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August 21, 2025 — Morning Report

Aug 21, 2025
821 AM YT
White v. BOE 22-cv-00062
Mississippi divides its Supreme Court election districts east to west — and one of those lines cuts the historically Black Mississippi Delta region right in half. A federal district judge said yesterday: that's how Mississippi has avoided electing Black justices for essentially its entire history. Time for it to end. Redraw the maps.

White v. State Board of Elections (22-cv-00062) is a challenge to Mississippi's Supreme Court election district lines. The state Supreme Court seats are chosen by three geographic regions, with district lines running roughly east to west. The historically African-American Mississippi Delta region runs north to south along the western side of the state. The district lines, as drawn, cut the Delta region roughly in half — dividing its population across two districts and preventing it from forming a majority in either. The federal district court ruled in plaintiffs' favor: this line-drawing has functioned to prevent the election of Black justices to Mississippi's Supreme Court for essentially the state's entire history. Four Black justices had been appointed or won reelection but none had won election outright from the district map as drawn. The court ordered Mississippi to redraw its Supreme Court election map to stop cutting the Delta region in half in a way designed to dilute Black political power. Mississippi said it would review the decision and decide how to proceed.

Voting Rights Act Section 2Thornburg v. Ginglesracial vote dilutionSupreme Court judicial election districtslegislative vs. judicial redistricting
Constitutional question: The Fifteenth Amendment and the VRA's Section 2 prohibition on racially dilutive districting apply to judicial elections as well as legislative ones. The Mississippi Supreme Court's historic record — no outright electoral wins by Black justices — is the constitutional problem the district lines created and that a remedial redrawing must correct. The court's order is a direct application of the principle that official structures cannot be engineered to exclude a racial group from political power, even when the engineering operates through seemingly neutral geographic line-drawing.
GHC v. Trump 25-cv-00402
The Global Health Council case is a rollercoaster. Three-judge panel dismissed for lack of standing — the grants were supposedly off the table. Plaintiffs asked for en banc rehearing. En banc granted. They asked the court to keep payments flowing in the meantime. The court said: stay denied. Then: oh wait, the first decision never actually went into effect. So the original preliminary injunction was never stopped. Payments must continue. Bryan: "ha ha."

Global Health Council v. Trump (25-cv-00402) — a case Bryan describes as actually two cases combined — involves a group of global health organizations whose grants were canceled by the Trump administration despite congressional appropriation. The court had issued a preliminary injunction in March ordering payments to continue while the case was litigated. About a week before this episode, a three-judge DC Circuit panel dismissed the case for lack of standing, a development Bryan had found was covered inaccurately by some outlets. The plaintiffs responded immediately: they petitioned the DC Circuit for en banc rehearing (asking the full court to reconsider the three-judge panel's standing ruling), and simultaneously asked the court to stay the panel's decision — i.e., keep the original PI and payments in place while the en banc petition was pending. The DC Circuit granted the en banc rehearing petition but denied the stay. That combination seemed bad for plaintiffs — no stay meant the dismissal could take effect. But then the court clarified: the stay was denied because the three-judge panel's dismissal decision had never actually gone into effect in the first place. The original PI ordering payments had never been stopped. Payments must continue. The en banc hearing was expected in September. Bryan's take: convoluted, but the practical result is money keeps flowing while the full court revisits the standing question.

Standingen banc rehearinginterlocutory stayPI payments during appealDC Circuit procedureglobal health grant termination
Constitutional question: The underlying constitutional stakes are the same across all grant-termination cases: Congress appropriated the funds; the executive is refusing to pay. The separation of powers dimension (executive refusal to carry out congressionally directed spending) provides the non-APA constitutional hook. The standing battle is itself constitutionally significant — if organizations directly receiving canceled grants lack standing to challenge the cancellation, the availability of judicial review for executive grant terminations collapses, leaving the Impoundment Control Act without a judicial enforcement mechanism.
NAACP v. US 25-cv-00965
The Department of Education is being functionally dismantled — staff cut, contracts canceled, grants halted. The NAACP sued and asked for a preliminary injunction. The judge denied it — not because they were going to lose, but because she couldn't tell who was going to win. The law is changing too fast. "We're on shifting sands." Bryan: "I'm not sure I agree with her conclusion, but I don't think she's totally wrong."

