Weekend Law: Powell Probe Dropped, SCOTUS & Religion in Schools

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From Brussels, I'm following the politics, policy and the people shaping the European Union right now. And from London, I'm looking at what all that means for markets, money and the wider economy. We've got reporters across Europe and around the globe feeding in as stories break. So whether it's geopolitics, energy, tech or markets, you're hearing it while it happens. It's smart, calm and to the point. And it fits into your morning. You can find new episodes of the Bloomberg Daybreak Europe podcast by 7am in Dublin or 8am in Brussels, Berlin and Paris. on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Bloomberg Law with June Grosso from Bloomberg Radio. About a month ago, the U.S. Attorney for D.C., Janine Pirro, professed that she didn't care that Senator Tom Tillis was opposing her controversial criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. She was moving forward. You know, honestly, I don't know and I don't care, and I'll tell you why. I am in a legal lane. All of the rest is white noise. I don't care what they say. I have a job. I have the ability to go into a grand jury. There are questions that the American public and people in D.C. are entitled to know where a billion dollars has gone. And on Wednesday, Pierrot doubled down and again vowed to continue the investigation into building renovation cost overruns by the Fed and to appeal a judge's order quashing her two grand jury subpoenas. This investigation continues. I am in the legal lane. There are others who are in the political lane. I don't intersect those two lanes. I am going forward. We are appealing the decision of Judge Boesberg. But then on Friday, in a stunning reversal, Pirro said in a social media post that her office was closing the investigation on Powell, but that, quote, this morning, the inspector general for the Federal Reserve has been asked to scrutinize the building costs overruns. In fact, the IG's investigation began last year. Does the end of Pirro's investigation clear the way for the confirmation of Kevin Warsh as Fed chair, even though Pirro added in her post, quote, note well, however, that I will not hesitate to restart a criminal investigation should the facts warrant doing so. Joining me is Elliot Stein, Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Litigation Analyst. Elliot, what do you make of Pirro's abrupt reversal? Is it due to the lack of evidence or pressure to clear the way for Walsh's confirmation? Probably a combination. I mean, you know, the whole point of Judge Boasberg's opinion questioning the subpoenas was that, you know, there's very little evidence of a crime versus a lot of evidence that this is all a pretext to go after Powell for not lowering interest rates. But then you also have this whole Senator Tillis dynamic, and he has been very forceful in saying that he's not going to allow Warsh to be confirmed until the investigation is wrapped up. And, you know, they're coming up on a May 15th deadline, which is when Chair Powell's term ends as Federal Reserve Chair. And so I think they want to move things along. They want to get Warsh in there. And this is sort of the quickest path to doing that. Although, you know, Janine Pirro did leave an opening for opening the investigation down the road. So it's unclear right now if this is going to be enough for Senator Tillis. I suspect it probably is. But if I'm Jerome Powell, I would want a little more assurance in the form of perhaps an immunity agreement of some sort. Pirro appeared to be trying to gloss over the implications of dropping the investigation by saying that the inspector general was now going to be the one scrutinizing the cost overruns. And, quote, I expect a comprehensive report in short order and am confident the outcome will assist in resolving once and for all the questions that led this office to issue subpoenas. But in fact, the IG has already reviewed the project twice and started another review last year because Powell had requested it. So does this seem like sort of a dead end? Right. Yeah. I mean, we're sort of where we were before the investigation started, right? That it's still with the Inspector General and that's what they do. And, you know, it sounds like Janine Pirro is sort of trying to appease two camps here, right? On the one, she obviously reports to President Trump, who has been adamant about going after Jerome Powell for several years now, and he wants him out of the board completely. On the other hand, she needs to satisfy Senator Tillis, who has said he's going to block the confirmation of Kevin Warsh until the investigation is wrapped up. So her tweet sort of seems to try to navigate right through both those sides in that narrow passageway, and we'll see if it's enough. I don't think we've heard anything from Senator Tillis yet, but I suspect maybe we will soon. Let's back up for a moment, Elliot. What is she investigating, the cost overruns and possible perjury by Powell? Right. Those are the two things. I think the testimony, to me, sort of seemed to be more of the impetus for her investigation because the inspector