It's the Brian Lair show on WNYC.

Good morning again, everyone.

I'm Bridget Bergen, senior reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist Newsroom filling in for Brian Lair.

Just before we shift gears, it looks like that last segment we were talking about legislation related to plastics and there may in fact

be a deal out of Albany. We'll get more news from that in the WNYC newscast coming up and

throughout the day, but possibly some good news on that front for supporters of that legislation, much more to come.

But for now, we're going to turn to a different segment.

We're turning now to a renewed push-by advocates for expanding rights in criminal justice, voting, reproductive freedom, environmental safety, to focus on state

courts instead of aiming for a Supreme Court decision.

Journalist Ayal Press writes about this progressive embrace of federalism in this week's New Yorker,

and he joins us now.

Welcome back to the show, A.L.

Thanks so much.

It's great to be here. Now, taking the Dobbs decision as an example of where the Supreme Court rolled back rights, reversing Roe v. Wade, which, you know, had ruled that the right to abortion was a federal constitutional right. Now reproductive rights are dependent on the laws and constitutions of individual states. And that's where

abortion rights advocates are focusing their efforts. Is that right? In the 50 states instead

of one federal court? Absolutely. You know, and in that on that issue, you know, the Supreme

Court was was explicit about it right it said we're going

to leave this up to the states to fashion their own laws on abortion and we see these battles

playing out very vividly across the country now in state courts but also politically because one of because one of the points of my piece and the

issues that true my attention is that the state constitutions generally are just much easier

to change, to amend.

You know, to amend the federal constitution, you need three fourths of the states, the legislatures to approve it.

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