This is Bloomberg Law with June Grossel from Bloomberg Radio.
There being ninety five members presence, a quorum.
Is not present.
For the third time in a week, the Texas House of Representatives was unable to reach a quorum on Friday, as dozens of Democratic lawmakers continued their walkout to block an unusual mid decade redistricting in the state. It's designed to give Republicans five additional seats in the midterm elections. But despite arrest warrants, threats of prosecution and removal from office, the Democrats who left the state, like Representative Chris Turner, have shown no signs of buckling.
This is a nationwide fight, and we want everyone in the country to understand what the stakes are. So Greg Gabbat can make all the threats he want, We're going to continue to fight.
Largely unnoticed with the focus on Texas's voting maps is that the Supreme Court has indicated it will consider outlawing the use of race in drawing voting maps, setting up a showdown with implications for dozens of congressional districts with predominantly minority populations. My guest is elections law expert Rick Hassen, a professor at UCLA Law School. So, Rick, Texas already jerrymandered its maps in twenty twenty one, and that's still in the courts. Is what it's doing now, trying to
redistrict again to get five extra Republican seats. Is that constitutional?
Well, that remains to be seen. What's going to happen if Texas draws its districts again is they will almost certainly be challenged as violating either the Voting Rights Act or as violating the Constitution's prohibition on racial jerrymandering. And that'll get tied up in the courts, just as the current round of redistricting is going to get tied up
in the court. What the federal courts are not going to do is say it's unconstitutional as a artisan gerrymander, that is drawing the district lines to favor Republicans over Democrats. Because back in twenty nineteen, the Supreme Court decided a case called Rusho versus Common Cause, where the Court said that there are no standards to judge under the Constitution whether partisan jerrymandering goes too far.
Several Blue states have threatened retaliatory redistricting but two key states, New York and California, have commissions drawing up the maps, so would they be able to retaliate in time for the midterms.
Well, as far as the California case goes, which is one I'm most familiar with living here in California, the way that registrict could be done consistent with state law in the middle of the decade would have to be through a voter passed measure, because voters earlier passed to measure actually two ballot measures, establishing a non partisan or multi partisan commission, and then extending that commission's job to clue drawing congressional district To overturn a ballot measure in
California needs a new ballot measure. So what the legislature and the governor are talking about doing now is drafting a new registioning plan and putting it before voters in a special election. If it passes, the new registing plan would be in effect, and then that could be challenged
in court. But I think that again, because partisan jerry managering is not something that federal courts will police, there wouldn't be much of a federal basis unless you can make an argument again, like under the Voting Rights Actor, as a racial ferry manager, the districts somehow are illegal.
It's sort of startling to hear the Republicans in Texas and the presidents say, you know, we're doing this to get more seats.
Well. One reason why we've seen legislators in Texas and earlier in North Carolina say we are doing a partisan jerry manager, like proudly admitting it, it's because they're trying to deflect the argument, No, you're doing this on racial grounds. You're doing this to make it harder for black and Latino and Native American voters to elect their candidates of choice, which could raise a Voting Rights Act question or could raise a racial genreymndor in question under the Protection Close.
So if the Supreme Court says we're not going to police politics, but we are going to police race, then of course they want to say, if they're trying to defend it, we're just doing politics. And so the courts have to try and sort that out, which is a very difficult thing to do when in a place like Texas, minority voters are much more likely to vote for Democrats and white voters for Republicans.
As far as the Supreme Court policing race, the justices are ordering reargument of a case that was argued in March involving a Louisiana congressional map that created an additional majority black district. What are the implications?
