David H. Gans
@davidhgans.bsky.social
Director of Civil Rights, Human Rights & Citizenship Program, Constitutional Accountability Center. He/Him. Posts are mine alone.
Scholarly writing: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=2051040
Scholarly writing: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=2051040
Reposted by David H. Gans
After emancipation, a Black Mississippi veteran reported that his white neighbors "outraged [Black Southerners] beyound humanity. Houses have been tourn down... & the old Negroes after they have worked there till they are 70 or 80 yers of age drive them off in the cold to frieze & starve to death."
Mississippi Black Soldier to the Freedmen's Bureau Commissioner, December 16, 1865
www.freedmen.umd.edu
November 21, 2025 at 2:17 PM
After emancipation, a Black Mississippi veteran reported that his white neighbors "outraged [Black Southerners] beyound humanity. Houses have been tourn down... & the old Negroes after they have worked there till they are 70 or 80 yers of age drive them off in the cold to frieze & starve to death."
Reposted by David H. Gans
In an opinion echoing our brief, Judge Jia Cobb held that President Trump's deployment of the National Guard to police DC is unlawful. Read our amicus brief: www.theusconstitution.org/litigation/d...
District of Columbia v. Trump | Constitutional Accountability Center
www.theusconstitution.org
November 20, 2025 at 9:55 PM
In an opinion echoing our brief, Judge Jia Cobb held that President Trump's deployment of the National Guard to police DC is unlawful. Read our amicus brief: www.theusconstitution.org/litigation/d...
Reposted by David H. Gans
#SCOTUS should not make significant substantive decisions on the shadow docket. Read more from @elizabethwydra.bsky.social in @cnn.com: www.cnn.com/2025/11/15/p...
Justice Jackson goes ‘her own way’ in Supreme Court’s SNAP fight | CNN Politics
As she oversaw President Donald Trump’s emergency Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, case this past week, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson once again proved she isn’t beholden to Supreme...
www.cnn.com
November 18, 2025 at 2:35 PM
#SCOTUS should not make significant substantive decisions on the shadow docket. Read more from @elizabethwydra.bsky.social in @cnn.com: www.cnn.com/2025/11/15/p...
The government refusing to enforce the law and turning a blind eye to racial discrimination is literally why the Fourteenth Amendment was added to the Constitution.
This whole piece is all the actual horribles on parade, and this one is just infuriating
November 17, 2025 at 10:08 PM
The government refusing to enforce the law and turning a blind eye to racial discrimination is literally why the Fourteenth Amendment was added to the Constitution.
Reposted by David H. Gans
Justice Jackson is "modeling the way that the emergency docket should be used." Read more from @elizabethwydra.bsky.social in @cnn.com: www.cnn.com/2025/11/15/p...
Justice Jackson goes ‘her own way’ in Supreme Court’s SNAP fight | CNN Politics
As she oversaw President Donald Trump’s emergency Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, case this past week, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson once again proved she isn’t beholden to Supreme...
www.cnn.com
November 17, 2025 at 2:16 PM
Justice Jackson is "modeling the way that the emergency docket should be used." Read more from @elizabethwydra.bsky.social in @cnn.com: www.cnn.com/2025/11/15/p...
Reposted by David H. Gans
After the police chief in Columbia, SC murdered a Black resident in cold blood, an anonymous Black woman wrote to the govt in May 1866: "Our friends in Congress are wasting time & breath, & all the bills they may pass, will do us no good, unless men are sent here that will see these laws enforced."
November 11, 2025 at 7:50 PM
After the police chief in Columbia, SC murdered a Black resident in cold blood, an anonymous Black woman wrote to the govt in May 1866: "Our friends in Congress are wasting time & breath, & all the bills they may pass, will do us no good, unless men are sent here that will see these laws enforced."
Reposted by David H. Gans
"A right without a remedy is pretty meaningless." Read more from @mbeckercohen.bsky.social about the important religious liberty case in which #SCOTUS is hearing oral argument today: www.deseret.com/politics/202...
Supreme Court will hear religious freedom argument for former inmate
The justices will hear oral arguments Monday in a case involving the violation of religious rights while in prison
www.deseret.com
November 10, 2025 at 4:25 PM
"A right without a remedy is pretty meaningless." Read more from @mbeckercohen.bsky.social about the important religious liberty case in which #SCOTUS is hearing oral argument today: www.deseret.com/politics/202...
