David H. Gans

Trump's Assault on D.C. Is a Grave Threat to Democracy | Opinion President Donald Trump's actions have nothing to do with anything happening in Washington, D.C. Trump is motivated instead to advance his authoritarian agenda and to distract from his political weakne...

Trump's authoritarian actions in D.C. are also an attack on our democracy. Read more from @lisa-pubcitizen.bsky.social and Rob Weissman:
www.newsweek.com/trumps-assau...

Grant v. Knapp | Constitutional Accountability Center

In the same way that laws may not limit mail-in voting to just men or just white people, they may not limit no-excuse mail-in voting to just voters 65 and older. Read our brief in the Fourth Circuit: www.theusconstitution.org/litigation/g...

Opinion | Donald Trump and John Roberts Have a Lot in Common

new piece from on the 60th anniversary of the voting rights act, and what the law has meant for american democracy www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/o...

The Supreme Court Just Signaled Something Deeply Disturbing About the Next Term A court fundamentally hostile to the rights of voters places the court increasingly at odds with democracy itself.

My New One at @slate.com on the Supreme Court Potentially Killing the Remaining Pillar of the Voting Rights Act: “The Supreme Court Just Signaled Something Deeply Disturbing About the Next Term” slate.com/news-and-pol...

Sent you one!

I’d be very interested and happy to pick them up for you.

Today is a good reminder that during Reconstruction, white southerners penalized freedpersons for being unemployed, unhoused, and destitute—criminalizing access to food, legalizing Black children’s abudction, and restricting Black folks’ freedom of movement— eventually bringing about the 14th Amend.

Looking forward to reading.

A Court Without the Range The Reconstruction Court 2.0

My new essay is up! The SCOTUS conservative majority not only won’t, but can’t engage in the kind of decision-making we have the right to expect.

open.substack.com/pub/sherrily...

SCOTUS limits nationwide injunctions with 'extremely significant' birthright decision | Fox News Video Constitutional Accountability Center President Elizabeth Wydra and constitutional attorney Mark Smith weigh in on how the Supreme Court limiting nationwide injunctions on federal judges will impact th...

Our constitutional rights don’t depend on what state we live in. Watch more from @elizabethwydra.bsky.social: www.foxnews.com/video/637499...

The test in Bivens cases remains, "Are you Bivens?"

As someone who has been on the business end of nationwide injunctions that I thought were improper, I find the question of what rules we should adopt for them to be genuinely hard. But yesterday's decision deserves massive criticism, for at least two reasons. (Thread.)

Historian of Reconstruction here the Supreme Court is behaving like its predecessor in the late 19th century when it gutted the Reconstruction constitution and federal civil rights laws. It refused to implement the 14th amendment against Trump and now he has a blank check to upend our constitution.

Prof. @sifill.bsky.social, Founder of the 14th Amendment Center for Law & Democracy, shares her statement on the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. Casa. You can read the full SCOTUS decision here: www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...

Those who organized Colored Conventions rallied for democracy and citizenship rights as state and national forces sought to deny them protections clearly outlined in the constitution. They were often forcefully dissenting voices.

We will soon make public a new trove of Reconstruction conventions.

A few more words on this. First, the tremendous vision and work of MacArthur Fellow Gabrielle Foreman, her colleague Jim Casey, and the host of folks working with them @ccp-org.bsky.social has made possible the wide use of the invaluable Colored Conventions materials. 1/ coloredconventions.org

KBJ's Medina dissent highlights the twin prongs of the pro-democracy vision she's been articulating since joining SCOTUS: generally deferring to Congress's will and specifically reading Reconstruction-era civil rights laws as robustly as their framers intended: www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...

1 E.g., Colored People’s Convention of the State of South Carolina (1865, Charleston, SC), Colored Conventions Project Digital Records (last visited June 15, 2025), https://omeka.coloredconventions.org/items/ show/570 (“ ‘Right’ is defined to be the just claim, ownership, or lawful title which a person has to anything”).

There's something really interesting going on here methodologically in Justice Jackson's Medina v. Planned Parenthood dissent. You can see it in one footnote.

In short, Jackson is emphasizing that Black Americans are part of the original "public" about which "originalists" should be concerned.

