Supreme Court 2020s: on Families & Children

Ketanji Brown Jackson: Decide child pornography based on intent, not just actions

To interpret that phrase, Judge Jackson relied on a set of guiding factors referred to as the "Dost factors," which include consideration of "whether the visual depiction is intended or designed to elicit a sexual response in the viewer," among other things. Jackson concluded that a reasonable jury could find the videos at issue to constitute "lascivious exhibition," emphasizing the need to account for the defendant's intent to gain sexual gratification from what was filmed, rather than the victim's actions or state of mind. The defendant was subsequently convicted of seven federal child-pornography counts, but a divided panel of the D.C. Circuit vacated those convictions on appeal based on insufficient evidence.

Ketanji Brown Jackson: 2018: Keep Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program

Ketanji Brown Jackson: Don't require religious employers to cover contraception

In 2014, she applied the Supreme Court's recent decision in Hobby Lobby v. Burwell to a similar challenge to the Affordable Care Act's contraceptive coverage requirement, Barron Industries v. Burwell. In the case, Judge Jackson granted the parties' joint motion for a permanent injunction and issued a short opinion barring the federal government from requiring the employer to provide its employees with health care coverage for contraceptives to which it had a religious objection.

In 2018, Judge Jackson ruled on two cases involving the Trump administration's abrupt cancellation of grants funding the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program. In Policy and Research LLC v. US Department of Health and Human Services, Judge Jackson held the Department of Health and Human Services unlawfully terminated plaintiffs' grant funding without explanation.