Legal Trouble

Know Your Enemy

After several trying months, Matt and Sam can finally discuss the lawsuit against KYE and Dissent magazine filed by Young Americans Foundation , the successor organization to Young Americans for Freedom. (We prevailed, for now anyway.)

Then we turn to three SCOTUS rulings from the end of the session: (1) Biden vs Nebraska (the student debt ruling); (2) Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (the affirmative action ruling); and (3) 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis (the gay wedding website design ruling). Each of these rulings represents a victory for the conservative legal movement, an exercise of raw power by the court, and a blow to dignity and decent policy for millions of Americans. Taken together, they help us understand the workings of the conservative intellectual pipeline — at law schools, fellowships, and well-endowed non-profits — to change federal policy.

How do conservative institutions work together to (in the eyes of the law) turn victims into oppressors and vice versa? Listen to find out.

Sources:

Jennifer Schuessler, "Conservative Group Withdraws Lawsuit Against Left-Wing Podcast," New York Times, July 12, 2023

John A. Andrew III, The Other Side of the Sixties: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of Conservative Politics (1997)

Sarah Posner, "The Legal Muscle Leading the Fight to End the Separation of Church and State," Washington Spectator, April 1, 2007

Emma Brown and Jon Swaine, "Amy Coney Barrett, Supreme Court Nominee, Spoke at Program Founded to Inspire a 'Distinctly Christian Worldview in Every Area of Law,'" Washington Post, September 27, 2020

Melissa Gira Grant, "The Mysterious Case of the Fake Gay Marriage Website, the Real Straight Man, and the Supreme Court," New Republic, June 29, 2023

Thomas Sowell, "The Day Cornell Died," Weekly Standard, October 30, 1999

Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism (2020)

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