A federal judge ruled Wednesday that David Boies' law firm can't represent an alleged victim of Jeffrey Epstein in her defamation suit against Alan Dershowitz, escalating a feud between two of the country's most prominent attorneys.* * *
Application (19A230) granted by the Court. The application for stay presented to JUSTICE KAGAN and by her referred to the Court is granted. The district court's July 24, 2019 order granting a preliminary injunction and September 9, 2019 order restoring the nationwide scope of the injunction are stayed in full pending disposition of the Government's appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and disposition of the Government's petition for a writ of certiorari, if such writ is sought. If a writ of certiorari is sought and the Court denies the petition, this order shall terminate automatically. If the Court grants the petition for a writ of certiorari, this order shall terminate when the Court enters its judgment. JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, with whom JUSTICE GINSBURG joins, dissenting from grant of stay.
Justice Stephen Breyer was concerned that, if the House of Delegates were not allowed to appeal in a case like this one, partisan divisions in government might lead to inertia in redistricting challenges. Here, for example, the Republican-controlled legislature drew the challenged map, but the state's Democratic attorney general decided not to appeal the district court's decision striking it down. If you have a Democratic legislature and a Republican governor, or vice versa, Breyer posited, "nobody's going to be able to attack it." "It's the House's plan," Breyer emphasized, and the governor won't attack it "because he likes it politically."
An emergency appeal is already pending in the Nevada Supreme Court."It's ironic that the maker of fentanyl, which is at the center of the nation's opioid crisis and is responsible for illegal overdoses every day is going to ... claim reputational injury from being associated with a lawful execution," Deputy Nevada state Solicitor General Jordan T. Smith protested.
When a federal district court in Texas issued a nationwide injunction in 2015 that halted the implementation of President Obama's amnesty program for illegal-alien parents of U.S. citizens, many on the political right cheered. Two years later, when a federal district court in Maryland issued a nationwide injunction that blocked President Trump's efforts to place restrictions on transgender people serving in the military, it was the left's turn to celebrate.
In recent years national injunctions have somehow become all the rage, even though it's not clear they are constitutional. Traditionally, an injunction requires the parties in a case--and only those individuals--to continue or cease particular actions. What makes national injunctions distinct and controversial is that they apply to people who are not parties in the case. And state attorneys general now regularly use them as political cudgels to thwart the implementation of federal policy not just in their respective states, but everywhere.
Sooner or later, I expect, either Congress or the Supreme Court will put the brakes on this practice. Hopefully sooner.
