Tag: scotus

Trump Scores SCOTUS Win In Battle Over Immigration Judges’ ‘Work-Related Speech’

The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously sided with the Trump administration on Tuesday in a dispute involving its policy regulating immigration judges’ “work-related speech.”

In its per curiam opinion, the high court vacated and remanded a decision by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals that centered around the government’s rules governing the executive’s immigration courts. The specific policy in question — which was enacted in October 2021 under the Biden administration — required immigration judges “to obtain supervisory approval for public speeches relating to their official duties” and was designed “to ensure that employee speech which may be seen as bearing the ‘imprimatur’ of the Office is consistent with its official positions,” according to SCOTUS.

The National Association of Immigration Judges (NAIJ) challenged the rule in federal court, arguing that it violated its members’ First and Fifth Amendment rights. As noted by the Supreme Court, however, under the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA), Congress “intended” for federal employees to bring “most work-related grievances” to the executive’s Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) and the Special Counsel — “not to federal district court.”

According to SCOTUS, the district court overseeing the case dismissed the NAIJ’s argument that its members’ constitutional claims “were not the kind of work-related claims that Congress intended to steer out of district court.” It held that it lacked jurisdiction over the matter, and that the CSRA “covered” respondent’s claims.

While agreeing with the district court’s conclusions that the NAIJ’s claims were covered by the CSRA and that Congress precluded district courts from overseeing such matters, the 4th Circuit panel nevertheless vacated the lower court’s ruling based on “factual circumstances” that it said “called into question” whether the CSRA was “functioning as Congress intended.” The appellate court further remanded the case back to the district court “for factfinding into the current operation of the MSPB,” as summarized by SCOTUS.

In vacating and remanding that decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the 4th Circuit’s actions were “based on an issue the parties had not raised” throughout litigation. By all accounts, the high court reasoned, the 4th Circuit’s decision “violated the party presentation principle when it decided ‘a case different from the one [respondent] advanced.’”

“Federal courts are not ‘roving commissions’ … licensed to ‘”sally forth each day looking for wrongs to right.”‘ … The Court of Appeals lost sight of those principles here,” the justices ruled.

While concurring with the court’s judgement, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas authored a separate opinion in the matter. Joined by Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the Bush 41 appointee explained why he believed the 4th Circuit’s ruling “was also wrong on the merits.”

“The Fourth Circuit’s analysis bears little resemblance to legal interpretation. Neither the President’s view that he can remove federal executive officials … nor his having done so, change the meaning of the statute or the binding nature of this Court’s interpretation of it,” Thomas wrote.

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SCOTUS Case Makes Freight Brokers Responsible For Crashes Caused By Commercial Immigrant Drivers

hirty people died in 17 semi-truck crashes caused by noncitizen commercial truck drivers in 2025, according to the Department of Transportation. That number is almost certainly an undercount. Prior to 2025, the immigration status of a commercial truck driver was mostly not recorded in crash reports, court filings, or news coverage. The national conversation focuses on the truck driver at fault for the latest accident, but rarely goes deeper. Why was this truck driver on the highways? What trucking company hired him? How are operations like this still in business?

Somewhere between receiving a package from the distribution center to your doorstep, there is a strong possibility that a freight broker was involved. Freight brokers exist to manage freight and risk for shippers, and to hire motor carriers (trucking companies) to haul that freight. They collect the margin between what the shipper pays them and what they pay the trucking company.

Until a Supreme Court ruling earlier this month, it was not considered the freight broker’s problem whether the trucking company it hired had a history of terrible safety violations, employed properly trained drivers, or safely maintained its trucks. Brokers had little reason not to hire cheaper, non-compliant trucking companies over compliant ones.

On May 14, the Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, and found that freight brokers can be held legally responsible for negligently hiring unsafe trucking companies.

