Tag: scotus

Justice Jackson Takes Aim at Fellow Justices, and the Results Aren’t Pretty

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is distinguishing herself on the U.S. Supreme Court — and not in a positive way. It’s as though she’s positioned on an island defined by woke ideology, racial justice, and equity, while the other eight justices remain on the mainland of restraint.

For proper context, it’s important to know about a case that was in front of her and the other members of the court.

The case centered on an early morning police stop in Washington, D.C., where a Metropolitan Police officer responded to a call about what was described as a suspicious vehicle. At around 2 a.m., the officer approached the car, and immediately—without any further provocation—two individuals fled the vehicle. A third person remained inside with the door open. That individual, identified only as J.W., slowly backed the car out of the parking lot.

The officer ordered the driver to put his hands up while drawing his service weapon.

The lower court, in this case the District of Columbia Court of Appeals (DCCA), ruled that the officer stopped R.W. without reasonable suspicion and concluded that this violated the Fourth Amendment. That amendment states:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The Supreme Court heard the case and reversed the DCCA’s ruling in a 7-2 decision. Leftist Justice Elena Kagan joined the majority. Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson were in the minority on this one, though Sotomayor said she would not have agreed to hear the case.

In the end, the majority on the court upheld law enforcement’s authority to make a stop based on “the totality of the circumstances” involved.

Now that you have the context, let’s turn to one of our foremost legal minds, none other than Jonathan Turley, to lay it out with clarity. On the X platform, Turley posted, “Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has issued another sole stinging dissent…Jackson wrote that ‘I cannot fathom’ how the seven justices could second-guess the lower court in rejecting the police claims. She accused her colleagues of mere ‘wordsmithing.’”

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Supreme Court Rejects Massachusetts Case Over Hiding Student’s Gender Identity

Supreme Court justices on April 20 declined to take up a case involving a Massachusetts schoolgirl whose parents say officials wrongly hid their daughter’s purported identity as a male from them.

At least six of the nine justices declined to accept a petition to rehear a lower court verdict in the case, which was brought by the girl’s parents in 2022 against the Ludlow, Massachusetts, school district.

The vote count on the petition and how each justice voted were not disclosed, nor were any comments offered by the justices.

“Today’s denial by the Supreme Court is a missed opportunity to defend parental rights,” Jim Campbell, chief legal counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, who was helping represent the parents, told The Epoch Times in an email.

“Social transition, including going by inaccurate or nonbinary pronouns and a different name, is a major intervention in a child’s life that puts the child on a difficult-to-escape pathway to medicalized transition, carrying the risk of life-altering damage. No school district should make important mental health decisions on behalf of parents and conceal those decisions from them, especially in opposition to the mental-health care that those parents have chosen for their children.”

An attorney representing the school officials did not return a request for comment by publication time.

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REPORT: The Latest ‘Shadow Docket’ Scandal Proves Between the Justices and Legacy Media, SCOTUS Is Toast

This week seems to be rife with journalistic malpractice from outlets either running with leaked and unsubstantiated material that tries and fails to put Trump administration officials in a bad light or works to erode and undermine our nation’s institutional bodies of governance. 

The latest installment from The New York Times involves leaked memos from the United States Supreme Court, verified by more anonymous sources. 

The Times spoke to 10 people, liberals and conservatives, who were familiar with the deliberations over the pivotal emergency order and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because confidentiality was a condition of their employment.

Amazing how one can fail so spectacularly on this basic tenet of integrity. God help us.

The papers expose what critics have called the weakness at the heart of the shadow docket: an absence of the kind of rigorous debate that the justices devote to their normal cases.

After obtaining the papers, The Times confirmed their authenticity with several people familiar with the deliberations and shared them with a spokeswoman for the court. The Times posed detailed questions to the justices who wrote the memos; they did not respond.

Nor should they. 

