Courtside

It's been widely reported that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the workplace vaccine mandate. That may be the ultimate practical effect, but that's not quite what happened. To understand that, we need to go into the details of where things currently stand in the judicial proceedings. Lawyers call this the "procedural posture."

The vaccine mandate went into effect on January 4 and affects nearly 84 million workers. The Court is deciding whether to postpone the mandate while lower courts more fully consider if the mandate is legal. The argument boils down to what specific words precisely mean. So you will see a lot of phrases here in quotes. It's up to the Supreme Court to determine what these phrases mean.

Last year, Iowa's hog inventory was nearly three times that of second-place Minnesota, and the state produced about 30% of the nation's pork. Therefore, Iowa has significant influence when it comes to any food policy involving pork. So when California recently enacted a new law that may make pork products prohibitively expensive there, Iowa politicians responded by strongly supporting a legal challenge that may soon make it to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The political and policy debates surrounding climate change have been going on for decades. But what policy changes have come about have not been enough to reassure activists concerned about human-induced global warming. The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently warned that Earth's population is in a "code red" due to rising temperatures, rising sea levels, and more extreme weather events. These warnings have come repeatedly in recent years, so much so that surveys show that many younger people are fatalistic about the chances of curbing the effects of climate change.

Three years ago, then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed the nation's first law requiring women on those boards even though he admitted that it might not survive legal challenges. So did an analysis by the state assembly, which concluded that a quota system "may be difficult to defend." That quota system is at the center of the legal challenge by Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group claiming that the law violates the state constitution's equal-protection clause.

In Oxford Township, Michigan, 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley allegedly shot 11 at his Oxford High School, killing four students and injuring six students and a teacher. Oakland County prosecutor Karen McDonald is charging Crumbley as an adult. These developments likely come as a shock to no one. What is different about this case is that Crumbley's parents are now joining him in jail in what could be a new legal strategy for trying to curb deadly incidents like this.