SCOTUS Blocks Rastafarian's Suit Against Prison Guards | Bloomberg Law
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This is [music] Bloomberg Law with June
Graasso from Bloomberg Radio.
>> It is undisputed that my client has
alleged an assault that is just brazenly
illegal. Uh he was at respondents mercy
in federally funded custody when he
handed them a copy of controlling
precedent holding the RLupa protected
his right to keep his hair long. They
threw it away, handcuffed him to a chair
and shaved him bald. Damon Landor is a
devout Rastafarian who hadn't cut his
hair in two decades following his faith
in which dreadlocks are a sacred symbol.
So when he was transferred to a
Louisiana prison with just weeks left on
his 5mon sentence, Landor handed prison
guards a copy of an appeals court
decision holding that cutting religious
prisoners dreadlocks violated federal
law. But a guard threw the ruling into
the trash. And despite Landor's pleas,
he was handcuffed to a chair and held
down as his kneelength dreadlocks were
cut and his head was shaved. During oral
arguments, the Supreme Court justices
condemned Landor's treatment and the
blatant disregard of his religious
rights. Here's conservative justice Amy
Coney Barrett.
>> Look, the facts of this case are
egregious. So, if on the facts we were
looking for a case in which there should
be money damages, this is it. But it
turns out this case wasn't it. Today in
a six-to3 decision, the court's
conservative majority ruled that Landor
cannot sue the prison officials who cut
off his dreadlocks, finding that the
religious land use and institutionalized
persons act, better known as Raulupa,
can't be used to hold those who violate
inmates religious rights financially
responsible. The opinion was written by
Justice Neil Gorsuch, who telegraphed
that conclusion during the arguments.
>> The circuits are unanimously against you
and have been for many, many, many
years. So saying that something awful is
going to happen, it's all whatever's
happened has happened, right?
>> But the liberal justices disagreed. and
in a descent by Justice Katanji Brown
Jackson expressed concerns that now
state prison officials will have little
incentive to follow the law regarding
the religious rights of inmates. My
guest is Richard Garnett, a professor at
Notre Dame Law School and director of
the school's program on church, state,
and society. Rick, what's your reaction
to this decision and the implications of
this decision? The result in this case
and the Landor case is not surprising
given the way the oral arguments went.
It was clear that the justices or at
least a majority of them were very
focused on the federalism issues in this
case. And that's what makes this case
kind of tricky. It has a religious
freedom dimension for sure because the
facts involve a really shocking
violation of a prisoner's religious
freedom rights. But there's also this
kind of technical constitutional law
question about the power of Congress to
authorize certain kinds of lawsuits. And
so, you know, some of the reactions to
the case, I think, are misguided
[clears throat]
in the sense that I I've seen some
reports that, oh, this is just the court
not caring about a minority religion. I
think that's not the right way to think
about it. Um, you know, a group of the
justices, the six and the majority here,
have a pretty consistent vision of
federalism, and they believe that there
are limits on the federal government's
power to authorize certain kinds of
relief against state officials. Now, I
should confess, I filed a brief on the
side of the prisoner in this case. In my
view, the right answer was that this
action was authorized. But the reason
the court ruled against him in my view
was not because it was unbothered by the
egregiousness of this violation, but
because they just didn't think the
federal government had the power to
authorize the suit. So what this means,
in my opinion, among other things, is
that state governments need to really
step up and make sure they provide
meaningful relief for prisoners whose
religious liberty rights are violated by
officials as Mr. Landor's clearly were.
Raulupa was designed to protect the
religious rights of inmates. So why
doesn't it work for this inmate whose
religious rights were I mean everyone
agrees clearly and blatantly violated?
>> Yeah, this is and I apologize for
getting into the weeds a little bit, but
Raulupa is a special kind of statute.
It's authorized by what we call the
spending power, which means that it's
not so much a direct regulation as it is
a deal. The Congress says to the states,
"If you want this money, then you have
to agree to comply with this
understanding of religious liberty
rights." The wrinkle in this case is
that Mr. Landor wasn't suing the state.
