Tag: scotus

SCOTUS Oral Argument In Nationwide Injunction Case Illustrates Courts’ Coup Against Trump

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Thursday in three cases concerning challenges to President Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order. The question before the high court was not, however, the constitutionality of the EO, but rather whether the lower courts had authority to issue injunctions on a nationwide basis to bar implementation of an EO. You would be hard pressed to know that, though, from the justices’ questions — the overwhelming number of which focused instead on how to stop Trump.

“So, as far as I see it, this order violates four Supreme Court precedents,” Justice Sotomayor declared early in the argument, referring to the Trump Administration’s EO on birthright citizenship. “And you are claiming that not just the Supreme Court — that both the Supreme Court and no lower court can stop an executive from — universally from violating that holding — those holdings by this Court,” Justice Sotomayor further charged. “[W]hy should we permit those countless others to be subject to what we think is an unlawful executive action,” the justice pushed, when a nationwide injunction could immediately remedy the executive branch’s unlawful action.

Justice Kagan likewise framed the question for the Court as how to promptly halt the implementation of a president’s EO which is “dead wrong” on the law. “[E]very court has ruled against you” on the birthright citizenship question, she intoned to Solicitor General D. John Sauer. 

“If one thinks — and, you know, look, there are all kinds of abuses of nationwide injunctions, but I think that the question that this case presents is that if one thinks that it’s quite clear that the EO is illegal, how does one get to that result in what time frame on your set of rules without the possibility of a nationwide injunction?” Justice Kagan further questioned the Trump Administration.

Those excerpts were but a few exchanges during the nearly three-hour hearing, with Justices Sotomayor and Kagan monopolizing much of last week’s oral argument with their questions focused solely on a solution: In effect, how do the courts expeditiously stop Trump, other than with a nationwide injunction? In positing this question, Justice Kagan even acknowledged “there are all kinds of abuses of nationwide injunctions . . . ”

From a legal perspective, the two liberal justices have it entirely backwards: The legal question for the justices was not how do courts accomplish their goal of stopping Trump without nationwide injunctions, but rather, do courts have the authority to issue nationwide injunctions?

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Trump Fumes After Supreme Court Rules Venezuelan Illegals Can’t Be Deported (For Now)

The Supreme Court ruled this afternoon to keep in place its block on President Trump’s deportations of (alleged) Venezuelan gang members under a 1798 law historically used only in wartime after their ACLU lawyers said the government was set to remove the men without judicial review in violation of a prior order by the justices.

The Supreme Court has previously issued two orders stemming from those cases.

Justices agreed that the president could rely on the centuries-old wartime law to remove immigrants from the country – provided they first have an opportunity to challenge those claims in court – and then temporarily blocked the government from deporting another group of Venezuelans in Texas while their lawyers scrambled to challenge the allegations against them.

In his proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act, Trump stated that “all Venezuelan citizens 14 years of age or older who are members of [Tren de Aragua], are within the United States, and are not actually naturalized or lawful permanent residents of the United States are liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as Alien Enemies.”

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Supreme Court Justice Proves She’s Totally Clueless Yet Again

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson talks a lot. That’s not just a qualitative observation. She consistently tallies up the most words spoken per justice. Take care not to confuse quantity with quality. When Jackson does open her mouth, it’s usually to expose her incompetency. 

During a Supreme Court hearing, Jackson made the case for rule by nationwide injunction. “I would think we’d want the system to move as quickly as possible to reach the merits of the issue, and maybe have this court decide whether or not the government is entitled to do this under the law,” the justice said. “Wouldn’t having universal injunctions actually facilitate that?” Jackson apparently isn’t much for Article II of the Constitution, which vests executive power in the president. It seems she’d prefer the president permanently subordinated to a clique of appointed judges. Herself included.

“It seems to me, that when the government is completely enjoined from doing the thing it wants to do, it moves quickly to appeal that, to get it to the Supreme Court, and that’s actually what we would want,” Jackson continued. The Supreme Court’s stated role is to interpret law. Jackson’s interpretation of the court’s role would see America guided by the whims of the judiciary – whims which, as has become obvious under the Trump administration, are ideological to the bone. It’s a vision straight out of the Progressive playbook: arbitrary rule by elected officials with the right credentials (and by extension, the right politics). The administrative state isn’t sending their best, folks.

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Supreme Court broadens standard for unreasonable force claims against police

The Supreme Court on Thursday made it easier to bring unreasonable force claims against police, ruling unanimously that courts should examine the circumstances beyond the split seconds when an officer fears for their safety in deciding whether they can be tried for unreasonable force.

The case stemmed from a 2016 traffic stop in Texas.

Ashtian Barnes, 24, was killed during the routine stop. He had been driving his girlfriend’s rental car, which had outstanding toll violations, when stopped by officer Roberto Felix Jr.   

After Barnes was asked to present his license and insurance, the car started moving forward. Felix jumped onto the vehicle’s doorsill and shot inside, striking Barnes twice and killing him.

The exchange turned deadly in seconds. The justices were asked to weigh whether courts should examine everything that happened during the traffic stop or just the moment when Felix feared for his safety when evaluating an excessive force claim.

