Amicus: How SCOTUS Enabled The Explosion of Anti-Trans Laws

This episode is a part of Opinionpalooza. Slate’s coverage of
Supreme Court decisions. We consider this coverage so essential
that we’re taking down the paywall for all of it. If you would
like to help us continue to cover the courts aggressively, please
consider joining Slate Plus. And sign up for the pop-up newsletter
to see the latest every week in your inbox. On this week’s Amicus,
a sobering interview between Dahlia Lithwick and the ACLU's Chase
Strangio. Chase is deputy director for Transgender Justice with the
ACLU’s LGBT and HIV Project and a nationally recognized expert on
trans rights. . The sheer number and breadth of proposed new laws
targeting trans people is breathtaking, and they are coming from
some familiar quarters if you follow the Supreme Court and abortion
law. This conversation helps to set the stage for the end of the
Supreme Court’s term by looking beyond the cases being decided this
month at One, First Street, and toward the legal landscape, and the
systems and groups that are shaping that landscape for the rest of
us. In the second half of the show, Dahlia is joined by her
jurisprudential co-pilot Mark Stern. They talk about why everyone
on Twitter hates Mark (hint: people have strong feelings about
Justice Alito’s recusal ethics), the labor case that was not
as bad for unions as maybe could have been (but is still NOT
GREAT), and Mark floats his theory that Supreme Court Justices just
don’t want to go back to the office full time and that’s why we’re
getting a dribble of decisions now… And might get a firehose of
them later this month.   In this week’s Amicus Plus
segment, we return to Washington DC and our Full Court Press live
show at Sixth and I, where Mark and Dahlia were joined by
Congressman Hank Johnson of Georgia’s 4th District. Rep. Johnson is
the ranking member of the House Judiciary subcommittee that
oversees the federal courts, including the Supreme Court. They talk
court reform and modernizing the judiciary, and why term
limits and court expansion are vital to both.  Sign up for
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