So, what we're talking about here is a case called Louisiana versus Calais, and it was already argued last March, and it was one of these cases where the Louisiana legislature, thanks to an earlier lawsuit, drew a second congressional district where black voters could elect their case of choice to a congressional district. And the argument in the earlier case was you had to draw the second district to comply
with Section two of the Voting Right sect. Well, then a new group of voters came in and they said, hey, when you drew that second district, you made race the predominant factor in drawing those lines, and you don't have up a compelling reason to do so, and therefore you were committing a racial gerrymander in violation of the Fourteenth
Amendments Equal Protection Clause. Back in March, the Court heard argument in that case where the main issue was was race really the predominant factor, the main reason why the second lines were drawn the way they were, or was it really about politics. It's surely about politics, then it's not a racialtarymander. Again, I find this distinction nonsensical when you have so much overlap between race and party in
these Southern states. But it looked like yet another in a series of cases where the court's deciding whether race or party predominates. But then the end of the Supreme Court's term in June, rather than decide the case, the Court issued a somewhat unusual order saying we're going to hear reargument in the case, we're going to want additional briefing, but we're not telling you yet what we want the
briefing on. And then it was not until the after five pm August first Friday night news dump where the Court issued this kind of obscure, cryptic order that I read as really asking the question whether Section two of the Voting Right Act remains constitutional. And the way this comes into the case is if race did predominate, then the only way you can do that in drawing district lines is if you have a compelling reason to do so, and the compelling reason that has been considered is, well,
the Voting Rights Act made me do it. I had to do it to comply with Section two. Now the Court wants to hear, maybe it's unconstitutional to apply Section two and make race the predominant factor when you're drawing these district lines. So it really brings these two lines of cases, the Voting Rights AACK cases and the racial gerrymandering cases together in a way where the Voting Rights
Act may lose. And the Supreme Court appears poised to consider striking down the second big pillar of the Voting Rights Act after it had already struck down the first pillar in twenty thirteen in the Shelby County Versus Holder case.
Many of the Court's conservatives have been what you might call hostile to the Voting Rights Act, and some seem to think that the Voting Rights Act no longer provides a legitimate basis for map makers to intentionally create majority Black or majority Hispanic districts.
Well.
So, the most recent piece of evidence we have on what the Court thinks about the Voting Rights Acts, aside from this order that came out in the Louisiana case, is a case that was decided a few years ago out of Alabama involving very similar facts of the Voting Rights Act requiring the drawing of an additional black majority district, and in this case Alan versus Milligan, the Supreme Court, on a five to four vote upheld the requirement that
these districts be drawn. The two conservatives who were in the majority already with the three liberals of the Court, were Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Cavanaugh, making it a five to four decision with Justices Gorsich, Barrett, Alito, and Thomas is descent. But Justice Cavanaugh, in the majority, wrote separately to say, I'm intrigued by the argument that maybe Section two is no longer constitutional because of the passage
of time and the changes in political conditions. This isn't the case to decide that, but there may come a case down the line where we need to address that, and I think now this Louisiana case is that case. So Kavanaugh could prove to be the fifth vote, and Roberts, who has shown some hostility in voting rights that cases in the past, including the Shelby County case I mentioned, could be a sixth vote. If the Court divides along party lines, along ideological lines, the voter Knight tax Section
two could either be whittled down or killed off. And so what started off as a pretty small, not blockbuster case out of Louisiana could turn out to be the most important voting rights case of this decade.
I mean that was just a few years ago. Why do you think the Court has reached this sort of monumental moment or decision now?
Well, you know, John Roberts likes to move slowly. Let's just take the killing off of Section five of the Voting Rice Act, which happened in Shelby County. That was the provision that said, the states with a history of racial discrimination and voting need to get approval before they make their voting changes to make sure that minority voters would not be made worse off. Congress renewed section five
in two thousand and six. The Supreme Court first took up the issue of overturning Section five in two thousand and nine in a case called Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number one versus Holder, And in that case, the Court punts it on the question, but strongly signals that in a future case, it could strike down Section five. It was not until twenty thirteen, right, so you're talking about seven years after Congress acts that Roberts was finally
ready to pull trigger. And so Roberts moves slowly, he whittles things away. And again, the Court in the Louisiana case could whittle it the way at the Voting Rights Act, make it essentially toothless without striking it down directly. But I think what's coming is not likely to be good for the Voting Rights Act.
So you think they might strike it down completely.
They might strike it down completely, or they might say it's unconstitutionalized applied in Louisiana, and then it will take time to figure out, well, what does that mean? How
does it apply in other cases? That would be much more of a John Roberts faux minimalist move, looking like they're moving slowly, but in fact, you know, I was telling my editor of the piece that I wrote Slate about this that you know, the media loves to cover the car crash, the Texas registersting, you know, legislators getting on planes, and that's great visuals, great story. But the Supreme Court does slow poisoning, and so it's very hard
to cover. Right, So here's an order that's issued, you know, Friday after five pm in August. I mean, who cover it on the weekend about a case that they're going to hear arguments about probably sometime in December or maybe in January, and then the issue in opinion in June. That will be very hard to understand. So the Court is still doing a lot of damage, but it does it in a way that is much harder to cover and much harder for the public to grasp.
