A federal judge struck down portions of a controversial Kansas election law on Thursday, ruling them unconstitutional.

U.S. District Court Judge Kathryn Vratil struck down provisions in statute KSA 25-1122 banning out-of-state entities from mailing advance ballot applications and prohibiting the applications from containing any pre-filled information.

Both provisions had previously been temporarily blocked, and Vratil last year permanently enjoined the state from enforcing the out-of-state mail provisions.

That left only the personalized application ban remaining to address in Thursday's ruling from the federal courthouse in Kansas City, Kan.

"Defendants have not established that the Personalized Application Prohibition is narrowly tailored to achieve the state's alleged interests in the enhancement of public confidence in the integrity of the electoral process and avoiding fraud, the avoidance of voter confusion or the facilitation of orderly and efficient election administration," Vratil wrote. "The Personalized Application Prohibition cannot withstand strict scrutiny and is therefore an unconstitutional infringement on plaintiff’s First Amendment rights to speech and association."

Rob Romano
@2Aupdates

BREAKING: Barnett v. Raoul (7th Circuit): Judge Easterbrook stays the preliminary injunction against Illinois' "assault weapon" and magazine bans "pending further order of the court," requests a response to the state's motion by 5/9.

A Utah state judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked a new law, one day before it was scheduled to take effect, that would have banned abortion clinics and potentially put a halt to most abortions in the state.

Abortion is legal in Utah up to 18 weeks of pregnancy, and after that only in limited circumstances. But legislators have been trying in recent years to further restrict the procedure. A state law which would ban nearly all abortions is suspended while the Utah Supreme Court considers whether abortion is protected in the Constitution.

While the more stringent ban is temporarily blocked by the legal challenge, the Legislature, dominated by Republicans, passed another bill known as H.B. 467 that was signed into law by the Republican governor and zeroed in on something else: abortion clinics, where 95 percent of all abortions are performed in the state.

Among other provisions, the law makes it a crime to provide abortion anywhere other than a hospital. Abortion clinics would lose their licenses if they performed the procedure. And even if they stopped performing abortions, no new licenses would be issued after May.

Pablo Manríquez
@PabloReports

NEW: Florida Senate just passed a law that bans attorneys with DACA from practicing law in the state starting in Nov. 2028. It's headed to the governor's desk for signature.

Mark Joseph Stern
@mjs_DC

Remember the Texas man who sued his wife's friends after they helped her get abortion pills? He found the pill in his wife's purse while secretly searching it, then put it back—he wanted her to take it so he could then blackmail her into staying with him. https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23794899/23-cv-0375-deftscounter-plaintiffs-jackie-noyola-and-amy-carpenters-original-answer-and-counterclaims.pdf

The Texas man also searched his wife's phone and took screenshots of texts from her friends talking about medication abortion. Then he reported his wife to the police—an effort to prevent her from divorcing him after he emotionally abused her for years. https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23794899/23-cv-0375-deftscounter-plaintiffs-jackie-noyola-and-amy-carpenters-original-answer-and-counterclaims.pdf

Jonathan Mitchell, leading light of the anti-abortion movement, chose to represent an abusive husband who called his wife a whore in front of her coworkers, emotionally tormented her, then reported her to the police after she self-managed an abortion. https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23794899/23-cv-0375-deftscounter-plaintiffs-jackie-noyola-and-amy-carpenters-original-answer-and-counterclaims.pdf

It is very clear that Jonathan Mitchell is aiding and abetting the abusive manipulation of a violently jealous man who tried to blackmail his ex-wife out of divorcing him. It exemplifies the ends-justify-the-means mentality of the anti-abortion movement. https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23794899/23-cv-0375-deftscounter-plaintiffs-jackie-noyola-and-amy-carpenters-original-answer-and-counterclaims.pdf

The Supreme Court case over President Joe Biden’s student debt forgiveness plan sits on a throne made of lies. A new report reveals that the main argument at the heart of the lawsuit is utterly false.