He wasn't suing the state prison. He was
suing the the prison employee in that
employees personal capacity. So, you
know, you're not suing the prison.
You're suing, you know, Officer Jones.
And the thing is, Officer Jones never
took any federal money. So, he didn't
make this deal with the federal
government. So, according to the court,
since officer Jones, that's not his
name, I'm making that up, didn't make
the deal with the federal government,
that means that the federal statute
doesn't authorize a lawsuit against
Jones. And it's all based on these kind
of, you know, firstear law school
constitutional law debates about the
regulatory powers of Congress and how
much power Congress has to attach
strings to the money it spends. And
there's a long tradition of the court
saying, you know, there are limits on
the strings you can attach to money. So
again, nothing in today's opinion denies
that the officers behave badly and that
Mr. Landor's religious freedom was
violated. It's that the particular
relief that Landor was seeking, that's
a, you know, money damages lawsuit
against an individual wasn't authorized
by the statute or couldn't be authorized
by the statute. So the majority said
that state employees didn't consent to
face lawsuits in their personal
capacities when Congress passed Raula.
As a practical matter, when would an
employee willingly consent to be sued?
And Justice Katanji Brown Jackson in
descent said today's decision magically
transforms a federal statute into an
invitation to be accepted or declined
deemed binding only if each particular
defendant has explicitly agreed to be
penalized. I mean to the average person
the dcent makes sense.
>> Well and again I was on that side in the
end. I do think she oversimplifies the
federalism issue. There's plenty of
precedent to the effect that these
regulatory spending arrangements do
function kind of like a contract. That
said, in my view, the better ruling
would have been to say that when the
state entered into this effectively
contract with the federal government and
took on the burdens to respect the
religious liberty of inmates that
because these folks are the employees of
the state, those folks kind of take
employment subject to the requirements
that are laid on their employers. And
that includes what the statute calls
appropriate relief, which if you really
want to get in the weeds, that's kind of
what this case really came down to is
what counts as appropriate relief. So, a
concern that Justice Jackson raised and
that I share, even though I think she
oversimplifies a bit, is that, you know,
the incentives on state prison employees
to respect religious inmates rights,
those incentives are going to be muted a
bit if they're not subject to damages
for, you know, egregious violations. I
mean, this wasn't kind of a judgment
call, reasonable minds can disagree kind
of thing. It's very clear on the facts
of this case that Mr. Landor's rights
were again outrageously violated. And so
there's a concern and this is one of the
concerns that Justice Jackson raised and
that I share is that the effectiveness
of the statute which I mean as you said
earlier June the point of the whole
statute was to protect prisoners
religious freedom rights is going to be
weakened or undermined if that kind of
what do you want to call it stick is uh
is pulled away.
>> Could Landor have sued the state and the
state prison system?
>> Yeah. So this is about a particular
cause of action and you know there are
almost certainly other ones that in
theory could have been available to him
and you know again my my hope is that
some states will respond by making sure
that they create additional causes of
action for prisoners like this. But you
know there's a tendency and we all we're
all familiar with it that it's easy to
kind of lose sight of prisoners and
their rights. You know out of sight out
of mind we tend to other our prisoners.
But it isn't it isn't the case that this
decision means that Landor would never
have any relief for this kind of
violation. The decision is limited to
relief under this particular statute.
>> The court in 2020 allowed Muslim men to
sue over their inclusion on the FBI's
nofly list under a sister statute, the
Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Explain why the same reasoning didn't
apply here.
