it. We should not shirk from the task. As “sovereign and independent states,” Native American Tribes have governed their internal affairs “from time immemorial.” Worcester v. Georgia, 6 Pet. 515, 559–561 (1832) (internal quotation marks omitted). Among the sovereign powers Tribes have always enjoyed is the power to redress crimes involving their own peoples. Reflecting as much, a great many Tribes today have courts, not wholly unlike those found in States and counties across the country, open to render justice when one tribal member commits an offense against another on tribal land.
November 10, 2025 at 2:34 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
New: The Supreme Court DENIES Kim Davis' request to overturn Obergefell, the marriage equality decision. No noted dissents. www.supremecourt.gov/orders/court...
DAVIS, KIM V. ERMOLD, DAVID, ET AL. The motion of Foundation for Moral Law for leave to file a brief as amicus curiae out of time is denied. The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied.
November 10, 2025 at 2:31 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
Chad’s wife is a federal judge who was appointed by Trump and confirmed despite a Not Qualified rating from the ABA. She issued a nationwide block on Biden’s public transit mask mandate and also struck down a ban on guns in post offices. No complaints about activist judges from Chad then?
joshgerstein.bsky.social Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social · 3d
At #FedSoc, just-departed Bondi chief of staff and acting DOJ No. 3 Chad Mizelle urges Congress to step up campaign to impeach federal judges who've blocked Trump policies. Mizelle also rejects Roberts' stance that rulings can't be grounds for impeachment. www.politico.com/newsletters/...
November 8, 2025 at 2:53 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
This is the correct explanation of what happened tonight👇
mikesacks.bsky.social Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 2d
KBJ threaded the needle thanks to CA1’s unfinished business.

-if she denied the admin stay, the full SCOTUS woulda stepped in to override her.
-if she immediately referred the case to the full Court, they coulda dragged feet.
-instead she boxed them in to act quickly once she does refer the case.
November 8, 2025 at 3:35 AM
mjsdc.bsky.social
Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh spoke on this very stage at this same convention exactly one day ago. Interesting that they maintain such a strong connection to a group that applauds a Trump hatchet man who boasts of going to “war” against “rogue activist judges.”
"They have a robe on but they are more political or certainly as political as the most liberal governor or D.A. ... There's a group of judges that are repeat players, and that's obviously not by happenstance, that's intentional, and it's a war, man," Blanche said. "It's happening over and over and over again. ... The system is not set up for efficiency when it comes to rogue activist judges. So, we lose days, we lose weeks, months, sometimes because of this, and that's why activist groups do what they do.
November 8, 2025 at 3:31 AM
mjsdc.bsky.social
A long and comprehensive opinion, but this jumped out at me: The judge accused the Federal Protective Service—which was called in to suppress the protests—of lying under oath to slander the regular Portland police.😬

DOJ recently admitted that other FPS claims in this case were objectively false.
As related to the time period immediately before the President’s callout of the National Guard, this Court heard testimony from FPS officers that PPB does not respond to their requests and that FPS stopped calling PPB altogether.13 The Court does not find this testimony to be credible. FPS did call PPB for help, and PPB routinely responded to these calls for help. One example is PPB’s response to the suspicious abandoned vehicle left near the ICE facility on August 16, 2025. FPS Commander W.T. testified that the Portland Metro Explosive Disposal unit responded “really fast.” Tr. 10/30/2025 549:2–6. The FPS report from that day shows that the response included an Explosives Detection Canine Team responding on scene roughly half an hour after the vehicle was abandoned. Ex. 835 at 5. No bomb was discovered, and the vehicle was later towed. Id.
November 8, 2025 at 1:13 AM
mjsdc.bsky.social
The Trump administration tells the Supreme Court it can’t be compelled to fully fund SNAP because paying out the money would “irreparably harm” the government, while SNAP beneficiaries … *won’t* be irreparably harmed by going hungry? The balance of equities here is completely upside down.
On the other side of the ledger, respondents have not established irrep- arable harm that warrants the extraordinary relief they seek—and certainly no rea- son to not at least administratively stay the decision below to avoid a further run on SNAP funds and further chaos. There is no doubt that the absence of full SNAP benefits may harm certain Americans who rely upon them. But USDA has worked to mitigate these harms through partial payments in an effort to navigate the difficult circumstances posed by the shutdown. And while respondents have pointed to inju- ries that may follow from limited SNAP benefits, they have not explained why it is necessary to fully fund SNAP regardless of the costs elsewhere—and why it is neces- sary or equitable to jeopardize the operational integrity of a safety-net program for children so SNAP could be fully rather than partially funded.
November 8, 2025 at 12:06 AM
mjsdc.bsky.social
Spoke about the Supreme Court’s egregious 6-3 decision in favor of Trump’s anti-trans passport policy on @wbur.org: www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2...
Supreme Court allows Trump administration to stop including gender identity on passports
In an emergency order, the Supreme Court is allowing the Trump Administration to require passports to show a person's gender at birth, not their gender identity, for now, as the case continues in the ...
www.wbur.org
November 7, 2025 at 10:04 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
Link here. No, I don’t think the justices are going to reconsider marriage equality … yet. Not at Kim Davis’ request, at least. www.msnbc.com/ana-cabrera-...
November 7, 2025 at 10:00 PM
Reposted by Mark Joseph Stern
keptsimple.bsky.social
this is trolling right? you can't be one of the justices who overturned roe and say this earnestly.
“All women should feel free to truly choose whatever it is they want, whether it is to be conservative or to be liberal or to have large families, to not get married, whatever it may be. … There is no stereotype of what a professional woman should look like,” Barrett said. “You don’t have to fit into any box.”
November 7, 2025 at 8:01 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
D.C. doesn't have statehood. We don't have voting representation in Congress. We have limited home rule that can be taken away any time. When Trump oppresses us, we have few democratic means of fighting back.