general is already investigating the cost overruns, for one. And, you know, they tried to accuse Powell of essentially lying in his testimony to the Senate last summer. But, you know, it seemed very nitpicky and sort of a matter of semantics. Nothing approaching a federal crime. And proving perjury is not easy. You have to prove that someone knowingly and willfully made a false statement under oath about a material matter. Yeah, it's very hard to prove intent in one of these types of cases. And we know that as late as a month ago, Pirro's office essentially had no evidence that Powell had committed a crime. Because during a closed door hearing with Judge Boesberg, the judge who quashed their subpoenas, they acknowledged they had no evidence, but said they wanted to go ahead with the investigation anyway. Right. I mean, you know, in most cases, that's sort of the purpose for the subpoena, right, when you don't have all these other things going on that suggest it's a pretext, right? If you have, you know, reasonable suspicion, or probable cause that that a crime was committed, then you issue subpoenas to develop the evidence further. But yeah, to your point, the judge found, you know, not only is there no evidence yet and not only did the Justice Department concede that, you have to balance that with the other side of the equation that the subpoenas were issued for the purpose of harassing Jerome Powell because he's not lowering interest rates fast enough. And the evidence of that was overwhelming, according to the judge. Yeah, Judge Boesberg said there was no evidence whatsoever that Powell had committed any crime, but there was a mountain of evidence that the investigation was intended to pressure Powell to lower rates or resign. And this isn't the first time that Pirro's office has had trouble moving forward on an indictment. Several times D.C. grand juries have refused to indict, disproving the old adage that a prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. They couldn't get a grand jury to indict the guy who threw the salami sandwich at an officer. And there are other instances, including a federal grand jury unanimously rejecting charges against six members of Congress for making that video reminding the military that they don't have to follow illegal orders. Right. And it's not just her in D.C. I think it was also in the Eastern District of Virginia. You had subpoenas issued and investigations opened against Tisha James, James Comey. Those were also essentially quashed or the grand juries refused to indict. And, you know, this case, too, against Jerome Powell, if it had proceeded, it looked like it was on a path to also not lead to an indictment. So it does seem that, you know, they are bringing weak cases. They're obviously going after President Trump's perceived political enemies. And, you know, if that's a justification, it's an explanation for why there's not evidence of a crime. What also strikes me about this is that Pirro dropped the investigation by social media post, but she held a press conference to announce that Judge Boesberg had quashed the subpoenas, a loss many people would not want to broadcast. I remember watching that press conference and at the time it really felt very performative. It felt like she was defensive. And, you know, I'm sure some of it was knowing that President Trump was watching and that she wanted him to know that she was continuing to pursue this case aggressively against Jerome Powell, who the president, you know, is not happy with, hasn't been happy with for a while. But what's interesting is they filed a motion to reconsider that opinion. They lost that on April 3rd. They haven't appealed those decisions to the D.C. Circuit at all and you would think that if they really wanted to move the case along and continue to prosecute it they would have done that We haven seen that The deadline is two months from that April 3rd date where the motion to reconsider was denied. I mean, they do have until June 3rd. Obviously, we don't expect that to happen now that they're dropping the probe. But it may be a date that gives Jerome Powell some comfort if it comes and goes and it results in no appeal being filed. It may give him some comfort that the investigation really is being dropped because they're not going to be able to really revive those subpoenas. I suppose, in theory, they could issue new subpoenas that cover different subject matter and different terrain. But it's hard to envision what that looks like. But I mean, the real question, you know, the two people that you really need to get inside the heads of at this point right now are Senator Tillis and Jerome Powell. And whether Jeanine Pirro's tweets are enough to give them assurance that the investigation is not going to be relaunched at some point down the road after Kevin Worsh gets confirmed in the coming weeks. And in other Fed news, we are still waiting for the Supreme Court's decision on President Trump's attempts to fire Fed Reserve Governor Lisa Cook over unproven mortgage fraud allegations. Those oral arguments were in January. And every time there is an announcement of decisions by the Supreme Court, we keep expecting that the Cook