But it does look like this case could end up being one of the blockbusters of the next Supreme Court term. Thanks so much for joining me. Rick, that's Professor Rick Hassen of UCLA Law School. I'm June Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg. Los Angeles has been in a battle
with the Trump administration over its aggressive immigration enforcement. Mayor Karen Bass has repeatedly called out ICE, saying it's masked agents in unmarked cars, we're grabbing suspected undocumented migrants off the streets in what looked like kidnappings.
We know that Los Angeles is the test case, and we will stand strong, and we do so because the people snatched off city streets and chased through parking lots. Are our coworkers, our neighbors, are family members, and they are Angelinos.
In a fast moving case, a federal judge found that there was quote a mountain of evidence that ICE agents tactics were violating the Constitution. She issued an order barring agents in LA from stopping and questioning people on the basis of race or ethnicity, they're speaking Spanish or English with an accent, the type of work they do, or
their presence at a particular location. Three weeks later, the non Circuit Court of Appeals turned down a Trump administration appeal and left the judges ban almost completely in place, and six days later, on Thursday of this week, the administration asked the Supreme Court to lift the ban. Joining me is immigration attorney Leon Fresco, a partner at hond and he was the head of the Office of Immigration
Litigation in the Obama administration. Leon explained what the district judge ordered in the LA case well.
The original case involved the challenge to something that was called Operation at Large, which was a federal immigration enforcement initiative in Los Angeles. There were these ICE contact teams targeting locations such as car washes and home depots and
other places believed to employ undocumented workers. And there was a lawsuit claiming that these roving patrols detained individuals without reasonable suspicion, violating the Fourth Amendment, and the District courd at Health on July eleventh that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed improving unconstitutional seizures. So the judge restricted federal agents from conducting these seiss raids and stops without a
reasonable suspicion. So what that means is that instead of walking around and trying to say this person looks like somebody that's not here legally, which has a sort of dubious application that people get worried about because they say, well,
how are you making those decisions? What they're trying to do is convert ice back into a list sort of agency where it says, we know today we're going to go after person one, person two, person three, person four, person five, And then they go and they look for these people because they know they're here undocumented, rather than just grabbing people in the middle of the street. And
so that's really the end goal of this lawsuit. And so yes, there are times where they will still be able to pick people up because they'll have a reasonable suspicion for another reason other than they're on a list. But mostly this limits ice to the sort of list based enforcement.
And what was the government's argument in defense of these tactics At the Ninth.
Circuit They said two things. They said, first of all, that the organizational plaintiffs and the case didn't even have standing to bring the case. And they also said that in general, they weren't violating the Fourth Amendment because they have the ability and then the right to enforce immigration law. They had the right to question anybody about their lawful presence in the United States at any time. That's what
the statue permits them to do. The Ninth Circuit said, first that the organizational planets had standing because they showed that these kind of roving patrols forced them to divert their resources instead of carrying out other missions of supporting immigrants rights in the community. They had to move to divert the resources into dealing with these enforcement actions. So that was the standing issue, and they said there was standing.
But they also said that with regard to these claims about reasonable suspicion and Fourth Amendment violations caused by ICE officers roving around looking for people. They said that, yes, that does also seem to have a likelihood of success enough that they would not say the district court's ruling.
It was a three zero decision, and so the court basically allowed almost all of the ruling to take place, except there was one line in the injunction that prevented ICE from even asking individuals about their immigration status absent reasonable suspicion. That was, they they were allowed to still do that. That was considered overbroad and problematic in terms of enforcement and constitutional interpretation, but the rest of the injunction was allowed to continue.
So the judge ruled that ICE can't attain people based on their apparent race or ethnicity, So speaking Spanish or accented English, or being at locations such as home depot parking lots, what does constitute reasonable suspicion?
Then?
The main thing that people who file this lawsuit basically are trying to limit ICE is to say you have to have some sort of knowledge of the person you're looking for and of their immigration status before you go
looking for those individuals. So, for instance, if you're at an immigration court, then you'll know if somebody has that status or not, so then you can pick them up after or if again, you're working off a list of people who have lost their status that you know from the Department of Homeland Security databases, and you're going to pick up those people at their work or at their home, you then have reasonable suspicion and you can do that.
