I don’t know. They could probably scam up some plausible, but really unlikely, scenario. Kinda like they did with the Colorado website case. The current SCOTUS seems to have a pretty broad definition of standing which includes theoretical situations which haven’t actually happened. That’s not traditionally how standing worked, but here we are. Which also tells you how bad this case was, that they couldn’t just cook up some scenario which satisfied Alito, Thomas, et al.
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That hasn’t stopped this court from allowing falsified or manufactured standing.
It’s not uncommon for subspecialist physicians to get a 2nd-level or escalation referral when a different physician lacks the sub specialty or has an oopsie. That could potentially be used as standing for this, but they would actually have had to have cared for a patient who was harmed by prescription of mifepristone. Then again, see above. 
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I know. That’s why I mentioned the Colorado case. That tells you how nonexistent the standing was here, that they couldn’t find a way to create any.
By the way, Thomas wrote a concurrence in which he challenged the very idea of associational standing. In other words, organizations being able to sue on behalf of their members when some of their members have standing. That’s problematic. While that was going on here, that type of standing pops up the most in civil rights cases, where the ACLU or the NAACP sues.
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Maybe they’ll just invent one?
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Another day another nonsensical ruling
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Decision
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Oh, I knew you know. But now you know I knew you know. 
It was just an additive comment.
And thank you (as always!) for reading the thick stuff and providing excellent translation. In this case about Thomas’ frustrating concurrence. 
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Glad to see that they have time for the important stuff. 
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Fuck SCOTUS. I haven’t read the opinion yet, but Jesus, come on! You can’t fall back on the founders’ intent or plain language of the 2A for this. Ugh.
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I do not believe for one moment that this is based in any legal theory. Pure ideological bullshittery and nothing more. Stupid 2A reading of no firearm limitations of any kind are acceptable. I am honestly surprised they left the opening for legislative action, although that will not happen with anything like the current makeup of the Congress. And if it did, I would lay odds they would strike it down.
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Ok, I just read through Thomas’s opinion. I didn’t read it in detail because it got waaaaaay into the weeds on how semi-automatic weapons work, how bumping works, and how bump stocks work, and I am not a gun nut so I don’t give a shit about any of that. Neither should the Court, frankly. And this is what bothers me about this opinion. It’s not actually based on the 2A. This decision is an attack on the administrative state. Since Chevron, the rule has been that if a law enabling an executive branch agency is ambiguous, or if an agency rule is ambiguous, then the agency can resolve that ambiguity on their own, as long as their interpretation is reasonable. When the ATF banned bump stocks, they were relying on the National Firearms Act, passed in 1934, which, among other things, banned “machine guns”. And it defined machine guns as “any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.” This might not seem ambiguous, but you have to also define terms like “automatically,” “manual,” and “single function of the trigger.” In this case, Thomas acknowledges that this definition is ambiguous. That should allow the ATF, who are the experts in this field, to define those terms. But Thomas’s opinion goes on for pages and pages about how bumping works with a semi-automatic rifle, even without a bump stock, and how bump stocks work, and blah blah blah blah. This is exactly what Chevron wanted to avoid: having nine experts in the law making decisions that require expertise in other areas. The experts are supposed to be the bureaucrats in the agencies. And you’re supposed to then trust the political process to avoid having bad policy that goes against common sense or the will of the people. In other words, if one administration’s agency officials enact bad policy that most people think is wrong, you assume that the political process will result in a change in administrations that will sort that problem out. The idea of Chevron was that you didn’t want 9 unelected legal experts who have their jobs for life making decisions on non-legal issues that they are not qualified to make. And yet this is exactly what Thomas and the majority did here.
And then there’s this fucking gem in Alito’s concurrence (seriously…Thomas and Alito…because of course it was them):
There can be little doubt that the Congress that enacted 26 U. S. C. §5845(b) would not have seen any material difference between a machinegun and a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock. But the statutory text is clear, and we must follow it.
So fuck the intent of the framers of this law and go with the technicality of the grammar? Really? That’s not the principle of originalism. Originalism is absolutely supposed to give priority to the intent of the framers of the law, whether it’s the original Constitution, an Amendment, or a statute. But here, Alito doesn’t agree with the framers of this law, so he says no, we have to follow the letter of the statute! Unbelievable. These people have no shame. None at all.
Ok, I’m gonna go read the dissent now, and I’ll edit this after I do that.
ETA: Ok, the first thing Sotomayor points out is that it was Trump’s ATF that banned bump stocks. I’ve seen some news articles talking about this as a “blow to the Biden Administration,” but this ban had bipartisan support, including the support of Donald Trump.
ETA2: Ok, Sotomayor also gets waaaaay into the weeds on how machine guns, semiautomatics guns, bumping, and bump stocks work, and comes to the opposite conclusion as Thomas. But that’s where she left it. She just said, basically, “You’re wrong. This is clearly the correct interpretation.” And that, I think, is a mistake the Court’s liberals keep making. They keep trying to play on the field that the conservatives laid out. And the problem with that is that it legitimizes that playing field. Who am I to tell Sonia Sotomayor how to do her job, but I’m going to anyway. What I think would have been more effective would have been to present this alternative interpretation in a shorter form, and then said something like, “The problem we have is that the definition of a machine gun presented by the majority and the definition provided by the minority are both reasonable interpretations of the language of the statute. This is a perfect example of an ambiguous statute. And it has been the position of this Court since Chevron that such ambiguities should be resolved by the experts that staff the administrative agencies responsible for the enforcement of these statutes. The nine members of this Court, no matter how much research we have done in the last few months on how firearms work, are not, and never will be, experts on firearms. The men and women of the ATF are. We should defer to their expertise on the interpretation of this ambiguous statute.” It wouldn’t change anything, as far as the ban being overturned, but it would point out the real problem here, and what the majority is really doing that’s wrong. Not to mention set up the same argument for when another mifepristone case, or any other drug approved by the FDA, comes before the Court. These decisions belong in the hands of the relevant experts, not judges.
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They keep wanting congress to do their job without realizing how dysfunctional it is (or, more likely, with full awareness).
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Do they? Seems to me like they want to shove Congess out of the way, so they can do their own (hatchet) job.
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Yes, they are admittedly, if you read Alito’s concurrence, substituting their own opinions for the intent of the Congress that originally enacted the National Firearms Act.
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Just to make it crystal clear how far out there this decision is, Sotomayor, in her dissent, was quoting Scalia. The majority opinion here would have made Scalia go, “Hold up a minute…what?”
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What are Thomas’ qualifications as a gun expert for his spew of gunsplaining?
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Sounds like little more than a load of gishgalloping flatus.
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The thing is that it’s not just a direct threat to the administration of government and the supposed balance of powers between the three branches of government - it’s one that has been planned for years. It’s one that everyone in Washington knew about before hand. It’s one that seeks to undermine those institutional protections in ways that will enable fascism.
But the billionaires rule the country completely now. And buy Supreme Court justices for what’s chicken feed for them. The slow slide just accelerated.
Fuck. Times a billion.
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The same as Sotomayor’s qualifications to do the same thing. None whatsoever.
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