Not to mention the fact that the Fourteenth Amendment was written with the problem of prejudice in mind. Read the Joint Committee on Reconstruction. Read the Black Conventions. They are all talking about prejudice.
josh blackman contends that the equal protection clause allows discrimination against unpopular groups out of pure animus. I’ll just observe that the Court did not need Justice Kennedy to reach the opposite conclusion generations ago.
![The amendment, we held, was "divorced from any factual context from which we could discern a relationship to legitimate state interests," and "its sheer breadth [was] so discontinuous with the reasons offered for it" that the initiative seemed "inexplicable by
anything but animus." Romer v. Evans, 517
U. S. 620, 632, 635 (1996). In 2018, when Trump v. Hawaii was decided, the
Court needed Justice Kennedy's vote. That is no longer the case. I faulted Justice Barrett for citing this aspect of Trump v. Hawaii in her Skrmetti concurrence. And I will fault the per curiam Court
for citing Trump v. Hawaii in the passport case. This mode of constitutional adjudication should be jettisoned. We are no longer living in Justice Kennedy's shadow. Political majorities can disadvantage politically unpopular groups, unless
there is some a constitutional prohibition.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:f4d76fjna5nxqsy2fu6cgmp3/bafkreidqb4kjwq3sp7nzayuzvj67owatmcep34nndblnh7dm6bk5cjw6ri@jpeg)
November 10, 2025 at 3:00 PM
Not to mention the fact that the Fourteenth Amendment was written with the problem of prejudice in mind. Read the Joint Committee on Reconstruction. Read the Black Conventions. They are all talking about prejudice.
Reposted by David H. Gans
In December 1865, 2500 Black Washingtonians petitioned Congress for the right to vote. "Experience teaches," they wrote, "that all reforms have their opponents. The same experience also teaches that apprehensions of evil arising from reforms founded in justice, are but seldom if ever realized."
Black Residents of Washington, D.C., to the U.S. Congress, December 1865
www.freedmen.umd.edu
November 5, 2025 at 2:45 PM
In December 1865, 2500 Black Washingtonians petitioned Congress for the right to vote. "Experience teaches," they wrote, "that all reforms have their opponents. The same experience also teaches that apprehensions of evil arising from reforms founded in justice, are but seldom if ever realized."
Reposted by David H. Gans
The tariffs case will be a test of whether #SCOTUS will actually be a check on the executive branch. Watch more from @elizabethwydra.bsky.social: www.cbc.ca/player/play/...
What's at stake for Trump with Supreme Court tariff case?
Elizabeth Wydra, a lawyer and president of the Constitutional Accountability Center, says the stakes for the Trump agenda are high with this case, while Yale Law School's Harold Hongju Koh says this c...
www.cbc.ca
November 6, 2025 at 2:31 PM
The tariffs case will be a test of whether #SCOTUS will actually be a check on the executive branch. Watch more from @elizabethwydra.bsky.social: www.cbc.ca/player/play/...
This is an incredible opportunity to spend a year at CAC developing progressive constitutional scholarship. Apply to come work with me and my brilliant colleagues.
Are you a scholar who would be excited to help CAC fulfill the progressive promise of the Constitution? If so, apply to be our Scholar-in-Residence! www.theusconstitution.org/scholar-in-r...
November 5, 2025 at 9:40 PM
This is an incredible opportunity to spend a year at CAC developing progressive constitutional scholarship. Apply to come work with me and my brilliant colleagues.
Reposted by David H. Gans
The Constitution gives Congress, not the President, the power to impose tariffs. Read our full reaction to today's oral argument at #SCOTUS: www.theusconstitution.org/news/cac-rel...
CAC Release: Supreme Court Considers Presidential Authority to Impose Tariffs Under Emergency Powers Law | Constitutional Accountability Center
WASHINGTON, DC – Following oral argument at the Supreme Court this morning in Learning Resources v. Trump and Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, consolidated cases in which the Court is considering whether P...
www.theusconstitution.org
November 5, 2025 at 7:09 PM
The Constitution gives Congress, not the President, the power to impose tariffs. Read our full reaction to today's oral argument at #SCOTUS: www.theusconstitution.org/news/cac-rel...
Reposted by David H. Gans
Join @elizabethwydra.bsky.social and @elpcenter.bsky.social tomorrow at 12:00 ET for a webinar on environmental issues at #SCOTUS! elpc.org/events/elpc-...
ELPC Thinks: The U.S. Supreme Court & the Environment | ELPC
Join us on November 5, 2025 - 11am CT
elpc.org
November 4, 2025 at 9:36 PM
Join @elizabethwydra.bsky.social and @elpcenter.bsky.social tomorrow at 12:00 ET for a webinar on environmental issues at #SCOTUS! elpc.org/events/elpc-...