In a 9-0 decision, they said the so-called “moment of the threat” doctrine should not be applied in such cases, instead directing courts to review the “totality of the circumstances.”

“To assess whether an officer acted reasonably in using force, a court must consider all the relevant circumstances, including facts and events leading up to the climactic moment,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the majority opinion.

Kagan noted the situation at the precise moment of the shooting may often be what matters most, given that the officer’s choice in those split seconds are what is under review. However, she said earlier facts and circumstances may inform how a “reasonable officer” would have responded to later ones.

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Biden Illegally Snatched Up Public Land, But SCOTUS Can Give It Back

There’s something undeniably American about searching the American Southwest for gold. As a young man, Mark Twain traveled to the Nevada Territory and, among other adventures, became a gold and silver prospector.

He wrote about the thrill of a strike: “You sweat and dig and delve with a frantic interest — and all at once you strike it! Up comes a spadeful of earth and quartz that is all lovely with soiled lumps and leaves and sprays of gold.”

Like so many throughout history, Twain’s search for gold wasn’t about the riches—it was about adventure. One of Twain’s contemporaries, Ralph Waldo Emerson, put it this way: “The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.”

If you ask Dan Torongo, that’s it exactly. 

Most of the time, Torongo is an engineer with his own firm in Brighton, Michigan. He specializes in gas and diesel aftertreatment systems and components, in clean air. But his family caught the gold bug as far back as the 1970s and has long held claims in the Chuckwalla Mountains of California.

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John Roberts Is The Judicial Supremacist The Founders Warned Us About

It’s a sad day in America when the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court ignores the basic framework of the Constitution he’s supposed to interpret.

That’s what happened on Wednesday, when Chief Justice John Roberts took it upon himself to subtly thumb his nose at President Trump and conservatives during a rare sit-down interview in his hometown of Buffalo, New York. In addition to rebuking calls to impeach activist lower court judges for overstepping the confines of the Constitution, the chief justice had this to say about the subject of “judicial independence”:

In our Constitution … the judiciary is a co-equal branch of government, separate from the others, with the authority to interpret the Constitution as law and strike down, obviously, acts of Congress or acts of the president. That innovation doesn’t work if … the judiciary’s not independent. Its job is to, obviously, decide cases, but in the course of that, check the excesses of Congress or of the executive. And that does require a degree of independence.

To quote Vice President J.D. Vance, does John Roberts hear himself?

The chief justice begins by claiming that the judiciary is a “co-equal” branch of government. Then, in the very next breath, he asserts that the courts can “strike down … acts of Congress or acts of the president.”

If the courts can unilaterally “strike down” actions by the legislative and executive it believes to be unlawful or finds unfavorable, as Roberts maintains, then that isn’t “co-equal.” It’s judicial supremacism.

What Roberts is conveying is his apparent belief that the Supreme Court and judicial branch writ large are wholly supreme to the other branches of government. That is, regardless of the will of the people as expressed through their elected representatives, it is judges who have the final say on matters of law and public policy.

While courts play an important role in American society, this is the exact opposite of the system the Founding Fathers established in the Constitution. If anything, the judiciary was viewed by framers like Alexander Hamilton to be the weakest branch, as it lacked “influence over either the sword or the purse” and “must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.”

The founders were not shy about sharing their fears of what would occur should the views of judicial supremacists like Roberts become reality.

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Maine Lawmaker Asks Supreme Court to Reverse Speech Ban

A Maine legislator has turned to the US Supreme Court after being effectively stripped of her ability to represent her constituents over a controversial social media post. Republican Rep. Laurel Libby, who serves District 90, submitted an emergency request to the high court this week, seeking to overturn a disciplinary action imposed by her fellow lawmakers that has barred her from voting or speaking on the House floor since February.

The dispute stems from a Facebook post Libby made criticizing the inclusion of a transgender athlete in a statewide girls’ pole vault competition.

The post included a mention of a Maine student and questioned the fairness of allowing biological males to compete in girls’ sports categories, a stance that ignited outrage among Democratic legislators. In response, the House voted to censure Libby and conditioned her return to full legislative participation on an apology she had refused to give.

Rather than comply, Libby launched a legal fight to restore her role, arguing the punishment amounted to unconstitutional retaliation. After lower courts refused to intervene, she is now asking the Supreme Court to address what she sees as a blatant violation of the First Amendment and a denial of her constituents’ right to representation.

We obtained a copy of the application for you here.

“For over 60 days my constituents have had no say in any actions taken by their government, actions that directly impact their lives,” she wrote in a post on X. “Every vote taken on the floor of the legislature is a vote my constituents cannot get back. The good people of our district have been silenced and disenfranchised.”

Libby emphasized that the case raises serious concerns about the limits of legislative authority when it comes to penalizing elected officials for their speech.

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Supreme Court’s “Ghost Gun” Ruling Accidentally Paves Way For Next-Gen 80% Firearms

In late March, the Supreme Court upheld a Biden administration rule regulating so-called ghost guns — unserialized firearms — delivering what initially appeared to be a victory for billionaire-funded gun control groups, anti-Second Amendment Democrats, and their allies in the corporate media. However, the ruling has inadvertently opened a new frontier for DIY firearm kits, alleges one ghost gun maker.