>> Yeah, this is an important distinction
or at least it was to the court. So, the
Religious Freedom Restoration Act is not
a spending power statute. It's a statute
that rests on Congress's power to
enforce the 14th amendment and it's a
statute that only applies to the federal
government. Raulupa is on the one hand
much broader. It applies to not only the
federal government but the states. On
the other hand, it's also narrower
because the basis for it, the
justification for the Raulupa statute is
this spending power and the lines of
doctrine about Congress's power under
the 14th amendment are just different
from the lines of precedent about
Congress's power under the spending
clause. And again, I know this is really
the kind of thing that makes normal
people's eyes glaze over. So, I
apologize to anybody who's listening to
it, but but for legal purposes, it
really does make a difference which
power a Congress is using. And with
Raulupa, because it was only applying to
the federal government, these federalism
concerns are not in play. Congress is
perfectly within its rights to subject
the federal government to various
standards of liability and to create
causes of action against the federal
government. But because we have a
federalist system, it's more complicated
when Congress imposes standards on the
states and that's what explains the
difference.
>> Can you explain why this would be a, you
know, there was an ideological split,
why it would be a conservative liberal
split on this? Again, this is
generalizing with these labels and so
on, but it tends to be the case that the
conservatives are more interested in
federalism, and it tends to be the case
that the liberals are more friendly to
Congress's power to create causes of
action. What divided the court was not
the importance of religious freedom. I
mean, you know, a couple years ago, we
had a case involving a Muslim prisoner
who wanted to grow a beard, and it was 9
to zero. uh everybody agreed on the
importance of that under Raulupa, but
there was no question about federalism
in that case because the cause of action
wasn't against uh the person in his
individual capacity. It was against the
prison system. So the justices, you
know, whether they're appointed by
Democrats or Republicans, they all agree
that the religious freedom rights of
prisoners are important, but divided
them here were these, you know, issues
that divide them in lots of cases.
again, debates about federal power and
debates about the ability to create
causes of action.
>> We've talked before that, you know,
there's been a string of victories for
religious liberty. Is this the first in
a long time where there was a defeat,
you might say, for religious interests?
>> I'm thinking out loud here, it is the
first in a while. So certainly religious
freedom claimants have done well with
this court. Now, I suppose some might
say, for example, that when a claimant
filed a lawsuit against the War Memorial
Cross in the American Legion case that
they were seeking to vindicate their
religious freedom and they lost. But I
think it's certainly true that this
court has been friendly to religious
freedom claims. But, you know, I can't
think of any of those claims that
involved the same federalism concerns
that this one did. Probably the last
case I can think of where the religious
freedom claimants lost was Trump versus
Hawaii, which was a challenge to the
so-called Muslim ban that the Trump
administration had put into place early
in its first administration, I think.
>> Thanks so much for your insights today,
Rick. That's Professor Richard Garnett
of Notre Dame Law School. Coming up next
in another 6 to3 decision, the court
sides with the Trump administration on
green card holders. This is Bloomberg.
The Supreme Court sided with the Trump
administration today in an immigration
case dealing with the government's power
over green card holders returning to the
country. The 6 to3 decision down
ideological lines centered on an
immigration officer's decision to put a
green card holder on immigration parole
when he returned from a short trip to
China because he'd been accused of a
thirdderee trademark counterfeiting
crime. The conservative majority in an
opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas
reversed the second circuit court of
appeals and said that the immigration
and nationality act doesn't require
border officers to establish by clear
and convincing evidence that the green
card holder had committed a crime
involving moral turpitude. While the
dissenting liberal justices in an
opinion written by Justice Katanji Brown
Jackson said that the decision
effectively sentences the green card
holder to immigration limbo before he'd
been convicted of any crime. Joining me
is Leon Fresco, a partner at Holland
Knight and the former head of the office
of immigration litigation in the Obama
administration. Leon, will you start
with the basics about green card holders
and what happens when they re-enter the
country?
