SCOTUS - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

[LFC]

Just another big, fat dollop of Republican hypocrisy.

The straw-grasping outrage then festered into Republican leadership legitimacy by Thursday afternoon when Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) gave President Biden a condescending reminder that it’s his job to “govern from the middle, steward our institutions, and unite America.”

“The President must not outsource this important decision to the radical left,” he declared. “The American people deserve a nominee with demonstrated reverence for the written text of our laws and our Constitution.”

No doubt, we will see more of this — never mind the fact that Biden has not named any names nor said one single thing about his potential nominee beyond the fact that she will be Black and she will be a woman.

To be sure, pointing out Republican hypocrisy is boring at this point. But the New York Times published this helpful reminder today that is worth looking at. While running against President Jimmy Carter in 1980 hoping to attract support from women voters, then-Republican candidate Ronald Reagan vowed he would appoint the first woman to the Supreme Court if elected. He ultimately followed through, appointing former-Justice Sandra Day O’Connor to the high Court.

But at the time, Republicans didn’t bat an eye at his preemptive demographic promise. It was only after O’Connor was named that he received some mild (by today’s standards) criticism for the nomination. Not because of her gender, but because there were concerns she might uphold Roe v. Wade (which, maybe a bit sexist anyways). She ultimately did.

[LFC]

Onward Christian SCOTUS!

Justice Amy Coney Barrett had been a member of the Supreme Court for less than a month when she cast the key vote in one of the most consequential religion cases of the past century.

Months earlier, when the seat she would fill was still held by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Court had handed down a series of 5-4 decisions establishing that churches and other houses of worship must comply with state occupancy limits and other rules imposed upon them to slow the spread of Covid-19.

As Chief Justice John Roberts, the only Republican appointee to join these decisions, explained in South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom (2020), “our Constitution principally entrusts ‘[t]he safety and the health of the people’ to the politically accountable officials of the States.” And these officials’ decisions “should not be subject to second-guessing by an ‘unelected federal judiciary,’ which lacks the background, competence, and expertise to assess public health and is not accountable to the people.”

But this sort of judicial humility no longer enjoyed majority support on the Court once Barrett’s confirmation gave GOP justices a 6-3 supermajority. Twenty-nine days after Barrett became Justice Barrett, she united with her fellow Trump appointees and two other hardline conservative justices in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo (2020), a decision striking down the very sort of occupancy limits that the Court permitted in South Bay. The upshot of this decision is that the public’s interest in controlling a deadly disease must give way to the wishes of certain religious litigants.

Just as significantly, Roman Catholic Diocese revolutionized the Court’s approach to lawsuits where a plaintiff who objects to a state law on religious grounds seeks an exemption from that law.

Before Roman Catholic Diocese, religious objectors typically had to follow a “neutral law of general applicability” — meaning that these objectors must obey the same laws that everyone else must follow. Roman Catholic Diocese technically did not abolish this rule, but it redefined what constitutes a “neutral law of general applicability” so narrowly that nearly any religious conservative with a clever lawyer can expect to prevail in a lawsuit.

That decision is part of a much bigger pattern. Since the Court’s Republican majority became a supermajority, the Court has treated religion cases as its highest priority.

It’s made historic changes to the law governing religion even before it moved on to other major priorities for the conservative movement, such as restricting abortion or expanding gun rights. The Court has also taken on new religion-related cases at a breakneck pace. In the eight years of the Obama presidency, the Court decided just seven religious liberty cases, or fewer than one per year. By contrast, by the second anniversary of Barrett’s confirmation as a justice, the Court most likely will have decided at least seven — and arguably as many as 10 — religious liberty cases with Barrett on the Court.

[jackd]

This court gives the lie to Amy Coney Barett's claim that the justices are not mere political hacks.

[LFC]

And THIS is why the Democrats need to adopt the Republican defined pace of confirmation. No delays.

Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) has been hospitalized for a stroke but is expected to make a full recovery, according to a statement from his office.

[LFC]

Clarence Thomas continues to prove himself as the most corrupt and compromised justice on the court.

According to a report from Politico, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has developed a relationship with far-right Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his activist wife Ginni, citing a watchdog group that has obtained information about emails between the three.

With Ginni Thomas under scrutiny due to her connections to the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, which has led to concerns about her husband's votes on any cases before the court involving Donald Trump, Politico is now reporting on the burgeoning relationship between the two and the man who appears to be Trump's heir apparent.

"Emails handed over to American Oversight, a group that bills itself as a government watchdog, suggest that DeSantis is in regular contact with Justice Clarence Thomas," Politico's Gary Fineout reports. "In June 2021, Thomas' wife, Ginni, who runs her own consulting firm, worked with the DeSantis administration to have the governor talk to a coalition of groups, including people affiliated with Judicial Watch, the conservative organization that uses information requests and lawsuits to investigate public officials."

READ: New reports place Bill Barr closer to insurrection plans -- and put him under increased pressure to testify

The report goes on to note that Ginni Thomas has bragged about her relationship with the potential GOP presidential nominee in 2024 and wrote, "...my husband has been in contact with him too on various things of late.”

Asked about what the DeSantis and the Justice and the Florida Republican have been discussing his spokesperson refused to respond, but Helen Aguirre Ferré, the executive director of the Republican Party of Florida, stepped up and claimed, "I can’t speak about any private conversations Governor DeSantis may or may not have had with anyone but both he and Justice Thomas believe in the separation of powers and defend individual liberty, the law and the Constitution as written.”

[LFC]

Right-wing SCOTUS may be taking another big, fat shit on the Constitution in order to protect Alabama from the Voting Rights Act. Can you say, "partisan hacks?"

The Supreme Court Monday put on hold a lower court ruling that would have forced Alabama to redraw its congressional maps that disenfranchised Black voters.

It was a 5-4 decision. Chief Justice John Roberts joined with the liberals in dissent.

The Court will make a decision on the case challenging the maps in the coming months. It’s a signal that the conservative justices are prepared to further weaken Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

The conservative majority did not explain its reasoning in Monday’s order. Justice Brett Kavanaugh did write a concurring opinion, attempting to rebut Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent.

This description of Kavanaugh's opinion is not kind. He's still as much of a spoiled little bitch as he was during his nomination hearing, where he whined, cried, screeched, lied, and generally melted down.

In Alabama Case, Kavanaugh Emits Lengthy Whine In Response To Kagan’s Dissent

Justice Brett Kavanaugh boldly struck pen to paper in an opinion published Monday, filled with a righteous anger — not so much over Alabama’s congressional maps, which a lower court found to disenfranchise Black voters, but because Justice Elena Kagan criticized him and his conservative buddies in her dissent.

The conservative majority that halted the lower court ruling requiring Alabama to redraw its congressional maps did not lay out its reasoning, but Kavanaugh wrote a concurring opinion on his own. Kagan and Chief Justice John Roberts, the latter joining the liberals, wrote separately in dissent.

Kagan, her prose infused with horrified anger, pointed out that the state of Alabama, in its arguments defending a map that lumped Black voters into a single district, seeks to “graft onto” the Voting Rights Act “a new requirement, lacking any foundation in our precedent.” The state is claiming that if a new map to craft two Black majority districts is to be drawn, it must be drawn without taking race into account as a priority — otherwise, the state claims, it would be an illegal racial gerrymander. The argument, if the conservative majority accepts it, would make vote dilution lawsuits under the Voting Rights Act all but impossible to win.

The lower court pointed out that reality, and duly required the state to produce new maps.

Kavanaugh, though, is offended by that truth, even after voting with his rightwing cohort to let the gerrymandered maps stand for now.

[LFC]

What goes around comes around, motherf***ers.

