On Friday, the State of Texas and others representing the Republican Party sued to stop the Federal Government from vaccinating the workers of the United States.
On Saturday, a panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals (there was no U.S. District Court involvement that I know of) issued a stay to prevent the United States from vaccinating its workers.
The response in corporate and legal media to this decision within 24 hours of when the complaint was filed, has largely been the usual response to judicial decisions, which is that we don't know what these judges have in mind, and courts are inscrutable.
That is ridiculous, in this case and in many other cases.
Here is the real story in this case: Two of these three judges on the Fifth Circuit panel were appointed by The Former Guy. The third was a lawyer for the Republican Party of Texas. (She is famed not so much for knowing the law as inventing it when she wants; for example, she overruled a Mississippi District Judge about Mississippi insurance law in a case which the Mississippi Supreme Court has rejected by name because it does not represent Mississippi law.)
That is the panel and what it is likely to do in this vaccine mandate case is not inscrutable. We can make a reasonable guess what these judges have in mind, based on experiencing what they have left behind during their careers. Do you really think that the odds are that Republicans will fail with them?
We cannot truly hope for justice until we know the odds against it. We cannot know where we are going until we know where we are. It is my hope that justice will prevail nonetheless, even at the hands of these judges in this particular case.
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