NAACP v. United States (25-cv-00965) challenges the Trump administration's actions aimed at shutting down the Department of Education, either directly or by cutting all staff, canceling contracts, and halting grants. The judge issued a two-part ruling on August 20. First: the government's motion to dismiss was denied, but primarily because the judge said she wasn't ready to deal with it and directed them to refile — not a victory for plaintiffs on the merits, just a delay. Second: the plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction was denied in the same 36-page memorandum. The unusual reasoning: a PI requires the court to find that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits. But the judge's explanation for why she couldn't make that finding was not that plaintiffs were likely to lose — it was that the legal landscape is shifting so fast, with so many cases producing potentially contradictory rulings, that she couldn't say with confidence what the law would look like by the time the case was decided. Her framing: "shifting sands" — no concrete foundation to build a legal argument on. Bryan's reaction was measured: he disagreed with her conclusion but acknowledged she wasn't entirely wrong. The NAACP, as a major organization with resources, was expected to appeal.

PI likelihood-of-success standardjudicial uncertainty as a basis for PI denialDepartment of Education shutdownSpending ClauseAPA
Constitutional question: The Department of Education was created by statute; the executive cannot abolish it without congressional action. The constitutional arguments in this case thus center on whether the administration's functional dismantling — without formally closing the department — is an end-run around the separation of powers. The judge's "shifting sands" observation is also constitutionally important: when the legal landscape is moving fast enough that a federal judge can't predict what the law will be in six months, that instability itself poses a rule-of-law concern — courts are supposed to be the stable interpreter of constitutional principles, not a variable that changes with each new case.
Spectrum v. Wendler 23-10994
A Texas student group wanted to hold a drag show fundraiser on campus. The university said no — limited public forum, and drag shows aren't inherently expressive. The Fifth Circuit disagreed: drag shows communicate a message, the message here was right there on the flyers, and the First Amendment covers it. Bryan: "If there's one word I would not deny them, it is expressive."

Spectrum WTV v. Wendler (23-10994) arose when a Texas university student group organized a fundraiser featuring a drag show on campus. The university blocked the event on two grounds: (1) the venue was a "limited public forum," where First Amendment protection is more restricted than in a fully public forum; and (2) drag performances are not inherently expressive conduct and therefore don't implicate the First Amendment at all. The district court sided with the university on both. The Fifth Circuit reversed. On the first question: the performers were dressing as members of the opposite sex as a clear message of support for the LGBTQ+ community — the fundraiser's purpose and message were explicitly stated on the flyers. Whether drag performance always conveys a message is debatable, the court acknowledged, but here the message was unambiguous and present. That makes it expression covered by the First Amendment. The court then worked through the limited public forum analysis and the question of which specific university officials were responsible. The result: the Fifth Circuit held that a drag show is expressive speech protected by the First Amendment. Bryan flagged the significance of a conservative circuit reaching this conclusion, particularly after several state drag performance laws had already been overturned, and noted Justice Kavanaugh's recent invocation of the First Amendment as a keystone value — a signal the First Amendment may appear in unexpected places as other major cases approach resolution.

First Amendmentexpressive conductlimited public forum doctrinedrag performance as protected speechqualified immunity (who at the university is liable)
Constitutional question: The First Amendment's protection of expressive conduct — established in Texas v. Johnson (flag burning) and Spence v. Washington (flag display) — extends to physical acts that communicate a message, not just to verbal speech. The Fifth Circuit's application of that principle to drag performance follows directly: if the conduct conveys a sufficiently clear message, government restrictions on it are subject to First Amendment scrutiny regardless of whether the conduct is "pure speech." Bryan's closing observation — Kavanaugh's First Amendment framing, the conservative circuit's holding — points toward a broader principle: the First Amendment remains a constraint on viewpoint-discriminatory government action even as other constitutional doctrines are being redefined in administration-friendly directions. Courts may reach for the First Amendment when other avenues narrow.
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