SCOTUS Keeps Rewriting Gun History

**Melissa Murray** (0:00)
Strict Scrutiny is brought to you by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The Trump administration's excessive Christian nationalist rhetoric is only building as we move toward the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Those most caught in the crossfire are federal workers, specifically a multi-faith group of federal employees who have filed a new lawsuit against the US. Department of Agriculture for violating the separation of church and state and the religious freedom promised in our constitution.
Our friends at Americans United for Separation of Church and State received emails from multiple USDA employees. A handful of employees reached out to say that the proselytizing Easter email sent by Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rawlins to more than 100,000 USDA employees is an abuse of power that violates the separation of church and state promised in the First Amendment. They're absolutely right. I just have to remind you as we continue to think about the nation's 250th anniversary that the whole question of religious freedom is not solely about religious pluralism, about different religious sex being able to flourish in the United States. It is also a hedge against tyranny, the idea that religion provides alternative sources of values and allegiances that imbue the individual with the capacity to be skeptical when the government comes peddling its own orthodoxies. So when you think about this, it's not just about letting a million flowers bloom. It's literally about keeping limited government in place.
And the hits just keep coming from this administration. And Americans United is doing their level best to keep up the fight against Christian nationalism. And if you want to help, head over to au.org/crooked to learn more about their work and how you can get involved.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:48)
Mr. Chief Justice, please report. It's an old joke, but when an argument against two beautiful ladies like this, they're going to have the last word.
She spoke not elegantly, but with unmistakable clarity. She said, I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.

**Melissa Murray** (2:30)
Hello, and welcome back to Strict Scrutiny, your podcast about the Supreme Court and the legal culture that surrounds it. We're your hosts. I'm Melissa Murray.

**Leah Litman** (2:38)
I'm Leah Litman.

**Kate Shaw** (2:39)
And I'm Kate Shaw. And we are in the home stretch of this Supreme Court term with opinions and argued cases coming fast and furious. So we're going to spend today's episode mostly breaking those opinions down for you. There will be even more opinions released the day this episode drops. That's Monday. So who knows, we might be in your ear holes again soon. And either way, it's going to be a busy and probably terrible week for all of us. So buckle up.

**Melissa Murray** (3:01)
Awesome, Kate. What a way to start.
All right. So last week, we got 10 opinions from the court and nine were in argued cases. On Thursday, we did a same day emergency episode covering two immigration decisions. So we'll briefly discuss those here, but we'll spend more time covering the decisions we didn't talk about in that emergency episode. The first decision that we covered in the emergency episode was Mullen versus Joe, which is a decision from the court, 6-3 decision that allows the president to cancel temporary protected status protections for Haitian and Syrian nationals. There were two questions in this case. One was a statutory question, whether the administration had complied with the required statutory procedures for rescinding temporary protected status or TPS, and the second question, which was a constitutional question, whether the administration had acted with unconstitutional animus in rescinding those statuses. As Justice Alito, who wrote for the majority, explained, courts cannot review whether the executive branch has complied with the statutory procedures that Congress imposed for the rescission of those protected statuses. And with regard to the constitutional question of racial animus, our favorite woke warrior, Samuel Alito, reminded us all that the only way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to ignore discrimination on the basis of race and instead allow the administration to engage in rank xenophobia.
Actually, the court specifically said that the cancellation of TPS for Haitian nationals was not racist, despite the president's many, many racist and targeted remarks about Haiti and its people.

**Leah Litman** (4:36)
Woke Alito so many takes. When we covered the TPS cases in our emergency episode, we had just digested them since taping the episode. We have some additional thoughts which we wanted to highlight. First, we should discuss the practical implications of the decision, which will likely bring about the largest de-legalization of immigrants in our history. It will affect more than 300,000 Haitian nationals and 6,000 Syrian nationals. And the de-legalization isn't going to be confined to those groups. The administration has sought to cancel TPS for many other countries as well. Note, not really majority white countries, but when Trump took office in 2025, there were over a million people with TPS and many TPS holders have been in this country for decades. I think it's easy for American citizens to think this won't affect them, but it's going to. Many people who work in the health care industry, whether it's physicians, nurses, orderlies, EMTs, are immigrants who are TPS holders. Many childcare workers and others in care industries are TPS holders, people who work in construction trades, basically every industry. This will be massive and we will all be impacted in ways both profound and banal. And this is to say nothing about the law enforcement practices that the administration might undertake to effectuate these mass removals and deportations, which are likely to sweep in citizens as part of racial profiling and more.