>> Sure. So, here is what happens when a
person obtains a green card or what is
also known as lawful permanent residence
in the United States. The common
conception is that that person can just
stay permanently in the United States
and if they want to become a citizen,
they can become a citizen. But if they
don't want to become a citizen for
whatever reason, maybe if they're from a
country that they'll lose their
citizenship from there, so they don't do
it, then that's fine, too. But that's
actually not true. There are ways you
can lose your green card. And one of the
ways you can lose your green card is if
you commit a criminal offense that is a
deportable offense. So what happens is a
lot of times people don't realize these
sort of interplays between the green
card law and the immigration law until
they travel outside of the United
States. And so here's what happens when
you travel outside the United States.
When you travel outside of the United
States and you try to reenter, you show
your green card to the Customs and
Border Protection official who is at the
airport. And 99 out of 100 times that's
not a big deal. They swipe your green
card and they let you in the country.
But what the law says is that if you in
the intervening time that you traveled
or we didn't realize it before and now
we're just realizing it for the first
time that you committed some sort of
criminal offense, then it's not a taken
forranted thing that you just reenter
the United States with your green card.
What they basically say in the statute
is you start from scratch again having
to prove that you are entitled to be
admitted in the United States. And so
the question in this Supreme Court case
is what happens in a world where the
person was accused of the crime and in
this case it was a crime of trademark
counterfeiting. because a Chinese
citizen who was charged with trademark
counterfeiting. So what happens when
it's a person who's charged with a crime
but not convicted of a crime? And so if
this person had never left the United
States, they could never be placed into
deportation proceedings unless and until
they actually were convicted of the
crime. the charging wouldn't change
anything because if they were innocent
then that would not lead to any
deportation. But this issue did not
arise with the person just staying in
the United States. This arose where a
person becomes a lawful permanent
resident in 2007. They get charged for
the crime in May of 2012. they leave the
United States and then try to re-enter
the United States while the charge was
pending. And so at that point, the
Customs and Border Protection says,
"Look, in this situation, you don't get
the presumption that you are a lawful
permanent resident who just gets to
reenter the United States. We treat you
like everybody else who if you are
charged with a crime don't get to just
enter scot-free. So what we're going to
do is yes, we'll let you enter because
you do have this green card, but we're
not going to let you enter as a lawful
permanent resident. We're going to enter
you in as a parole e. And that way when
we try to deport you, if you try to use
your lawful permanent residency as a
defense to deportation,
you will have the burden of proof to
show that you're not deportable as
opposed to the government having the
burden of proof to show that you are
deportable. And so that's what happened
here.
This was an appeal from a second circuit
decision, but there's a split in the
circuits on this issue. Probably one of
the reasons why the court took this
case. So, there was a circuit split
between the second circuit who had ruled
in favor of the foreign national and
previous decisions from the fifth and
the ninth circuit that said, "Hey, wait
a second. In these cases, why doesn't
the border patrol that's at the airport,
why don't they have to do exactly the
same thing an immigration judge would
have to do if this person had never left
the United States, which is essentially
wait to see if they're convicted of the
crime before they strip someone of their
lawful permanent residency. So that's
what the second circuit said. The
government appealed that decision
because they didn't want to shortcut the
ability of the border patrol to find
people with criminal issues at the
airport and place them in removal
proceedings. They view that as an
important safeguard for America that you
know it's we don't think about people
until they try to reenter. That's a good
sort of like reminder. Hey, this person
exists. Let's check their background.
And so they like that that reminder
exists in the system. And so they ask
for a Supreme Court review. And when the
government asks for a Supreme Court
review, they usually get it. And in this
case, it turns out the Supreme Court
held today 6 to3 that yes, Customs and
Border Protection at the airport does
not have to actually put you through
sort of a little mini hearing or wait
until you're actually convicted of a
crime. They are more than capable or
legally able to now after this decision
take someone who's been charged of a
crime but not convicted of a crime and
conditionally allow them in the country
with what's called a parole which is
just basically a legal fiction that even
though your body's in the US your legal
body is still waiting to see what will
happen after a hearing and so they said
they can do that and then at the time of
the immigration court hearing. Now, the
burden will be on the foreign national
to prove that they shouldn't be deported
as opposed to the burden being on the
government.