Before the ruling, a freight broker’s liability depended on which state the crash occurred in. Negligent hiring claims against freight brokers have proceeded for years in the Sixth and Ninth Circuits, but not in the Seventh (Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin) and Eleventh (Alabama, Florida, and Georgia) Circuits, as freight brokers claimed preemption by the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994. This left semi-truck crash victims in different parts of the country with fundamentally different legal options against the same class of defendant.

When a freight broker hired a trucking company, and that company’s truck driver caused a wreck that killed someone, the broker often walked away. The trucking company absorbed the liability, the family absorbed the loss, and when the verdict exceeded the carrier’s $750,000 minimum insurance coverage (a federal floor set in 1980 and never adjusted for inflation), the family absorbed that too. The middleman who chose the trucking company and profited from the load often faced no legal consequence.

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A Century of Progressive Apartheid

This year marks the centennial of zoning in the United States, when the Supreme Court upheld comprehensive municipal land-use restrictions over the claims of property owners. The decision, Euclid v. Ambler Realty, was a milestone in the progressives’ campaign to overcome constitutional impediments to their plans for social engineering. In the ensuing century, zoning fundamentally altered the geography of American life, turning what had just become an urban-majority nation into a suburban one. Critics on both the libertarian right and woke left condemn zoning as a back-door version of apartheid, a stealthy way to keep immigrants and blacks out of “desirable” neighborhoods.

By 1900, Southern states had enacted segregation laws for “places of public accommodation” (hotels, restaurants, railroads, and the like), and the Court upheld these in 1896’s Plessy v. Ferguson. The residential segregation campaign began later, a response to the “Great Migration” of blacks into border-state cities in the 1910s. This campaign faced more constitutional difficulties due to American doctrines of property rights.

Baltimore enacted the first residential segregation law in 1910. Louisville enacted a law that prohibited members of one race from moving into a block in which the other race was a majority. The NAACP cleverly arranged a case in which a white man, Buchanan, sued to overturn the law. Buchanan sold his house on a white-majority block (situated between the only two black-owned houses on the block) to a black man, Warley. When Warley refused to complete the purchase because of the Louisville ordinance, Buchanan sued him. Given his house’s situation between the only two black-owned houses on the block, Buchanan argued, no white man would buy it. In Buchanan v. Warley (1917), the Supreme Court struck down the Louisville law as a violation of individual property rights. Edward Bassett, the “father of zoning,” lamented that cases like this indicated that American law “gave real estate owners almost total control over the use of their property.”

To get around this constitutional impediment, segregationists devised the “racially restrictive covenant,” in which a purchase contract forbade selling the property to members of certain races. The title search for a house that I purchased in 2007 turned up a restrictive covenant from the 1925 sale of the property. The purchaser agreed never to sell the parcel “to any one of the Ethiopian or African descent.” He also promised “that no dwelling house shall be erected on the property that costs less than $1500”—a zoning-use restriction avant la lettre. The Supreme Court upheld such covenants in 1926, the same year that it upheld more comprehensive zoning laws.

Zoning was a “quintessentially progressive concept,” historian Michael Allen Wolfe observes, exemplifying the movement’s faith in expertise and state power. It fit particularly into the progressives’ belief that the state could improve the genetic stock of the population, based on their belief in racial group hierarchy and eugenics. One can see the first zoning ordinances in the efforts of cities like San Francisco to control Chinese laundries, and in New York City’s tenement-manufacturing laws.

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National Sovereignty Is At Stake In Imminent Supreme Court Ruling

With the Supreme Court nearing the end of this term, it will soon release its ruling in Trump v. Barbara, the landmark case on the constitutionality of President Trump’s Jan. 20, 2025, executive order clarifying and protecting the meaning of American birthright citizenship. Expectation that the court will rule against the president has prompted a recent social media blast from Trump against the unreliable “conservative” justices on the court. Trump predicted that the court will be “ruling against us on Birthright Citizenship, making us the only Country in the World that practices this unsustainable, unsafe, and incredibly costly DISASTER. I don’t want loyalty, but I do want and expect it for our country … Sometimes decisions have to be allowed to use Good, Strong, Common Sense as a guide.”

