Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts - Rewriting Statutes Via Courts
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4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 23 April 2022
⏱️ 36 minutes
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Summary
On this episode of Amicus – in studio edition! – host Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Professor
Lawrence O. Gostin, professor of global health law, at Georgetown University, among many other things. They talk about the federal district court in Florida’s decision to lift the mask mandate for public transportation. While it may seem like a small deal given that the mandate was set to expire in a few weeks anyway, the decision was built on a very labored and tortured interpretation of the word “sanitation.” Professor Gostin explains that this case could have a chilling effect on government agencies. They also discuss why the decision by the Biden administration to appeal involved a lot of political calculous.
In our Slate Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Mark Joseph Stern to talk about a death penalty decision at the Supreme Court and an upcoming case about school prayer.
Podcast production by Cheyna Roth.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I couldn't think of a worse way for COVID-era masking on transport to be over than by a single federal judge in Florida. |
| 0:18.5 | So this is obviously a disappointing decision. |
| 0:21.4 | The CDC continues recommending wearing a mask in public transit. |
| 0:27.5 | Hi, and welcome to Amicus. |
| 0:29.9 | This is Slate's podcast about the court and the law and the rule of law. |
| 0:34.8 | I'm Dahlia Lithwick, and I cover some of those things for Slate. |
| 0:38.7 | This week, we're actually going to turn our eyes briefly from the U.S. Supreme Court to a |
| 0:43.7 | federal district court in Florida, which decided on Monday to lift the mask mandate for public |
| 0:50.8 | transportation all around the country. At one level, it could seem a little trivial. The mandate |
| 0:57.2 | was going to expire May 3rd. Anyhow, the ruling came from a newly minted Trump judge who |
| 1:04.1 | basically just tortured the word sanitation into a smoldering heap in order to get herself there. |
| 1:12.4 | And I guess everybody hates masks now, so no big deal. |
| 1:16.5 | But actually, this ruling was a big deal. |
| 1:19.8 | And it feels like another episode of a lone federal jurist substituting their own public |
| 1:25.9 | health opinion for that of an entire government agency tasked with dealing with what is still, my friends, a lethal pandemic. |
| 1:35.0 | It also feels like part of a larger effort to ensure that those very agencies are increasingly sidelined with claims of government overreach and really expansive new ideas |
| 1:47.3 | about liberty. And now the Biden administration is appealing in a move that risks creating a legal |
| 1:54.9 | precedent they don't want. Here is Biden's press secretary, Jen Saki, explaining why. |
| 2:02.0 | The objective here is, of course, to appeal the 15-day extension, but also to preserve the |
| 2:07.9 | CDC authority over the long term, because as we've noted from here, we expect there to be |
| 2:13.5 | ups and downs in the pandemic, and we certainly want the CDC to continue to have this authority. |
| 2:18.7 | Later on in the podcast, Flate Plus members will be able to listen in on my conversation with Mark Joseph Stern. |
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