[LFC]

This has no business going to SCOTUS but I guess we'll see if the right-wing of the court will declare war on the press. And if they do I can hardly wait to see the barrage of lawsuits Faux News, Newsmax, and OAN will face. The winger justices might be smart enough to avoid that trap.

To the numerous challenges facing the U.S. media in recent years, add a libel case against The New York Times – lost by Sarah Palin, but now seemingly headed to appeal and perhaps on to the highest court in the land.

On Feb. 15, 2022, a jury rejected Palin’s claim. As it happened, its verdict was more or less moot. The presiding judge had already said he would dismiss the case on the grounds that the former Alaska governor’s legal team had failed to reach the bar for proving she had been defamed.

A Times editor admitted a mistake in suggesting in a 2017 opinion piece that there was a link between Palin’s rhetoric and a mass shooting. But under the so-called Sullivan standard – a rule in place for nearly 60 years that makes it difficult for public figures to successfully sue for defamation – neither the jury nor the judge considered the error significant enough for Palin to win her case.

But in reaching his decision in the Palin case, the federal judge suggested that it was likely not to be the end of the matter – indeed, an appeal is expected.

And that has defenders of a free press worried. Legal scholars note that recent opinions by Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch favor overturning the Sullivan standard – a move that would take away a key protection for the press against libel suits by vindictive public officials.

As a media historian, I can see the Palin case providing a vehicle to return libel laws back to a time when it was much easier for public figures to sue the press.

Read on for how it was used as a racist weapon. Also how Clarence Thomas (what a shock) would open the press up to a barrage of lawsuits over any story a rich person didn't like.

[LFC]

Right-wing SCOTUS continues its move to make religious rights (if you're Christian, of course) superior to all other rights.

The Supreme Court said Wednesday that it will consider a renewed request from New York City teachers and staff to block a vaccine mandate due their religious objections, despite an earlier denial by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

The teachers had previously asked Sotomayor -- who has jurisdiction over lower courts in New York -- to consider their emergency request. Sotomayor denied the request without referring the matter to the full court, likely because she did not think her colleagues would be interested in granting the application. The court has been reluctant to get involved in state and local vaccine mandate disputes.

But the New York group then took the unusual step of directing a new request to conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, who referred it to the full court to consider.

Supreme Court rules allow a party to make a renewed request to "any other justice" after a denial from the justice who has jurisdiction over the lower courts involved in the case. The rules state, however, that such a renewed application is "not favored."

The parties likely directed the latest request to Gorsuch because last fall he penned a dissent when the court denied a request to block Maine's vaccine mandate. In that case, a group of unvaccinated workers argued that the mandate -- that had no accommodations for religious objections -- violated their rights. However, there are significant differences between the two mandates, particularly the fact that the NYC mandate does offer limited religious accommodations.

Gorsuch did not explain his reasoning for his action in the New York case, but likely referred the matter to the court in order to stop the parties from continuing to apply for relief to the court. Although they asked for action this week, the justices will only consider the request early next month.

[pnwguy]

IOKIYAC?

Of course, there aren't many Muslim/Jewish/Hindu/Buddhist/Sihk/agnostic/etc. Republicans, so R and C are synonymous

[goldenvalley]

It will be interesting to see what happens in the hearing on Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's nomination to the Supreme Court. Harvard educated, Supreme Court clerk, public defender for 2 years, federal district court and then federal appellate court...she has everything on paper that people might think is necessary for the job.  

The Republicans are still bitching about Kavanaugh, I guess because they're still mad and because they can't think of much to say about this nominee beyond she's a black female Democrat and they're afraid to say that.  I wonder if they'll ask who does the laundry at her house like they did Coney Barrett.  

[LFC]

America is clearly facing a radicalized right-wing SCOTUS, a.k.a. "partisan hacks", who have little to no respect for precedent or even the law. They're about to face another credibility test over a lawsuit filed by the state of West Virginia over an Obama era environmental rule that never took effect, has never impacted anybody, and which had its goals met already anyway so would be completely moot if Biden decided to reinstate it.

