Docket Watch: May 8, 2025
A daily note on power, process, and the bench
1. Federal Court Strikes Down Alabama’s Congressional Map
A three-judge panel has once again tossed Alabama’s congressional map for violating the Voting Rights Act and Equal Protection Clause. The real scandal isn’t that the court struck it down—it’s that Alabama drew the map this way in the first place, after already being warned. This is exactly the kind of case that tests whether courts can still be neutral arbiters when states weaponize redistricting. The court got it right, but one wonders how many times states will be allowed to “accidentally” dilute Black voting power before intent is simply presumed.
2. Washington Supreme Court Upholds High-Capacity Magazine Ban
The Washington Supreme Court ruled that the state's restriction on magazines holding more than 10 rounds is constitutional. In doing so, it joined a growing number of courts interpreting the Second Amendment not as a free-for-all, but as a framework subject to democratic balance. Critics cry tyranny. But the decision doesn’t eliminate gun rights—it reins them in where public safety is genuinely in play. That’s the judiciary at its best: not culture-war refereeing, but constitutional boundary-setting.
3. Supreme Court Allows Transgender Military Ban to Stand
Without explanation, the Supreme Court has allowed a ban on transgender military service to remain in effect. There’s no principled reason for the silence. The Court’s shadow docket was once the Left’s bogeyman—emergency orders with no oral argument or full briefing. Now that this procedural black box preserves a progressive administration’s policy? Crickets. The inconsistency is the point. Whatever one thinks about the merits, the public deserves reasoning—not ritual deference wrapped in opacity.
4. Chief Justice Roberts Defends Judicial Independence
Chief Justice Roberts resurfaced today to offer a paean to judicial independence. That’s welcome, of course, but it also feels a bit like whistling past the graveyard. Independence isn’t something you declare—it’s something you earn, day by day, opinion by opinion. The Court’s institutional legitimacy is fragile, and Roberts knows it. What he hasn’t yet reckoned with is how much of that erosion has come from the justices themselves, not just from external political pressure.
5. Ed Martin’s Nomination Withdrawn
Trump’s decision to withdraw Ed Martin’s nomination as U.S. Attorney for D.C. is a rare moment of political pressure actually functioning as a safeguard. Martin’s reputation as a partisan attack dog made him the wrong choice for a role that demands restraint and even-handed enforcement. The withdrawal doesn’t solve the broader problem—prosecutorial independence is still under siege—but it does remind us that sunlight and scrutiny, when relentless enough, can still matter.