As RedState reported in February, Chief Justice Roberts took action to secure the integrity of the court’s processes after the 2022 leak of the draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. Two months later, if this latest tranche of leaked memos is any indication, it hasn’t worked. Between justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson publicly criticizing their constitutionalist colleagues, and the legacy media’s breathlessly publishing unsourced and leaked material, soon there will not be a Supreme Court left to preserve.

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Explosive Report: As Dobbs Majority Faced Death Threats, Liberal Justices Slow-Walked Release

When the draft of the Supreme Court ruling that would overturn Roe v. Wade leaked to the press, the conservative justices who signed on to the majority opinion suddenly wore bigger targets on their backs. The very real threat of assassination hung over them like a coming thunderstorm. 

And still their pro-abortion colleagues stalled the release of the official ruling for weeks, putting the justices’ lives at increased risk, as detailed in Mollie Hemingway’s new book on Justice Samuel Alito and reported Saturday by Fox News.

Alito is the justice who wrote Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the ruling ending nationalized abortion.

“Alito asked the dissenters to make the completion of their dissents their priority because delay of the decision was a security threat,” Hemingway, The Federalist’s editor-in-chief writes in Alito: The Justice Who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution.“Abortion supporters had an incentive to kill one or more of the justices in the majority to change the outcome.” 

The dissenters — Justices Stephen Breyer (counting down the days until his retirement at the end of the 2021-22 term ), Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor — “demurred,” Hemingway reports. Justice Neil Gorsuch asked the liberals when they expected to be wrapped up. They refused to provide a date. 

The tension and the threats escalated. 

‘Serious Security Risk’

On May 2, 2022, accomplice media outlet Politico published the 98-page draft of Dobbs. The unprecedented leak set off a wave of leftist protests and a literal firestorm of pro-abortion-led violence. Six days later — on Mother’s Day — a radical who was eventually arrested thanks to a half-eaten burrito firebombed the Madison headquarters of Wisconsin Family Action, a Christian pro-life, pro-family organization. 

“In the ensuing weeks, hundreds of pregnancy centers, churches, and pro-life organizations would be vandalized, some even set ablaze,” Hemingway wrote. Protesters also lined the streets and sidewalks outside the conservative justices’ homes.

More than a month after the leak, Nicholas Roske, 26 at the time, arrived at Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home with murder on his mind. In his possession were a Glock pistol, ammunition, zip ties, a tactical knife, pepper spray, a hammer, duct tape, and more accoutrements, according to the criminal complaint. Roske said he was going to stop Roe v. Wade from being overturned by getting rid of a judge — or three — that voted to stop the deeply flawed 1973 ruling legalizing abortion nationwide. 

“Everyone knew that the leak posed a serious security risk for justices. Since decisions do not take effect until issued officially from the bench, the death of a justice before then could alter the result. The threat of assassination increased dramatically,” Hemingway writes. 

It took 53 days to finally release the Dobbs decision. Despite the growing threat to their colleagues, the liberals on the court refused to listen to urgent pleas to complete their work, Hemingway reports.

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Justice Clarence Thomas: Progressivism, Declaration of Independence Cannot ‘Coexist Forever’

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas used a speech at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law on Thursday to contend that progressivism has increasingly conflicted with the principles of the Declaration of Independence, telling students that the movement cannot permanently coexist with the founding ideals of natural rights and limited government.

Thomas, 77, was speaking at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, commemorating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The justice, who was appointed by Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1991, is the longest-serving current member of the Supreme Court and the second-longest-serving justice in the Court’s history.

During the address, Thomas traced the rise of progressivism in the American mainstream to the beginning of the 20th century and identified President Woodrow Wilson as its most prominent advocate.

Thomas said progressivism had “made many inroads into our system of government and our way of life” since Wilson’s presidency and asserted that it stood in opposition to the Declaration.

“It has coexisted uneasily with the principles of the Declaration because it is opposed to those principles,” Thomas stated. “It is not possible for the two to coexist forever.”