And what the decision also allows is so, for instance, let's say there's twenty undocumented people at a work site that they know about because they have it in their database, then they can ask, Okay, well, what about the other people at this work site? I want to see the paperwork for them, because then there's a reasonable suspicion because you've already established that there's twenty undocumented people at that
work site. Employer hires undocumented people. But in terms of just randomly generating leads by going to places and making these sort of facial decisions how this person looks or how they present themselves, et cetera. That's the kind of thing that is enjoyed under this injunction.
How much of a hindrance is this order to ice, Well.
It depends if you say, how much of a hindrance is it to their deterrent operations as opposed to their
removal operations. It's not really a turrent at all to their removal operations in the sense of ICE has pretty sophisticated databases where it knows where most of the undocumented people in this country are and where they live, and ICE, if they want to, can go and pick up as many people as it has detention space to detain, and so there's never a shortage of people that ICE can pick up on any given day to place and detention
given the limited detention space it has. But what it does limit is ICE's ability to engage in the kind of patrols that are designed to create a deterrent effect, meaning people are nervous to remain here in the United States because they think, oh, if I take a city bus, or if I just go shopping, or if I'm taking my child to school, I could be apprehended at any moment. The design of those operations isn't to meet the quota,
so to speak. It's to instead create a deterrent effect that tells people if you stay here, you never know what day is going to be the day you're apprehended, so you should just return home and so that's where it's limiting the operation is in that deterrent effect.
The government is asking the Supreme Court to lift the band, saying that the judge overstepped her authority.
The Government's been quite aggressive in appealing to the Supreme Court, and they've been getting better results in the Supreme Court with saying some of these injunctions. And I could foresee the Supreme Court lifting or saying parts of the injunction that limit ICE's hands. I mean, I don't see them potentially taking away the whole injunction, but I could see them giving ICE a little bit more wiggle room here.
Leon in another lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of ICE agents in Los Angeles impersonating police officers or using other ruses in order to enter a home or convince someone to come outside to make an arrest, ICE has reached a court approved settlement and agreed not to use those subterfuges anymore. I mean, what were they doing to cause this lawsuit to be filed.
This is sort of a larger issue, which is that as people in the immigration rights movement have become very very successful in communicating messages of know you're right, a lot of people in the immigration community have understood that ICE can be refused entry into a home unless they have a judicial warrant. So if they have an administrative warrant, or if they just say can you let me in, you're totally within your right to say no, I don't want to let you in, and I can't go in.
If I goes in, then whatever operation they did is invalid under the law once it eventually gets to a court. So so a lot of individuals know this now. So I has had to operate, and this has been happening for many years. This is not a recent thing. So I has had to operate where they tried to find ways around these limitations. So they try to get people
to come outside. They say, hey, your car is broken, or hey I need some directions, can you come outside or whatever, and then once they're outside then they can conduct their legal action, or they say they're police, can they be let inside? And if people think they're police but not ICE, then they let them inside. And so the idea of this lawsuit was to say ICE has to not do those tactics. They have to say that their ICE, both in their clothing and in their verbiage.
And so that when they are engaging in those operations now under this settlement, then the individuals will know this is ICE. ICE is strength enter the home. I can refuse it unless they have a judicial warrant.
Yeah, so they have to have a warrant that's signed by a judge. Are those hard to get?
It's not that they're hard to get, but it's time consuming because judges only have so many things they can do on a given day. And if ICE is trying to get one of those warrants, they have to set up the paperwork that says, here's this person, here's how we know they entered illegally, or they entered legally but they've overstayed their status. And also they have to get the Department of Justice lawyer involved, and then you wait for the judge they issue the warrant, and then the
judge issues the warrant. So all of this takes time, and it's time that ICE doesn't want to be spending when it can just write up an administrative warrant on their work processing documents.
Lee on one more question about agents. Attire Mayor Karen Bess is one of many who've complained about ICE agents being masked when they're making these arrests.
The agents wear masks because they don't want people coming to their homes. Now, in this social media era, you could say, oh, that's Ice agent Fred Smith who lives on one one one Smith Lane, and so go to their house and yell at them. Whether you agree with Immigration enforcement or not, the people at I don't deserve to have their houses raided by angry people at the community. I think most people agree there has to be some identification that's done and shown that says I'm an ICE agent.
So maybe the person wears a mask, but during the immediate apprehension says here's my badge and I'm an ICE agent. But I think the current way where someone just is completely unidentified, wearing a mask and putting someone in a van, I think if that continues, you will see courts getting involved, and I think you'll even see Congress getting involved, because those are not the kind of images that one typically associate with normal law enforcement.