decision will be among them. Yeah, exactly. I was on the soccer field down in North Carolina this last Friday at 10 a.m. when it was a Supreme Court opinion date. And I have one eye on my daughter playing. I have one eye on my phone. And I was just so relieved when it was not that decision. I think one of the reasons it may be taking longer than people anticipated is that it's sort of wrapped up with the Slaughter case. Rebecca Slaughter, if you recall, is the FTC commissioner who also challenged her termination. And the cases are all sort of wrapped up together because the Supreme Court has indicated that even though the president likely has the authority to remove most agency commissioners out. This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Apple Card members can earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases wherever they shop. This means you could be earning daily cash on just about anything, like a slice of pizza from your local pizza place or a latte from the corner coffee shop. Apply for Apple Card in the Wallet app to see your credit limit offer in minutes. Subject to credit approval, Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at AppleCard.com. I'm Francine Lacroix, an award-winning journalist, and I've got a new podcast. Leaders with Francine Lacroix from Bloomberg Podcasts. I've interviewed everyone from heads of state to fashion icons about the news of the moment. But I've always been curious, who are these people as leaders? I don't think there's one right way to be a leader. Make decisions. A poor decision is always better than no decision. Listen to new episodes every other Monday. Follow Leaders with Francine Lacroix wherever you get your podcasts. What separates good leaders from transformational ones? I'm Jessica Chen, and in Season 2 of Leading by Example, we'll sit down with executives like Grace Chen of Birdie Gray to find out. It's important to understand where you spike, but also really acknowledge where you don't and find people who can fill those gaps. Listen to Leading by Example, executives making an impact on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Will, and that for-cause removal restrictions as to them is unconstitutional. The Federal Reserve is situated differently because it's sort of quasi-private. It's not really a part of the executive branch. And as a result, the for-cause removal restriction in the Federal Reserve Act is likely constitutional. The only question is, what does it actually entail? Maybe next Supreme Court Opinion Day, the Cook decision will come out. Thanks so much for joining me today, Elliot. That's Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Litigation Analyst Elliot Stein. Coming up next, revelations from behind the curtain at the Supreme Court. I'm June Grosso, and this is Bloomberg. Chief Justice John Roberts has long cultivated an image of the Supreme Court as an institution above politics. Nine justices who reach their decisions based on the law alone. I think the important thing to understand is that there are three branches of government and two of them are political. And if you don't like what the Congress is doing, your congressman, you can throw him out of office. If you don't like what the president is doing, you can throw him out of office. If you don't like what I'm doing, it's just too bad. And now most people would say, how can that be? You do, you know, the cases are pretty important and you need to understand, well, it's because the framers didn't want the courts to be making political decisions. And Roberts famously compared justices to umpires at his confirmation hearings more than 20 years ago. Judges are like umpires. Umpires don't make the rules, they apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules, but it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a ball game to see the umpire. But the New York Times has published leaked confidential memos between the justices, and they reveal a very different side of Roberts, certainly not an umpire calling balls and strikes, but rather the driving force to block President Obama's signature environmental policy, pushing the decision through in just five days, without oral arguments, without briefings, and without input from lower court decisions. Why? Because Obama's power plan, in Roberts' words, was, quote, the most expensive regulation ever imposed on the power sector. And so, on February 9th of 2016, in a 5-4 vote along partisan lines, the justices issued a one-paragraph ruling halting Obama's clean power plan. It was just the beginning of the court's emergency or shadow docket that has been repeatedly used to move President Trump's agenda forward. My guest is an expert in constitutional law, Harold Krent, a professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law. House of the New York Times has published these until now secret memos about the five days before the Supreme Court issued an order blocking President Obama's clean power plant. Tell us what happened. So the court never blocked the power plant on the merits, but rather used its power to stop the action before they could even hear the case. And so they deployed their power to basically protect