Powerful words from Justice Jackson. Importantly, in laying out the text and history of Section 1983 and how the Court betrays it, she draws on the Black Conventions held in the South, shining a light on the rich history of Black activism of the Reconstruction-era that the Court ignores.

CAC Release: Supreme Court’s Conservative Supermajority Allows Tennessee to Flout Constitution’s Equal Protection Guarantee | Constitutional Accountability Center WASHINGTON, DC – Following today’s decision at the Supreme Court in United States v. Skrmetti, a case in which the Supreme Court considered whether Tennessee’s ban on providing gender-affirming medica...

Today’s #SCOTUS decision is a stunning betrayal of the Fourteenth Amendment’s promise that all persons, including transgender persons, are entitled to equal protection of the law. Read more from CAC's @davidhgans.bsky.social and Praveen Fernandes: www.theusconstitution.org/news/cac-rel...

YouTube video by Bloomberg Television Should Trump Have Sent Troops to Los Angeles?

"President Trump is using the military in unprecedented and frankly unlawful ways to further his political agenda." Watch @elizabethwydra.bsky.social on @bloomberg.com: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCPB...

CAC Release: Deploying the Military Against Americans is an Anti-Democratic Provocation | Constitutional Accountability Center WASHINGTON, DC – Following reports that President Trump has deployed active-duty Marines and the National Guard to American streets, Constitutional Accountability Center (CAC) President Elizabeth Wydr...

"Deploying the military against Americans in their own communities is a dangerous, anti-democratic provocation." Read more from @elizabethwydra.bsky.social: www.theusconstitution.org/news/cac-rel...

Accepting applications: Douglass T. Kendall Fellowship 2026-2027. Apply to join the CAC team today!

CAC is looking for our next Kendall Fellow to start Fall of 2026 to support our work to advance the progressive promise of the Constitution. Learn more about this internally funded fellowship for recent law school graduates: www.theusconstitution.org/douglas-t-ke...

CAC Release: At Ninth Circuit Oral Argument, Trump Administration Attempts to Advance Radical Alteration to the Constitution’s Birthright Citizenship Guarantee | Constitutional Accountability Center WASHINGTON, DC – Following oral argument at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals today in State of Washington v. Trump, a case in which the court is considering whether the Trump Administration’s execut...

Under the plain meaning of the 14th Amendment, virtually all children born in the United States are citizens at birth. Read the full reaction to today's 9th Circuit oral argument on Trump’s birthright citizenship EO from CAC's @ajessurun.bsky.social and @eeksmita.bsky.social:

Textual Healing: Progressive Lawyering and Text-and-History Approaches | Constitutional Accountability Center What does it mean to be a progressive text-and-history legal organization? How can text and history be used to advance progressive interests? What is the proper use of history to illuminate constituti...

Calling all public interest summer interns & clerks: join @myconstitution.bsky.social on Tu 6/17 @ 12:30 ET for a virtual training on "Textual Healing: Progressive Lawyering and Text & History Approaches." Register at the link:

www.theusconstitution.org/events/textu...

Have the Trump administration's actions put the US into a constitutional crisis? - Daily Bruin Debates on the extent of government authority and the power of the United States Constitution have become commonplace in recent months. The term “constitutional crisis” is used to describe a situation...

“We’re in a period of conflict and struggle over our constitutional system, and the question is not only for lawyers and for courts, but for everyone." Read more from @davidhgans.bsky.social: dailybruin.com/2025/05/01/h...

Doe v. Trump and New Jersey v. Trump | Constitutional Accountability Center

CAC has filed an amicus brief at the First Circuit on behalf of an ideologically diverse group of leading legal scholars in the cases challenging President Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order: www.theusconstitution.org/litigation/d...

I’ve told the story many times. Now @katemasur.bsky.social and I have filed it in federal court: Free Black Americans were first to recognize BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP in the US. When denied it, they fought to secure it. They show us what the 14th Amendment meant and what it meant to live without it.

We devote musicals, miniseries, and documentaries to the founders of our first republic and not to those of our second, who saw this country with clear eyes.

We need fewer encomiums for Jefferson, Madison, and Lafayette. More respect for Sumner, Stevens, Bingham and Douglass (Frederick).

THREAD:
So what did I hear at the oral argument in the birthright citizenship case this morning? What was clear from when the cert petition was filed: Trump & his lawyers tried to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Trying to squeeze a win out of his serial losses in federal district courts in….1/