President Trump is predictably insightful in his analysis of the politics of the court. Despite Chief Justice John Roberts’ desire to preserve the alleged impartiality and supra-political character of the court, it is impossible to deny that the courts have always been political actors in American government. As the president exhorted, the Supreme Court should make its decisions by “Good, Strong Common Sense” and with an underlying loyalty to the United States, which means loyal prioritization of our people, our founding principles, and our national preservation. Fortunately, the original meaning of the 14th Amendment supports President Trump’s position.

Specifically, while U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), which allegedly established the liberal interpretation of birthright citizenship, should ultimately be overturned, there remains a viable path where the court could uphold that ruling’s precedent and simultaneously recognize that the 14th Amendment does not grant citizenship to children of illegal aliens born within the territory of the U.S. This would be a major win and step toward securing and restoring our national sovereignty.

Ed Erler, one of the foremost scholars on the issue of birthright citizenship and the 14th Amendment, has treated this topic in great detail in his compelling book The United States in Crisis: Citizenship, Immigration, and the Nation-State. As Erler demonstrates, the original intention of the 14th Amendment, as expressed by its framers, was to grant American citizenship to former slaves and their children. The clause “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” excludes illegal aliens and foreign citizens, given that they are not fully subject to the jurisdiction of the American regime. They are subject to our laws while they sojourn here, but not subject as loyal citizens, since they owe allegiance to their foreign nations of origin.

Erler relies upon the political principles of the American founders to reject the British common law doctrine whereby anyone born within the territory of the British Empire was a perpetual subject of Britain. Erler further provides evidence from the ratification debates, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Expatriation Act of 1868, and Elk v. Wilkins (1884) to clarify the original meaning of birthright citizenship in the 14th Amendment.

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Supreme Court Directs Lower Courts To Reexamine Decisions In Voting Rights Act Cases

The U.S. Supreme Court on May 18 ordered lower courts to reconsider rulings in two redistricting cases that concern whether private individuals may sue to enforce a federal law that bans discriminatory voting practices.

The court directed the lower courts to take another look at the cases from Mississippi and North Dakota in light of its recent landmark ruling limiting the use of race in redistricting efforts.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from both new rulings.

In Louisiana v. Callais, a majority of the court had said April 29 that race may not be the predominant, overriding reason for how congressional district lines are drawn. The case focused on the Pelican State’s decision to add a majority-black district after a lower court said omitting the district would violate the Section 2 nondiscrimination provisions of the federal Voting Rights Act.

On Monday, the nation’s highest court summarily disposed of the two cases, State Board of Election Commissioners v. Mississippi State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians v. Howe, in unsigned orders. The court did not explain its decisions.

Lawyers call this process, which disposes of cases without holding an oral argument, GVR, which stands for grant, vacate, and remand.

The Supreme Court follows this procedure when it wants lower courts to reconsider their rulings using a new legal framework from a recent decision without delving deeply into the specifics of the cases.

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Ketanji Brown Jackson, the AOC of Jurisprudence, Has Thoughts About Court Neutrality

Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson spoke at the American Law Institute and warned that the Supreme Court risks looking political after its handling of the Louisiana redistricting case under the Voting Rights Act.

KBJ argued the court must guard its public image, especially in election cases, because, as the AP reported, Americans expect judges to stand apart from partisan fights.

She spoke after writing a solo dissent from the court’s decision allowing Louisiana to move quickly to use new maps after the court’s conservative majority struck down a majority-Black district and weakened the Voting Rights Act.

“Public confidence is really all the judiciary has,” she said at a talk before the American Law Institute in Washington, D.C.

“Everyone believes the court system is outside the political sphere. I think that means it’s incumbent on us to do things, to act in ways, that shore up public confidence,” she said.