Reposted by David H. Gans
“The stakes of this case are extremely high.” Before #SCOTUS hears oral argument tomorrow, learn more about the Trump tariffs case from @elizabethwydra.bsky.social: www.cbc.ca/news/world/t...
Trump's tariffs face 'most important case ever' in U.S. Supreme Court | CBC News
U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff regime faces its biggest legal test yet. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday on Trump's unprecedented use of an emergency powers law to slap broad...
www.cbc.ca
November 4, 2025 at 2:35 PM
“The stakes of this case are extremely high.” Before #SCOTUS hears oral argument tomorrow, learn more about the Trump tariffs case from @elizabethwydra.bsky.social: www.cbc.ca/news/world/t...
Reposted by David H. Gans
Trump's unlawful ban on transgender people serving in the military makes the same tired, untrue arguments opponents of integration in the military have always made. Before oral argument in the Ninth Circuit today, read our amicus brief: www.theusconstitution.org/litigation/s...
Shilling v. Trump | Constitutional Accountability Center
www.theusconstitution.org
October 20, 2025 at 1:11 PM
Trump's unlawful ban on transgender people serving in the military makes the same tired, untrue arguments opponents of integration in the military have always made. Before oral argument in the Ninth Circuit today, read our amicus brief: www.theusconstitution.org/litigation/s...
Reposted by David H. Gans
This from @rickhasen.bsky.social is exactly right: "The idea that the Court may use the Reconstruction Amendments to the Constitution to bar a remedy that helps minority voters is both ahistorical and repugnant."
electionlawblog.org?p=152536
electionlawblog.org?p=152536
Early Signs from Oral Argument in Callais Suggest that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is in Real Trouble #ELB
As I explained back in August, the Supreme Court reached and and in the most opaque way on a late Friday afternoon in mid-summer, the Court turned a ho-hum racial gerrymandering case where the court h...
electionlawblog.org
October 16, 2025 at 3:19 PM
This from @rickhasen.bsky.social is exactly right: "The idea that the Court may use the Reconstruction Amendments to the Constitution to bar a remedy that helps minority voters is both ahistorical and repugnant."
electionlawblog.org?p=152536
electionlawblog.org?p=152536
Reposted by David H. Gans
Yesterday, many #SCOTUS Justices turned a blind eye to the Fifteenth Amendment’s text and history. Read more from @kelseyreichmann.bsky.social: www.courthousenews.com/supreme-cour...
Supreme Court looks to neuter key protection for minority voters
A path for equal representation for Black voters in Louisiana appeared distant on Wednesday as the Supreme Court debated limiting solutions to racial discrimination in voting.
www.courthousenews.com
October 16, 2025 at 1:50 PM
Yesterday, many #SCOTUS Justices turned a blind eye to the Fifteenth Amendment’s text and history. Read more from @kelseyreichmann.bsky.social: www.courthousenews.com/supreme-cour...
Reposted by David H. Gans
As @mjsdc.bsky.social explained, citing our brief, "The 14th and 15th Amendments were ratified to establish an enduring multiracial democracy." But the freedom to vote is now under attack at #SCOTUS. Read more in @slate.com: slate.com/news-and-pol...
The Supreme Court Is Poised to Rule That It’s Racist to Remedy Racism
It's going to be an electoral bonanza for Republicans.
slate.com
October 16, 2025 at 2:55 PM
As @mjsdc.bsky.social explained, citing our brief, "The 14th and 15th Amendments were ratified to establish an enduring multiracial democracy." But the freedom to vote is now under attack at #SCOTUS. Read more in @slate.com: slate.com/news-and-pol...
Reposted by David H. Gans
Justice Sotomayor during today's argument:
“Race is always a part of these decisions, and my colleagues are trying to tease it out in this intellectual way that doesn’t deal with the fact that race is used to help people."
@courthousenews.bsky.social
www.courthousenews.com/supreme-cour...
“Race is always a part of these decisions, and my colleagues are trying to tease it out in this intellectual way that doesn’t deal with the fact that race is used to help people."
@courthousenews.bsky.social
www.courthousenews.com/supreme-cour...
Supreme Court looks to neuter key protection for minority voters
A path for equal representation for Black voters in Louisiana appeared distant on Wednesday as the Supreme Court debated limiting solutions to racial discrimination in voting.
www.courthousenews.com
October 15, 2025 at 9:08 PM
Justice Sotomayor during today's argument:
“Race is always a part of these decisions, and my colleagues are trying to tease it out in this intellectual way that doesn’t deal with the fact that race is used to help people."