There is literally no reason for the court to take this up as they have no jurisdiction. That doesn't mean they won't and then use it as a bludgeon to destroy the power of the EPA.

The cases involve the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era effort to fight climate change. When this plan was announced in 2015, it was widely touted as President Barack Obama’s most ambitious climate policy initiative. Obama’s EPA predicted that, by 2030, the Clean Power Plan would lower carbon emissions from power plants by about a third below where they stood in 2005.

When the Clean Power Plan was announced, the coal industry and many red states treated it like the apocalypse, warning that the plan would cause “tens of millions of tons of lost coal production, thousands of lost jobs in the mining industry, and rippling unemployment effects for those dependent on the coal industry.” Four days before Justice Antonin Scalia’s death temporarily deprived Republicans of a majority on the Supreme Court, the Court voted along party lines to suspend the plan.

Less than a decade later, however, things look — well, different. Although the Clean Power Plan was blocked too fast for it to accomplish anything, the energy sector achieved its 2030 goals for emissions reductions by 2019. As the EPA explained in 2019, many power companies retired older, dirtier coal-fired plants because they were more expensive to operate than technologies such as natural gas or renewable energy. (Coal executives also complained that unrelated Obama-era rules restricting mercury emissions also led them to shut down coal plants.)

As it turns out, the plan’s original goals were too unambitious to matter. Market forces and other regulations achieved those goals, and they did so much faster than anticipated.

Nevertheless, a small army of litigants are now in the Supreme Court asking the justices to strike down the Clean Power Plan — which, again, is not in effect right now, which never really took effect, and which President Joe Biden’s administration does not plan to reinstate.

But while it’s not at all clear that the Supreme Court has any business hearing this case — federal courts do not have jurisdiction to hear lawsuits where there is no live dispute between the two parties — the stakes in this case are still quite high. The plaintiffs challenging the nonexistent Clean Power Plan rely on arguments that, if taken seriously by the Supreme Court, could permanently strip federal agencies like the EPA of much of their authority to regulate.

And so we wait, to see whether the Court will use a case about nothing to ensure that the Biden administration never does anything meaningful to fight climate change.

The article goes on to describe why right-wing SCOTUS has no business taking up this case.

[jackd]

I doubt the radical right majority on the court cares what the article says.

[LFC]

Feb 28, 2022 22:02:21 GMT jackd said:

I doubt the radical right majority on the court cares what the article says.

Of coruse not. They've already played the "we're not partisan hacks" card so that covers all the accusations, no matter how accurate and fact-filled.

[LFC]

The partisan hacks on SCOTUS appear to be teeing up the destruction of regulatory agencies based on a case of a regulation that is not even in force. Once again we see the right-wing results oriented court doing what couldn't be accomplished democratically.

The Supreme Court heard a bizarre case Monday that dealt with the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. A coalition of red states and coal companies are gesturing towards a rule that is no longer on the books — Obama’s Clean Power Plan — as a way to bring before the conservative court questions of how the EPA can act on climate.

It’s a case where the justices handcuffing the EPA from its ability to keep some of the country’s biggest polluters from belching greenhouse gasses into the air is actually not the worst case scenario.

Some court watchers worry that a conservative majority could also use this forum to issue a blanket ruling on agency power, one that reverberates through the entire administrative state and invites challenges to all kinds of exercises of executive branch authority. Weakening environmental protections would be one impact — but such a decision could ripple into worker safety, public health, housing disputes, and every other corner of American life that agencies shape.

And after oral arguments, the Democratic senators most invested in this case did not like what they heard.

“Normally, I would say that oral argument is an incomplete and possibly misleading sign of where the Court’s going,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) told TPM. “But in this instance, it seems they’re clearly determined to strike down a lot of good regulation.”