Polling has shown public trust in the Supreme Court at historic lows in recent years, and Chief Justice John Roberts has separately bemoaned a perception that the justices are “political actors,” calling it a misunderstanding.

That’s a fair-sounding statement; nobody wants the highest court in America to look like a cable news panel wearing matching robes.

Unfortunately, despite a fair-sounding message, the problem comes from the messenger. Jackson has become the court’s loudest progressive voice, and subtlety doesn’t appear to be her preferred instrument.

While the justice did not address the substance of the ruling in Louisiana v Callais, which put limits on protections for minority voters under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, Jackson did express concern about the rare move to immediately certify the ruling over the objection of a group of black Louisiana voters who said they were considering a petition for rehearing of the case.

She suggested that the court’s move – with no explanation and over a dissent she joined written by Justice Elena Kagan – may have looked like the justices taking sides. The practical impact has been the elimination of at least one majority-black district that has been represented by Democrats.

“The parties who were asking us to expedite the judgment [state Republicans] were doing so because they were embroiled in a political dispute over whether or not to apply the court’s ruling in the context of an ongoing election. …The parties who came to us said, ‘Please alter your rules, so that we can essentially have an advantage in the context of this political dispute.’ What I thought is that that should not be something that we should do,” Jackson said, “because it would look as though we were doing something unusual…to advantage this political party…that was asking us for political reasons to do it.”

In the Louisiana case, she dissented alone after the court allowed the state to quickly move with new congressional maps.

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Cory Booker Almost CRIES as Supreme Court Deals Blow to Democrats’ Race-Based Redistricting Scheme

Sen. Cory Booker appeared on MSNOW Sunday and delivered exactly the kind of dramatic, race-obsessed rhetoric that now defines the modern Democrat Party’s response to redistricting.

Booker was reacting to recent Supreme Court redistricting rulings, including the Court’s May 11 decision allowing Alabama to use a congressional map previously blocked by a lower court. 

The decision overturned a judicial order requiring Alabama to use a court-imposed map with two largely Black districts.

Instead of treating the ruling as a constitutional debate over race-based districting, Booker framed the entire issue as a return to one of the darkest chapters in American history.

During the interview, Booker said his “soul and heart ache” over the Court’s decision and claimed America is facing a moment similar to the civil rights battles of the 1950s and 1960s.

Booker spoke about Alabama as “sacred soil,” referencing Martin Luther King Jr., Fred Shuttlesworth, John Lewis, Freedom Riders, the Edmund Pettus Bridge, police dogs, fire hoses, and the long struggle against Jim Crow.

The problem is obvious: no one is stopping Black Americans from voting.

Black voters have the same legal right to cast ballots as white voters, Hispanic voters, Asian voters, Jewish voters, Christian voters, young voters, old voters, and every other American citizen. The issue at the center of this fight is not whether people can vote, but rather whether the government should draw congressional districts based on race.

Booker and the Democrat Party do not want Americans to see the issue that way because their political strategy depends on making every election fight a moral emergency. 

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Stacey Abrams Says the Quiet Part Out Loud After Democrats Lose Districts Following the Supreme Court’s Blockbuster Ruling on Racial Gerrymandering

Twice-failed Democrat Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams said the quiet part out loud after the Supreme Court issued a ruling on racial gerrymandering.

Abrams appeared on MSNOW on Sunday to discuss the redistricting wars following longtime Democrat Rep. Steve Cohen’s decision to end his reelection bid after Tennessee Republicans erased his district with a newly drawn congressional map.

Tennessee Republicans recently passed a new congressional map that eliminated Cohen’s Memphis district.

Tennessee became the ninth state to approve a new congressional map amid the redistricting wars following the Supreme Court’s blockbuster ruling on Louisiana’s racial gerrymandering.