Thomas maintained that Wilson and other progressive thinkers believed that “America needed to leave behind the principles of the founding and catch up with the more advanced and sophisticated system of relatively unimpeded state power, nearly perfect, perfected.”

“Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence and hence our form of government,” Thomas explained. “It holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God, but from government.”

Quoting Coolidge, Thomas said: “If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with unalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final.”

Thomas argued that Wilson’s distrust of popular government reflected his preference for European-style systems of centralized state power. According to Thomas, Wilson described Americans as “selfish, ignorant, timid, stubborn and foolish,” complained that they did “too much by vote and too little by expert rule,” and praised Germany because its people were “docile and acquiescent.”

Thomas contended that those ideas produced disastrous consequences in the 20th century. “The century of progressivism did not go well,” Thomas said. “The European system that Wilson and the progressives scolded Americans for not adopting, which he called nearly perfect, led to the governments that caused the most awful century that the world has ever seen.” Thomas pointed to the regimes of Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Mao Zedong, saying they were intertwined with the rise of progressivism and opposed to natural rights.

Thomas linked progressivism to Supreme Court decisions such as Plessy v. Ferguson and Buck v. Bell. He argued that Wilson’s claim that natural rights must give way to historical progress helped justify segregation in Plessy. Thomas also observed that progressives embraced eugenics and believed Darwinian science had shown the superiority and inferiority of different races, leading Wilson to resegregate the federal workforce and later contributing to sterilization programs upheld by the Court in Buck v. Bell.

Near the end of the speech, Thomas remarked, “In my view, we must find in ourselves that same level of courage that the signers of the Declaration have so that we can do for our future what they did for theirs.”

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Wait, Did This Former Trump Official Just Reveal the Voting Rights Act Decision?

Where is the decision on the Supreme Court case involving the Voting Rights Act? Where is Louisiana v. Callais, the case that could weaken the Voting Rights Act, and potentially cause Democrats to tremble? The national consequences of this decision are critical, as a ruling striking down the VRA could lead to total Republican control across the South. Perhaps that’s why the Court is slow-walking in releasing the opinion.

Sean Spicer said on The Huddle that the opinion is finished, but some justices are holding out as long as possible to prevent redistricting. Does that mean VRA is going to be struck down?

“I have been told by reliable sources that the decision is done and the minority is slow walking the dissent so that states do not have time to redistrict,” said Spicer.

So, does this mean we won?

The Callais case revolves around whether the creation of a majority-minority congressional district in Louisiana violates the 14th and 15th amendments. 

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The Fight for Election Day Is Now at the Supreme Court

Recently the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in one of the most consequential election integrity cases in years – Watson v. Republican National Committee. The core question: Does federal law require that mail-in ballots be received by Election Day, or can states extend that deadline by days – or longer – after the election has concluded?

This is a case the ACLJ has been fighting. As we reported earlier this year, we filed an amicus brief at the Supreme Court on behalf of 29 Members of Congress – urging the Court to hold that Election Day means exactly what it says: one day. The arguments we put before the Court echoed throughout the chamber.

Mississippi passed a law allowing absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted if received up to five business days after the election. Mississippi is one of 14 states with such a grace period. The Republican National Committee sued, arguing the practice is preempted by the federal statutes that Congress enacted in 1845 and 1872 establishing a single, uniform Election Day for federal elections.

Take action with the ACLJ. Add your name to our petition: Defend Election Integrity.

The ACLJ’s Arguments Took Center Stage

Election Day means a single day. The central pillar of our brief was that Congress exercised its explicit constitutional authority to establish Election Day as one specific day – not a window, not a period. Justice Alito made this exact argument from the bench, noting that Labor Day, Memorial Day, and Independence Day are all particular days, not extended periods – and Election Day should be no different. That is the ACLJ’s argument, made on behalf of 29 Members of Congress, now voiced by Justice Alito.

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Supreme Court REJECTS Appeal from So-Called ‘Republican’ Candidate After Being Exposed as a Democrat Plant

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to intervene on behalf of a “Republican” candidate who was kicked off the GOP ballot after evidence surfaced tying him directly to the Democrat Party.

