Podcast

Baby Boom! Lawyered

From Jessica Mason Pieklo, Imani Gandy Government, News, Politics

You were smart enough not to go to law school. Good—that's what Imani Gandy is for. Baby Boom! Lawyered is the micropodcast from the co-creator of Boom! Lawyered: two or three short episodes a week on the fastest-moving legal fights for reproductive justice. Everything from abortion rights to trans discrimination to racial justice, translated by someone who sat through the three years so you didn't have to.

Produced by Rewire News Group.

Episodes
326
Releases
Twice a week
Typical length
11 min
On air since
2017
Latest episode
4 days ago

Episodes

326 episodes, newest first

  1. Trump Can't Stop Interfering with the Midterm Elections

    Episode 326

    Show notes

    Republicans are cratering in the polls, so Trump is doing what he knows best: Threats. Intimidation. Promises to jail election officials and purge supposed noncitizens from the voter rolls. His problem? Noncitizens voting isn’t a widespread problem. Democrats are sick of it, so they sued the Trump administration to make it stop. Imani Gandy explains how Trump keeps losing in court and how states keep telling him no.

    [Correction: Department of Homeland Security found 185 potential non-citizen votes in Nevada, not 185,000.]

    Expert Repro Journalism That Inspires.

    Episodes like this take time, research, and a commitment to the truth. If Baby Boom! Lawyered helps you understand what’s at stake in our courts, chip in to keep our fearless legal analysis alive. Become a member today.

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    9 min
  2. Yes on 3, Again: Missouri’s Abortion Ban in Disguise

    Episode 325

    Show notes

    Missouri Republicans want abortion rights out of the state constitution—so they wrote an amendment that restricts abortion and allows the legislature to put up more barriers to care, and are selling it to voters as a list of times abortion would be allowed. Cheeky. It took two courts and four drafts to get a ballot summary that says what Amendment 3 does: repeals the abortion rights voters approved in 2024. Imani Gandy explains the chaos Republicans sowed to hide the true purpose of Amendment 3 from voters, and the anti-trans ballot candy they tossed in as a treat.

    Expert Repro Journalism That Inspires.

    Episodes like this take time, research, and a commitment to the truth. If Baby Boom! Lawyered helps you understand what’s at stake in our courts, chip in to keep our fearless legal analysis alive. Become a member today.

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    8 min
  3. Why Missouri's Amendment 3 Could Cost Teens a Way Around Parental Consent

    Episode 324

    Show notes

    Missouri voters are being asked to vote on abortion rights in the midterms—again—because Republicans can’t take no for an answer. In 2024, voters enshrined the right to reproductive freedom, including abortion through fetal viability, in the state constitution. Now, a new Amendment 3 asks voters to repeal that protection.

    Amendment 3 would also write Missouri’s existing parental-consent requirement into the state constitution. Imani Gandy explains what judicial bypass is, what the Supreme Court has said about it, and why it matters that parental consent would be protected by the constitution while judicial bypass would remain in an ordinary law that legislators could change or repeal.

    Expert Repro Journalism That Inspires.

    Episodes like this take time, research, and a commitment to the truth. If Baby Boom! Lawyered helps you understand what’s at stake in our courts, chip in to keep our fearless legal analysis alive. Become a member today.

    B*itch, Listen now has its own dedicated feed on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts. If you already subscribe to Baby Boom! Lawyered, sign up for B*tch, Listen so you won't miss it.

    10 min
  4. Why a Fetal Viability Ban is Still Just a Ban

    Episode 323

    Show notes

    https://rewirenewsgroup.com/2025/07/30/fetal-viability-missouri-abortion-amendment/

    Expert Repro Journalism That Inspires.

    Episodes like this take time, research, and a commitment to the truth. If Baby Boom! Lawyered helps you understand what’s at stake in our courts, chip in to keep our fearless legal analysis alive. Become a member today.

    B*itch, Listen now has its own dedicated feed on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts. If you already subscribe to Baby Boom! Lawyered, sign up for B*tch, Listen so you won't miss it.

    7 min
  5. Texas’s Abortion Pill Bounty Law Comes for Kristan Hawkins

    Episode 322

    Show notes

    Students for Life president Kristan Hawkins pushed hard for Texas’ House Bill 7, a “bounty hunter law” that allows total strangers to sue anyone who mails or hands over abortion pills. Then, she went to Texas and went undercover, reportedly calling herself “Wanda,” to order abortion pills. She was trying to prove how easy it is to procure the pills despite Texas’ ban. Now a Texas mother using the pseudonym Maria Puerto is suing Hawkins and three Students for Life staffers under that same law. Talk about hoisted by your own petard.

    Imani Gandy breaks down HB 7, whether Maria Puerto can actually win, and why Hawkins’ best defense might be admitting the whole thing was a stunt.

