SHOULD YOU CARE...about the Supreme Court coming for the Education Dept?

SCOTUS hates school / a new law against censorship, for once / shoes are back at airports

July 18, 2025

First, SHOULD YOU CARE…

...about the Supreme Court coming for the Department of Education?

Yes, I think you should, for all the reasons that have been discussed elsewhere; but there’s another angle I want to talk about here too.

First, the context: earlier this week, the Supreme Court issued another of those mysterious orders they have been so fond of issuing lately—aka an order that uses their institutional power to change something a lower court did without explaining why, usually something that was ostensibly temporary to begin with—to lift a block that a lower court had issued to stop Trump from firing half the Department of Education.

It’s worth noting that the case was still making its way forward even with the block in place (aka the Trump administration hadn’t even officially lost the case yet) and the lower court had just issued the temporary block because firing half the department of education is maybe something that should be given a little thought and time. Which seems hard to argue with!

Which is perhaps why the Supreme Court did not argue with it. They instead just issued one of these “shadow docket” orders that just reversed the temporary ban without explanation. What a bunch of silly gooses. Many people (including me) have already written about the Court’s oddly blatant deference to Trump when they had major issues with similar actions under Biden, and about their overuse of this procedural method to intervene in politics, so I’m not going to rehash all that here.

What I am going to talk about a little is the Supreme Court’s recent predilection for chaos.

I know this sounds like a moral critique, but I actually mean it as a legal one. One of the things that you come to understand as a lawyer—or that I did, at least—is that law is not fundamentally about justice. It’s about stability. It’s about the centralization of authority in a single body of government so that people turn to that government to resolve disputes rather than just duking it out with each other. Having a nation of laws is about ensuring that the world that people go to bed in is roughly the same as the one they wake up in the next morning. Aka: the point of the whole legal system is to keep things the same.

(Side note: this is also why it’s so hard to change things! It can be a really frustrating and problematic aspect of the way that our legal works that rights or justice are not always a priority, but stability is. But in my view, that’s the reality. As one law professor used to say: reporting, not endorsing.)

And the Supreme Court’s recent willingness to upend hugely consequential, measured decisions of the lower courts lately—not only via inexplicable shadow docket orders, but in big meaty opinions—really flies in the face of this fact. A fact which I am sure they know too. It signals to me that the Court has kind of forgotten the whole point of the legal system in the first place, or is choosing to ignore it; they, like virtually everyone in Trump’s camp now, seems to view it primarily as a means to an end, rather than anything that has a worthwhile value of its own.

Which, in turn, is going to erode people’s (including my) likelihood of turning to the legal system as the reliable authority and arbiter of truth in the country. Which I guess is maybe the point? Because if I know one thing about these conservatives on the court, it is that they really don’t seem to love it when people turn to the government for help.

Well look at that: I guess I’ve talked myself around to thinking that the Supreme Court maybe actually does know what it's doing. Unfortunately.

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Second, YOU SHOULD CARE…

...about legislative anti-censorship protections!

So I came across this story about Rhode Island passing the “Freedom to Read Act” earlier this month, and I found it quite interesting, because while I hear all the time about Texas banning LGBTQ+ books or whatever (what I always find most comical about those bans is thinking about these idiot parents who are now so relieved that their kids won’t be gay), you don’t hear a lot about legislative action from the opposite side—but apparently it’s a thing!

The gist is that Rhode Island joined a number of other states in passing legislation that basically makes it harder for books to be censored. I only skimmed the legislation itself, and it contains a bunch of statements of principle about how libraries are supposed to be sources of knowledge and whatnot, but the meat of it is grouped into two main functional provisions:

First, if a book is removed from a library, there’s now a whole bunch of official procedures that someone can follow (filing some sort of request, getting it reviewed by a panel, etc) to make sure that the removal was not just political censorship and based on a good reason. Second, that either: librarians who have been punished for teaching particular content; parents or students who saw books removed from their libraries, or (most interestingly to me); authors whose books have been removed, can all now sue to get their books put back in.

I think this is really interesting! I hadn’t even considered the possibility that legislative protections might be put into place from the anti-censorship side. It’s the enabling of the author to sue that I find particularly interesting—because the author almost certainly didn’t have standing (aka a legally cognizable interest allowing him to sue) before. I say this because authors are unlikely to live in the community where their book is being censored, and without living there, a court might not agree that they have a stake in the issue. (It looks like I am not the only one that thinks this is a worthwhile development—just found this when I googled.) But the state legislature just gave the author a legal interest in the issue, and so now they can go sue in court and ask for their book to be uncensored, pretty please.

Obviously the effect is limited to the state that passed the legislation, and so this won’t affect whatever’s going on in Texas. It also makes me think a little bit of how all these censorship laws are a bit moronic in the first place—well, a lot moronic—but moronic in particular because the Internet exists and so people can just access the content that way. (Yes I know some people are trying to come for that too—a topic for another day.) And also I worry a bit about MAGA activists using this to just throw chaos into the system and start forcing librarians to explain why they’re not including disinformation in their libraries.

But still—an interesting and potentially promising roadmap for how to create legislative protections against censorship.

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Lastly, WHY DO I CARE...

...about wearing shoes at airports?

Ok so apparently we can wear shoes at airports now? And while mostly I am just pleased at my security experience getting easier—since taking off my shoes always just seemed like a bit of ridiculous theater that didn’t actually accomplish anything—I am also deeply irritated by this, because now I have to agree with a policy change implemented by our current leaders-in-chief.

I’ll be honest: this is not an issue I know anything about. From a legal standpoint, it seems well within the power of the TSA to do whatever the hell it wants with security procedures. And like every other human who ever goes through security, I am generally happier when I have to take fewer clothes off.

But man—because this administration is what it is, I feel like this is somehow a setup into some horrible new policy that is about to be launched, where like...now you aren’t allowed to take off your shoes in the airport anymore, and if you do then you get arrested. Or everyone must wear a MAGA hat when they go through security. Or if you don’t have enough red white and blue on you, you can’t enter the country. Or something.

Aka one of the minor irritations of this administration is that now I view even small positive developments with a deep sense of suspicion. But I guess even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Enjoy the weekend!