New Supreme Court Nominee, West Virginia vs EPA, and NC Vanity Plate Controversy

This week on The Outlaw Lawyer, Joe and I have a special guest in studio, Miss Cassandra Nicholas, and we discuss several legal topics, including the historic nomination of Kentaji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, West Virginia versus the EPA, a very important climate change case, and the DMV fart truck, which will be a lot of fun to talk about. And now, Outlaw Lawyer.

Welcome into the program, The Outlaw Lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, Whitaker and Hamer law firms, where you can find them during the week, managing partners there and practicing attorneys right here in the great state of North Carolina, 46 combined years experience and they have offices in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, and in Gastonia. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. We want to remind you too, that you're going to have legal questions of your own. We understand that, and if you need some advice, here's a number for you, 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186. Just leave your contact information, a little bit about what the call's about, and an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch.

You can also email your questions to the program, questions at theoutlawlawyer.com, and we'll answer those questions on a future program, and check out the website, theoutlawlawyer.com. Josh, you have a special guest in studio, and I understand that Joe's on assignment, but he is remote. He's joining us. That's right, Morgan. I have Miss Cassandra Nicholas in with us today.

This is her second time guest starring on The Outlaw Lawyer. Cassandra, how are you doing today? So far so good, but it's still early. We're just getting started, but so far so good. You might remember Miss Nicholas is an attorney over at Whitaker and Hamer, where me and Joe also live, and me and Cassandra are in studio this morning with Morgan.

Our good friend Joseph Hamer is remoting in from the Whitaker and Hamer Clayton office on Main Street down in Clayton, North Carolina. Is that right, Joe? That's right, Josh. I am sad not to be with you guys.

I'm also not sad not to be with you guys, but your voices sound great. Well, that's good. That's good. You're coming in. You're coming in loud and clear.

I was going to apologize. I'm real tired today. We record this on Wednesday morning, so you may be hearing it Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, depending on how you listen to us, but we record Wednesday, and I have basically been staying up all night just looking at Ukraine news, so news on the Ukraine invasion and just kind of taking everything in, following all these different people on Twitter to get different perspectives, but that's pretty much been my full-time job for the past three days. Are you guys following that tough?

Oh, man, that's a level of dedication that I have not given to the conflict in Ukraine. I've kept up with it. I can't say that I've lost sleep studying and following people, but just to comment on you being tired, when have you not been tired? I'm tired of the show, man.

I'm tired a lot. Maybe it's just Wednesday. Maybe it's just Wednesday. Wednesday morning is the time where you are, the rest of the week, you've got a lot of energy. Cassandra, have you been following us closely?

Not as closely as you. I watched the State of the Union last night, though, so President Biden definitely addressed everything going on towards the beginning, mostly focused on domestic stuff, though, which I was surprised that he didn't talk more about Ukraine. Yeah, I hung in there for the Ukraine part, and then I go to bed, part of me being tired, I go to bed too early and I get up too early. But I hung in there for a little while, but it made me go back and I started reading the NATO treaty, you know, we're the outlaw lawyer, we try to talk about legal topics that come up in the news and try to address those specifically. And so I was trying to think about, you know, what's the legal part of this? And so I started thinking about international law. So some light reading, the NATO treaty.

Let's dig in. So I went to the NATO website, which, you know, is there is a thing that exists. And then they had this whole section dedicated to, you know, the original treaty, I didn't get a page count. It's not super long, but there's all these amendments.

And there's, there's a lot there on the website, but I just started thinking about that. This is, you know, if you want to put an international law perspective, we don't have to go into the UN. But international law is a little, a little different, because it's hard to punish people, right? That's kind of that's kind of what we're seeing, right? When someone breaks international law, as in theory, Russia has done here, how do you deal with that?

Because usually, there's no, and there are some courts, but it's not like criminal court, you know, like, if I do something wrong down at the bar, and get a DUI or something, I'm going to jail, and I'm going to have a court date, and then my license can get suspended. There's all these punishments, there's these repercussions, and in international law, it's not always the case. So it's been interesting to see everybody come together. It's horrifying to watch what's happening, though, and, and I had to turn it off.

I think that was Tuesday night, because I just finally had to get some sleep. But it's fascinating to think about it, and it, you know, put a legal spin on it anyway. Josh, I want to update you. I'm also tired now, after hearing, hearing you talk about reading the NATO treaty, I did it for me. I think I think for this show, I think that's what I'm gonna do. I'm just gonna pull out the NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty, and I think I'm just gonna give it a give it a read. See how it goes.

I hope we're prepared to break some, some box office radio records, because it's gonna this is gonna do it for people, man. I can tell. Well, I was also I was also spending a lot of time thinking about the, you know, I don't, I'm not gonna sit here and say I know a lot about Ukraine.

I don't know too much about it, just when they were in the news over the past 20 or so years, I would, I would read it, but you just have to be impressed with the leadership that they have. And it made me start thinking about, you know, when when America when you know, we fought our war for freedom, and I wonder if George Washington was that, you know, awesome back in the day, you know, if he was because you can't, can you imagine if something, God forbid, somebody tried to invade the US now, you think our leaders would stay in fight or be holed up in some building and I doubt I see Biden with a with a Kevlar vest on with a rocket launcher in the trenches, man, what was lasting people. So the other thing that's made me do this made me think about all these, you know, because I'm a child of the early 80s, right? So every movie, the Soviets were always the bad guys. And at some point, the Russians stopped being the bad guys in a lot of movies. But when I was growing up, the Russians were the bad guys in every movie.

