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OA 1128 - First: an urgent question from a patron on Trump’s latest executive power grab. Matt explains the history of the “unitary executive theory” and the Federalist Society-backed movement to give the President more power than an actual king. 

Then: Rutgers Law professor Katie Eyer studies, teaches, and litigates the law of anti-discrimination with a specialty in LGBTQ rights. She joins to discuss the current state of the law in the shadow of the Supreme Court’s forthcoming decision in U.S. v. Skrmetti and the wake of Donald Trump’s recent anti-trans executive orders. Which, if any, of these orders should we actually be concerned about? What does it mean that the fight for trans lives is now becoming a federal issue?  Can Trump really just instruct the federal government to ignore the Supreme Court’s extension of employment protections to LGBTQ employees in Bostock v. Clayton County? Professor Eyer takes up these questions and many more as we find reasons both for concern and for hope.

• “Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies,” (2/18/25)

• “Interrogating the Historical Basis for a Unitary Executive,” Daniel D. Birke, Stanford Law Review (Jan. 2021)

• Professor Katie Eyer (Rutgers Law bio)

• Anti-Transgender Constitutional Law, 77 Vanderbilt L. Rev. __ (2024) (forthcoming)

• Transgender Constitutional Law, 171 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1405 (2023)

• Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 US ___ (2020)

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