>> The six conservatives didn't say there
had to be any standard. The second
circuit had said clear and convincing
evidence of the crime at the border, but
there's no standard at all to it could
be the intuition of the officer. The
court actually did leave open the
separate question of what appropriate
evidentiary standard, if any, applies at
the border. So, you're correct. At the
moment, it's totally up to the
discretion of the Customs and Border
Protection whether to say I think
there's something wrong with your
immigration status that I'm not going to
just accept your green card as evidence
that you should be lawfully permanently
admitted to the United States. instead
I'm going to just parole you in and let
an immigration court figure that out.
Every time the Supreme Court does
something like this, it always leads to
a subsequent case that needs to clarify
this. I understand an incrementalist
approach generally. But whenever
something like this happens, it's
inevitable where two or three more years
of just chaos occurs because the Supreme
Court didn't want to give an evidentiary
standard in the first place here. And
the Supreme Court ultimately doesn't do
that in this case because in between the
time of this fact pattern and now the
person does actually get convicted of
this counterfeiting offense. And so the
court figures, okay, if this person is
convicted of the counterfeiting offense,
then it's not really important that we
go down this road because it's not going
to make a difference in this case. this
person. Now, the only decision left is
whether this counterfeiting offense is
what's called a crime involving moral
turpitude or it isn't. And that comes
down to the concept of whether it's
really considered a moral offense like a
murder or a rape or a burglary or
something or is it considered a pure
regulatory offense? And if it's a pure
regulatory offense, then this person
won't be deported. But that's the point
is the court basically leaves this more
important issue of for another day of
what the border patrol whether they have
any standards at all before they can
decide to reject your green card and
conditionally let you in the country as
opposed to lawfully permanently letting
you in the country and so yes that's yet
another uncertainty now for even people
who have been here 20 30 years
>> so Leon who is going to make that
decision ision about whether the crime
is one of moral turpitude
>> that will now be made first by an
immigration judge who's an employee of
the department of justice. It's going to
get remanded all the way back down. It
gets remanded to the second circuit, but
the second circuit will remand it down
to the board of immigration appeals who
will remand it back down to the
immigration judge and then it'll work
its way back up to the second circuit
because presumably the immigration
court, especially now in the current
climate, will probably rule that it is a
crime involving moral turpitude. And
then it'll be up to the second circuit
who no longer has to defer to the
immigration courts anymore under the
loper bright line of cases which says
look when there's a legal issue there's
a legal issue this isn't really anything
we have to defer to here. So in the end
this decision is going to be made by the
second circuit who will have to decide
whether this individual's counterfeiting
conviction actually constitutes a crime
involving moral turpitude. So Leon, the
three liberal justices dissented and
Justice Katanji Brown Jackson wrote that
the decision to put the green card
holder on immigration parole effectively
sentenced him to immigration limbo
before he'd been convicted of any crime.
She wrote, "I worry that the court has
now handed the government a massive
blank check." Well, I mean, there's
definitely some merit to the argument,
and I don't see how even the majority
could dispute that they're really hoping
that the good faith of the men and women
in the Customs and Border Protection
continues to operate in good faith so
that this doesn't become an excessive
problem. Of course, if it becomes an
excessive problem, then the court's
going to have to revisit this. And this
is why I say these fact patterns tend to
lead and evolve into foreseeable
excessive problems. But they point out
in the dissenting opinion that one of
the main problems here is if the Customs
and Border Protection wants to sort of
proform invalidate your green card in
this manner, they can place you in
detention when they do this. And when
they place you in detention, then
depending on where they place you, if
they place you in some remote rural
area, you also will have very difficult
time in accessing an attorney. And if
you can't access an attorney, then you
can't make the defense as to why you
shouldn't be deported. And basically,
this whole thing can essentially lead to
a revocation of someone's green card by
default in a fact pattern where wouldn't
actually be lawfully permitted. And so
from that standpoint, the only thing
preventing this is the good faith of the
men and women working in the government.