So you made me think about Rocky. And you do remember Superman for Superman for I do, I don't recall what was Superman for called was the quest for hope, right? Is that right?

Or am I off piece? It was close quest for close man. But do you remember very bad guy is in Superman for isn't it? Dolph?

No, no, that was Rocky. Ah, who's the guy? It's a Russian guy, right? It's like the Russian nuclear man.

Yeah, they make us he wasn't played by Dolph Lundgren. You know, I don't know. I don't know the answer.

I hope there's an easy way to find this out. Just give me one second, please. I hope he did. No, no, no. This guy's name is actually this guy's got a pretty cool name. His name is actually Mark Pillow. He looks kind of like he looks like a he looks like a man. He's he's got a Lundgren esque look to him.

He's like a little bit more pretty, though. Not quite as rugged. What year did that come out? Came out in 87. How old were you in 1987? I was one was not a lie. I'm familiar with the movie.

I never asked that question. I always ask that question because it makes me feel so old. I'm always close to being the oldest. That was my favorite movie back in 87 when it came out.

Mom used to put me in front of it and then just go live her life while I watched it on loop. It explains a lot about you. Look, man, Superman for the quest for peace, because the only Superman is Christopher Reeves. Like, I will accept no other person playing Superman like Batman.

I've gotten used to some different folks. Michael Keaton is the one true Batman, but I can accept other Batman Batman. But anyway, the point being, what was the what was the movie with the Wolverines in it? A Superman movie with Wolverine?

It's another Russian movie. The Russians and the Cubans are invading us and the kids all form the Wolverine. Oh, that's oh, it's called Wolverine. I'm pretty sure. No, it's called Logan. No, wait. What are you talking about?

I don't understand what you're talking about right now. The movie, the movie where Cuba and the Russians invade. Right. Rick Swayze.

Charlie Sheen. The group of kids. The resistance force. They're the Wolverines. You're talking about Red? Red Dawn. Red Dawn. Red Dawn. I'm going to watch Red Dawn today. We're going to give you a we're going to give you a medal for watching your eleventh movie lifetime. I have to apologize to our special guest, Cassandra, because we've invited her in to talk about movies that came on before she was born.

It's not my fault. Cassandra, have you seen any movies with Russian villains? No, I don't.

None that come to mind. Well, I got a feeling there's going to be a lot of new movies where Russians are the bad guys again because they're an easy bad guy. Yeah, it's got to be good for screenwriters. The Taekwondo Association took away Putin's black belt. I saw that.

That's really good. That was Judo, wasn't it? Wasn't it Judo? I think it was Judo. I think he does Judo. I think he was like the Judo master.

Like he was like head of the Judo Federation or something. The Instagram blurb, I saw Taekwondo. I didn't look into it further.

I didn't do my due diligence. I got to confirm this. You guys keep talking. I'm going to confirm. I read an article that Steven Seagal was banned from the Ukraine. Is that correct? I saw there was like an article that Steven Seagal was in Ukraine to like do something and then it came out that he's actually had been banned from the Ukraine. All right.

So look, I got to update our guests. So you're correct. He was stripped of his black belt in Taekwondo, but they also removed him as like head, like honorary head of some Judo Federation as well. So he's really taking a big hit in the martial arts world. Well it's definitely, we don't mean to make light of it, it's definitely a serious, more than a serious situation.

Just unnerving. My 12 year old, you know, again, when I was growing up in the early eighties, you know, the comic books, like anything that a kid would absorb would talk about, you know, the threat of nuclear war and the Cold War kind of was in everything. There was episodes of like Night Court that focused on, you know, the Cold War.

So sitcoms and everything. So it seems like that's all coming rushing back to me, right? You know, because what was the video game, Russian Attack? Is that where you were?

It was all over the place, man. Russians were the bad guys. This was before we were born, right? This is when, am I correct? Was not before I was born. Okay. Russian Attack. It was a video game.

They had video games then though. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

I'm going to, I'm going to research this. What's, what was it on? What system? It was, no, it was arcade. It was before you got good at arcade. There was a time when you didn't get arcade games at the house.

You had like an Atari and you got some games, but you didn't get like the arcade games. Was it called Russian Attack? As in Rush, R-U-S-H-N, Attack? Yeah.

Apostrophe. Yeah. That came out in 85. I was negative one then. So 85 was a good year.

The um, you weren't here 86 though. I was going to say what's going on, man. All right. Well, we invited Cassandra here for a reason. And that reason is not for us to devolve into these kinds of topics. We actually have important legal things to talk about. So just, just real quick, the biggest legal thing, I think that happened last week and it's terribly overshadowed.

But President Biden did make a historic nomination. Judge Kintaji Brown Jackson was nominated to take Justice Breyer's, he's retiring. So Justin Breyer's position as a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, and that's a big deal for a lot of reasons that we'll talk about, but we'll spend some time talking about that. The Supreme Court's hearing a big case this week. I think oral argument started, no it started Monday, but West Virginia versus the EPA.

And so this is a big case that's talking about what the EPA can and can't do, kind of has a climate change involved in it. So that's something we can talk about. And then I saw the local story where a lady had gotten a, what would you call it? Vanity plate. Vanity plate with the word FART, F-A-R-T on it. And so it's been issued, somebody has complained about it to the DMV, so the DMV is reevaluating whether that's offensive, and so we're going to talk about that system and how it works.

But some interesting things to talk about that don't involve the Russians or pop culture references from the early 80s. The Outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer and our special guest today, again, always a pleasure to have Cassandra Nicholas with us. She's an attorney at Whitaker and Hamer as well, but we are going to get into more topics here. A reminder, if you've got a legal question of your own, you can get in touch with Whitaker and Hamer, call 800-659-1186, that's 800-659-1186 and leave your contact information, a little bit about what the call's about and an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. You can always email your questions to the program, questions at the outlawlawyer.com and please check out the website, the outlawlawyer.com. We're back right after this. Welcome back in to the Outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, Whitaker and Hamer law firm managing partners there, practicing attorneys here in North Carolina, 46 combined years experience with offices in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina and Gastonia.

If you've got a legal situation that you're dealing with, you've got questions, you can get in touch with Whitaker and Hamer, 800-659-1186, that's 800-659-1186 and leave your contact information, briefly what the call's about and an attorney with the firm will be in touch and you can always email your questions at the outlawlawyer, that's questions at the outlawlawyer.com. Josh, take it away. All right, Morgan, so President Biden, this week, or was that last week, when did she actually get nominated?

I'm very confused on my days. I feel like that was this week. Let's just say she got nominated, that's what's important, right?

In the past six to seven days, no one's going to be doing a quiz on what day this was. She's nominated. Our president, President Biden, nominated Judge Kintaji Brown Jackson, currently on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, federal judge, federal appellate judge. It's his nomination to be a new U.S. Supreme Court Justice and we've talked about this earlier, I don't think this is going to get a lot of attention because this doesn't really change anything on the court. So we have more of a liberal justice in Justice Breyer who will be retiring and so of course President Biden being a Democrat is probably going to want someone in who kind of fits that mold but won't change the balance of the court so everybody seems to be a lot calmer when this is the case or at least that's my experience.

But Cassandra, so far what do we know about Ms. Jackson? So she's only 51 so if she is confirmed she could be on the court for a very long time. She did three clerkships including for Justice Breyer so it's kind of a nice closing of the loop there that she would potentially be the person taking his spot. Her mother was the principal of my friend's high school. Oh my gosh, sign her up.

That's a big time fact. She's bullet proof man, how do you come at her? And this for you Josh, she was a reporter in her year between undergrad and law school. I like it, I like it. For Time magazine. I knew I liked her.

Just casual. She sounds fantastic. No this is, I like this nomination, I think this is a good safe nomination.

She's obviously extremely intelligent. I like the fact that she's done a lot of things so she's been a public defender, she's been in private practice, she's been a federal judge, but unlike a lot of nominations have been judges for a long time and maybe never even had any private practice experience, maybe never being a public defender or a prosecutor, having that experience I think is huge. I think she's one of the most attractive candidates since I've followed the Supreme Court.

I like the mix of experience. I think the one problem and the way you're going to see people who want to prevent her from being confirmed, I think the attack on her is that we don't have a lot of, she hasn't authored a lot of opinions because she hasn't been a judge for 20 years. So she doesn't have a lot of opinions to kind of criticize, you don't know necessarily how she'll rule on an abortion issue or a second amendment issue because she hasn't ever had to rule on those type of cases.

So there's some unknown there that probably scares some folks. But no, I read the Wall Street, basically everything I've read loves the nomination or at least can't attack the nomination. So the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, I think the BBC had a piece on her, but everything that I've been looking at, really positive and I haven't seen, the people that are attacking her are just attacking her because I think they're just Republicans who feel like they have to contest the nomination in some way since it's not going to be a conservative justice. I just can't see how she doesn't get confirmed. I agree in theory, but as nominations have already been held up in the past, I can't predict.

Right, right. Well, we hold our prediction record very, very, we take it very, very seriously, Joseph. I don't know if we're willing to make a bold prediction here on confirmation or not. Oh man, what the key to the key to never losing a prediction on anything, even remotely, even remotely like possible that it won't occur. You don't, you just don't, you don't predict it.

So I don't know, maybe, maybe Cassandra can, because her record obviously doesn't count towards our record. So do you ever, you ever watched that, and there's a classic Simpsons, you know, this one where Lisa helps her dad gamble, you see that when it's like season three or four is a long time ago. You know what I'm talking about? I'm going to lie to you and I'm going to say, yeah, man, I saw that one.

Yeah. There's an episode where Homer watches a lot of football and he ends up gambling on football and Lisa being the smart one decides she wants to spend time with her dad. She gambles with her dad. They bet on football games and the Super Bowl or the very last game.

I don't remember what game it was. She stops helping him because she figures out like, do you love me or do you just want me to help you to gamble? The whole point of this story is that they have a giant, they watch a guy on TV as a giant lock. So anytime he makes a prediction on a game, he has this huge novelty lock and he's like, this is the, you know, my lock of the week is, you know, Arizona by four over Philadelphia.

So I feel like we should have some sort of giant prop. Anytime we make a prediction, we can just say, you know what I'm saying? Lock of the week.

Somebody. Yeah, man. I know. I love that. Play well on the radio. I think that's fantastic. Yeah. Radio radio is known for its good use of props.

We could get some good sound effects. That's right. There's probably one on here somewhere. We get the prop and we hire someone just to explain like really descriptively what's going on.

Yeah. What's the number of physical actions? What's the over under on number of Simpson references per episode from Josh?

My goal is one. You get, definitely one, some, usually it's one because he does it and then it, and since I'd never watched the Simpsons, I can't back him up on it. And I think he's just like, well, I'm not going to do it again. Her, uh, Ms. Brown, her range of experience, um, it, it just, it just seems like a perfect fit and he does correct some historical biases on the Supreme court at the same time.

I, I, I'm going to, if we're not, if we're not prepared to make an outlaw lawyer lock prediction, I'm going to at least make a personal Joshua Whitaker prediction that do that. I'm going to personally say the same thing and the only, this isn't really a true caveat, but, uh, you know, I'm with you really like the, the, the depth of experience, the variety of experience. There are a lot of, a lot of great things there, um, looks really good on paper in a lot of ways. Uh, very difficult to attack is what you would think. But then we always talk about the tribalism and just the, the blind, just the, the way that some people just blindly stick to their party lines and they, you know, they politicize everything. So as difficult as this individual may be to attack, there's, there's definitely going to be people who come at her, uh, strongly just because literally she's, they perceive her as being on the other team. So I think that's the reality that's going to have to be faced.

I haven't, I haven't seen this anywhere. Uh, but just again, just kind of talking about, uh, certainly someone will pro you know, the, the progressive side of, of maybe the democratic party may not see her as being progressive enough and I know she is, um, religious to some extent, I know that always doesn't fly well with certain parts of the, a democratic party. I can't imagine you have any democratic, uh, Senate members, you know, abstain of getting her on the court because of that. But, um, that would be a plot twist. I feel like that would be a plot twist and unexpected, um, plot twist, but that'd be like a new level of like insanity though.

I feel like who knows, who knows? And you know, the whole bad thing for her is as historic as this was, it was completely 100% overshadowed by the events in the Ukraine. So, I mean, I don't know if you weren't really paying attention to legal news, I don't know how much you would even picked up on this, but maybe that does prevent some protest against her that it's just not as big of a deal.

People don't need to make as much of a show of objecting. Yeah, maybe so. Maybe so. I, uh, I think we should note, cause we need to get Cassandra talking more that our, our most downloaded episode of the outlaw lawyer was the episode where Cassandra joined us to talk. I'm not even gonna try to say the guy's name cause I'll mispronounce it Murdoch. I think we should put that in the, in the notes, uh, for download here is that Cassandra was with us.

I think we should put that guy's name in there too. Just I think it's Cassandra she's the rock star, but anyway, well we, you know, we, we're not really in disagreement on this point. So when everybody agrees, it's not always the, uh, is it a show prediction or not?

You're saying no, no, it's not. We're not going to do that. Going with.

Yes, I can't. So here's what, here's the way this is going to work because I'm the official prediction manager. Uh, if, if it pans out and it's correct, it's a show prediction. If, if it does not pan out, it is incorrect. It is an unofficial personal prediction.

I didn't even make the prediction if that's what happens. And it was just Josh, you know, something, something popped into my mind. Um, me and Joe both have to turn that key. Right. I was going to say it's like launching a new killer, a new that's very appropriate right now.

Not a good analogy, not a good analogy at all. And then I started thinking, you think two people have to turn the key in Russia? That's probably just one key, right? Yeah.

And Putin has it. Yeah. Yeah. That, that actually was quite scary and drug me down into my Twitter fueled, uh, give that guy his, his black belt and Taekwondo bag.

We got to keep them calm, man. All right. Well, I think that's about all we can talk about for, for Ms. Jackson. Hopefully she will be confirmed.

Everybody seems to like her on a professional level. Uh, I think she'd be a good fit, uh, up next something that's a little more debatable. Uh, we're going to talk about the, uh, West Virginia versus EPA case. That was just, uh, just had an oral arguments this past Monday, uh, with the U S Supreme Court.

So that's up next. The outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer. You can find them at Whitaker and Hamer law firm, 46 combined years experience again, offices in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, and Gastonia. They're the managing partners there. They're practicing attorneys here in the great state of North Carolina.

If you've got a legal situation, you've got questions. Here's a number for you, 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186.

Leave your contact information briefly. What the call is about an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will return that call. You can also email your questions to the show questions at the outlaw lawyer.com. We encourage everybody to visit the website, the outlaw lawyer.com.

We're back right after this. The outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer. You can find them at Whitaker and Hamer law firm and managing partners. They're practicing attorneys here in North Carolina offices in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, and Gastonia special guest today, Cassandra Nicholas. She is an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer.

And now the guys are going to get to, uh, West Virginia versus the EPA. Before we do that, Morgan, the, you know, we were talking about having like an official sound when we make a prediction, just, just a minute ago, just before the break. Okay. And I was thinking about like a big lock sound, but how about that? What's that law and order sound? What would you call that sound? You know what I'm talking about? It's like a ding, ding. Oh, it's on this thing.

If I press this button, will that happen? Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah.

I think that's going to be, I don't think that hit hard enough. Okay. I just want to go ahead and say that we do a lot of broadcasting from this studio and the iPad has an allure to it. And Josh, you have control of the iPad. You need to use it, uh, you know, sparingly.

You don't want to run it into the ground. We had a, we had a show a while ago, one of our shows and, and Joe got to the iPad. You remember that Joe? Yeah. I'm pretty sure that's our most downloaded episode. I don't know.

It was a, it was a lot of sound effects. We really, we really used the board, but all right, so the Supreme court heard, uh, and this, you know, a lot of these Supreme court cases, if it's, if it's not about abortion, if it's not about the second amendment, you know, if it's not about gun rights, a lot of these will fly under the radar and they're all important. Some of them are hard to read.

Some of them are technical. Some of them really only fascinate, you know, legal folks, legal minds in a certain field. But this is one that again, I had forgotten about, you know, I always kind of take a look at what's on the docket for the U S Supreme court, what's coming up. And so oral arguments started on this one on Monday. Um, and it was West Virginia versus the environmental protection agency. And I'm going to let Cassandra kind of give us a rundown of, of how this case started and kind of how it got to the Supreme court.

So this will be fun. Um, so in 2015 Obama's administration adopted the clean power plan, and that was a rule that sought to combat climate change by reducing carbon pollution from power plants. It set individual goals for each state to cut power plant emissions, uh, and gave some specific deadlines. However, the court, uh, the Supreme court actually put that on hold and then Trump came into office and instituted the ACE rule, the affordable clean energy rule.

And then that kind of sat around for a while. And on Trump's last full day in office, um, the U S court of appeals for the district of Columbia vacated the repeal of the clean power plan, which Trump's administration repealed that. So essentially if the clean power plan was repealed and then that was vacated, is it back in force?

Um, furthermore, the court vacated the ACE rule. So, so the overarching, you know, just, uh, the overarching thing here is, uh, there was an act, right? So, uh, an agency like the, like the EPA, an agency can only do what the, uh, what a governing body gives it to do, right? So they're just, they're executing on legislative power. So, uh, you know, the Congress will pass an act or a law, and then they will hand it down to this agency to enforce. And sometimes the agency has some leeway depending on the law where they can kind of fill in the gaps. They get this overarching, uh, rule and then they'll kind of fill in, all right, well, this is how we're going to enforce it.

You can only have this much blank and, you know, and water, and, and so they'll kind of fill it in and then they'll enforce it. And you know, I'm not a environmental protection agency apologist, but I'm sure that's a very hard job to have as a bureaucrat when you're, you know, you're going from an Obama administration to a Trump administration to a Biden administration. So those are administrations that have some very different theories on what the EPA should be doing. Um, so I'm pretty sure everybody was confused, but it has real world consequences because here in West Virginia, and there's a lot of plaintiffs in this, in this suit, uh, coal mining companies, uh, you know, there are certain States involved like West Virginia, but you know, if, if the Biden, if the, if the legislation that came under the Biden administration kind of rules the day, then coal mining takes a big hit, I think is, is the easiest way to say it. And if, uh, you know, the Trump, the, the legislation that got passed under Trump stays in effect and it kind of relaxes, uh, some of the limitations on if you're in the coal mining business, uh, the coal burning business is kind of a little more relaxed. And so now we kind of have to figure out where are we at and that that's kind of how I understood it after, after the procedural history, I don't know if that's right or wrong, but that was my understanding.

Yeah. My convoluted history of it brings us to West Virginia and other States, 12, 12 ish additional States sued the EPA saying that the EPA does not have the authority to, um, essentially restrict the carbon pollution from the power plants. Um, so that brings us to the oral arguments. And really there were only two questions at play at the oral arguments first, whether these States even have standing in this case at all. So the Supreme court could decide just to dismiss it outright saying the States don't have standing.

And second, whether the EPA has been given authority by Congress, uh, to regulate this at all. Yeah. So courts, courts like to do that, you know, standing is, you know, there are certain things you have to have before you can even bring a court case. So like if we're leaving the studio today and I see Cassandra walking across the street and she gets hit by a car, I'd hope that didn't happen, but she gets hit by a car. I can't bring a lawsuit on her behalf, right? I don't have standing to Sue.

I wasn't, I wasn't injured. I wasn't involved because Sandra obviously has a great case against whoever hit her with their car. Um, but, but so standing is always important. And so like Cassandra was saying here, the Supreme court might have an easy out where they just say, Hey, um, you don't have standing to bring this where we don't even have to reach a decision. Nope, we've seen cases like this before where people are complaining that an agency, um, now was the heart of, I don't remember the name of it, but the vaccine, uh, you know, the vaccine, the private vaccine mandate, the mandate. Yeah.

We talked about it a couple of shows ago. So people were saying, Hey, OSHA, you don't have the right to promulgate this requirement and then punish us for not following it. Cause you don't have, you know, legislative authority to, to do that.

So this is kind of in that, that same vein. Um, the anything else come up in oral arguments. So regarding standing, it does have to be in the right person, right place that they're being sued. Supreme court's definitely the right place. And then they're actually, there has to be an actual case and controversy. So the standing issue is that part, whether there's an actual case and controversy, because uh, the EPA is interesting argument is that even though the lower court vacated the repeal of the clean power plan, the EPA is saying, no, we're not, the clean power plan doesn't, isn't in effect.

ACE isn't an effect. You're not complaining about anything because there's no rule regulating you right now at all. Oh, that's interesting. Who? Okay. That's interesting. Yeah. There's nothing here to adjudicate.

Yeah. You don't have standing and you don't have a controversy. That's worse than not having standing is literally not having a controversy whatsoever. Oh, and so much money has been poured into this legislation.

That would be, that would be a big insult to me. If I brought a case as an attorney, I know this is probably attorney generals or some private attorneys involved private sector attorneys, but your client doesn't have standing and they don't have a controversy and that that would be tough. And then I spent a lot of the time while listening to it, just a deep diving on the personal lives of the people arguing. So I can tell you a lot about West Virginia's solicitor general and the U S solicitor general.

Give me a fun fact about each of those pieces. So West Virginia's solicitor general, she's been the solicitor general for about five years. She's only 35 now.

So I feel like I'm not doing much, not that my work isn't very important, but I am not the solicitor general of the state. You're killing that lady in terms of accomplishments in life. I found her on Facebook and Instagram, the U S solicitor general. She had three clerkships, but she's only 40, uh, had three clerkships, including two, four. She, she clerked for Garland at the DC district level and then clerked for Ginsburg and Kagan. So she's pretty impressive as well and was miss Idaho, 2004.

So she's all, she's all right. How many, how many times has she been on this radio show? That's my question.

How many downloads does she have for the, uh, yeah. You know, when I got out of law school, I didn't even think about, uh, a clerkship. I guess you just got to have that, uh, that mindset I needed to, uh, I needed to make some jingle. I needed to make some coin. I didn't, of course I guess you get paid for that, right? Clerkships.

You do get paid. Yeah. Yeah. Well, anyway, it's going to be interesting to see what the, uh, what the Supreme court does with that. Um, I was going to, uh, mention one more thing. Um, well we'll save it next up. We're going to be talking about, uh, the fork truck, the infamous fork truck up next way to tease it.

All right. The outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer Whitaker and Hamer law firm, where you can find them during the week, 46 combined years experience and conveniently located offices in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, goals, borough, Fuquay, Verina, and Gastonia. They are the managing partners. They're practicing attorneys here in North Carolina.

And again, our special guest is Cassandra Nicholas, who is also an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer. If you've got your own legal situation, you've got questions. We've got a number for you, 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186. Leave your contact information briefly, what the call's about and an attorney will be in touch with you from Whitaker and Hamer. You can also email your questions, questions at the outlaw lawyer.com again, questions at the outlaw lawyer.com, we'll answer those questions on a future program.

We're back right after this. Welcome back into the outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer law firm, practicing attorneys here in North Carolina, offices in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, and Gastonia. Again, you're going to probably have your own legal situation, maybe a question about what you're going through.

Well, we have an answer for you. You need to call 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186.

Leave your contact information briefly, what the call is about and an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. And you can always email the show, questions at the outlaw lawyer.com, we'll answer those questions on a future program. I tell you, we've been promoting it and now it is here. So here we go. The most anticipated segment in the history of the outlaw lawyers. I'm kidding, of course.

Go ahead, Josh. I'm looking at your sound effects iPad, and I don't know that we have any appropriate sound effects for this, this segment, just looking through here. But this is, I saw WRAL picked up this story and this is when I was, when I was a reporter for one year between undergrad and law school, and this is a gift from, from the gods here. If this had fallen in my lap, but this is what I have called the fart truck, but we have a North Carolina resident who, according to the stories, a molecular biologist that lives in Asheville, and she's got an older Toyota truck, and she decided one day on a whim to get a vanity, a DMV plate, which is something I've thought about a lot, but never done it, but a vanity plate. And she just put fart on there, F A R T fart. So that was her vanity plate. And she's had it. I didn't get, I didn't get an exact timeframe on how long she's had it, but she's had it for a while.

It wasn't something that she just got in the mail. Is it just fart or is it fart one or one fart? What is it? I think it's just fart. They said there was an SM on it officially because of a, you know how you can, I can't remember what it was now.

There's a, you know, when you can get a plate, but you can get like a sponsor, an organization and you have a little symbol, there's something that's SM that's associated with it at the DMV. But when you see a picture of it, it just says fart. But she's had it for a while. She says, people take pictures of it. Her daughter says she has a seven year old daughter. It's a big joke when she drops her off at school.

So it's all in good fun. But somebody filed a formal complaint with the DMV that it was offensive. And so the DMV has reached out to our molecular biologists to, to say, why did I basically ask her her intentions? Why did you get this? What does it mean to you?

These kinds of questions. And in case you don't know, the DMV does regulate that kind of thing, right? You can't just go in and get any, anything on a vanity plate.

You won't. And there's, you know, swear words can't have, of course, can't have anything racist or, or bigoted. So there's a DMV person or people that judge whether your request for a vanity plate is, is okay. And so fart passed the test early on. Genie's out of the bottle, toothpaste out of the tube. That's right.

Who has it? Um, but, but anyway, there's a complaint. So the DMV has, has reached out to her and they're reconsidering. And so this is, this is the story, uh, WRAL kind of ran with, it's kind of a funny story.

Um, but it does involve the law, you know, the DMV and, and a lot of the little bureaucratic rules that, that we have to deal with as, as people in, in attorneys. Um, but I really liked it when I was growing up, I wasn't allowed to, I couldn't say fart. Yeah. Cause I was in big trouble if I said fart, that was just as bad as like the real F word. You're definitely getting a spanking. So that's why I'm going to say it on air as many times as humanly possible today. I got a few preliminary thoughts about this story because I'm looking through, I'm looking through our notes here and I, I'm assuming this is a direct quote from the news article and uh, it talks about how she applied for this plate and she thought it would get rejected and then it didn't get rejected. They said they approved it and it says, the quote is, I got it in the mail and I was so excited I was jumping around and I can't, I can't remember the last time I was so excited about anything that I was literally jumping around. This lady, this lady must, she must be a true fan of farts, man.

I don't know. And not that it would necessarily matter like who she is, what her job is, but she is a molecular biologist turned software developer and I just like picture her a little on the nerdier side. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Absolutely not. But it adds to the mental image of her jumping around as like soccer mom, minivan software developer. I wonder if people driving by her always give her a huge thumbs up. I wonder if her favorite song is jumping jack flash from the rolling stones.

It's a gas, gas, gas. The uh, what do you think, do you think the DMV is going to take it away from her? Do we need to make a prediction on that? Do we need to make a bold outlaw lawyer prediction? I hope they don't. I don't know, man. I don't believe they do.

Go ahead and board it out. I don't think they will as a personal prediction. I don't think they will either. I think whichever DMV employee originally approved it, like knew what was happening and was excited for her. It's their own fault, man. It's their own fault.

Like who? Come on. Let's put a special frame around a case around it because somebody is going to try to take it off her car now. Look, whoever complained about this license plate, I can guarantee you that person has farted like a thousand times in their life and they just need to, the energy it takes to do that, man, the energy it takes to write a letter or an email or anything relating to this is just, it kind of blows my mind, man. And I don't know what the process here in North Carolina is to get vanity plates approved in the first place is, but I will tell you about the process in North Dakota, at least as it was in 2005. I was in driver's ed and we had a DMV representative come to our class to, I think, recruit us essentially to serve on this committee as volunteers that would approve or deny vanity plates. It was a volunteer committee that they purposely included teenagers on because they feared that young folks would get things by an older committee, inappropriate vanity plates. So they'd get an email every single week of all the proposed vanity plates and would approve or deny them.

And I think that would have been so fun. I might sign up for North Carolina's version of that. I think the DMV should release a list of disapproved vanity plates like every week, like Monday, like the third headline.

This is everything. You give us an easy segment for our radio show of nothing else. We would just read it for 10 minutes. But anyway, I thought that was very interesting. It's always amazing to me that somebody has paid money to deal with this. And I understand you can't have people, I guess you can't have people just putting anything they want.

I don't think that society would break down if that happened. But there are people... Well, there's some things that I could like, there's some ways I could come up, you give me that number of characters for a license plate, whatever the maximum is, I can come up with something that would be offensive that I would understand someone writing a letter about and take an issue with. So Oh, I saw one recently here that isn't offensive, but it was surprising. I've noticed around here you can put symbols in your license plates, apostrophes, semicolon, colons. So someone's license plate was CHK space, UR space, the colon symbol, check your colon. That's a public health message, there's nothing wrong with that.

I hope it is a doctor, like I think that's amazing marketing. It's a colon enthusiast. Oh, I tell you, it just brings back Seinfeld.

It does. I mean, come on, Kramer, ass man. I mean, Can you say that on the radio? Yeah. We'll find out. Oh, man.

We've been blowing it. How many episodes have we done not knowing that? I know that would have changed a lot of things for me, Morgan, if I didn't know that. I think we need a list of what we can say and can't say. No, no, we don't need that list because I've just been relying on, I guess, George Carlin all this time. That's kind of where I got by.

Yeah, those are good. Start there and let's not go anywhere else. But anyway, we'll see how that we'll see how that works out. Hopefully, the DMV leaves her alone and lets her enjoy her funny. I'm sure that seven year old gets a blast out of it. I was going to tell the kids I was going to talk about this today and I didn't get a chance.

I'll just have to. I feel like there's a threshold, though, like where the seven years, an age where the seven year old is going to get to. I don't know what that age is, where the the fart truck is not going to be cool anymore. I mean, do you agree with that? Like there's going to be a time when that kid is grown enough that it's going to become less cool and they're not going to want mom to pick them up in the far truck.

I vehemently, I vehemently disagree with that. I think that's all that would be funny right now. Yeah, it'd be funny to me.

But you kids, you get to that you get to that point where you're like embarrassed by your parents and like you don't want the attention. You know, I don't know. That's a bold prediction.

I'm not that's not official. You can make it a lot. It's not a lot. It's not like we can't prove you'll never be able to prove that one. I only I only made the prediction on the far truck license plate not being taken away because we're never going to follow up on this story ever. There's no way I beg to differ.

I mean, we have Josh. We are going to follow up. I'll be glued to my to my Twitter timeline to see see when it's taken care of. But I was reading all all night about the far truck updates until I fell asleep at six fifteen. I'm not going to be able to come into work today because I was up all night reading it.

We've exceeded the limit on the F word for the show today. So the outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, you can find them at Whitaker and Hamer law firm, forty six combined years experience. Again, we we say this often, but there are offices in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuqua, Verina and Gastonia. They are practicing attorneys here in North Carolina and they are the managing partners at the firm. Cassandra Nicholas is our special guest today, also an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer. If you've got a legal question that you are facing and you need some answers, we have a phone number for you, eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six.

That's eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six. Contact information briefly what the call is about. An attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch and you can always email your questions to questions at the outlaw lawyer dot com and please visit the website, the outlaw lawyer dot com.

We'll wrap up the program right after this. Welcome back into the outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, Whitaker and Hamer law firm, the managing partners, they're practicing attorneys here in the great state of North Carolina. Forty six combined years experience between these two and again, offices in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuqua, Verina and Gastonia. If you've got a legal question you are facing, you need some answers, call this number, eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six. That's eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six and leave, you know, a description of what you're going through, contact information and they will be in touch with you, an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer law firm.

You can also email your questions to the show, questions at the outlaw lawyer dot com. Josh. You know what concerts tonight, Morgan? I don't. The the Eagles are coming to PNC.

Nice. Have you ever seen the Eagles? Do you like the Eagles? I love the Eagles. Have not seen them. I am. I am so excited about this one. I've never seen them.

It's always been too expensive. But this year, Vince Gill's with them and and I think, yeah, Vince Gill, I think, took most of the Glenn Frey part since Glenn has passed away. And then Glenn Frey's son tours with him, I believe, and does one or two of his dad's songs. Great show.