Samuel Ronan, a progressive who ran for Chair of the Democratic National Committee back in 2017, thought he could sneak onto the GOP primary ballot in Ohio’s solidly conservative 15th Congressional District.

On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Sarah D. Morrison ruled that the Franklin County Board of Elections acted within its authority when it voted to remove Ronan from the ballot, clearing the path for incumbent Rep. Mike Carey.

Judge Morrison ruled that Ronan allegedly lied about being a Republican.

In an order filed April 6, U.S. District Court Judge Sarah D. Morrison allowed the Franklin County Board of Elections to remove Ronan from the race. The two Republican members of the four-person county board voted last month to kick Ronan out of the race while the two Democrats voted to keep him on.

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose later broke the 2-2 tie and sided with his fellow Republicans against Ronan’s candidacy. Ronan appealed the decision in federal court, and Morrison initially issued a temporary restraining order allowing him to remain in the race. That order is now vacated.

Ronan already appealed Morrison’s decision to the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which sided with Morrison. Ronan is now appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court. A response to his application for an injunction is due by noon on April 8.

[…]

Franklin County GOP Central Committee member Marc Schare filed the protest against Ronan’s candidacy, pointing to past statements from Ronan while he was a longshot candidate for chair of the U.S. Democratic National Committee and a recent Facebook comment Ronan made.

Ronan told The Dispatch his statements are being mischaracterized. Ronan argues that he should be allowed to present his progressive ideology as a Republican and let the GOP voters decide.

However, SCOTUS refused to intervene, leaving the lower court’s ruling in place.

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Supreme Court Reverses Former Cincinnati Councilor’s Bribery Conviction

The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for a former Cincinnati City Council member convicted of bribery and attempted extortion but later pardoned by President Donald Trump to have those charges dismissed in the lower courts.

The ruling came as the high court has, in recent years, been willing to overturn corruption convictions involving public officials engaging in activities some consider normal political activity. For example, in 2016, the Supreme Court vacated the conviction of the former Republican governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, for accepting gifts from a benefactor without actually taking action to benefit that person.

On April 6, the justices granted Alexander “P.G.” Sittenfeld’s petition in an unsigned order. The court did not explain its decision. No justices dissented. The court disposed of the case summarily without hearing oral arguments. 

The Supreme Court also vacated the convictions and sent the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit to be reconsidered in light of a pending motion to dismiss the indictment against Sittenfeld.

The new ruling came after Trump pardoned Sittenfeld on May 28, 2025. This act of presidential clemency eliminated his 16-month sentence of incarceration after he had served almost five months of it.

A presidential pardon forgives federal criminal offenses and removes the legal consequences of those offenses, but does not change history by erasing the judicial finding of guilt.

The pardon covered Sittenfeld’s October 2023 conviction for bribery and attempted extortion related to an FBI-led sting operation that involved campaign contributions. Prosecutors said he accepted $20,000 in donations to his political action committee from undercover FBI agents who feigned interest in developing a specific property. Prosecutors also said Sittenfeld’s actions went beyond mere campaign fundraising to bribery that constituted an illegal quid pro quo for backing the development project.

A quid pro quo—from Latin, meaning “this for that”—is something given or received in exchange for something else.

Sittenfeld’s attorney said in the petition that he was considered “a rising star in Ohio politics,” first elected to the Cincinnati City Council in 2011 at age 27, making him the youngest person ever elected to the council.

“A defining trait of Sittenfeld’s political identity was his unwavering support for economic development. He voted for every economic development deal put in front of him while on the Council,” according to the petition.

In 2018, Sittenfeld approached a local developer to help raise money for his mayoral campaign, in order to match contributions from other developers, and “nothing about this was unlawful,” the petition said.