Juries are one of them. And Trump can't take that away. slate.com/news-and-pol...
The Sandwich Guy’s Verdict Sent Exactly the Right Message to Trump
Dunn—aka Sandwich Guy—became a folk hero in August.
slate.com
November 7, 2025 at 7:49 PM
Reposted by Mark Joseph Stern
ryanlcooper.com
people hate hearing this but it's 100% true, creating a huge pay gap between political leaders, their staffs, and other elites is a recipe for corruption. of course the flip side of that is taxes on the rich should be jacked way the hell up
shoe.bsky.social Shoe+ @shoe.bsky.social · 3d
The Mayor of New York only makes $260k. I bet there are police that make more than that in NY with overtime.

We need to pay elected leaders more money and stop pretending it's some sort of calling. They're managing hundreds of billions of dollars in investments and millions of people's lives.
November 7, 2025 at 3:24 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
Will be on MSNBC shortly talking SCOTUS!
November 7, 2025 at 3:13 PM
Reposted by Mark Joseph Stern
stevevladeck.bsky.social
"Beyond being the 24th consecutive grant of emergency relief to the Trump administration, the cryptic ruling in Orr is a reminder of just how bankrupt the Court’s proffered justifications are in these cases—both legally and in other ways, too."

Me on today's ugly #SCOTUS ruling in Trump v. Orr:
189. The Breezy Inequity of Trump v. Orr
The Supreme Court's latest grant of emergency relief to the Trump administration illustrates in technicolor the direct (and ugly) consequences of the two different ways it keeps messing up "equity."
www.stevevladeck.com
November 7, 2025 at 2:28 AM
Reposted by Mark Joseph Stern
rickhasen.bsky.social
My new one @slate.com: "Gavin Newsom Just Proved It: Voters Want Democrats to Fight Fire With Fire" slate.com/news-and-pol...
November 6, 2025 at 8:59 PM
Reposted by Mark Joseph Stern
mikesacks.bsky.social
This year, the Roberts majority has let states ban medical care for trans kids, and let Trump expel trans troops and make trans people erase themselves to travel abroad.

And Roberts et al aren't done: they're gonna strike down states' conversion therapy bans and uphold states' trans athlete bans.
mikesacks.bsky.social Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 3d
SCOTUS, 6-3, says "animus? what animus?" and lets Trump make trans people erase themselves to travel abroad (and more).

www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...

As Justice Jackson writes in dissent for herself, Sotomayor, and Kagan:
November 6, 2025 at 8:53 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
NEW: On the shadow docket, the Supreme Court lets Trump resume misgendering trans Americans on their passports, claiming "the government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment." All three liberals dissent. www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...
This case concerns an Executive Branch policy requiring all new passports to display an individual’s biological sex at birth. The United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts preliminarily enjoined the Government from enforcing the policy, and the First Circuit declined to stay the injunction pending appeal. The Government then filed this stay application. Applying our familiar stay fac- tors at this preliminary stage, we grant the application. Displaying passport holders’ sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth—in both cases, the Government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment. And on this record, respondents have failed to establish that the Government’s choice to display biological sex “lack[s] any purpose other than a bare . . . desire to harm a politically unpopular group.” Trump v. Hawaii, 585 U. S. 667, 705 (2018) (internal quotation marks omitted). Nor are respondents likely to prevail in arguing that the State Department acted arbitrarily and capriciously by de- clining to depart from Presidential rules that Congress ex- pressly required it to follow. See 22 U. S. C. §211a.
November 6, 2025 at 8:16 PM
Reposted by Mark Joseph Stern
adamserwer.bsky.social
A reminder that if you are called to be part of a jury in a political prosecution you have a right to refuse to convict on the grounds the prosecution is unjust. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
Trump’s Politicized Prosecutions May Hit a Roadblock
When the president puts his political enemies on trial on pretextual grounds, jurors have the option of refusing to convict.
www.theatlantic.com
November 6, 2025 at 8:01 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
I love DC and DC juries so so so so much🥹

Sorry not sorry, we are the best
November 6, 2025 at 7:36 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
Really enjoyed these photos at the Brooklyn Museum of Claude and Alice Monet with many, many pigeons in Venice. (Also the art!)
Many pigeons with the couple Painting of Venice
November 6, 2025 at 6:57 PM
Reposted by Mark Joseph Stern
ryanjreilly.com
There is such a thing as a free lunch at the "sandwich guy" trial: www.nbcnews.com/politics/jus...
November 6, 2025 at 5:13 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
The justices are smart people. (Minus Kavanaugh.) They see that tariffs are a tax on the American people. And they may hate taxes more than they love Trump.

Full clip from @11thhourmsnbc.bsky.social: www.msnbc.com/11th-hour/wa...
November 6, 2025 at 5:45 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
My only contribution to this discourse is that Andrews grossly misrepresents the laws she accuses discriminating against men in the workplace. Her Great Feminization essay conjured a fantasy version of Title VII that has never existed and claimed it entrenches bias toward female workers into law.
November 6, 2025 at 5:21 PM
Reposted by Mark Joseph Stern
scottlgreer.bsky.social
It is, of course, primarily a network for preferential employment that allows people to circumvent merit-based hiring while often feeling strangely aggrieved about their fortunate lives
cristianfarias.com Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 4d
If you ever hear anyone say that FedSoc is simply a nonpartisan debating club that takes no position on hotly contested issues of legal or public policy, show them this:
lawrencehurley.bsky.social Lawrence Hurley @lawrencehurley.bsky.social · 4d
Victory coins for attendees at the Federalist Society convention citing major conservatives wins at the Supreme Court:
November 6, 2025 at 3:48 PM