Thanks Leon, as always, that's Leon Fresco of Holland and Knight. The Trump administration has been mounting an unprecedented campaign to reign in independent agencies and increase executive authority. To that end, President Trump has fired more than a dozen leaders of independent agencies without cause. What stands out in the long list is Trump firing the two Democratic members of the
Federal Trade Commission. Rebecca Kelly Slaughter is fighting her dismissal in court, arguing that it was illegal.
Only one time in history has a president attempted to remove an FTC commissioner over a policy disagreement. It was ninety years ago President Roosevelt tried to remove Commissioner Humphrey, and in the face of the clear language of the statute, the Supreme Court said that was illegal. The statute is constitutional and that FTC commissioners and other commissioners of multi member, bipartisan agencies cannot be simply removed because the president doesn't agree with them.
But the Justice Department has said it's going to ask the Supreme Court to reverse that ninety year old president called Humphrey's executor. Legal experts say they'll be broad ramifications if the president can fire FTC commissioners at will and the agency is no longer independent. My guest is William Kavasik, former FDC chair and a professor at the George Mason University School of Law Bill tell us about the president firing Slaughter.
Yeah, the President decided that he has the authority to simply fire members of the FTC without any cause, and this contradicts a nineteen thirty five Supreme Court decision called Humphrey's Executor that said that FTC commissioners can be removed only for good cause. The President clearly wanted to remove the two Democrats from the FTC, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and
Alvaro Beadoya, and he simply dismissed them. So he decided not just for the FTC, but I think as part of a program for government generally, decided to assert executive authority to control more directly who can serve on these regulatory agencies.
Slaughter won her first battle in court. A federal judge reinstated her last month, although that reinstatement has been put on hold pending an appeals court decision explain the judge's reasons for reinstating her now.
She concluded that the president's authority is defined by the nineteen thirty five Supreme Court decision, and the nineteen thirty five Supreme Court decision said that the president can remove federal Trade commissioners only for good cost, that the limitation on removal was established in the FTC Statute adopted in nineteen fourteen, and that the Supreme Court's interpretation of that statute limited the circumstances in which the President could remove
FPC commissioners. Judge Ali Khan and the District Court opinion concluded that those authorities are controlling, that the statute itself makes clear the conditions enrich removal can take place, and the Supreme Court upheld the limitation on executive power. She said, the President contradicted that approach, and until the Supreme Court says otherwise about it's nineteen thirty five decision, that decision is binding on me and commissioners, Slaughter is entitled to be reinstated.
It seems like Humphrey's executor is in jeopardy at the Supreme Court. In July, the Court allowed the Trump administration to remove three democratic members of the Consumer Product's Safety Commission that were fired by Trump and then reinstated by a federal judge. And in May, the Court rule that the democratic members of the NLRB and Merit Systems Protection Board could return to their jobs because the government was likely to be able to show that the agencies exercised
considerable independent power. So does it seem like the Supreme Court is ready to overturn Humphrey's executor.
As you say, June, the Court's given a number of hints that it is ready to revisit Humphrey's Executor and to overturn it. The Court has cautioned that every turn in the road, that we're not making a final decision on the merit, that that fuller evaluation of the merit of Humphrey and its vitality today remains to take place.
So they've said we're not deciding now, But the way in which they've written the decisions that you referred to, even these preliminary rulings where they're not offering a final view about the legitimacy of the challenges at issue, have given hints that at least three members of the Court think that Humphreys must be overturned. Maybe two more members of the Court are wavering in their support of Humphreys.
I suppose if you were making a wager now about whether Humphreys will live through the end of twenty twenty six, I suppose the way to bet would be to say no that it won't. I don't think the possibilities for
Humphrey's executors to survive have been extinguished. There's still possibilities that the Court might reflect on the basis for the creation of the limit on removal, might think more completely about existing controls that the President already has over administrative agency discretion, to realize that the choice here is not between having no control and absolute control over appointments and removal.
The president already has a number of tools at the president's disposal to influence the way in which the Federal Trade Commission and similar agencies operate. The real issue here is whether that control must be absolute, and the Court might reflect on that in a more elaborate way and
come to a different conclusion. But that's a long way of saying that Humphrey's Executor appears to be in peril, and that when the Court does come at some point, perhaps in twenty six, to confront the continuing vitality of Humphrey's executive, it will probably say that we've decided to change our minds.
