Boom! Lawyered

Sam Alito keeps saying he has a pretty good idea who leaked the Dobbs draft but he still won’t share it. Funny. Imani has a suspect too: Sam Alito. From the toothless investigation into who leaked the Dobbs decision and the alleged leak of the Hobby Lobby decision to Alito’s flag collection, which is associated with the Stop the Steal movement and Christian nationalism (and which he blamed on his...

One of our listeners, Contessa, wants to know what the hell fetal personhood is. Short answer: It’s the anti-choice movement’s push to give fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses a legal right to life, which turns pregnancy into a conflict between two people, with the state serving as referee. In this Office Hours episode of Baby Boom! Lawyered, Imani Gandy explains how the law decide who counts as...

Louisiana, Alabama, and Arkansas have filed two lawsuits targeting abortion shield laws and the providers who mail abortion pills into states where abortion is banned. Imani examines how the states use fetal personhood to describe their alleged injuries, whether the Supreme Court is likely to hear their case, and what today’s shield-law fight has in common with the personal liberty laws Northern s...

The Supreme Court did something nice for Black voters. I’m as shocked as you are. On Sept. 25, the Court told the Eighth Circuit to knock it off and stop trying to force Missouri to use a gerrymandered 2025 congressional map that Republicans drew at Trump’s urging. Imani Gandy breaks down how Missouri’s secretary of state gambled and ran the primary on the wrong map, and why the Supreme Court had...

Trump’s Department of Justice says the medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, discriminated against white and Asian applicants, and it’s giving the school until October 2 to enter into a voluntary resolution agreement or get sued. Imani Gandy breaks down the DOJ’s claims, including its attack on application essays asking students how race shaped their lives, which Chief Jus...

Tierra Walker knew her pregnancy could kill her, so she asked about an abortion. Not one of the more than 90 doctors who saw Walker offered her abortion care.  Now her family is suing the doctors, hospitals, and Texas officials who failed her, including Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Imani Gandy explains how the state created an abortion regime that terrifies doctors into inaction, then b...

The new Supreme Court term doesn't start until October, so why has the Court been issuing important rulings while it's supposed to be on break?  In this Office Hours episode of Baby Boom! Lawyered, Imani Gandy answers a listener's question about the shadow docket, the emergency track where some of the Court's most consequential decisions get made all year. They’re decided quickly—and often wi...

Disparate impact may sound boring. It isn't. It's the rule the Supreme Court established in 1971 to catch discrimination that doesn't announce itself. Fifty-four years later, the EEOC, acting on Trump's executive order, walked away from that standard. Then the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel went further, declaring disparate impact liability under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act unconstitutional.&...

On Wednesday Louisiana asked the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to stop the abortion drug mifepristone from being mailed to patients by reinstating a rule that says you have to show up in person to get it. But if it wins, Louisiana told the three-judge panel, it doesn't want the rule change to go into effect immediately, because Louisiana doesn't trust the Supreme Court would let that restriction...

A pill doesn't care about state lines. Louisiana does—apparently a lot. Welcome to the first-ever episode of Baby Boom! Lawyered. Imani Gandy gets into Louisiana v. FDA , the case that could result in a  ban on mailed mifepristone for everyone, not just Louisianans. There's a standing fight, a Supreme Court dissent where Clarence Thomas called mifepristone manufacturers a "criminal enterprise...

Roe v. Wade was never enough. Reproductive justice advocates have been saying that for decades. So why did so much of the reproductive rights movement organize itself around protecting Roe anyway?  In this solo episode, Imani Gandy explores how legal arguments became the center of the fight for abortion rights, what got lost in the process, and why public health researchers and reproductive justic...

Imani and Jess are off this week, but before the Supreme Court issues its birthright citizenship ruling in Trump v. Barbara , revisit this conversation with Pregnancy Justice President Lourdes Rivera on how the movement trying to deny citizenship to some children born in the United States is also working to grant constitutional rights to embryos and fetuses. Expert Repro Journalism That Inspires.&...

In this episode, Imani and Jess unpack the Supreme Court’s order on mifepristone access and explain where it fits in the Trump administration’s crusade to redefine motherhood nationwide. Expert Repro Journalism That Inspires.  Episodes like this take time, research, and a commitment to the truth. If Boom! Lawyered helps you understand what’s at stake in our courts, chip in to keep our fearles...

