Gavin Newsom's plan to save the Constitution by trolling the Supreme Court

[In It to Win It]

Vox

alifornia Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed a law on Friday modeled after Texas’s anti-abortion law SB 8 — the Texas law which uses private lawsuits to target abortion providers. But there’s one important difference between the two state laws: California’s new law sends these litigious bounty hunters against gun dealers who sell certain guns, including assault weapons and weapons with no serial number.

It’s a high-stakes gambit that will test whether the Supreme Court actually meant what it said in Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson (2021), which held that because of SB 8’s unique style of enforcement, it was immune from meaningful judicial review — and thus would take effect despite very strong arguments that the law was unconstitutional at the time.

Shortly after Jackson was decided last December, Newsom announced that he disagrees with the Supreme Court’s conclusion that states can dodge judicial review of unconstitutional laws. But Newsom also said that, if the Court’s Republican-appointed majority would give this power to states, then he would use it to limit access to firearms.

The state of California, in other words, appears to be trolling the Supreme Court. SB 1327 should force the justices to either overrule Jackson and admit that they were wrong to let states evade the Constitution, or give California’s new gun ban the same immunity from judicial scrutiny that five justices gave SB 8.

That is, of course, assuming that this increasingly political Supreme Court cares about consistency.

Link to tweet

[unblock]

1. the "bounty" concept is, to me, obviously deputizing otherwise private citizens into

serving the state's interest.

if the private person doesn't have any personal injury associated with the "crime", then they're advancing a state's public interest and not that person's private interest.

consequently, it's a blatant attempt to circumvent restrictions on what a state can legislate by trying to reframe it as a private interest, when it's not. just because the bounty hunter isn't a regular employee of the state doesn't me they aren't working in service of a state interest.

[intrepidity]

2. Won't work

SCrOTUS has already decided that murder weapons like guns are Constitutionally protected, while women's (and children's) lives are not.

But I'm all for him trolling them.

[roamer65]

3. If SCROTUS strikes down this CA law, I think CA should enforce it anyway.

Seriously, there isn’t much the court can do to enforce their ruling.