Check out the big brain on Brett.

In an early decision involving abortion, newly confirmed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh sided with liberals in declining to hear a case that could have allowed states to defund Planned Parenthood in state Medicaid programs.

…Lower court rulings prevented Louisiana and Kansas from blocking abortion provider Planned Parenthood from participating in Medicaid. The Supreme Court has now decided to pass on the cases.

Supreme Court watchers are hanging on every sign from Kavanaugh and Roberts as to how they may rule on abortion given the new makeup of the bench. While it's difficult to assess what implications this particular decision says about their thinking on the issue, the decision not to hear these cases is at least noteworthy, as it suggests a certain level of caution on taking on contentious cases involving abortion in any way.

Update: One Supreme Court watcher writes: "As I recall the history of this case, the first vote for cert [i.e. certiorari — granting a hearing] would have taken place before Kavanaugh's appointment — and Roberts would have had to refuse to vote for cert then as it only takes four votes to accept the case. I assume Kavanaugh did not want to be the late-arriving fourth vote for cert, and that's a reasonable call for a brand-new justice to make.

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Shortly before Ford's allegations, prominent Yale Law professor Amy Chua endorsed Kavanaugh's nomination, writing in The Wall Street Journal how delighted she'd been that her own daughter, Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld, had recently accepted an appellate court clerkship from Kavanaugh. (One had the slight feeling that Chua was explaining how lucky Kavanaugh was to have been allowed to hire her daughter.)

After Kavanaugh became mired in allegations about his sexual behavior and underage drinking, Chua went to bat for him again, while also being forced to deny allegations that that she had advised female students at Yale to cultivate a certain "look" if they wanted to clerk for Kavanaugh. Could Chua simply be trying to keep in with a powerful friend, legal blogs asked at the time, so that her daughter might one day have a shot at a Supreme Court clerkship with him?

On Twitter, Chua-Rubenfeld denied any such possibility -- her obligations to the US Army, she asserted in July 2018, meant that she "won't be applying to SCOTUS anytime soon." How unjust we were to hint at such an improper motive.

It's now June 2019. And it's just been announced that Chua-Rubenfeld will be clerking for Kavanaugh, commencing October 2019.

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phrodeau said:

https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/06/14/opinions/brett-kavanaugh-amy-chua-nepotism-maltby/index.html


Anyone surprised by this?

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