@courthousenews.bsky.social
www.courthousenews.com/supreme-cour...
“Race is always a part of these decisions, and my colleagues are trying to tease it out in this intellectual way that doesn’t deal with the fact that race is used to help people."
@courthousenews.bsky.social
www.courthousenews.com/supreme-cour...
Reposted by David H. Gans
Congress has the power to enact laws enforcing the full scope of the 15th Amendment's protections for voting rights. Read more from @davidhgans.bsky.social in @medillschool.bsky.social: www.upi.com/Top_News/US/...
Supreme Court seems skeptical of key provisions in Voting Rights Act - UPI.com
The Supreme Court expressed skepticism of a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, setting the stage possible redistricting efforts across the country.
www.upi.com
October 16, 2025 at 1:48 PM
Congress has the power to enact laws enforcing the full scope of the 15th Amendment's protections for voting rights. Read more from @davidhgans.bsky.social in @medillschool.bsky.social: www.upi.com/Top_News/US/...
Reposted by David H. Gans
The Trump administration's arguments that the federalization of the National Guard can't be reviewed by the courts are just plain wrong. Read more about our amicus briefs setting the record straight from @stevevladeck.bsky.social: www.stevevladeck.com/p/bonus-183-...
Bonus 183: Martin v. Mott
The Trump administration claims Justice Story's 1827 ruling establishes the President's unreviewable power to decide when domestic use of the military is needed. It doesn't come close to saying that.
www.stevevladeck.com
October 16, 2025 at 12:40 PM
The Trump administration's arguments that the federalization of the National Guard can't be reviewed by the courts are just plain wrong. Read more about our amicus briefs setting the record straight from @stevevladeck.bsky.social: www.stevevladeck.com/p/bonus-183-...
Reposted by David H. Gans
Oral argument today in Case v. Montana added fuel to the concern that #SCOTUS uses history selectively. Read more from CAC's Brian Frazelle: www.theusconstitution.org/news/cac-rel...
CAC Release: Justices Appear Reluctant to Embrace Historical Protections Against Warrantless Emergency Entries by Police | Constitutional Accountability Center
WASHINGTON, DC – Following oral argument at the Supreme Court today in Case v. Montana, a case in which the Court is considering whether police may enter homes without warrants based on less than prob...
www.theusconstitution.org
October 15, 2025 at 7:16 PM
Oral argument today in Case v. Montana added fuel to the concern that #SCOTUS uses history selectively. Read more from CAC's Brian Frazelle: www.theusconstitution.org/news/cac-rel...
Reposted by David H. Gans
In this morning’s oral argument in Callais, #SCOTUS ’s conservative Justices turned a blind eye to a core part of the Fifteenth Amendment’s text and history. Read more from @davidhgans.bsky.social: www.theusconstitution.org/news/cac-rel...
CAC Release: The Continuing Assault on the Voting Rights Act Is Back at the Supreme Court | Constitutional Accountability Center
WASHINGTON, DC – Following oral argument at the Supreme Court this morning in Louisiana v. Callais on whether to reverse a district court decision that held unconstitutional the map the Louisiana legi...
www.theusconstitution.org
October 15, 2025 at 4:54 PM
In this morning’s oral argument in Callais, #SCOTUS ’s conservative Justices turned a blind eye to a core part of the Fifteenth Amendment’s text and history. Read more from @davidhgans.bsky.social: www.theusconstitution.org/news/cac-rel...
Reposted by David H. Gans
This entire argument by Louisiana and the conservatives questions are premised on an erasure of Congress’ enforcement power under the 14th & 15th Amendments.
Literally swinging for the fences to wipe out the premise for the legitimacy of Congress’ power to enact civil rights statutes.
Literally swinging for the fences to wipe out the premise for the legitimacy of Congress’ power to enact civil rights statutes.
October 15, 2025 at 3:43 PM
This entire argument by Louisiana and the conservatives questions are premised on an erasure of Congress’ enforcement power under the 14th & 15th Amendments.
Literally swinging for the fences to wipe out the premise for the legitimacy of Congress’ power to enact civil rights statutes.
Literally swinging for the fences to wipe out the premise for the legitimacy of Congress’ power to enact civil rights statutes.
Race-consciousness is baked into the Reconstruction Amendments. slate.com/news-and-pol...
October 15, 2025 at 4:08 PM
Race-consciousness is baked into the Reconstruction Amendments. slate.com/news-and-pol...