“The clear impact of dark money on Supreme Court appointments and the influence of right wing fringe groups was one of the factors that motivated us,” added Blumenthal.

For Whitehouse specifically, exposing the connection between dark money and the Court has been a yearslong crusade.

“This trumped-up challenge is one prong of a massive, anonymously-funded influence campaign by the fossil fuel industry,” he told TPM in a statement.

Thomas has been the poster child of a corrupt SCOTUS justice but now he has a whole bunch of friends.

[LFC]

Democrats are playing by the Republican rules of SCOTUS nominee hearings. The entire process will take 4 days. That's it. I'm sure there will be right-wing play-acting going on as revenge for the Democrats bringing up actual moral and legal issues with Brett Kavanaugh, the man who lied, cried, and raged on the stand, but the Dems seem intent on getting this done on a Republican timeline.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a schedule.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a four-day marathon of hearings, the brunt of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation process.

On Monday, March 21, committee members, individuals introducing Jackson and Jackson herself will all make remarks.

The committee’s questioning of Jackson will span Tuesday, March 22 through Wednesday, March 23. There will also be a routine closed-door hearing on Jackson’s FBI background check.

Thursday will end the proceedings with outside witness testimony.

[goldenvalley]

Mar 3, 2022 15:14:07 GMT LFC said:

The partisan hacks on SCOTUS appear to be teeing up the destruction of regulatory agencies based on a case of a regulation that is not even in force. Once again we see the right-wing results oriented court doing what couldn't be accomplished democratically.

Let us return to the good days of the Gilded Age when men could make piles of money by conducting their business with zero restraint by anything but the market, exploit labor, and destroy anything in their path to making money.  Who needs general welfare?  

[pnwguy]

Mar 3, 2022 18:28:42 GMT goldenvalley said:

Let us return to the good days of the Gilded Age when men could make piles of money by conducting their business with zero restraint by anything but the market, exploit labor, and destroy anything in their path to making money.  Who needs general welfare?  

"If God didn't accept humans getting maimed and killed in the work place, He wouldn't have made them hungry and poor."

[goldenvalley]

Some thought that the Mueller Report gave DOJ a nice neat, already researched package on obstruction of justice by Trump and the DOJ has done nothing.  It appears the Select Committee is also assembling such a package against Trump, cronies, and campaign. Has the DOJ been so hollowed out of responsible people that it is incapable of acting? Garland alone would never be enough to prosecute these cases, there should be many people in that department who are capable of doing it and should be telling Garland that.  

This brings me to think about the New York District Attorney who seems disinclined to go after the Trump Org.  The need to prove the intent to defraud beyond a reasonable doubt is a difficult goal to reach when it comes to complex organizations that have layers of decision makers.  Same with conspiracy...it rests on the intent of the alleged conspirators.  Trump has always managed to duck responsibility by saying it wasn't his decision or obfuscating at least. 

[LFC]

This author believes that right-wing SCOTUS has decided to dismantle much of the federal regulatory system. It sounds like federal agencies would effectively be powerless to implement anything new, and that all new regulations would have to come from Congress or at least the power to regulate any area would have to come from Congress.

The Supreme Court conservatives, exuding the heady self-confidence of a team that knows it cannot lose, haven’t been coy about the jurisprudence they want to reshape or tear down.

Religious liberty, abortion, guns — the Court has recently taken up and dispensed with a whole swath of cases at astonishing speeds, often dramatically changing the bench’s long-held posture in relative silence through the shadow docket.

But perhaps on no topic has the Court telegraphed its intent more clearly than the administrative state, the power of federal agencies to regulate and make rules. The dry name belies a system absolutely critical to every corner of American life.

“If I want to dump chemical waste in a swamp, I’d prefer that the federal government not have power to regulate that,” Julian Davis Mortenson, professor at the University of Michigan Law School, told TPM. “If I want to pay people working in my factory a miserably tiny wage, or employ 12 year-olds, I’d rather the federal government not have the power to make a rule against that.”

