Matthew Segal
@segalmr
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Civil Rights Lawyer | Personal Views | Not Legal Advice | segalmr . bsky . social
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Some news:
After 11+ years, today is my last day as Legal Director of the ACLU of Massachusetts. I will soon join the national ACLU as an attorney focusing on advocacy in state supreme courts.
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how embarrassing for Massachusetts residents that someone figured out how to prove we’re actually nice
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The law he signed doesn’t mention drag performances, likely because lawyers thought they could insulate the law from constitutional challenge by not admitting its true aim.
Then the Governor just… tweeted it out.
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In my legal practice it has not occurred to me to urge someone to become a fugitive but then again I don’t have “Esq” in my Twitter bio so what do I know
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If someone had told you on Jan 7, 2021, that this is where we'd be in July 2024, you'd have said it was a spectacular failure by the legal system.
And you'd have been right.
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A justice who thinks a policy can go from *constitutional* to *unconstitutional* in 25yrs believes in a living constitution, whether they admit it or not.
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“Where do you get your state supreme court news?”
“Oh, the usual: court web sites, noted scholars, and of course THUGGERDAILY”
UPDATE: Brian Steel has been granted Supersedeas Bond by the Supreme Court of Georgia.
He will not need to go to jail, while waiting for his Contempt order to be appealed.
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It took me a while to realize this, but sometimes when public officials go out of their way to complain about a certain type of advocacy, what they are revealing is that this is the type of advoacy that has the best chance of altering their conduct.
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This is excellent and important.
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Korematsu, except the Executive Branch tries to end internment and the Judicial Branch says no you have to do it.
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wonder how the NFL would react if it turned out a billionaire fan of a specific football team had been flying an official around to vacation with other fans of that team
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Absurd to say it's a decision between "a woman, her doctor, and local political leaders" because that leaves out all the prosecutors and bounty-hunter plaintiffs who also get to weigh in.
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JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: qualified immunity does not protect an officer who inflicts deadly force on a person who is only a threat to himself.
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The second Trump era will go extremely badly if people are led to believe, in advance, that certain kinds of homicides will result in pardons.
BREAKING: The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles has recommended a full pardon to Daniel Perry, convicted in the death of protester Garrett Foster, which Gov. Greg Abbott has previously said he will sign.
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There's a saying in appellate practice that if someone claims to have, like, 7 appellate issues then they actually have none.
Well, I think we found the guy who actually might have 7 issues.
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Law School Exam Issue-Spotter:
A defendant who is subject to a gag order invites surrogates, who may in the future seek jobs from him, to stand outside the courthouse and promote jury nullification. Who if anyone has liability, and for what?
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just amazing that the man tried to overturn a presidential election and so far his harshest punishment is a temporary loss of a social media account
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“We literally fought a civil war for this.”
“But did you pass a ✨statute✨”
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A federal right that exists at the discretion of the states is not, in fact, a federal right.
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My take on the lawyer outfit debate is that the legal system would do well to devote less attention to commanding respect through its outfits and more attention to earning respect through its outcomes.
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Not great that it takes 60 Senators to create voting rights but only 5 Justices to nullify them.
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To put it mildly: the court's apparent disdain for what drag shows express undermines the court's claim that drag shows don't express anything.
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk refuses to grant relief to Texas college students who may be punished for hosting a drag show.
His condemns drag as “vulgar and lewd” “sexualized conduct” that harms children and is likely unprotected by the First Amendment.
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LAWYER: Have you posted anything on social media that could affect the judge's decision on pretrial detention?
CLIENT: I have an account but it's no big deal.
THE ACCOUNT:
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IDAHO: if a doctor says an abortion is warranted to protect a woman's life **but a prosecutor disagrees** then Idaho law gives the prosecutor discretion to prosecute the doctor.
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Sorry to be a stickler, but if law enforcement officers endorse and stand by a politician who calls certain people “animals,” I think that may be evidence of unconstitutional animus in cases involving those officers.
Trump: Democrats said please don’t call immigrants animals. I said, no, they’re not humans, they’re animals.
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My field is law not music, but if im understanding things correctly one side filed its brief and then Kendrick Lamar immediately e-filed his reply brief?!?!
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When the Fifth Circuit halted OSHA's vaccine-or-test rule, many people noted its remarkable claims about the facts and law.
It looks like the Sixth Circuit... had a similar reaction.
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Seems like a great place to store classified docs
8/10. Secret Service said it’s not in charge of access at Mar-a-Lago, “a private club” whose private security is in charge of club of “who may have been allowed access to their facilities”
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can't wrap my mind around the view that routinely prosecuting nonviolent crimes by poor folks doesn't risk our system's legitimacy but prosecuting a coup would
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If a Yankees flag had been flown outside an umpire's home, even briefly, I would expect that umpire not to work Yankees games.
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Between the YLS clerk boycott and mocking journalists at FedSoc we are seeing federal judges loudly announce that they are on a specific political team and I think we can take them at their word.
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To be clear: this opinion means that when *the courts* misinterpret a statute and cause someone to be wrongly convicted or sentenced, that person is out of luck when the courts later realize their mistake.