individuals in the United States from what they saw as overreaching by the Obama administration. So this is an overtly political move because they didn't like the power plan and the memos evince the fact that they thought that there shouldn't be this much of a drain on the economy in order to protect the environment. And so the way it reads is that the Supreme Court was overtly political in deciding to resolve this case, not on the merits, but rather simply on the basis of its emergency docket, thereby stopping the plan before it could be effectuated. So this was pushed through in five days, and some of the justices were in Europe. So it was all done by exchanging memos. And from your reading of those memos, did it seem like the chief justice was the one really pushing it through? And what astonishes me is that we know that for years the chief justice stood and said, integrity of the court is my mission. This is the most important thing to me. So we have stature. Yet it was the chief who decided to use the power of the Supreme Court to try to attain his political ends. So this to me is what is so amazing is that while the chief seemed to have this public persona of respect and integrity of the court, he was the one that instigated the unorthodox use of the court in order to accomplish a political result. Did it seem as if some of the justices didn't recognize the importance of what was happening here? In retrospect, I think we can all tell this is the start of the aggressive use by the robber's court of the shadow docket. But the justices at the time didn't know that. They thought maybe this was a one-off. The court was not in session. They were in various places around the world. And so they could have said this is a one-off, a unique response that wouldn't create any kind of precedent. That's what it seemed to me from reading the memos. Obviously, now with the lens of history, we look back and say we can see a linear progression. The use of the power of the Supreme Court for various political ends has become much more common. But at that time, it was rare. And I don't think that justices realized what a precedent this could create. So the chief justice said that this was the most expensive regulation ever imposed on the power sector. Too big, costly and consequential for the court not to act immediately. Yet no justice, not a liberal, not a conservative, ever mentioned the dangers on the opposite side of climate change. There's no discussion of climate change. There was no discussion of letting the challenges to the regulation play out in court. This wasn't a discussion of the usual legality of an administrative action. This was a political reaction to the Obama administration saying this is too extensive, too much, and no consideration of the equities on the other side. It's astonishing. The irony. So Justice Kennedy figures that, you know, well, when we take this on the merits docket, it's going to end up being struck down anyway. But then Justice Scalia passed away. And so the vote on the power plan would most likely have been 4-4. And so Obama's power plan would have gone into effect. Likely. Obviously, we don't know because we're deprived of that knowledge because of how history played out. The other thing that's amazing about this is why the leak now You know is this a leak from clerks who have ordered this material for 10 years Is this a leak from the Supreme Court justice that more and more frustrated with how the court is acting? We don't know, but it certainly suggests that tensions are aflame within the Supreme Court building. Well, we've seen that with the various justices. I mean, we saw Sotomayor criticizing Kavanaugh and then coming out with an apology. we saw Jackson and Kavanaugh quibbling about the shadow docket in a public appearance, and Jackson giving an hour-long speech at Yale Law School, basically taking the shadow docket apart and criticizing it. So it seems like the tensions are pretty much out in the open. Yeah, and this idea of, you know, the friendship between RBG and Justice Scalia is, you know, a thing of the distant past. And obviously, these justices don't like each other. They're sniping at each other. And now they're arguably possibly making leaks. So we don't have a very unified or collegial court. I've asked you often in the past, how much are the justices influenced by public discussions of the issues, public discourse? And here they're relying on outside sources, like a blog post and television interviews to push their points. We try to teach our students, you know, the Supreme Court justices consider, they deliberate, they're influenced by their predecessors, they try to understand the integrity of the legal process. And then we're confronted by these memos, the disparate memos that seem to suggest, oh, it's all about politics and our knee-jerk reaction to what we think is dangerous for politics. So they're acting as politicians. So what then differentiates the court from the other institutions is getting a little muddier here. And I think that's the real downside of what they've done is to sap the Supreme Court of the respect that it should otherwise deserve in our system. apartheid system. Yeah. And