In this episode, Imani and Jess unpack the historic attack on voting rights from the Supreme Court in Louisiana v. Callais and explain what’s next from the Court on the fight to block mifepristone access.    Expert Repro Journalism That Inspires.  Episodes like this take time, research, and a commitment to the truth. If Boom! Lawyered helps you understand what’s at stake in our courts, chip i...

The Supreme Court closed out arguments for the term this week. Jess and Imani are out, but this episode showcases all the biggest cases of the term. Stay tuned for deep dives on the decisions coming up in future episodes. Expert Repro Journalism That Inspires.  Episodes like this take time, research, and a commitment to the truth. If Boom! Lawyered helps you understand what’s at stake in our...

Imani and Jess are off this week, but in this episode republished from 2025, Imani and Jess discuss a new school launched in Colorado that’s designed to erase the separation of church and state in public education. They also explain why the conservative legal movement could finally succeed in getting taxpayers to fund religious schools.  Expert Repro Journalism That Inspires.  Episodes like t...

In this episode, Imani and Jess unpack the conservative legal movement’s latest attacks on medication abortion, from courthouses to state legislatures across the country—including efforts to categorize mailing pills as “drug trafficking.”  Expert Repro Journalism That Inspires.  Episodes like this take time, research, and a commitment to the truth. If Boom! Lawyered helps you understand what’...

In this episode, Imani and Jess dive into the Supreme Court’s conversion therapy decision, birthright citizenship oral arguments, and rumours that President Donald Trump has his eye on Texas Sen. Ted Cruz for his next Supreme Court nomination.        Expert Repro Journalism That Inspires.  Episodes like this take time, research, and a commitment to the truth. If Boom! Lawyered helps you under...

The most informed progressive public in American history is watching a fascist takeover in real time. In her first solo episode, Imani Gandy wants to know why. From Black Twitter to the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act dying in the Senate twice, she builds the argument—and then pokes holes in it herself. She doesn't have a clean answer. That's why she's asking. Correction: In this episode I st...

In this episode, Imani and Jess break down the latest anti-trans decision from the Supreme Court, Mirabelli v. Bonta and explain how the conservative legal movement is rewriting parental rights law from the shadow docket of the Supreme Court.   Expert Repro Journalism That Inspires.    Episodes like this take time, research, and a commitment to the truth. If Boom! Lawyered helps you understand wha...

In this episode! Imani and Jess spill the tea on the recent Supreme Court drama, from infighting among the justices in the Trump tariff decision, to retirement rumours, and why it is more than political theater when the president attacks the independence of the judiciary. Expert Repro Journalism that Inspires. Episodes like this take time, research, and a commitment to the truth. If Boom! Lawyered...

In part two of her series on true crime and disability, Imani Gandy interviews Dateline correspondent Josh Mankiewicz about true crime as a machine that decides whose stories get told—and whose don’t. From missing Black women, to missing and murdered Indigenous people, to the near invisibility of disabled victims, they talk about what true crime shows—and what it leaves out. Because attention itse...

In this episode, Imani and Jess walk through the current legal threats to medication abortion access and explain how the national abortion landscape could be reshaped entirely by spring.   Expert Repro Journalism That Inspires.   Episodes like this take time, research, and a commitment to the truth. If Boom! Lawyered helps you understand what’s at stake in our courts, chip in to keep our fearless...

Imani and Jess are off this week, but in this episode republished from 2024 they explain the spurious new legal arguments underpinning the conservative push to end birthright citizenship.   Expert Repro Journalism That Inspires. Episodes like this take time, research, and a commitment to the truth. If Boom! Lawyered helps you understand what’s at stake in our courts, chip in to keep our fearless l...

In this episode, Imani Gandy and Jess Pieklo unpack the federal charges brought against Black journalists and advocates in connection to an anti-ICE protest at a Minnesota church.  Correction - In this show we refer to Don Lemon as "from CNN"  when he is a former CNN journalist.  See the referenced Lourdes Rivera Episode Here! Expert Repro Journalism That Inspires. Episodes like this take time, re...