This Week in Liberal Judicial Activism—Week of November 24

2004—A New Hampshire law, enacted in 2003, generally requires that abortionists provide 48 hours’ advance notice to parents of minor daughters who have arranged to undergo abortion.  The law provides for various exceptions to the notice requirement but does not set forth an express exception for hypothetical instances in which compliance with the notice period would threaten severe damage to the minor’s health.  In Planned Parenthood v. Heed, a First Circuit panel invalidates the law in its entirety because it lacks a health exception.

On review, the Supreme Court rules unanimously (in Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood) that the First Circuit erred in failing to consider whether narrower relief, such as enjoining enforcement of the law only in instances that presented a severe health risk, was appropriate.

2008—Happy Thanksgiving!  Be grateful that the secular activists in the judiciary weren’t dominant when George Washington was president, or we’d never have this great, and deeply religious, American feast.  In the words of Washington:

“Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me to ‘recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness’:

“Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.

“And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.”

1975—President Gerald Ford nominates Seventh Circuit judge John Paul Stevens to fill the Supreme Court seat vacated by retired Justice William O. Douglas.  Not long before his death at the end of 2006, Ford rashly states that he is “prepared to allow history’s judgment” of his presidency to rest exclusively on his appointment of Stevens—and that he specifically agrees with Stevens’s extreme positions on the Establishment Clause.  But Ford’s actions belie his words, for (as this essay explains) his own funeral ceremony at National Cathedral that he so carefully planned could never have taken place as it did—and probably could not have occurred at all—if Stevens’s radical secularist misreading of the Establishment Clause were governing law.  

2004—Objecting to government policy on homosexuals in the military, many law schools restricted the access of military recruiters to their students.  In response, Congress enacted the Solomon Amendment, which provides that in order for a law school and its university to receive federal funding, the law school must offer military recruiters the same access to its campus and students that it provides to the nonmilitary recruiter receiving the most favorable access. 

In FAIR v. Rumsfeld, a divided panel of the Third Circuit rules that the Solomon Amendment violates First Amendment speech guarantees by “requir[ing] law schools to express a message that is incompatible with their educational objectives.”  According to the majority opinion of Judge Thomas Ambro, the message that law schools are supposedly being required to express is that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is permissible, and the means by which law schools are supposedly being required to express that message is by giving military recruiters the same access to students they give other recruiters.

On review, the Supreme Court unanimously reverses, in an opinion by Chief Justice Roberts.  Roberts makes short work of the Third Circuit’s reasoning.  The Solomon Amendment, he explains, “neither limits what law schools may say nor requires them to say anything.”  Rather, it “regulates conduct, not speech,” as it “affects what law schools must do—afford equal access to military recruiters—not what they may or may not say.”  Because Congress could directly require that law schools provide access to military recruiters, it can impose the same requirement as a condition of government funding.

1979—President Carter nominates This Week Hall of Famer Stephen Reinhardt to a seat on the Ninth Circuit.

1987—In the aftermath of the Senate’s defeat of the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Robert H. Bork and of Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg’s decision not to proceed with his intended nomination, President Reagan nominates Ninth Circuit judge Anthony M. Kennedy to fill the seat vacated by retired Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr.

1989—By a vote of 4 to 3, the Florida supreme court concocts a categorical rule that police violate the Fourth Amendment when they conduct drug searches by boarding intercity buses and questioning passengers.  In her melodramatic majority opinion (in Bostick v. State), Justice Rosemary Barkett posits that the “intrusion upon privacy rights caused by the [practice] is too great for democracy to sustain,” and she equates the police conduct with methods employed by Nazi Germany. 

On review, the Supreme Court (in Florida v. Bostick) rejects Barkett’s rule by a 6 to 3 vote (with Marshall, Stevens, and Blackmun in dissent).  Justice O’Connor’s majority opinion determines that the same totality-of-the-circumstances inquiry that governs whether “encounters that take place on a city street or an airport lobby” constitute a seizure “applies equally to encounters on a bus.”

On remand, Barkett again concludes that an unlawful seizure occurred.  This time, though, she is in dissent.