And now we're going to have to see. You
know, usually the way this works is you
put constraints on the good faith,
hoping that people do operate in good
faith, but just in case they don't,
there are constraints so that people
know, hey, this will be reviewed by this
person, etc. But now we'll have to see.
Will the good faith that has been given
in terms of this blanket authority to
the Customs and Border Protection be
abused or will it be used in a way that
is still very rare for criminal type of
cases and not just for all types of
lawful permanent residents re-entering
in the United States after visiting
abroad? I mean, is there an undercurrent
here of the administration trying to
undermine perhaps the security that
green card holders may feel? The idea is
to say since you don't actually have to
be convicted of a crime and you can
basically have this green card status in
a sense conditionally revoked while you
go through immigration court if the
Customs and Border Protection has any
reason to think that you committed a
crime as opposed to you are convicted of
a crime. then everybody is potentially
on notice that if there's anything on
your phone or anything on your laptop or
anything anywhere that someone at the
CBP could decide to inspect and decide
to say, "Oh, well, it looks like you've
committed XYZ,
then yes, you won't be allowed to enter
in the United States." So now everybody
has more incentive. First, as a factual
matter, yes, mind your P's and Q's, but
also I think you will end up seeing the
immigration bar start giving advice
about what types of electronics to bring
into the United States or or don't bring
any, leave them all here, etc. Because
the potential for application here, you
know, pretty much you confiscate
anybody's computer, you can you can find
something. And so you say, "Oh, you
know, there's a mattress, you didn't pay
your mattress tag violation or
whatever." And so from that standpoint,
it becomes very very complicated.
>> The most high-profile case of the term
probably is the birthright citizenship
case and also ending TPS status. I mean,
does this decision at all indicate the
way the court might go in other
immigration decisions to come or is it
separate? Well, I will say I was
surprised that this decision was six to
three. I'm not surprised that there was
a majority of votes for this decision
because at the end of the day, I think
it's incremental enough that the court
can come back if the CBP starts going
too overboard with regard to rejecting
lawful permanent residents and come back
and impose some type of evidentiary
standard. So I do think that part is not
surprising, but I do think that because
the oral argument there was a lot of
concern about how broad this thing could
be applied and yet they still wrote a
decision that at least for the short
term allows this doctrine of cancelling
people's green card so to speak at the
airport to be applied in as broad a
fashion as possible. meaning it hasn't
been constrained by this particular
decision. Then I do think maybe not
exactly in the birthright citizenship
case. Although we'll wait and see
because there are some things here where
they might let Congress actually do some
legislation, which they would never do
because the Congress won't have the
votes either way to pass anything on
this. But I could see something like
that now from the standpoint that it
seems that the court really is willing
to say that in any of these cases where
we are going to defer to the political
system in the way it would work normally
if it was full of good faith actors that
were all doing their job. Not like the
world that exists today where the
Congress can't really pass anything. And
in a world where people in the
administrative branch have sort of
changed depending on what administration
they're in how they operate and how they
view the law. They don't read the law
like an AI chatbot. They read the law
based on policy priorities of of
different administrations. They're still
willing to seem to give a lot of good
faith difference here. And so we'll have
to see whether that ends up being wise
or not.