UGH final op is Jones . Thomas writes (6-3) that even if an intervening federal case shows *you were convicted of something that isn't a crime* OR *were sentenced to more time than the law allows* you CANNOT file a federal habeas petition.
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Officials openly calling for the starvation of detained babies due to their national origin is perhaps a sign that enforcement of anti-discrimination guarantees has gotten a bit lax.
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Weird how there are there are no federal judicial doctrines that inexplicably let civil rights plaintiffs win cases they should lose. Only the opposite.
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SPRINGFIELD, MASS. POLICE OFFICER: Handcuffing and detaining potential witnesses is our protocol.
MASS. APPEALS COURT: Your protocol "constitutes flagrant police misconduct."
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Westlaw calls for "total and complete shutdown" of caselaw until our country's legal system can figure out what is going on.
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POLICE: We've caught you trying to rob this bank.
ROBBER: No, you misunderstand. I'm trying to seat an alternate slate of bank account holders.
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It’s not just the press releases.
It’s the police reports.
It’s the legal briefs that rely on those reports.
It’s the court rulings that rely on those briefs.
It’s the legal system that is built on those rulings.
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Judge Cannon has issued this order dismissing Trump's Mar-a-Lago case.
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Targeting nominees who represented criminal defendants relies, implicitly, on the idea that the federal judiciary should not be neutral but should instead be part of the prosecution team.
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Supporting the 1st Amendment by doing a holiday card where my kids are holding signs showing their favorite swear words
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Next time the Court will post the draft to Google docs and you’ll get to make edits but only in Suggesting mode
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@nateraymond
@WSJ
Just a quick follow-up, Your Honor:
If Congress were to pass a law that in your view impermissibly regulated the Court, what provision of the Constitution would you cite as giving you the authority to strike it down?
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Unfair to call this a conspiracy because if you’re even slightly familiar with our legal system you know a typical conspiracy allegation involves far less evidence
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The constitution used to have a clause that might have prohibited the government — here, a judge — from ordering someone to be trained by a religious organization, but I guess they got rid of that clause??
NEWS: Federal judge in Texas orders airline lawyers to take "religious-liberty training" from the extremist advocacy organization, Alliance Defending Freedom, in issuing sanctions in an employment case on Monday.
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Having a court treat someone who tried to steal the presidency as though he retained some of its powers is not a healthy thing for our democracy. Not at all.
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Good thing the Supreme Court assured us that misogyny *never* plays a role in banning abortion. Otherwise I might be worried.
Gaetz: "Why is it that the women with the least likelihood of getting pregnant are the ones most worried about having abortions? Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb."
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It has also been my experience that I am very smart when arguing to judges who agree with me.
NEW: The story of Scalia clerk who quietly became legal mastermind behind Texas abortion law. Our reporting found he explicitly wrote the law so it could survive regardless of what court did. His efforts to flummox court date to ‘13 when he 1st tried this.
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Congratulations to the United States of America on the nomination of Dale Ho to be one of its federal judges.
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a law school rankings system that takes into account the % of a school's alumni who have supported overturning democratic elections
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ICYMI: Nevada Supreme Court held that the Nevada Constitution's search-and-seizure guarantee can be enforced through suits for $ damages with NO QUALIFIED IMMUNITY DEFENSE.
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Maybe BigLaw attorneys tend to strongly oppose the decisions of this Supreme Court because — and I’m just spitballing — most people who are good at legal analysis feel that way.
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Look it’s certainly your right to criticize the Court but it undermines our very democracy if you do so by protesting at the courthouse steps or at a residence or by calling for court reform or by analyzing justices like politicians or by writing a mean magazine article or—
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So, to recap, the federal judiciary imposed nationwide restrictions on abortion access less than 1 year after the federal judiciary said it was returning the issue to the states.
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Hard to understand how courts could say that spending money is speech but not spending it isn’t.
Breaking news: The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today that boycotts are not protected by the First Amendment.
@ACLU
has confirmed it'll take the case to the Supreme Court, with huge implications for free speech in America.🧵
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just spitballing here but maybe there are downsides to teaching elite lawyers that they should not stand on principle if it might hurt them professionally???
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An interesting exercise is to read the OSHA opinion and, in your mind, replace "COVID-19" with "fire" or "head injury."
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In case anyone was confused, this is what an attack on the legitimacy of the federal courts actually looks like.
Gov. Ivey has signed the new congressional map and released the following statement:
#alpolitics
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Is there clearly established case law saying the police cannot sneak up behind you and inject you with a COVID-19 vaccine, because if not I have an idea for building more support for qualified immunity reform.
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When future generations ask where all the federal rights went, we will simply explain to them that these weren’t decisions on the merits
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NEW: Dept of Homeland Security says "comprehensive search" turned up no records responsive to FOIA request for Trump's alleged declassification order.
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The alleged involvement of lawyers in these events is extremely disturbing and law schools should consider addressing it when they teach professional responsibility.
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Civil rights advocates acting as private attorneys general represent *injured* parties against people who *violated* their rights.