how many times have we heard the chief justice talk about the Supreme Court is not a political institution, we're different from the political branches, and here it's all about politics? It is. And again, I can understand why people are disillusioned, because if the court is thinking about politics, you know, what gives them the advantage as opposed to those in Congress. Was this in any sense President Obama versus Chief Justice Roberts? Because, I mean, Obama was one of just 22 senators who voted against Roberts' confirmation. And here it seems like the Chief Justice is eager to assert the authority of the Supreme Court against Obama. I don't know how much of this is a reaction to the friction between Chief Justice Roberts and President Obama. I think it's more about President Obama's policies that he just thought that the Democrat was wrongheaded in trying to sort of quickly change the ground in terms of climate change and limiting pollution and saw his responsibility as a court to do something about the rapid change that was at play within the Environmental Protection Agency. Do you think that there'll be any fallout from this publication of these notes? Well, we saw that the first Dobbs decision, if you remember, was released by someone. And we knew what the Dobbs decision was going to say, overruling their right to an abortion. And tighter security was imposed, but nothing really happened. Again, we don't know if the leak is from now or from 10 years ago. There may be some more security, but I think now in this age, there won't be too many more steps that can be undertaken by the court to prevent this kind of leaking. But the leaking isn't good for the court. Clearly, this is a court that has lost its civility, but also its ability to be collegial. And also, I'm wondering if since now we have this huge leak, you mentioned the leak before, whether the justices will be more reluctant to put things into writing that can be leaked. Oh, absolutely. I think that if you know that your rough draft and your comments, Snyder or otherwise, may end up in The New York Times, you're going to think twice before you write that down. And that's also not good for the court, right? Sometimes it's really important to have a sharply worded memo, some kind of comments about the wisdom of a particular argument that another justice may write, and the justices will be more restrained in showing candor for fear of the disclosure. And Hal, I want to get your reaction to this speech by Justice Thomas, ostensibly to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, but it devolved into an attack on progressivism. Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence, and hence our form of government. Thomas said that Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao were all intertwined with the rise of progressivism, as was racial segregation, eugenics, and other evils. I do think there's a tie here, both with the Roberts decision and with Thomas, there is such a deep-seated hatred for the administrative state. And Justice Thomas calls it progressivism. What he's talking about is this idea of these experts in government and both Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Thomas sort of evince a real distrust for anybody who believes in bureaucratic government, anybody who relies on the government to actually respond to our nation's woes and to try to help the country. Well, the Roberts Court's attacks on the administrative state have been pretty clear. Thanks, Hal. That's Professor Harold Krent of the Chicago-Kent College of Law. Coming up next, an appellate court rules it's okay to force schools to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms. I'm June Grosso, and you're listening to Bloomberg. This is Tom Keene inviting you to join us for the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. It's about making you smarter every business day. I'm Paul Sweeney. We bring you complete coverage of the U.S. market open. We cover stocks, bonds, commodities, even crypto, all the information you need to excel. And I'm Alexis Christophorus. Bloomberg Surveillance also brings you the analysis behind the headlines. We do that through conversations with the smartest names in economics, finance, investment, and international relations. We do all this live each and every weekday that bring you the best analysis in our daily podcast. 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President Trump cheered laws requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in schools while speaking to a group of evangelical Christians as he campaigned in 2024. Who likes the Ten Commandments, by the way, going up in the schools? They think it's such a bad thing. I said, has anyone read the Thou Shalt Not Steal? I mean, has anybody read this incredible stuff? It's just incredible. They don't want it to go up. And now, in a significant win for conservatives who've been trying to inject more religion into classrooms, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that Texas can force public schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms. A 9-8 decision of the full appellate court, considered the most conservative circuit court in the