>> Okay. Stay with me, Leon. Coming up next
on the Bloomberg Law Show, I'll continue
this conversation with Leon Fresco. The
case about alleged Venezuelan gang
members sent to a notorious El Salvador
prison back in March of last year is
still going on. I'm June Grao and you're
listening to Bloomberg. I've been
talking to immigration law attorney Leon
Fresco of Holland Knight. So now let's
go back in time to, you know, early in
the Trump administration and those
flights in March of last year where the
administration sent alleged Venezuelan
gang members to a notorious El Salvador
prison. That case is amazingly still
going on even though the Venezuelans
have been returned to their home and set
free. Oddly enough, this case is still
going on even though Venezuela is now an
ally of the United States. And so the
whole idea that remember the if these
deportations of Venezuelans that were
taken to El Salvador were all based on
the idea that Venezuela was an alien
enemy of the United States and that
people here were acting in sort of in
cahoots with the Venezuelan government
to be our enemy and and destabilize the
United States. And so even though all of
that has now changed, one, the
government hasn't actually withdrawn its
theoretical doctrine that's gone on in
other cases where these issues are being
appealed that there are still Venezuelan
alien enemies of the United States. So
that's going to be interesting. I don't
know what the government's going to end
up doing with that again given that
we're in this world where we have this
cooperation with the Venezuelan
government. But in this particular case,
you still have Judge Boseberg who
remains upset from the quote unquote
original act in this case, which is he
said orally,
bring the people back if they're on a
plane and don't send people to El
Salvador if they're not on a plane. And
yet people never got sent back and
planes didn't turn back and and people
got sent to El Salvador. And so even
though the Supreme Court said that he
didn't have jurisdiction to have that
case that needed to be filed as
individual habiuses by the people who
were subject to these orders and
couldn't be done as a class action in
DC. Judge Booseberg still said, "Yeah,
but if you lied to me in my courtroom, I
should still have contempt authority to
do something about that." And the DC
circuit in a three judge panel basically
disagreed with that and said, "Look,
this case has reached an end. You don't
have contempt authority to do anything
at this point. And even if you if you
want to try to issue a contempt order,
go ahead because you already know what
happened. So if you want to basically
hold former Secretary Gnome in contempt
or anybody else, that's fine. But what
Judge Booseberg wanted to do is hold an
evidentiary hearing with testimony
before he issued a contempt order and a
criminal referral and all of that. And
then now looks like the full DC circuit.
That's the decision says let's see
whether he can do this or not because
there was hundreds of judges who did an
AMA brief saying look judges have to be
able regardless of in the end whether
they're right or wrong still be able to
patrol their courtrooms for people who
will lie to judges. And so from that
standpoint, you know, we'll see if the
DC circuit ends up saying regardless of
whether there was jurisdiction or not,
you still can enforce your courtroom and
issue contempt orders for things that
happened while you puditively did have
jurisdiction over the matter. And then
if that does happen, I'm sure the
government will appeal to the Supreme
Court and the Supreme Court will have to
decide whether Judge Boseberg actually
can continue with this contempt issue or
whether it's over and we just move on to
another issue. I mean, I would say just
looking at the numbers that since the
full court has decided to hear the case,
it might be because a lot of the judges
are interested in reversing the 2 to1
decision that went against Judge
Boseberg, but that's just looking at
numbers.
>> And I mean, he's a very well- reggarded
judge in DC.
>> He certainly is, and he was subject to
repeated attacks by the attorney general
and the president. So before we go,
Leon, tell us about the cows.
>> So for 30 years, every administration
and every bipartisan presidency has said
you can't bring in temporary
agricultural workers to do dairy work
because you have to milk those cows
every day. The cows don't just
seasonally need to be milked. And the
Trump administration out of all the
issues that it could have picked decided
this is the one issue where we will take
the pro-immigrant stance and let people
bring in immigrant workers to milk the
cows even though they have to be every
day so they're not seasonal. Oh well
that's not our problem. We're going to
let them come in. And so clearly the
agricultural industry got a huge win
there.
>> And the cows are happy too I guess.
>> Yes. And the cows are happy as well.
[laughter]
We've talked about so many immigration
issues, Liam, but I never thought it
would be about milking cows. Thanks as
always. That's Leon Fresco of Honda
Night. And that's it for this edition of
the Bloomberg Law Show. Remember, you
can always get the latest legal news on
our Bloomberg Law podcast. You can find
them on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and at
www.bloomberg.com/mpodcast/law.
And remember to tune in to the Bloomberg
Law Show every week night at 1000 PM
[music] Wall Street time. I'm June
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Bloomberg.
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