Welcome back, Deadline: Legal Newsletter readers. The Supreme Court jumped into the TikTok fight and took up a new abortion-related case, while a federal judge was called out for calling out Justice Samuel Alito's ethics. Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump got good news in his Georgia state criminal case and bad news in New York, as Democrats are poised to surpass the number of federal judges appointed during Trump's first term.
TikTok has a SCOTUS hearing Jan. 10, the justices announced this week. They'll consider a First Amendment challenge to a law that would ban the popular social media app's U.S. operations if its Chinese parent company doesn't sell it. The hearing arises just ahead of a Jan. 19 deadline for the law to take effect, so the new year is set to start with a bang in TikTok v. Garland.
Health care will also be on the docket later this term, via another case the justices took up this week. The appeal, called Kerr v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, stems from South Carolina's desire to prevent Planned Parenthood from participating in the low-income Medicaid program. The legal question centers on Medicaid users' ability to pick their chosen providers.
Remember the Alito flag flap? He declined to recuse himself from Jan. 6-related cases last term, despite the potential appearance of impropriety from flags flying outside his homes that Jan. 6 rioters also carried. Federal Judge Michael Ponsor, a Clinton appointee, had criticized Alito's behavior in an op-ed, and we just learned that Ponsor was officially rebuked for his criticism, under the enforceable ethics rules that apply to lower court judges such as Ponsor — but not to high court justices such as Alito.
"Textbook hypocrisy" is how a spokesperson for Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., described the episode, noting that Alito "currently faces no consequences for his public commentary and actions that cast doubt on his impartiality, but the judge who raised legitimate concerns about these ethical lapses is disciplined in response to a complaint by a political activist with an axe to grind." The Ponsor complaint was led by former Neil Gorsuch clerk Mike Davis, who advocates for Republican-appointed judges.
But Durbin and the Democrats closed in on a milestone Friday of nearing confirmation of their 235th federal judge during President Joe Biden's term, which would beat Trump's 234 judges confirmed in his first term. A darker spot on Democrats' judicial record is their failure to confirm Adeel Mangi to a federal appeals court, leading him to write a letter to Biden in which he lamented the Islamophobic attacks on his nomination. "I set forth this record of my experience and my opinions so that this playbook will be recognized the next time a Muslim is nominated to a prominent position of service," Mangi wrote.
On Trump's personal docket, Judge Juan Merchan rejected the president-elect's bid to overturn his guilty verdicts in the New York hush money case. But the case is still unsettled, because there's another defense dismissal motion for Merchan to decide before Trump can be sentenced, and Trump's lawyers could appeal to try to block any sentencing before he takes office.
Trump got better news in Georgia, where a state appeals court disqualified Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her office from prosecuting the election interference case against him and several co-defendants. Willis vowed to appeal to the state's top court, which could decide to keep her on the case. But with Trump's two federal criminal cases gone, the fate of both his state cases is unclear — including the question of whether they can be paused while he's in office, leaving them waiting for him after his second term ends.
Finally, a programming note: The newsletter is off next week, returning Jan. 3.
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