rules-of-court us-supreme-court court-records electronic-procedure
Where is the audio record of the Gorsuch remarks on flu deaths in Biden v. Missouri before the Supreme Court?
<p>As <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/justice-neil-gorsuch-slammed-after-he-suggests-flu-kills-hundreds-thousands-each-year-1667015" rel="nofollow noreferrer">news broke</a>, an initial transcript of the hearing included the alleged statement of Justice Gorsuch stating “he believes the flu kills “hundreds of thousands of people every year”.</p>
<p>This transcript was <a href="https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/589001-supreme-court-issues-revised-transcript-of-gorsuch-remark-about-flu" rel="nofollow noreferrer">amended</a> allegedly because it did not correctly record the justice’s statement.</p>
<p>Allegedly, he had actually stated the following:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“We have vaccines against that — that, but the federal government through OSHA, so far as I know, and you can correct me, does not mandate every worker in the country to receive such a vaccine. We have flu vaccines. The flu kills, I believe, <strong>hundreds, thousands of people every year</strong>. OSHA has never purported to regulate on that basis.” (bold type added)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I always considered the lack of a conjunction before the last instance of some should <em>not</em> be interpreted as the logical conjunction between operands; the relationship is represented as ambiguous as to whether it is conjunctive or disjunctive and therefore it states both remaining silent and not including a grammatical conjunction. It should be used and interpreted as “and/or”. Just like how allegedly it is used here.</p>
<p>But the English language does not use it that way. It is seen often in the terse titles of the publications of the press. For e.g. “U.S., EU to discuss Russian war threat Friday”.</p>
<p>And for their social consensus that the lack of a grammatical conjunction means the conjunctive operator (“and”), the above statement would mean the following:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The flu kills, I believe, hundreds [and] thousands of people every year.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Now who says that in the U.S.? Who says that? No one. Close idioms would be “thousands and thousands”, “millions and millions” or Trump’s favorite: “billions and billions”. There is no such idiom as “hundreds and thousands” in General American. And no one says “hundreds, thousands” anywhere.</p>
<p>And Gorsuch never said that. It’s just another level when it turns out the Wise of the nation has a(t least one) conspiracy theorist idiot among them so he had to back track.</p>
<p>I tried reviewing and rehearing the oral arguments and search for the alleged incorrect version as well as the allegedly corrected version, but found neither versions neither in the <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2021/21a240_7648.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">transcript</a> nor in the <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/media/audio/mp3files/21A240.mp3" rel="nofollow noreferrer">audio</a>.</p>
<p>Now, since at most of the time there is silence while one speaks in the oral arguments before the Supreme Court, it is plausible that even the audio was doctored and the part where he would actually say “hundreds <strong>of</strong> thousands” (bold type added) the word “of” is deleted and a new audio is up now. But it is theoretically possible that the audio still includes the word “of”.</p>
<p>So, how does neither the transcript or the audio include these remarks of Gorsuch and where are the actual files that would at least include <em>one</em> of the alleged versions?</p>
<p>On the backwater of this: Has the Supreme Court ever been caught falsifying its own transcripts, for example, to avoid ridicule or considerable face loss or Gorsuch would be the proud first?</p>

<p>Gorsuch said it in the oral arguments on <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/docketfiles/html/public/21a244.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><em>National Federation of Independent Business v. Department of Labor</em>, 21A244</a>, which is cited in the The Hill article you linked.  The line is on the page numbered 121 in the <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2021/21a244_7k47.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">transcript</a> (which is page 122 in the PDF), and at 1:51:50 in the <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/audio/2021/21A244" rel="nofollow noreferrer">audio</a>.</p>
<p>From your links, you appear to have been looking instead at the arguments in <em>Biden v. Missouri</em>, a different vaccination case argued on the same day, so it's no wonder you couldn't find it.</p>
<p>I think your questions about falsification and so on are now moot, so I won't address them.</p>
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<p>From what I heard, I would probably transcribe the line as &quot;the flu kills, I believe, hundreds — thousands — of people every year.&quot;  My interpretation is that he said &quot;hundreds&quot;, then paused briefly and corrected himself to &quot;thousands&quot;.  The official transcriber seems to have transcribed that pause as a comma, but you're right that a comma doesn't really make grammatical sense.</p>
<p>Anyway, it doesn't sound to me like an implausible thing to say.  And in any case I don't hear an &quot;of&quot;, and the cadence and inflection don't match the way that a native AmE speaker would say &quot;hundreds of thousands&quot;.</p>