The Court is now stocked with justices hungry to shift the power back in the direction of those nonregulatory interests. In doing so, they’ll really be shifting power to themselves.

“If the Supreme Court truly honored the rule of law and precedent, then they would acknowledge the power of the agencies that was granted to them by Congress in order to save our environment,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) told TPM of a recent illustrative case involving the Environmental Protection Agency. “But this is an extremist Supreme Court, so I’m very worried about the outcome.”

Because Congress is already paralyzed on critical issues, the prospect of a future in which the administrative state is rendered toothless is also a future in which unelected, conservative Justices become the arbiters of what the government can and can’t do. It’s a right-wing fantasy, cherished and developed for decades, come to life.

This is a corporate America wet dream that would allow them to do all sorts of horrible things and simply say "So sue me." Of course the people being harmed won't have the means to handle that kind of lawsuit. Other than the dirty money it's effectively

[jackd]

Unfortunately, the only remedy for the direction of the Court is packing and the thin majorities in both houses make that a remote possibility.

[goldenvalley]

Mar 4, 2022 17:02:53 GMT jackd said:

Unfortunately, the only remedy for the direction of the Court is packing and the thin majorities in both houses make that a remote possibility.

Yes.  Also true for any big policy change...regarding climate change or health care or child tax credits or....

[LFC]

Right-wing SCOTUS stays out of a states' rights case ... this time.

The Supreme Court on Monday night denied requests from Republicans challenging congressional maps in North Carolina and Pennsylvania that had been approved by other courts, in two rulings that could benefit Democrats in the midterm elections.

[LFC]

This certainly could have gone under "Sphincter Politician" but I guess this is more appropriate. Chuckles Gr-Assley (R-IAm A Hypocritical D-bag) is whining that the Democrats have to slow down on Katanji Brown Jackson's confirmation.

Grassley Complains About Dems’ Speedy SCOTUS Confirmation Plan (LOL)

Ranking Senate Judiciary Committee member Chuck Grassley (R-IA), after backing Amy Coney Barrett’s two-minute confirmation right before the 2020 election, says Democrats need to hold their horses with Supreme Court Justice nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation process, which they plan on starting on March 21. After all, there’s “the integrity of our constitutional advice” and “thoroughness of the vetting process” to think about, crucial things that shouldn’t be sacrificed for an “arbitrary timeline,” according to Grassley.

A Republican whining that Democrats are now playing by the rules the GOP put in place, rules Grassley was specifically involved in creating. How ... expected.

[goldenvalley]

Mar 8, 2022 15:05:37 GMT LFC said:

This certainly could have gone under "Sphincter Politician" but I guess this is more appropriate. Chuckles Gr-Assley (R-IAm A Hypocritical D-bag) is whining that the Democrats have to slow down on Katanji Brown Jackson's confirmation.

Grassley Complains About Dems’ Speedy SCOTUS Confirmation Plan (LOL)

Ranking Senate Judiciary Committee member Chuck Grassley (R-IA), after backing Amy Coney Barrett’s two-minute confirmation right before the 2020 election, says Democrats need to hold their horses with Supreme Court Justice nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation process, which they plan on starting on March 21. After all, there’s “the integrity of our constitutional advice” and “thoroughness of the vetting process” to think about, crucial things that shouldn’t be sacrificed for an “arbitrary timeline,” according to Grassley.

A Republican whining that Democrats are now playing by the rules the GOP put in place, rules Grassley was specifically involved in creating. How ... expected.

Well the Federalist Society had already vetted Coney Barrett so the speed was okay when she was confirmed.  That hasn't happened with this suspect judge who went to Harvard, clerked for various federal courts, and was just confirmed to the Appellate Court 8 months ago...Schumer is going way too fast here!