The case, State of Louisiana v. Phillip Callais (and the related Press Robinson v. Phillip Callais), stems from Louisiana’s woke lawmakers caving to left-wing judges and creating a second “majority-minority” congressional district.

Abrams has cried racism for years and even started a nonprofit aimed at ‘getting out the black vote.’

Recall that in 2013, Abrams created The New Georgia Project, a nonprofit to get out the black vote.

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Virginia Governor Spanberger Rages on X After Supreme Court Kills Democrat Gerrymander

Virginia Democratic Governor Abigail Spanberger erupted in anger on social media Friday after the Supreme Court refused to reinstate the state’s new congressional map that Democrats openly designed to flip up to four House seats in the 2026 midterms.

The high court’s one-sentence order left in place a 4-3 ruling from the Virginia Supreme Court that struck down the redistricting amendment on procedural grounds, meaning the state will use its existing 2021 congressional districts for the upcoming elections.

Spanberger took to X to lash out at both the state and federal courts, claiming they had “nullified an election” and the votes of more than three million Virginians.

The governor wrote in full:

The Supreme Court of the United States has now joined the Supreme Court of Virginia in choosing to nullify an election and the votes of more than three million Virginians.

These Virginians made their voices heard — casting their ballots in good faith to push back against a President who said he’s “entitled” to more seats in Congress before voters go to the polls.

As Governor, I will make sure voters know when and how to cast their votes this year. Because our votes are how we choose the representation we deserve.

Spanberger later shared a link on her personal campaign account directing supporters to donate to Democratic congressional candidates via ActBlue.

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‘Crazy ass Uncle Tom’: Democrat State Rep. Juandalynn Givan says Clarence Thomas ‘sold us back into the hands of the master’

State Rep. Juandalynn Givan (D-Birmingham) called U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) Associate Justice Clarence Thomas an “Uncle Tom” and the “one who sold us out in Africa” after a recent redistricting ruling on Monday.

SCOTUS struck down a 2023 federal court-ordered Alabama congressional map on Monday.

The ruling paves the way for Republicans in Alabama to likely pick up at least one congressional seat in the 2026 midterms. Republicans currently have a narrow majority in Congress, and redistricting battles are happening in multiple states across the nation. A special master hired by a three-judge panel in Birmingham redrew the map for the 2024 congressional elections after Democrats and liberal groups were successful in their initial redistricting legal challenge. The court-ordered map resulted in Democrats picking up one seat in Alabama via Figures in Congressional District 2.

Givan criticized Thomas, a black and respected conservative jurist, for ruling to “take away two damn congressional seats” from Democrats.

“This mf’er, this man, this Uncle Tom, this Uncle Tim…and I’m so pissed and I said this today…this black man right here, I don’t know what kind of black he is. I don’t know what damn plantation this man came from. I don’t know what slave ship he was on. I don’t know what part of the slave ship he was on,” Givan said on Facebook on Monday.

“I have never in my life met a black man who has never done any damn thing at all in the position that he has that would ever benefit black people and this man is just as dark as I am. First of all, you just pissed on the 11th Circuit. You just pissed on the judges in the 11th Circuit. You literally have ruled to take away two damn congressional seats because that’s what’s going to happen. You have sided with the Republican Party. You are a freaking straw boss…a damn Uncle Tom for these people. I just don’t get it.”

Givan continued, “I do not say the N word. You have not ever heard me use the N word to say it out. I may say reggin. That’s it spelled backwards but this reggin right here, this reggin right here. This man. I’m telling y’all. This mf’er must’ve been there, he must’ve been the one who sold us out in Africa. His ancestors had to be the ones that sold us out in Africa that caused us to be chained. I don’t understand this man.”

“Today this man has forever turned the clock, he is the man who has turned us back into the hands of the master,” Givan said. “Help me understand this black man right here. Help me understand this crazy ass Uncle Tom. Help me understand this lynchman. Help me. Help me understand him.”

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