Let's talk about what would happen the changes if the FDC loses the independence it now has. It's been said that one casualty would be the in house adjudication system.
I think that's right, Jo, and I think the administrative in house adjudication system ultimately topples For this reason. I think crucial to the legitimacy of any judicial dispute resolution tribunal is some degree of autonomy. This is where the autonomy is most important for legitimacy. Once it becomes apparent that the president can simply fire Federal Trade commissioners because he doesn't like their work, doesn't like their philosophy, I
think that system unravels. You can't have courts where the judges are aware that a decision or a specific approach taken in a given case could cause their dismissal, and the TC commissioners serve as adjudicators when the FTC uses that internal mechanism. So I think a domino that falls if Humphrey's executor is overturned is the perceived legitimacy and functioning of the administrative adjudication system that disappears.
And even now we're seeing motions to dismiss FTC cases eleging that the FTC structure is unconstitutional because of this weight over Humphreys.
I think the deeper threat to the FTC's effectiveness is that when it goes to court, it has always had the capacity to tell the court the positions we are taking are the result of our best professional judgment, and as an expert body, we are asking for respect for our judgments because they're based on our accumulated experience, our research in the field of competition and consumer protection, and the expertise that individual members of the Commission bring to
the analysis of specific cases. When you put all of those together, you have a key element of professional judgment that might not be always correct, but it deserves respect because it is more likely to be correct than the judgment of individual federal judges, the parties, and the cases. That is that that judgment is worthy of respect. It doesn't mean that the FDC is always going to prevail
in court. The moment that courts perceive that you are using your authority not because of your best professional judgment, but because you are simply an extension of the political process and you are serving the specific interests or whims and the chief executive, that element of professional judgment and respect disappear. They're gone. So I think a consequence imphmphrase dies is that the Commission loses the ability to stand
before the courts and say you can trust us. And in so many ways, that's what government agency ask court is trust us because we are the professionals. We're using professional judgment, and that's why you can have confidence in the judgments we're making. And I think it means that simply stated, you have a harder time winning your cases when you go to court.
And build beyond that, Can you give us the broader reasons why you think the FTC's independence is critical.
The broader, high level reason is that the FDC exercise is significant economic policy making functions and has broad regulatory responsibilities. I think in any economy, and certainly in our market economy, the business community, the citizens as a whole have to have confidence that that authority is being used in a
principled way. And then when it's used, it reflects truly the exercise of high quality professional judgment from an agency that has special expertise, broad experience, and then when it's making those judgments, it's making it on the basis of sound policy analysis. That assumption and confidence vanishes if the head of State can simply designate outcomes or point the agency in a specific direction. I mean it's the same concern we have about the Federal Reserve Board and monetary policy.
Notice how the markets lose their minds when it appears as though the Fed might lose that insulation from direct political influence over the monetary system. I can't quite assert that the FTC occupies the same position in the minds of business leaders and others about its role in the economy, but I think it is nonetheless an important pillar of
the regulatory mechanism in the US. If you take away some measure of autonomy, especially in the decision to prosecute, the decision to impose sanctions, the decision to do things that in a broad sense hurt, you take away that presumption of good professional judgment and autonomy with respect to those functions, I think it undermines confidence in the regulatory process itself, and at a higher level, for our entire
political economy and our stature in the world. For the last thirty plus years, we have been telling the world that these key economic regulatory functions must have some element of protection with respect to these fundamental decisions about prosecuting cases, initiating rules, that there has to be an accountability regime.
But you can't have political leadership telling the agency to punish enemies, reward friends, and otherwise simply be party to a negotiation between top political leadership and individual business interests. So once you do that, confidence in the entire system of government tends to erode. And if the hunphrees executive protections against removal except for good cause disappear, that's a step in the direction of diminishing that confidence and legitimacy for the regulatory process.
So right now, Slaughter's case is before the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit on the Trump administration's appeal, So we'll have to see if the Circuit ends up affirming Judge Ali Kahan's decision or not. So it's a pleasure to have you on Bill, Thanks so much, and that's it for this edition of The Bloomberg Law Show. Remember you can always get the latest legal news on
our Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at www dot Bloomberg dot com, slash podcast Slash Law, And remember to tune into The Bloomberg Law Show every weeknight at ten pm Wall Street time. I'm Junie Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg