While the article noted telecommunication companies' apprehension in working with a government surveillance program, it didn't mention that the pre-existing FISA statute, which remains in effect, explicitly allows such cooperation.
The new "replacement" law similarly invalidates pre-existing local anti-discrimination statutes protecting LGBTQ people, doesn't allow passage of new anti-discrimination ordinances until 2020 (when Republicans will surely attempt to extend the law ) and prevents localities and public entities from protecting access to rest rooms for transgender people.
He asked the judge to reconsider his unusual retroactive ruling (applying a new statute to pre-existing cases).
In June, the Trump administration took the unusual step of siding with the state officials rather than defending the law in court, although it sought to throw out only the protections for pre-existing conditions and not the entire statute.
Contrary to that position, Professor Jonathon Siegel argues that, because a statute's legislative history already exists at the time of the statute's passage, a court's treating legislative history as authoritative is the same as giving effect to a statute that validly incorporates pre-existing materials by reference.
It "represents an unsustainable attempt to shoehorn a pre-existing surveillance programme into the text of a statute with which it is not compatible", they said.
"By removing material from the public domain, the statute, in literal terms, 'abridges' a pre-existing freedom to speak," he wrote, referring to a key word of the First Amendment.
But the plain language of the statute provides that state courts must adhere to pre-existing law if their resolution of election controversies is to be given binding effect.
The Trump administration argues for a relatively less extreme outcome that would leave most of the statute in place but eliminate all its protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
The statute's linked provisions prohibiting companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions and requiring most Americans to have minimum coverage fit that understanding.