Biden introduced a plan to forgive a total of $300 billion in student debt last August. The attorneys general from six Republican-led states promptly sued to block the plan, arguing primarily that Missouri’s main higher education loan organization, the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority, or MOHELA, would suffer major financial losses if the policy were implemented. An appeals court issued a national injunction on debt relief, and then the Supreme Court took the case up directly.

Much of the debate around this case, Biden v. Nebraska, stems from the question of whether the authority provided by the Heroes Act goes so far as to grant the administration the authority to implement such sweeping loan forgiveness. Not as much attention has been paid to the question of whether the states have legal standing to bring the suit in the first place.

As it turns out, they don’t, because their underlying argument that the firm would suffer historic losses isn’t true, according to a new investigation by the Debt Collective, a debtors’ union, and the Roosevelt Institute, a liberal think tank, that was shared exclusively with The New Republic.

An internal impact analysis that MOHELA conducted in August, which the Debt Collective and Roosevelt Institute acquired through a Freedom of Information Act request, shows that the debt servicer would actually make more than $97 million annually after Biden’s student debt cancellation plan went into effect. To put that figure into context, MOHELA will make more money after the debt cancellation than at any point in its history.

Mark Joseph Stern
@mjs_DC

Missouri's theory of standing is that MOHELA, a student loan servicer, will lose money under Biden's debt relief plan. In reality, MOHELA has determined that it will make money—a lot of it. Totally blows up the only theory of standing with any marginal plausibility.

Chris Geidner
@chrisgeidner

BREAKING: Oklahoma GOP AG to #SCOTUS about Richard Glossip’s case: “Absent this Court’s intervention, an execution will move forward under circumstances where the Attorney General has already confessed error—a result that would be unthinkable.” Background:

Oklahoma’s top criminal court ignores Republican AG in Glossip case

#SCOTUS filing, in which the OK AG’s office is joined by Paul Clement. https://supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22A941/265824/20230501154508421_2023.05.01%20Response%20Stay-Final.pdf

An important brief, with an essential task in front of #SCOTUS: “In those unprecedented circumstances, this Court should grant the application for a stay of execution.”

With the future of abortion rights in Florida potentially hinging on the case, attorneys for abortion clinics and a doctor are pushing back against arguments that the state Supreme Court should reject decades of legal precedents about a privacy clause in the Florida Constitution.

The attorneys late Friday filed a 24-page brief urging the Supreme Court to block a 2022 state law that prevented abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. But the stakes of the case soared last month when Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a new law that would bar abortions after six weeks.

The six-week limit is contingent on the outcome of the challenge to the 15-week law (HB 5). In the 15-week case, the state contends the Supreme Court should reject more than 30 years of legal precedents and rule that a privacy clause in the Constitution does not protect abortion rights.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys in Friday’s brief wrote that the Supreme Court should stick with the longstanding interpretation that the Constitution protects abortion rights, saying the 15-week limit “openly flouts that protection and decades of this (Supreme) Court’s precedents.”

In a March 29 brief, Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office argued that past rulings on abortion rights were “clearly erroneous” and that decisions about abortion restrictions should be left to the Legislature.

With the future of abortion rights in Florida potentially hinging on the case, attorneys for abortion clinics and a doctor are pushing back against arguments that the state Supreme Court should reject decades of legal precedents about a privacy clause in the Florida Constitution.

The attorneys late Friday filed a 24-page brief urging the Supreme Court to block a 2022 state law that prevented abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. But the stakes of the case soared last month when Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a new law that would bar abortions after six weeks.

The six-week limit is contingent on the outcome of the challenge to the 15-week law (HB 5). In the 15-week case, the state contends the Supreme Court should reject more than 30 years of legal precedents and rule that a privacy clause in the Constitution does not protect abortion rights.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys in Friday’s brief wrote that the Supreme Court should stick with the longstanding interpretation that the Constitution protects abortion rights, saying the 15-week limit “openly flouts that protection and decades of this (Supreme) Court’s precedents.”

In a March 29 brief, Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office argued that past rulings on abortion rights were “clearly erroneous” and that decisions about abortion restrictions should be left to the Legislature.