They don't bring suits by *uninjured* parties to punish others for *exercising* rights. That's what SB8 allows.
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This is a pretty clear concession that the T42 policy was intended to control immigration, not COVID.
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I’m going to feel pretty bad for wasting time on things like “jurisdiction” and “causes of action” if it turns out you can just waltz into federal court with a Motion to Make My Client Happier.
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This opinion is chock-full of little warning signs.
Like, sure, you can get standing in fed court by arguing that something that hasn't happened one (1) time in 23 years still... might happen some day.
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@JanNWolfe
This would never happen, but it's interesting to think about how this suit would unfold if one of the defendants chose not to file a motion to dismiss but instead to answer and proceed to discovery.
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@ACLU_Mass
@WilmerHale
PSA: if you're thinking about doing crimes to migrants, please know that your actions could give them a path to a U visa and, ultimately, a green card.
Something to think about!
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Personally I do not think a professional sports league would say this is fine so long as the official discloses it.
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Technically it's not overturning unless it's from the Overturning region of the Federal Reporter or the U.S. Reports.
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The DOJ will 100% do this if Trump regains the presidency.
Heads up: This is the strategy. They don't need to win Congress. They just need to win the presidency and then the new DOJ can prioritize the enforcement of the Comstock Act (a law that was enacted in 1873 and has been unenforced, tho still on the books, for much of our lives).
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Does that mean customers can change their banking terms by just mailing new terms to the bank?
(I'm guessing not.)
NC Supreme Court rules that a bank can change its terms of service to require arbitration, just by mailing the new terms to customers. Riggs & Earls dissent.
#ncpol
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we asked a Ouija Board what this document means and it said you’re not really a person
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Justice Thomas’s position seems to be that it’s unfair to say that SCOTUS is political because it’s not SCOTUS’s fault that one political party is always right.
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On the bright side it’s been an amazing run for people who regularly get accused of being unduly alarmed.
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A court saying the "original public meaning" of a constitutional right to privacy does NOT include abortion, even though it was enacted in 1980, after Roe said privacy rights include abortion, is among the most devastating takedowns of originalism I have ever seen.
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.
@ACLU_Mass
, with support from
@WilmerHale
, is assisting 9 people flown to Martha's Vineyard who are seeking U visas.
Statement👇
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NEW: ICE admits Trump-era practice of instructing officials to wipe their govt cell phones, per docs filed in
@weareoversight
/
@ACLU_Mass
FOIA litigation.
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The Court's rationale for gutting Bivens—deference to Congress—would be easier to accept if the Court had deferred to Congress in construing §1983, instead of, for example, adding a qualified immunity defense that appears nowhere in the statutory text.
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Imagine a court saying "the plaintiff's rights were not violated but they win anyway under the doctrine of A Thing The Federal Judiciary Invented."
It wouldn't be tolerated.
Yet, from SB8 to Qualified Immunity to so many other things, we are expected to tolerate the reverse.
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@hannnahmmarie
I think part of it is that some people with law degrees are very bad at analyzing and judging the key facts in a legal case, especially concerning people. Sotomayor is extremely good at this. It’s important to some people that this skill, which they lack, be devalued.
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Texas Court of Criminal Appeals: Admitting rap music or videos in criminal trials is highly prejudicial, especially bc "by no means is rap the exclusive genre for glorification of criminal activity."
Some examples from the Court:
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Today the Supreme Court will hear two cases about whether higher ed can consider race in admissions, and if you’re wondering how the Court will rule then congrats on what must have been a very peaceful years-long slumber.
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Our democracy will be safer when the professional consequences for endangering it outweigh the professional consequences for describing the danger.
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One lesson here, particularly for law students and newer lawyers, is that while it may be frustrating to practice in courts where you and your clients will experience unfairness, it can also be exceptionally good training.
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"this one weird trick allows you to have unconstitutional laws"
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I made this argument in a federal appellate court more than a decade ago, when I was an assistant federal defender, and a judge on the panel asked me if I was serious.
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you're not going to believe this but the Fifth Circuit just enjoined the New York earthquake
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impossible to say what happened here until a special master decides which items actually belong to the dogs
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When a SCOTUS justice has to explain (in a dissent from the denial of certiorari!) that a doctrine doesn't let officers kill people in order to "save" them from themselves, maybe that's a sign that the doctrine should be re-considered?
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More fundamentally, there is no "progressive playbook" of suing people for exercising rights and then contriving to prevent courts from deciding whether that's lawful.
Not yesterday. Not today. Not ever.
Not even with the door to this mischief thrown open by the Supreme Court.
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So.
My colleague FOIA'd Trump's alleged "standing order" declassifying docs he took to Mar-a-Lago. Today the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency responded.
And guess what?
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Everyone who cares about the health of the federal judiciary should read today's Fifth Circuit opinion staying the OSHA vaccine mandate.
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This is, all too often, how the duty to disclose exculpatory evidence gets trampled:
*If you don’t know what evidence has been withheld, it’s hard to prove a violation.
*If you do know, the prosecutor will say it was no big deal bc you found it.
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