    Expert Repro Journalism That Inspires.

    Episodes like this take time, research, and a commitment to the truth. If Baby Boom! Lawyered helps you understand what’s at stake in our courts, chip in to keep our fearless legal analysis alive. Become a member today.

    B*itch, Listen now has its own dedicated feed on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts. If you already subscribe to Baby Boom! Lawyered, sign up for B*tch, Listen so you won't miss it.

    9 min
  6. Sam Alito Is Looking for the Guy Who Leaked Dobbs

    Episode 321

    Show notes

    Sam Alito keeps saying he has a pretty good idea who leaked the Dobbs draft but he still won’t share it. Funny. Imani has a suspect too: Sam Alito.

    From the toothless investigation into who leaked the Dobbs decision and the alleged leak of the Hobby Lobby decision to Alito’s flag collection, which is associated with the Stop the Steal movement and Christian nationalism (and which he blamed on his wife for), Imani Gandy walks through why you should never take his word.

    Everybody’s trying to find the guy who did this. Has anyone checked the hot dog suit?

    B*tch, Listen is a 2026 Signal Award finalist!
    Vote for "The Constitution: A Scam by Rich White Men, for Rich White Men" by Oct 15: https://buff.ly/CriHNpI

    Expert Repro Journalism That Inspires.

    Episodes like this take time, research, and a commitment to the truth. If Baby Boom! Lawyered helps you understand what’s at stake in our courts, chip in to keep our fearless legal analysis alive. Become a member today.

    B*itch, Listen now has its own dedicated feed on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts. If you already subscribe to Baby Boom! Lawyered, sign up for B*tch, Listen so you won't miss it.

    11 min
  7. What the Hell is Fetal Personhood?

    Episode 319

    Show notes

    One of our listeners, Contessa, wants to know what the hell fetal personhood is. Short answer: It’s the anti-choice movement’s push to give fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses a legal right to life, which turns pregnancy into a conflict between two people, with the state serving as referee. In this Office Hours episode of Baby Boom! Lawyered, Imani Gandy explains how the law decide who counts as a person, from corporations and Alabama’s “extrauterine children” to a fetus in Florida whose lawyer tried to spring it from jail.

    Expert Repro Journalism That Inspires.

    Episodes like this take time, research, and a commitment to the truth. If Baby Boom! Lawyered helps you understand what’s at stake in our courts, chip in to keep our fearless legal analysis alive. Become a member today.

    B*itch, Listen now has its own dedicated feed on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts. If you already subscribe to Baby Boom! Lawyered, sign up for B*tch, Listen so you won't miss it.

    11 min
  8. What Happens If SCOTUS Orders Blue States to Respect Fetal Personhood?

    Episode 318

    Show notes

    Louisiana, Alabama, and Arkansas have filed two lawsuits targeting abortion shield laws and the providers who mail abortion pills into states where abortion is banned. Imani examines how the states use fetal personhood to describe their alleged injuries, whether the Supreme Court is likely to hear their case, and what today’s shield-law fight has in common with the personal liberty laws Northern states used to resist the Fugitive Slave Act. Also: why Louisiana put mifepristone, anthrax, and mail bombs in the same sentence.

    Expert Repro Journalism That Inspires.

    Episodes like this take time, research, and a commitment to the truth. If Baby Boom! Lawyered helps you understand what’s at stake in our courts, chip in to keep our fearless legal analysis alive. Become a member today.

    B*itch, Listen now has its own dedicated feed on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts. If you already subscribe to Baby Boom! Lawyered, sign up for B*tch, Listen so you won't miss it.

    11 min
  9. SCOTUS Did Something Nice for Black Voters in Missouri. I Know.

    Episode 317

    Show notes

    The Supreme Court did something nice for Black voters. I’m as shocked as you are. On Sept. 25, the Court told the Eighth Circuit to knock it off and stop trying to force Missouri to use a gerrymandered 2025 congressional map that Republicans drew at Trump’s urging. Imani Gandy breaks down how Missouri’s secretary of state gambled and ran the primary on the wrong map, and why the Supreme Court had to tell Republicans in Missouri three times that they can’t use the 2025 map—they have to use the 2022 map. Also, she explains what the Purcell principle is so you can dazzle your friends in the group chat when talking about these messy midterms.

    Expert Repro Journalism That Inspires.

    Episodes like this take time, research, and a commitment to the truth. If Baby Boom! Lawyered helps you understand what’s at stake in our courts, chip in to keep our fearless legal analysis alive. Become a member today.

    B*itch, Listen now has its own dedicated feed on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts. If you already subscribe to Baby Boom! Lawyered, sign up for B*tch, Listen so you won't miss it.