But I'm very excited about that. My tiredness level already, though, this early in the day is is making me think I need to get home and maybe get a nap in or something because that Eagles concert, they said they're playing till midnight. They're doing all of the Hotel California album and then an intermission and then a greatest hits compilation. So if you go to the concert and check in, can you never leave? They're doing they're doing Hotel California with, I think, people from it, like not the whole symphony, but I think a lot of people from the NC Symphony are going to be there and they got like a backup choir that's famous on its own.

I don't know the name. But yeah, they're going to Hotel California from beginning to end. And then there's like a long intermission. It was like an hour or something. It's some crazy long intermission. It's greatest hits that be done between like eleven forty five or twelve. And this is a Wednesday. Get a nap in during intermission.

Yeah, you're done for it. We should have done this show tomorrow and it could have just been you just I usually start our start heading to bed around nine fifteen, nine thirty. Like I'm not staying up late, you know, so this is what year was Hotel California released Josh? I know.

I'm just asking. Seventy eight. Seventy six. Nineteen seventy six. It's the year I was born, Joseph. It was a good year.

I was born to ten years after that, actually. If the Eagles were coming to North Dakota, Cassandra, being from North Dakota, where would where did like people go? Where did you go to see shows in North Dakota? The Fargo Dome.

When it's completely full, it's the third largest city in North Dakota. It's the dome itself. They have these in the hall. There are these old pictures that they have on these giant lock light boxes.

So they're they're covering large portions of the wall. And there's one showing a blizzard in like the 80s. And there's a guy crawled up under the hood of his vehicle, like fixing it. And my dad is walking through the Fargo Dome and he looks and he's like, that's me. That's those are my jeans.

That's my car. That's such a sweet name for a stadium. The Fargo Dome is much cooler than that. The PNC Arena. How do you compete with the Fargo Dome? So the PNC, like the PNC, still the ESA, which was a terrible name to begin with, but neither one of those are good. You think they could come up with something, you know, like Fargo Dome. You can't use you can't I guess the hockey folks wouldn't appreciate, but you got to get Valvano on there. I think that's that's a whole. Yeah, that's a whole nother conversation, I guess.

But you got to do something. But the Valvano Coliseum, did anybody. You guys have a sports team that plays there? Is that just North Dakota State University? Yes.

OK. Yeah. We don't have any professional teams, but the Bison are a big deal. They've got lots of national championships. They've got players that have come out of there. Like, I think didn't I see the they won like Division Two football championship for like nine out of 11 years? They're super there. It's FCS. Josh, it's the FCS distinction between the FCS and Division Two.

But no super successful football team, man. Well, you know, I try to keep up with what's going on, you know, out there. And the Eagles concert is like I can't even see past tonight because I don't even know what I don't even know what we got tomorrow at the firm, because all I'm thinking about is is get to the Eagles concert early, beat the traffic, because that's what old people want to do. Are you in the tailgate? It's going to be beautiful. We are. We're going to play take the truck and and tailgate a little bit and then then get in there. And then I guess once you're in there, you're in there for a while.

I got a bold prediction and I'm going to this is going to be a lot. Play the sound. All right.

All right. Well, Josh, I'll play the song after Josh Whittaker drinks more than two alcoholic beverages tonight. Probably someone else drives him home. This fart truck lady. We need to get in touch with her. Yes.

If she Ubers, that would be interesting. You'll be getting thumbs up all the way home. Well, just a quick reminder, you know, we have a lot of fun on the show. We enjoy sitting down and being able to to get our voices out there and then and discuss this legal information with everyone. We hope it was fun, but we also are practicing attorneys in the state of Carolina. And so over here at Whittaker and Hamer, if you have a legal problem, you can get in touch with us. Morgan always gives you those details, but Joe and and me and Cassandra, we're all in our offices doing work most of the time.

This is about the only time we get out to do this show and go watch concerts. But we're happy to help you with with any legal question you might have. Our firm handles a broad range of of things. So anywhere from personal injury to, you know, real estate transactions that total in the millions of dollars. Family law. You know, divorce, child custody questions, general civil litigation, criminal charges. You know, there's not much we can't advise you on.

We have a lot of attorneys, a lot of staff, a lot of experience in our six or seven offices, however many we got we got going these days. And so we're we're always happy to help. And I always want to remind people that we we we do real things other than the show. The outlaw liars, Josh Whittaker, yes.

And Joe Hamer. They do real things outside of radio that you can find them at Whittaker and Hamer law firm managing partners there again, practicing attorneys here in North Carolina. We do have a lot of fun on the program, but, you know, there are some serious issues facing you. If you've got questions, call the firm, 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186. Leave your contact information briefly what the call is about and an attorney with Whittaker and Hamer will return that phone call. You can also email your questions to the show questions at the outlaw lawyer dot com for Joe Hamer and Josh Whittaker and our special guest, Cassandra Nicklaus, also an attorney at Whittaker and Hamer.

I'm Morgan Patrick, and we will see you on the radio next week. Outlaw Lawyer is hosted by an attorney licensed to practice law in North Carolina. Some of the guests appearing on the show may be licensed North Carolina attorneys. Discussion of the show is meant to be general in nature and in no way should the discussion be interpreted as legal advice. Legal advice can only be rendered once an attorney licensed in the state in which you live had the opportunity to discuss the facts of your case with you. The attorneys appearing on the show are speaking in generalities about the law in North Carolina and how these laws affect the average North Carolinian. If you have any questions about the content of the show, contact us directly.