David H. Gans

Thanks to everyone who expressed interest in my forthcoming @stanlrev.bsky.social piece. As promised, I have posted the current version of the piece on SSRN: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers..... Comments very welcome. So excited to work with Stanford's amazing editors in getting this into print.

This Friday, Oct. 23, we’re co-hosting “We the People” with the Gibson-Banks Center for Race & the Law in Baltimore. A day with legal scholars, journalists, and advocates on the 14th Amendment. Doors open 9:30, program at 10. Register: 14thamendmentctr.org/news/we-the-...

Arizona tried to create an unnecessary barrier to voting by requiring documentary proof of citizenship. Read our #SCOTUS brief explaining why this requirement can’t stand: www.theusconstitution.org/litigation/r...

"[Justice Jackson] has brought to the court this idea that if we’re going to look to text and history, we have to look to the whole public and the views of marginalized communities." Read more from @davidhgans.bsky.social in @cnn.com: www.cnn.com/2026/10/19/p...

On this day in 1859, John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry begins. Although ultimately defeated, the uprising is considered an important cause of the Civil War and thus did help lead to the abolition of the institution of slavery. anticolonialhistory.com/event/124/

Frederick Douglass on John Brown, 1881

CAC is looking for interns for Summer 2027! This is a paid position perfect for law students interested in the progressive promise of the Constitution's text and history. www.theusconstitution.org/legal-intern...

I’ve got a piece in the @nytimes.com this morning about why Supreme Court reform has to be at the top of any agenda for democratic repair www.nytimes.com/2026/10/13/o...

I've been immersed in research on Reconstruction in Lousiana and it's a very difficult truth to absorb that the white terrorist movement in the South was among the most successful terrorist movements in global history. Took 10 years but it won a total & complete victory through murder and atrocity.

Here's some history the US Supreme Court doesn't want you to think about. In April 2026, SCOTUS effectively ended the Voting Rights Act. The decision has startling parallels with Plessy v. Ferguson, the decision that established “separate but equal" and cemented Jim Crow.

My new one @slate.com : How Trump Can—and Cannot—Still Mess With the Midterms (gift link) slate.com/news-and-pol...

It's sure to be an eventful term at #SCOTUS, with major issues teed up for the Justices. Watch @elizabethwydra.bsky.social on @cspanwj.bsky.social: www.c-span.org/event/washin...

When Kekai Watanabe’s tailbone was shattered, a prison nurse refused to treat that injury, in violation of the Eighth Amendment. Our #SCOTUS brief explains why Watanabe can sue in federal court to remedy that constitutional violation: www.theusconstitution.org/litigation/n...

CAC is looking for interns for Summer 2027! This is a paid position perfect for law students interested in the progressive promise of the Constitution's text and history. www.theusconstitution.org/legal-intern...

Under Title IX, transgender people must be treated with equal dignity and given access to an educational environment where they can learn, thrive, and grow free from discrimination. Read our brief before the Seventh Circuit hears argument today: www.theusconstitution.org/litigation/a...

In 1848 Boston attorney Robert Morris challenged school segregation in court a century before Brown v Board of Ed. In 1787 Black Bostonians had petitioned for equal education as well. Morris fought for the rights of his Black & Irish American clients & was appointed a magistrate by the governor.

#BREAKING: #SCOTUS once again freezes the lower federal courts’ rulings in the Missouri redistricting case—and affirms that, as the Missouri Supreme Court held earlier this month, Missouri will use the 2022 map in the November elections. There were no public dissents.

the Court “cannot expect the public to have faith in our judicial system if, without clear explanation, we are consistently greenlighting harmful acts” i continue to think putting KBJ on the Court may be Biden's best decision, no other justice is doin it like her www.nytimes.com/2026/09/24/u...

If you're a law student who wants to spend your summer working in the public interest & is interested in appellate advocacy, apply to join the @myconstitution.bsky.social team this summer! www.theusconstitution.org/legal-intern... 1/2

Deep dives like this really put into perspective what Chief Justice Rehnquist was doing in 2000 when he resurrected the Court’s precedents of the 1870s and 1880s, writing that their authors “had intimate knowledge and familiarity with the events surrounding the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

In destroying the Voting Rights Act and gutting the 14th and 15th amendments, the Roberts court is recycling legal arguments once advanced by Confederates and white supremacists to destroy Reconstruction. From me and @ariberman.bsky.social

Anti-competitive gerrymandering strikes at the heart of our democracy. Before oral argument today, read our brief on behalf of political scientists in the Wisconsin Supreme Court: www.theusconstitution.org/litigation/w... 1/2

Happy 197th birthday to the Colored Conventions! On this day in 1830, a small group of Black leaders met secretly in Mother Bethel AME Church to plan a new movement of conventions to redeem this country's pledges for liberty. Read an early history from 1859 hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.321...

