Strict Scrutiny13 Okt 2025

Will SCOTUS Allow Conversion Therapy for Minors?

Leah, Melissa, and Kate are back in business, breaking down this term’s first week of arguments at SCOTUS, including a challenge to Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy for minors. Also covered: the indictment of New York’s Attorney General Letitia James, the continuing legal fights against Trump’s efforts to send the National Guard into Portland and Chicago, and Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi’s pugnacious testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Then, Kate and Leah speak with Yale Law Professor John Fabian Witt about his book The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America, which chronicles how philanthropist Charles Garland bankrolled progressive causes through his American Fund for Public Service.

If you want to learn more about Buck v. Bell (the 1927 case Justice Alito referenced in the Chiles arguments), listen to our deep dive from 2020

Favorite things:

Leah: Protest videos from Portland and Chicago; The Sentimental Garbage podcast on The Life of a Showgirl

Kate: Writers & Lovers by Lily King, Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner; Red Clover Ranch in Wisconsin; wine and cider from Las Mujeres

Melissa: Vision & Justice; Miss Toy Poodle on Instagram

Leah will be in conversation with UCLA Law Professor Rick Hasen at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles on Tuesday, Oct 14, 2025 at 7:30 PM. Details here.

Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE – The Bad Decisions Tour 2025!

3/6/26 – San Francisco
3/7/26 – Los Angeles

Learn more: http://crooked.com/events

Order your copy of Leah's book, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes

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Avsnitt(413)

The Malicious Incompetence of Trump's DOJ

Kate and Leah cover this week’s three Supreme Court opinions—one featuring a killer Ketanji Brown Jackson dissent—before turning to legal news, where bad behavior is everywhere. We’ve got a violent ju...

15 Juni 1h 18min

Affirmative Action for Mediocre Men

Leah and Melissa break down what may be a new low for the Court: granting Alabama’s request to reinstate racially discriminatory voting maps. Then, they turn to the big questions: how dead is Trump’s ...

8 Juni 1h 24min

Ballrooms, ‘Bama and (Very) Bad Behavior

Leah, Kate, and Melissa recap another busy week in legal news, covering the continued fallout from the Voting Rights Act case, Louisiana v. Callais, the ongoing saga of the DOJ’s insurrectionist slush...

1 Juni 1h 37min

Trump's Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Grift

Kate, Melissa, and Leah try to wrap their heads around Trump’s nearly $2 billion DOJ slush fund, which they agree may be—despite extremely stiff competition—the biggest act of trolling and self-dealin...

25 Maj 1h 34min

How SCOTUS is Waging Electoral Warfare

Kate and Leah break down the Supreme Court’s extension of a stay allowing for continued mail-order access to mifepristone, from the Court’s unconscionable failure to meet its own arbitrary deadline to...

18 Maj 1h 44min

The Constitution (Melissa's Version)

Kate & Leah talk to Melissa about her new book, The U.S. Constitution: A Comprehensive and Annotated Guide for the Modern Reader, or, as we like to call it at Strict HQ, The Constitution (Melissa’s Ve...

11 Maj 1h 42min

Supreme Court Declares Racism Over

The 5th Circuit gave us a doozy late on Friday night by tightening access to the abortion drug mifepristone—Leah and Melissa break it down. Then, the full crew dives deeper into the Court’s catastroph...

4 Maj 1h 31min

BREAKING: SCOTUS Deals Another Blow to Multiracial Democracy

Kate and Leah are joined by Democracy Docket’s Marc Elias to break down the Supreme Court’s shameful assault on multiracial democracy in its ruling on the Voting Rights Act case, Louisiana v. Callais....

29 Apr 40min