    12 min
  10. Make Med School White Again

    Episode 316

    Show notes

    Trump’s Department of Justice says the medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, discriminated against white and Asian applicants, and it’s giving the school until October 2 to enter into a voluntary resolution agreement or get sued. Imani Gandy breaks down the DOJ’s claims, including its attack on application essays asking students how race shaped their lives, which Chief Justice John Roberts expressly left legal when the Supreme Court ended affirmative action in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. Then, she explains who pays when fewer Black and Native students become doctors: pregnant people in maternity-care deserts, Black patients whose pain gets dismissed, and anyone already waiting months to see someone.

    Expert Repro Journalism That Inspires.

    Episodes like this take time, research, and a commitment to the truth. If Baby Boom! Lawyered helps you understand what’s at stake in our courts, chip in to keep our fearless legal analysis alive. Become a member today.

    B*itch, Listen now has its own dedicated feed on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts. If you already subscribe to Baby Boom! Lawyered, sign up for B*tch, Listen so you won't miss it.

    9 min
  11. Tierra Walker Died Under Texas's Abortion Ban. Now Her Family Is Suing.

    Episode 315

    Show notes

    Tierra Walker knew her pregnancy could kill her, so she asked about an abortion. Not one of the more than 90 doctors who saw Walker offered her abortion care.

    Now her family is suing the doctors, hospitals, and Texas officials who failed her, including Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Imani Gandy explains how the state created an abortion regime that terrifies doctors into inaction, then blames those doctors when patients die—and why that regime still doesn’t excuse that Walker’s doctors failed to save her life by providing an abortion.

    Expert Repro Journalism That Inspires.

    Episodes like this take time, research, and a commitment to the truth. If Baby Boom! Lawyered helps you understand what’s at stake in our courts, chip in to keep our fearless legal analysis alive. Become a member today.

    B*itch, Listen now has its own dedicated feed on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts. If you already subscribe to Baby Boom! Lawyered, sign up for B*tch, Listen so you won't miss it.

    10 min
  12. What Is the Shadow Docket and Why Should You Care?

    Episode 314

    Show notes

    The new Supreme Court term doesn't start until October, so why has the Court been issuing important rulings while it's supposed to be on break?

    In this Office Hours episode of Baby Boom! Lawyered, Imani Gandy answers a listener's question about the shadow docket, the emergency track where some of the Court's most consequential decisions get made all year. They’re decided quickly—and often with no explanation at all.

    Expert Repro Journalism That Inspires.

    Episodes like this take time, research, and a commitment to the truth. If Baby Boom! Lawyered helps you understand what’s at stake in our courts, chip in to keep our fearless legal analysis alive. Become a member today.

    B*itch, Listen now has its own dedicated feed on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts. If you already subscribe to Baby Boom! Lawyered, sign up for B*tch, Listen so you won't miss it.

    8 min
  13. Trump Is Making It Easier to Discriminate Against Black Workers (Imani Explains it All)

    Episode 313

    Show notes

    Disparate impact may sound boring. It isn't.

    It's the rule the Supreme Court established in 1971 to catch discrimination that doesn't announce itself. Fifty-four years later, the EEOC, acting on Trump's executive order, walked away from that standard. Then the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel went further, declaring disparate impact liability under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act unconstitutional.

    The new requirement: prove the employer intended to discriminate, which sounds neutral until you notice who can actually produce that proof. A white employee suing over "reverse discrimination" has a paper trail sitting right there — the employer's own DEI policy. Black workers rarely, if ever, get that paper trail; they'd have to read a hiring manager's mind.

    Imani Gandy breaks down how the law built to stop discrimination got rewired to shield it in this Imani Explains It All episode of Baby Boom! Lawyered.

    Expert Repro Journalism That Inspires.

    Episodes like this take time, research, and a commitment to the truth. If Baby Boom! Lawyered helps you understand what’s at stake in our courts, chip in to keep our fearless legal analysis alive. Become a member today.

    B*itch, Listen now has its own dedicated feed on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts. If you already subscribe to Baby Boom! Lawyered, sign up for B*tch, Listen so you won't miss it.

    8 min
  14. FDA Wouldn’t Defend Its Own Mifepristone Rule in Court

    Episode 312

    Show notes

    On Wednesday Louisiana asked the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to stop the abortion drug mifepristone from being mailed to patients by reinstating a rule that says you have to show up in person to get it. But if it wins, Louisiana told the three-judge panel, it doesn't want the rule change to go into effect immediately, because Louisiana doesn't trust the Supreme Court would let that restriction stand.

    Meanwhile, the FDA showed up to oppose Louisiana in court but wouldn't answer a single question about its own rule. So the abortion pill manufacturers (who are now party to the mifepristone lawsuit) ended up defending the agency's rule instead.

    Imani Gandy breaks down what actually happened at this week's oral argument in Louisiana v. FDA, why one judge called Louisiana's own strategy "self-defeating," and why the FDA's silence in that courtroom should worry you more than anything Louisiana said there.