country, found that the Texas law doesn't violate the separation of church and state. Challengers of the law had argued that displaying the Ten Commandments in classrooms amounts to proselytizing and violates the rights of parents to decide when, how, and if to provide religious instruction to their children. The case is expected to end up at the Supreme Court, where the conservative majority has steadily been expanding religious rights. My guest is an expert in the First Amendment, Caroline Mala Corbin, a professor at the University of Miami Law School. Caroline, to put this case into context, tell us about the Texas law and Supreme Court precedent. The Texas law is pretty straightforward. straightforward. It basically required that in every single public school classroom, there had to be a Ten Commandments poster. It had to be sufficiently large, easy to read, easy to see. There couldn't be anything else around it, and they dictated the particular version of the Ten Commandments. Now, it's not surprising that this mandatory scripture on the wall triggered an Establishment Clause violation. The Establishment Clause, of course, is that part of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which requires some separation between church and state. Texas was not the first state to mandate Ten Commandments in the public schools. Kentucky had tried the same thing about 45 years ago, and the Supreme Court had already made a decision about it. In a case known as Stone v. Graham, the Supreme Court held this is a blatant violation of the Establishment Clause. There is no secular purpose for mandating biblical texts on schoolroom walls when you're not even incorporating it into any kind of secular education It is unconstitutional So there is a case directly on point that holds this kind of law violates the Establishment Clause Unfortunately precedent doesn stop there because the Roberts Court has been very busy trying to dismantle protections of the Establishment Clause. And one way it's been doing that is by rejecting earlier tests that the Supreme Court has relied on. And the doctrine that was part of the decision in the earlier Ten Commandments case was something known as the Lemon Test. And the Lemon Test said, listen, you're violating the Establishment Clause if your law doesn't have a primarily secular purpose or it doesn't have a primarily secular effect. And the Roberts Court has said, this is no longer the test we're going to use in the Establishment Clause. Instead, the touchstone for an Establishment Clause analysis is to look to history and original understandings. And so this is what faced the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Only the Supreme Court can overturn its own precedent. So isn't Strong v. Graham still the precedent? Now, the courts below had said, listen, there's still a Supreme Court case that's directly on point. It has not been explicitly overruled, and therefore it still controls. And therefore, this is not a difficult case. The Fifth Circuit, on the other hand, argued the precedent depended on a test that has since been rejected. And not only did it reject Stonetree Graham as controlling precedent, it interpreted the Supreme Court guidance to look to history and understanding in a very narrow way. It basically adapted a concurrence from Gorsuch that said, and this was the Fifth Circuit's new rule for establishment clause challenges, is if this does not resemble something the original founders would consider a religious establishment, then it doesn't violate the establishment clause. And there was a short list of things. It said, these are the things that the founders thought was a religious establishment, and this does not resemble any of them, and therefore it doesn't violate the Establishment Clause. So that's what it held. It rejected the Supreme Court's existing precedent. It interpreted the Supreme Court's turn to history in a very particular narrow way and said this does not resemble something that was an establishment at the time of our country's origins. And therefore, no problem whatsoever to have a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments on every single classroom in every single public school in Texas, regardless of whether it's the science lab or the library, the music room or your English class. Caroline, what also struck me is that there was that Supreme Court case, Mahmoud, that you and I discussed at the time, saying that parents could opt their children out of LGBTQ material that contradicted their religious beliefs. And here, the Fifth Circuit said the measure doesn't restrict parents' right to direct their children's religious upbringing. I mean, how do they possibly distinguish that case? So this is the case involving picture books with LGBT characters in them that were part of the English curriculum in some public schools. And some conservative religious folks claimed that having their children hear these stories about same-sex marriage when that same-sex marriage was not condemned violated their religious rights. And therefore, they had a free exercise right to opt their children out of hearing their stories. And the Supreme Court, always sympathetic to very conservative