Anti-competitive gerrymandering strikes at the heart of our democracy. Before oral argument tomorrow, read our brief on behalf of political scientists in the Wisconsin Supreme Court: www.theusconstitution.org/litigation/w... 1/2

the truly crazy making part of all of this is that voter fraud EFFECTIVELY DOES NOT EXIST. you have a better chance of finding an actual leprechaun at the end of the rainbow than of finding evidence of voter fraud that influences an election

Breaking: Supreme Court, with Justices Thomas and Alito Publicly Dissenting, Continue Block on USPS Rule Through the Midterm Elections [Now updated with Analysis] electionlawblog.org/2026/breakin...

#BREAKING: Over public dissents from Justices Thomas and Alito, #SCOTUS *denies* the Trump administration’s request for a stay in the mail-in ballots case. The USPS Rule will remain blocked—almost certainly through the midterms.

There are so many outrageous qualified immunity decisions out there - but this one, ruling officers who pinned a woman down on a hill of fire ants while handcuffed were entitled to qualified immunity because there was no other case in which officers were so depraved, is beyond the pale.

The Due Process Clause protects non-citizens, but the Trump administration is throwing immigrants into prolonged detention without any hearing to show why they should be detained. Read our brief to #SCOTUS explaining why this is unconstitutional: www.theusconstitution.org/litigation/g...

to place the sexual and reproductive exploitation of black women at the center of your understanding of american slavery is to see that the system was forced birth and this, in turn, should lead to a more expansive vision of what the 13th amendment actually guarantees.

I just posted a revised version of my forthcoming @stanlrev.bsky.social article on the Black Conventions of the Reconstruction era and how they shaped the 13th, 14th, and 15h Amendments. Read it here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Anti-competitive gerrymandering strikes at the heart of our democracy. Read our brief in the Wisconsin Supreme Court: www.theusconstitution.org/litigation/w...

This summer, CAC welcomed five incredible interns who contributed to our work promoting the progressive promise of the text, history, and values of the U.S. Constitution. Check out their reflections on our blog: www.theusconstitution.org/blog/another...

The Supreme Court has long recognized the import of eradicating discrimination in First Amendment cases. Read our #SCOTUS brief on behalf of scholars explaining why the nondiscrimination policy for Colorado’s universal preschool program is constitutional: www.theusconstitution.org/litigation/s...

A huge win for voting rights and a really important vindication of the text and history of the 26th Amendment.

The Roberts Court has read the 14th Amendment as a justification to lock in racial subordination and to immunize bias and prejudice from scrutiny. Read more from @davidhgans.bsky.social in @slate.com: slate.com/news-and-pol...

Last term the Roberts Courts gutted the Voting Rights Act and allowed states to undermine the voting power of Black communities. More from CAC's @davidhgans.bsky.social in conversation with @nharnie.bsky.social: www.podomatic.com/podcasts/sta...

The Framers of the Reconstruction Amendments were deeply concerned with police violence. Listen to more from CAC's @davidhgans.bsky.social's conversation with @nharnie.bsky.social: www.podomatic.com/podcasts/sta...

“The Roberts Court sees only white. It refuses to acknowledge who the Equal Protection Clause was written to protect. The freed people, their descendants, and all others denied equal citizenship. The 14th Amend. is not colorblind. It never was.” Me? No a judge www.courts.state.hi.us/wp-content/u...

The Roberts Court rejected the principles of the Reconstruction Amendments last term. More from CAC's @davidhgans.bsky.social in conversation with @nharnie.bsky.social: www.podomatic.com/podcasts/sta...

CAC's @davidhgans.bsky.social joined @nharnie.bsky.social to discuss the Roberts Court and ICE's killings. www.podomatic.com/podcasts/sta...

Yes, please. In 2029, a Democratic Congress and President should take these basic but important steps to allow people to sue federal officers and supervisors for constitutional violations. In the meantime, states can take - and are taking - these steps today.

Wrote about the Roberts Court’s highly selective aversion to identifying racism, echoing the logic of the infamous Korematsu decision, which the Roberts Court has both condemned and imitated. Call it Neo-Korematsu doctrine. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

The Roberts Court's invocations of colorblindness are a one-way ratchet deployed against efforts to undo racial subordination. Read more from @davidhgans.bsky.social in @slate.com: slate.com/news-and-pol...

The Roberts Court has read the 14th Amendment as a justification to lock in racial subordination and to immunize bias and prejudice from scrutiny. Read more from @davidhgans.bsky.social in @slate.com: slate.com/news-and-pol...

NEW: After the Civil War, Congress readmitted the southern states under a key condition: don't expand felony disenfranchisement. But the states quickly violated their promise & weaponized criminal statutes to skew elections. It finally caught up with one of them this year. Fascinating read:

Must read.

This piece is well worth your time.

My latest @slate.com on the Roberts' Court's war on the Second Founding. As we learned in case after case this term, in the Roberts Court, even the most foundational guarantees inscribed in the Reconstruction Amendments remain insecure: slate.com/news-and-pol...