The high court’s ruling in Bondi v. VanDerStok (originally Garland v. VanDerStok, but renamed after a new Attorney General was appointed) was a 7–2 decision upholding the rule issued by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) requiring ghost gun makers to include serial numbers on kits and conduct background checks on purchasers.

According to Defense Distributed’s Cody Wilson, the March 26th opinion, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, was a master class in judicial hand-waving—a carefully worded evasion that accidentally set a new standard even stronger than Chevron for upholding administrative agency actions while quietly greenlighting the next evolution of DIY firearm kits.

In Wilson’s view, the high court’s ruling did not ban ghost guns but instead inadvertently provided a roadmap for how the industry can survive — and even thrive.

Parsing through Gorsuch’s opinion, Wilson cited a few lines from pages 11 and 12 that show the DIY firearm kit industry is far from dead:

On page 11:

In the same way and for the same reason, an ordinary speaker might well describe the “Buy Build Shoot” kit as a “weapon.” Yes, perhaps a half hour of work is required before anyone can fire a shot. But even as sold, the kit comes with all necessary components, and its in-tended function as an instrument of combat is obvious. Really, the kit’s name says it all: “Buy Build Shoot.”

On page 12:

That turns out to tell us all we need to know about the statute’s “ready conversion” test. As we have seen, a person without any specialized knowledge can convert a starter gun into a working firearm using everyday tools in less than an hour. Mullins, 446 F. 3d, at 755. And measured against that yardstick, the “Buy Build Shoot” kit can be “readily converted” into a firearm too, for it requires no more time, effort, expertise, or specialized tools to complete.

“Although the plain text in this opinion is intended more as an admonishment of Polymer80, which had become the ghost gun industry’s largest single success story, it also undermines the ATF’s purposely vague “tests” for determining when components have or have not become firearms,” Wilson said, adding that ghost gun kits are not dead after the ruling – just the high court saying kits must be:

  1. Require more than an hour of effort and work
  2. Involve uncommon tools to complete, and;
  3. Lack all necessary components to be built into a functioning weapon

On Saturday, Defense Distributed debuted the next iteration of DIY firearm kits that fit the new definitions of the high court’s ruling. The new ghost gun is called the “G80.”

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Not so fast on the FDA’s food dye ban — the Supreme Court has changed the rules 

Last week, the Food and Drug Administration announced long-awaited bans on certain food dyes and added new warnings about sugar in processed foods. Public health advocates cheered. Parents breathed a sigh of relief. But as someone who has spent years reporting on the intersection of federal science, health and regulation, I have a warning: In today’s legal climate, we are celebrating too soon. 

The Supreme Court’s recent reversal of the Chevron doctrine means every new regulation is now living on borrowed time — and the FDA’s food dye ban may be its first casualty. 

For 40 years, the “Chevron deference” gave federal agencies the benefit of the doubt in their interpretations of ambiguous laws within their areas of expertise. So when Congress writes broad rules, courts are to give agencies like the FDA, EPA and NOAA wide latitude to fill in the scientific and technical details.

But last year, in a move cheered by conservative legal activists, the Supreme Court struck down Chevron. Now, federal judges need not give such great deference to agencies as to what the law means, even on issues where the judges have no practical experience, such as food additives and clean air.

This is a landmark shift with potentially far-reaching consequences. While a regulation-friendly administration like Joe Biden’s can’t guarantee that new public health protections will survive the courts, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s FDA under the Trump administration should prepare to encounter similar hurdles.

The Chevron ruling presented us with a fitting preview of what happens when judges — as opposed to subject-matter experts at relevant agencies — determine the best way to interpret applicable regulatory frameworks within the law.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, in a concurring opinion overturning Chevron, referenced “nitrous oxide” as a pollutant from coal plants. Nitrous oxide — the compound best known for providing the temporary euphoria you may experience while a dentist fills a cavity — has nothing to do with the “nitrogen oxides” that actually come out of smokestacks and threaten respiratory health.  

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Schumer: If Trump Disobeys Supreme Court Order ‘Extraordinary Action Will Be Necessary’

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said Thursday on MSNBC’s “Chris Jansing Reports” that if President Donald Trump disobeyed a Supreme Court order, “extraordinary action will be necessary.”

Jansing said, “The Supreme Court said the administration must facilitate the return of Kilmer Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador. That has not happened. Are we at the point, Senator, where you feel extraordinary action is warranted?”

Schumer said, “Look, the case will be back to the Supreme Court, they sent it down to the lower court judge. But if the president disobeys a Supreme Court order, extraordinary action will be necessary. We’ve never had that in the Republic before, in the kind of way that the president is doing it. And again, he doesn’t believe in democracy. He doesn’t believe there should be diversity of opinion. He doesn’t believe in due process. You can’t pick up someone off the streets and send them somewhere if you don’t have evidence, if you haven’t presented evidence against them, the country, the democracy is at risk.”

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