    Expert Repro Journalism That Inspires.

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    B*itch, Listen now has its own dedicated feed on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts. If you already subscribe to Baby Boom! Lawyered, sign up for B*tch, Listen so you won't miss it.

    9 min
  15. Louisiana Says It's ‘Blanketed’ in Contraband Mifepristone

    Episode 311

    Show notes

    A pill doesn't care about state lines. Louisiana does—apparently a lot.

    Welcome to the first-ever episode of Baby Boom! Lawyered. Imani Gandy gets into Louisiana v. FDA, the case that could result in a ban on mailed mifepristone for everyone, not just Louisianans. There's a standing fight, a Supreme Court dissent where Clarence Thomas called mifepristone manufacturers a "criminal enterprise," and a very predictable outcome coming from the Fifth Circuit. Oral arguments are Sept. 9. Get into the case with Gandy.

    Expert Repro Journalism That Inspires.

    Episodes like this take time, research, and a commitment to the truth. If Baby Boom! Lawyered helps you understand what’s at stake in our courts, chip in to keep our fearless legal analysis alive. Become a member today.

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    9 min
  16. If ‘Roe’ Was Never Enough, Why Was It Everything? (And a Word to My Boom! Lawyered Fam)

    Episode 310

    Show notes

    Roe v. Wade was never enough. Reproductive justice advocates have been saying that for decades. So why did so much of the reproductive rights movement organize itself around protecting Roe anyway?

    In this solo episode, Imani Gandy explores how legal arguments became the center of the fight for abortion rights, what got lost in the process, and why public health researchers and reproductive justice advocates were often telling a different story. From Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' anti-abortion roadmap in Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky to the public health findings of the Turnaway Study, this episode asks what happens when a movement builds itself around a court decision—and what is left when that decision is gone.

    Expert Repro Journalism That Inspires.

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    29 min
  17. Can Trump Really End Birthright Citizenship

    Episode 309

    Show notes

    Imani and Jess are off this week, but before the Supreme Court issues its birthright citizenship ruling in Trump v. Barbara, revisit this conversation with Pregnancy Justice President Lourdes Rivera on how the movement trying to deny citizenship to some children born in the United States is also working to grant constitutional rights to embryos and fetuses.

    Expert Repro Journalism That Inspires.

    Episodes like this take time, research, and a commitment to the truth. If Baby Boom! Lawyered helps you understand what’s at stake in our courts, chip in to keep our fearless legal analysis alive. Become a member today.

    B*itch, Listen now has its own dedicated feed on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts. If you already subscribe to Baby Boom! Lawyered, sign up for B*tch, Listen so you won't miss it.

    30 min
  18. The Trump Administration Wants More Trad Wives

    Episode 308

    Show notes

    In this episode, Imani and Jess unpack the Supreme Court’s order on mifepristone access and explain where it fits in the Trump administration’s crusade to redefine motherhood nationwide.

    Expert Repro Journalism That Inspires.

    Episodes like this take time, research, and a commitment to the truth. If Baby Boom! Lawyered helps you understand what’s at stake in our courts, chip in to keep our fearless legal analysis alive. Become a member today.

    B*itch, Listen now has its own dedicated feed on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts. If you already subscribe to Baby Boom! Lawyered, sign up for B*tch, Listen so you won't miss it.

    38 min
  19. Louisiana is Ground Zero for Voting Rights, Abortion Pill Access

    Episode 307

    Show notes

    In this episode, Imani and Jess unpack the historic attack on voting rights from the Supreme Court in Louisiana v. Callais and explain what’s next from the Court on the fight to block mifepristone access.

    Expert Repro Journalism That Inspires.

    Episodes like this take time, research, and a commitment to the truth. If Baby Boom! Lawyered helps you understand what’s at stake in our courts, chip in to keep our fearless legal analysis alive. Become a member today.

    B*itch, Listen now has its own dedicated feed on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts. If you already subscribe to Baby Boom! Lawyered, sign up for B*tch, Listen so you won't miss it.

    59 min
  20. The Supreme Court Gears Up For Another Unprecedented Term (Rerun)

    Episode 306

    Show notes

    The Supreme Court closed out arguments for the term this week. Jess and Imani are out, but this episode showcases all the biggest cases of the term. Stay tuned for deep dives on the decisions coming up in future episodes.

    Expert Repro Journalism That Inspires.

    Episodes like this take time, research, and a commitment to the truth. If Baby Boom! Lawyered helps you understand what’s at stake in our courts, chip in to keep our fearless legal analysis alive. Become a member today.

    B*itch, Listen now has its own dedicated feed on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts. If you already subscribe to Baby Boom! Lawyered, sign up for B*tch, Listen so you won't miss it.

    38 min