The dissents

The primary dissent was written by Chief Justice Roberts, and joined in part by the three Democratic appointees, Jackson, Kagan, and Sotomayor. It is a grand total of one paragraph, and can be distilled down to a single sentence: “If the District Court had jurisdiction to vacate the directives, it also had jurisdiction to vacate the ‘Resulting Grant Terminations.’”

Jackson, however, chose to write a separate and far more detailed argument against the decision, mostly focusing on the fact that it’s not simply a matter of abstract law; it has real-world consequences.

She notes that existing law prevents plaintiffs from suing in the Court of Federal Claims while the facts are under dispute in other courts (something acknowledged by Barrett). That would mean that, as here, any plaintiffs would have to have the policy declared illegal first in the District Court, and only after that was fully resolved could they turn to the Federal Claims Court to try to restore their grants. That’s a process that could take years. In the mean time, the scientists would be out of funding, with dire consequences.

Yearslong studies will lose validity. Animal subjects will be euthanized. Life-saving medication trials will be abandoned. Countless researchers will lose their jobs. And community health clinics will close.

Jackson also had little interest in hearing that the government would be harmed by paying out the grants in the meant time. “For the Government, the incremental expenditure of money is at stake,” she wrote. “For the plaintiffs and the public, scientific progress itself hangs in the balance along with the lives that progress saves.”

With this decision, of course, it no longer hangs in the balance. There’s a possibility that the District Court’s ruling that the government’s policy was arbitrary and capricious will ultimately prevail; it’s not clear, because Barrett says she hasn’t even seen the government make arguments there, and Roberts only wrote regarding the venue issues. In the mean time, even with the policy stayed, it’s unlikely that anyone will focus grant proposals on the disfavored subjects, given that the policy might be reinstated at any moment.

And even if that ruling is upheld, it will likely take years to get there, and only then could a separate case be started to restore the funding. Any labs that had been using those grants will have long since moved on, and the people working on those projects scattered.

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On Friday, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) issued a 6-3 decision on party lines stripping lower courts of the power to issue nationwide injunctions. But some opponents of President Donald Trump’s administration view the decision as an opportunity to exploit what may be a significant loophole.

The majority opinion — which was authored by Trump-appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett — ruled that lower courts could not unilaterally prevent Trump’s executive order overturning birthright citizenship for the American-born children of undocumented immigrants. Trump celebrated the decision in a Friday press conference, praising Barrett in particular. While the Court didn’t decide on the issue of citizenship guaranteed in the first sentence of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution itself, Barrett’s opinion stripped federal district and circuit courts of the power to block executive orders from going into effect nationwide.

According to a recent analysis by Politico’s Kyle Cheney, Hassan Ali Kanu and Erica Orden, the ruling may have created a backdoor for “complete relief” in a unique way — lawsuits filed by a collective of state attorneys general.

READ MORE: ‘Risking our way of life to give money to the rich’: Red state lawmakers slam Trump’s bill

“Barrett wrote in the majority opinion that district judges are empowered to provide ‘complete relief’ to litigants who are improperly harmed by government policies,” Cheney, Kanu and Orden wrote. “And when states sue the federal government, it’s possible, legal experts say, that ‘complete relief’ requires a sweeping judicial remedy.”

University of Virginia law professor Amanda Frost told Politico that she believes Friday’s ruling will be particularly difficult to implement in practice, as it will create two separate classes of people born in the United States. She added that the decision leaves the question open as to whether the Court will be able to differentiate between “universal” or “nationwide” relief for successful plaintiffs who challenge Trump’s executive orders, and the “complete relief” that state attorneys general could obtain with a lawsuit to protect residents of their respective states.

According to a Friday NOTUS report, Democratic state attorneys general became more powerful as a result of the conservative majority’s opinion given their newfound ability to combine forces and file lawsuits on behalf of millions of Americans. This could mean that collective lawsuits — like one filed earlier this week by 21 attorneys general (20 states plus Washington D.C.) challenging the Trump administration’s slashing of federal grant funding — become more common in the years ahead.

“State attorneys general are in a better position to challenge unlawful executive orders than the everyday individual person,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who is a former state attorney general himself, told NOTUS. “The importance of the state attorneys general in stopping unconstitutional actions by the president is tremendously heightened by this president’s tendency to break the law.”

READ MORE: ‘We cannot support’: 17 GOP governors ask Congress to ‘strip this provision’ from megabill

Click here to read Politico’s full analysis, and click here to read NOTUS’ article in full.

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Don’t be “technology-blind,” broadband group says

The Benton Institute for Broadband & Society criticized what it called “Trump’s BEAD meddling,” saying it would “leave millions of Americans with broadband that is slower, less reliable, and more expensive.” The shift to a “technology-neutral” approach should not be “technology-blind,” the advocacy group said.

“Fiber broadband is widely understood to be better than other Internet options—like Starlink’s satellites—because it delivers significantly faster speeds, is more reliable due to its resistance to interference (from weather, foliage, terrain, etc), has higher bandwidth capacity, and offers symmetrical upload and download speeds, making it ideal for activities like telehealth, online learning, streaming, and gaming that require consistent high performance,” the group said.

It’s ultimately up to individual states to distribute funds to ISPs after getting their allocations from the US government, though the states have to follow rules issued by federal officials. No one knows exactly how much each Internet provider will receive, but a Wall Street Journal report this week said the new rules could help Starlink get nearly half of the available funding.

“Under the BEAD program’s original rules, Starlink was expected to get up to $4.1 billion, said people familiar with the matter. With Lutnick’s overhaul, Starlink, a unit of Musk’s SpaceX, could receive $10 billion to $20 billion, they said,” according to the WSJ report.

The end of BEAD’s fiber preference would also help cable and fixed wireless providers access grant funding. Lobby groups for those industries have been calling for rule changes to help their members obtain grants.

While the Commerce Department is moving ahead with BEAD changes on its own, Republicans are also proposing a rewrite of the law. House Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) yesterday announced legislation that his office said would eliminate “burdensome conditions imposed by the Biden-Harris Administration, including those related to labor, climate change, and rate regulation, that made deployment more expensive and participation less attractive.”

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