Christian concerns, said, absolutely, it's a violation of your free exercise rights for your child to be exposed to same-sex marriages in a positive way because that's contrary to your anti-same-sex marriage beliefs and you are allowed to opt out. And so isn't this an even more direct affront to non-inherence beliefs to be presented with the Ten Commandments everywhere they turned, which is contrary to their own beliefs. Like it clashes just like the same sex marriage clashes with my beliefs. The Ten Commandments clashes even more directly because they're religious. and surely the Mahmood case would support the approach to the Ten Commandments as something problematic and something that should not be allowed. The Fifth Circuit distinguished it in two ways. They exaggerated the harm to the parents in Mahmood and they ignored the harms to the parents who opposed the Ten Commandments. The other thing, as one of the dissent points out, that they completely ignore is that the Supreme Court has historically been very mindful of the Establishment Clause in the public school context for several reasons. One, the state requires children to be there. So they're already using coercion and requiring their attendance. Second, these are young children. These are impressionable children. And they're very influenced by what happens in school. They're very influenced by their teachers, by their peers. There's a lot of pressure on them to conform. And third, this whole idea is parents are trusting them to schools on the understanding that they're not going to try and inculcate them in a religion not their own. And so even when the Supreme Court was moving away from more protection under the Establishment clause, it has historically been especially careful when it comes to children in public schools. And there was zero mention of that in the majority's opinion. Although the Supreme Court has allowed a high school football coach to pray on the 50-yard line right after games, saying his players wouldn't feel coerced to pray alongside him. So not if, but when this gets to the Supreme Court, how do you think they'll rule? I have little confidence in a principled decision from the current Supreme Court when it comes especially to issues involving the rights of conservative Christians and doing what they want, right? I think it's a white Christian nationalist court. I think they'll decide whatever is favorable to white Christian nationalists. So I think that they would probably end up upholding this law. Now, there are a lot of different tactics that they might use to do it. They might not do what the Fifth Circuit did. They might try and dodge it by not finding standing. They might do it by something I call secular washing. What they might try to argue is that the Ten Commandments is not ultimately a religious doctrine, but a secular item. It's not about inculcating particular religious beliefs. It's about explaining or showing the role of religion in our nation's history, trying to make clear the origins of our political structure or law. None of that's true. But one thing the Supreme Court has done in other cases where there is some object that's obviously inherently religious and therefore should be problematic under the Establishment Clause is the court has said, no, no, no, this is not actually religious like you think. So it's not a problem like you think. And one particular case that comes to mind is the challenge to the very large Latin cross monument in the middle of the highway. And you think that's the preeminent symbol of Christianity. And the court was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's not. You don't understand. It's actually just a symbol of World War I, and therefore there's no problem with it. And they've done that with the Ten Commandments as well. They've already laid the groundwork for arguing that the Ten Commandments, it's not religious scripture. It's not trying to proselytize. It's an educational document about our country's history and the origins of our law and government. Well, it will certainly be a while before this gets up to the Supreme Court and we find out the answer to that question. It's always great to have you on, Caroline. Thanks so much. That's Professor Caroline Malacorbin of the University of Miami Law School. 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.bloomberg.com slash podcast slash law. And remember to tune into the Bloomberg Law Show every weeknight at 10pm Wall Street time. I'm June Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg. This is Caroline Hyde. And I'm Ed Ludlow, inviting you to join us for Bloomberg Tech, a daily podcast focusing exclusively on technology, innovation and the future of business. Every weekday, we bring you the top headlines from the world's biggest tech companies. From finance to defence, AI to entertainment, and from startups to the magnificent seven. We highlight the latest stories of the people and companies pushing the tech sector to new frontiers and the politics that shape global tech markets. We do this all every weekday, then bring you the most important conversations and analysis in our podcast. 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