Earlier today, 43 Catholic-affiliated organizations, including the University of Notre Dame, filed twelve separate lawsuits claiming that the Obama Administration’s efforts to expand access to birth control violate the religious liberties of conservative Catholics. For California residents, however, this lawsuit is like stepping into a time warp, since the overwhelmingly Republican California Supreme Court rejected a nearly identical lawsuit over eight years ago.

In 1999, California enacted a law guaranteeing that many employer-provided insurance plans include coverage for birth control. Catholic Charities sued, raising very similar claims to the ones raised in today’s lawsuits. When the case reached the state supreme court in 2004, however, five of the court’s six Republican justices held that, even if the law were examined under the strictest level of constitutional scrutiny, California’s contraceptive access law is constitutional:

The [law] serves the compelling state interest of eliminating gender discrimination. Evidence before the Legislature showed that women during their reproductive years spent as much as 68 percent more than men in out-of-pocket health care costs, due in part to the cost of prescription contraceptives and the various costs of unintended pregnancies, including health risks, premature deliveries and increased neonatal care. Assembly, Senate and legislative staff analyses of the bills that became the [birth control law] consistently identify the elimination of this economic inequity as the bills’ principal object. . . .

Strongly enhancing the state’s interest is the circumstance that any exemption from the WCEA sacrifices the affected women’s interest in receiving equitable treatment with respect to health benefits. We are unaware of any decision in which this court, or the United States Supreme Court, has exempted a religious objector from the operation of a neutral, generally applicable law despite the recognition that the requested exemption would detrimentally affect the rights of third parties. . . . [I]n rejecting a religious employer’s challenge to a law requiring him to pay Social Security and unemployment taxes for his employees, the [Supreme C]ourt wrote that “[g]ranting an exemption from social security taxes to an employer operates to impose the employer’s religious faith on the employees.“

Only one justice dissented from this outcome, Justice Janice Rogers Brown, who President George W. Bush later appointed to a federal appeals court in D.C. In her new job, Judge Brown wrote an opinion suggesting that all labor, business or Wall Street regulation is unconstitutional. In other words, eight years ago, the case against contraceptive access earned barely any support even on one of the most Republican courts in the country, and the sole justice who voted to strike California’s law down — Judge Brown — is the same judge who once compared liberalism to “slavery” and Social Security to a “socialist revolution.”

If outside bidders make a high enough offer, New Hampshire may be the first state with the dubious distinction of privatizing its entire male prison population.

The New Hampshire Department of Corrections recently put out a request for proposals that would contract out state penitentiaries to an outside contractor, and at least four companies have responded with their plans to build a new prison for all of the state’s male prisoners:

The New Hampshire Department of Corrections has put out a request for proposal that would essentially hand over the keys to a future penitentiary to an outside contractor for 20 years. Though the RFP still has to clear several hurdles, four companies have responded with plans to build, and probably run, a new prison for all of New Hampshire’s male (and perhaps female) inmates.

Two of the firms interested are publicly traded — Nashville, Tenn.-based Corrections Corporation of America and The GEO Group of Boca Raton, Fla., with combined annual revenues of over $3 billion.

Although corporate-run prison systems are often touted as an effective way to cut costs, prison privatization — which has negative effects on prisoners and their families and impedes criminal justice reform as a whole — doesn’t actually end up saving taxpayers money. And, as ThinkProgress has reported, when companies profit by incarcerating people, they often spend millions on lobbying legislatures to put more people in jail simply to increase their profits.

Florida also recently proposed to expand its private prisons, a measure that was voted down in the state senate earlier this year. Unless New Hampshire also decides against their new for-profit prison plan, the state may be about to go down on the wrong side of history.

Elisa Castillo is 56 years old and has never been convicted of a crime. Three years ago, she entered into an unusual business arrangement at the urging of her boyfriend — a Mexican businessman agreed to partner with her to purchase three tour buses that would travel between Mexico and Houston. He fronted the money for the buses, but they were kept in her name. Castillo claims she was unaware the buses were also fitted with secret compartments enabling them to smuggle cocaine across the border. Nevertheless, she’s now been sentenced to life in prison for her role in this operation.

As the ACLU explains, Castillo likely received this harsh sentence entirely because she played a very minor role in the operation:

56-year-old Castillo maintains that she didn’t know she was being used as a pawn in a cocaine trafficking operation between Mexico and Houston. Given her alleged role as a low-level player in the conspiracy, it makes sense that she was not privy to — and therefore could not provide — any valuable information to federal agents that could lead to the arrest and prosecution of the leaders or other high level members of the alleged conspiracy. Since she was of no help to the government, Castillo received the harshest sentence of the approximately 68 people involved in the scheme, despite being a first-time offender who never saw the drugs she was accused of trafficking.

It is well known that state and federal sentencing schemes allow for reduced punishment when offenders are able to provide information that leads to the prosecution of others. As former federal prosecutor Mark W. White III explained, “Information is a cooperating defendant’s stock in trade, and if you don’t have any…the chances are you won’t get a good deal.” But at what cost are these bargains made? There are clear incentives for law enforcement officials to seek information from criminal suspects when possible. But this system of trading information for reduced time often means that those at the bottom of the chain end up suffering consequences that are disproportionate to their crimes. As such, Castillo was effectively left to die in prison because of what she did not know.

At the very least, Castillo likely acted foolishly by entering into the strange business arrangement in the first place. Nevertheless, her case highlights how high criminal sentences for drug offenses enhances the prosecution’s bargaining power often at the expense of individuals left to spend years or decades in prison for drug crimes.

Twenty-two states joined an amicus brief that will be filed today in the Supreme Court by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) calling for the Supreme Court to back off its election-buying decision in Citizens United. The brief, which supports the state of Montana’s effort to preserve its ban on corporate money in elections, argues that state elections present an even greater risk than federal elections of being corrupted by corporate money — and thus states should be allowed to restrict such money even if the justice cling to their idiosyncratic belief that federal bans on corporate election spending are unconstitutional.

Sadly, the states’ brief only highlights the partisan impact of Citizens United. Of the 22 states that joined the brief, only three — Idaho, Washington and Utah — have Republican attorneys general. Additionally, top Republican elected officials and lobbying organizations, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, previously filed briefs calling for the justices to redouble their commitment to corporate influence on elections.

The GOP’s loyalty to Citizens United is disappointing, but it is not surprising. As ThinkProgress previously explained, Citizens United succeeded in transforming a moderate election spending advantage for Democrats into a massive advantage for Republicans:

Yet, while Citizens United enjoys strong support among Republican officials (and among the five Republican justices responsible for it), few Americans share this view. According to a recent Brennan Center poll, only 15 percent of respondents agree with the core of Citizens United‘s reasoning, that allowing wealthy corporations and individuals to spend unlimited money trying to influence elections will not lead to corruption — four percent fewer than believe in “spells or witchcraft” according to a different poll.