The government was informed about this, and the FBI organized a sting operation. The local developer contacted Sittenfeld about a specific project, which the then-elected official was already supporting, and offered to connect him with potential investors, who were actually undercover agents. The agents proposed a quid pro quo, saying if Sittenfeld agreed to back the project, they would donate to his campaign, the petition said.

The petition said Sittenfeld filed a motion after the conviction for post-trial relief, saying the evidence at trial was not sufficient to prove an “explicit” quid pro quo, as required by McCormick v. United States (1991). In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that the receipt of a campaign contribution was not a federal crime unless the payment was part of an “explicit quid pro.”

The federal district court ruled that the evidence was “ambiguous” at best and believed that, despite that, the jury could still surmise an “explicit” exchange from the record. The court sentenced Sittenfeld to 16 months and fined him $40,000. A divided panel of the Sixth Circuit upheld the conviction, finding the jury was allowed to conclude based on the ambiguous evidence that he had accepted an illegal bribe.

In the petition, Sittenfeld’s attorney urged the Supreme Court to take up the case, saying candidates “routinely raise money based on pledges of official action: ‘Donate to me and I will vote to repeal the law my opponent supported!’ ‘Send me a campaign check and I will cut your taxes—I can’t do it without you!’”

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For The Third Time, SCOTUS Tells Colorado To Stop State-Enforced Homosexuality

The Supreme Court, for the third time, has slapped down another attempt by Colorado to control what people say, think, and do regarding sexuality and the sexes.

First, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission told Jack Phillips that he may sell baked goods only if he’s willing to include messages that violate his religious beliefs. The Supreme Court said that violated Phillips’ First Amendment rights. Up next, Colorado’s “anti-discrimination” law allowed creative entrepreneurs, like web designer Lorie Smith, to do business only if they, too, would include messages in their work that violated their religious beliefs. Again, the Supreme Court said this violated the First Amendment.

But Colorado had another law, this one dictating what licensed counselors like Kaley Chiles may say to their young clients about sexuality and the sexes. They may, the law says, provide acceptance, support, and assistance for “an individual’s … identity exploration and development.” That much might sound OK, but it only works in one direction. Counselors may help an individual who wishes to separate so-called gender identity from his or her sex, but not those who wish to align them.

In other words, a counselor in Colorado may help a boy — even without his parents’ permission — accept that he’s actually a girl, but must tell a girl — even with her parents’ permission — who doesn’t want to be a boy that she has to go elsewhere.

The law uses the extremely broad brush of “conversion therapy” to include everything from discredited and abandoned physical techniques to the “talk therapy” that Chiles uses. That’s no doubt intentional, a rather crude attempt at guilt-by-association, but seriously misleading. And the First Amendment flag has to go up whenever the government attempts to dictate what you must or can’t say.

Colorado is being especially authoritarian here. Under this law, any person who thinks a counselor is saying the wrong thing may file a complaint with a regulatory board, which triggers a disciplinary review process that can result in a counselor losing his or her license. This invites activists to target mental health professionals with such complaints, knowing that even the rumor of a disciplinary proceeding, no matter how bogus, can ruin a professional’s reputation.

Equally undeterred, the Supreme Court on March 31 held that this violated Chiles’ First Amendment right to freedom of speech. The First Amendment’s “jealous protections for the individual’s right to think and speak freely,” wrote Justice Neil Gorsuch for an 8-1 majority, means that government attempts to control the content of speech are “presumptively unconstitutional.” This Colorado law did not ban counselors from talking about sexuality and the sexes, but dictated what they may say when they do. Attempting to control the opinions or perspectives an individual may express, Gorsuch wrote, presents “even greater dangers” and constitutes an even more blatant violation of the First Amendment.

This time, the Supreme Court repudiated Colorado’s authoritarian tendencies by a resounding margin, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson the lone dissenter. As she did during the argument in this case, Jackson suggested that there’s no difference between physical interventions like electric shocks and simply talking. She insisted that a ban on certain speech affects speech “only incidentally.” Yes, she really did.

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