April 3, 2026 — Aloha Friday

A January 6th civil case. Trump moved for summary judgment, asserting blanket presidential immunity. The court's response was more surgical: of all the actions being sued over, some were close enough to presidential duties to qualify. But most weren't. Presidential immunity protects the president only for acts within his official role — the "Titanic-is-hitting-the-iceberg" theory, as Bryan put it: someone has to be able to grab every lever without worrying about getting sued later, and we make that person immune while acting in their job. But nothing in that theory covers conduct that has nothing to do with the job. And the court confirmed that line. Bryan's take: we don't have much case law here because we usually pick presidents who don't push these edges. More case law is a win even if individual claims don't land. He might eat those words, but probably not.

Colorado banned gay conversion therapy. A therapist challenged the ban under the First Amendment. The case raised the fundamental question: is talk therapy speech or conduct? The distinction matters because the government's power to regulate licensed professional speech is different from its power to regulate conduct. Two prior SCOTUS cases formed the framework — a state requiring doctors to read scripted statements to pregnant patients (held to be speech), and the feds threatening lawyers who explained humanitarian law to terrorism clients (also held to be speech). Both governments said they were regulating "professional conduct." The Court said no. In this case, it's talk therapy. Clearly speech. Once it's speech, what scrutiny applies? Because the Colorado law explicitly prohibited helping patients reduce same-sex attraction while permitting encouragement of the same-sex orientation, it was viewpoint-specific — which triggers strict scrutiny, the hardest test for the government to pass. The lower court hadn't applied strict scrutiny, so SCOTUS sent it back. Bryan's confidence that it won't survive a rewrite: high. The therapist said patients sometimes came to her asking to be helped reducing same-sex attraction, and she wasn't allowed to assist them. A law that prevents a professional from helping patients who are asking for help is probably not narrowly tailored. An 8-1 decision with a Kagan concurrence asking everyone to imagine this law in reverse. Bryan thought we'd start seeing challenges to similar overbroad laws elsewhere.

A federal judge issued a permanent injunction barring enforcement of the executive order stripping funding from PBS and NPR. This wasn't a temporary or preliminary order — it was a final motion for summary judgment. The court found all three elements of First Amendment retaliation: the executive order punished protected speech, it was adverse action, and it was causally connected. Bryan was happy about this one for personal reasons and not shy about saying so. He was "very angry" when they messed with PBS. Don't mess with Elmo.