Tag: scotus

Justice Kavanaugh Asks Jack Smith’s Prosecutor Why Barack Obama Was Never Charged For Drone Strikes Against Civilians

The Supreme Court on Thursday heard oral arguments on Trump’s presidential immunity claim in Jack Smith’s January 6 case in DC after a federal appeals court ruled Trump was not immune from prosecution.

Trump’s lawyers previously argued that Trump is immune from federal prosecution for alleged ‘crimes’ committed while he served as US President.

At issue before the Supreme Court is whether a US President is immune from criminal prosecution for official (not personal) acts.

Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked DOJ prosecutor Michael Dreeben (former Mueller goon) why Barack Obama was never charged for drone strikes against civilians.

“How about President Obama’s drone strikes?” Kavanaugh asked Michael Dreeben.

Dreeben defended Obama’s drone strikes that killed weddinggoers and innocent civilians.

“So the office of legal counsel looked at this very carefully and determined number one that the federal murder statute does apply to the Executive Branch, but the president wasn’t personally carrying out the strike, but the aiding and abetting laws are broad and determined that a public authority exception is built into statutes and that applied particularly to the murder statute that talks about unlawful killing did not apply to the drone strike,” Dreeben said.

Dreeben could have saved a lot of time and just said that Barack Obama has Democrat privilege.

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SCOTUS shocked by Biden administration’s view of federal power over states in ER abortion challenge

To convince the Supreme Court that the Biden administration could use federal Medicare funding to force hospitals to perform abortions in violation of Idaho law, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar conceived and gave birth to some unusual arguments Wednesday.

She reached for a 129-year-old precedent that crippled the labor movement for decades, neutered legal obligations to the “unborn child” in the federal law that allegedly requires abortions in certain situations, and didn’t deny a Republican administration could use her rationale to functionally ban abortion and even transgender care nationwide.

Such is the federal government’s interest in ensuring that abortion-minded women can use emergency rooms to terminate pregnancies as conservative states approve new abortion restrictions, or reinstate old ones, under the high court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022.

Backed by 22 conservative states and sued by the feds, Idaho challenged the Biden administration’s use of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act as a “super-statute” that overrides its Defense of Life Act, which includes criminal penalties and loss of license, and “turns emergency rooms into a federal enclave where state standards of care do not apply.”

While Prelogar faced skepticism from GOP-appointed justices about the massive expansion of federal power her argument implied, a recurring point of confusion for the whole bench was how much “daylight” stood between EMTALA, designed to stop “patient-dumping,” and Idaho’s law.

The former requires “immediate medical attention” when the health of the individual or “unborn child” would otherwise face “serious jeopardy, serious impairment to bodily functions, or serious dysfunction of bodily organs.” The latter has one health-related abortion exception: “necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman.”

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Censorship on Trial at the Supreme Court

Billed as one of the most consequential lawsuits of the last century, Murthy v. Missouri (formerly Missouri v Biden) is a legal battle that stands at the intersection of free speech protections and social media companies. 

The plaintiffs, which include psychiatrist Aaron Kheriaty, and epidemiologists Martin Kulldorff and Jay Bhattacharya, cosignatories of the Great Barrington Declaration, allege the US government coerced social media companies to censor disfavoured viewpoints that were constitutionally protected by the First Amendment.

The US government denies coercing social media companies, arguing it was “friendly encouragement” in an effort to protect Americans from “misinformation” in a public health emergency.

The Constitution is clear – it forbids the US government from abridging free speech. But a private company such as a social media platform bears no such burden and is not ordinarily constrained by the First Amendment.

This case asks whether certain government officials impermissibly coerced social media companies to violate the First Amendment rights of social media users. The case now sits before the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS).

The Case So Far

The case has seen several twists and turns since it was originally filed in 2022.

Discovery allowed plaintiffs to document nearly 20,000 pages showing platforms like Twitter (now X), Facebook, YouTube, and Google stifled free speech by removing or downgrading stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop, the 2020 presidential election, and various Covid-19 policies.

The plaintiffs described it as an “unprecedented, sprawling federal censorship enterprise.”

On July 4, 2023, US District Court Terry Doughty granted a motion to restrict federal government officials from communicating with social media companies over content it believed to be misinformation.

Specifically, they were prohibited from meeting or contacting by phone, email, or text message or “engaging in any communication of any kind with social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”

Doughty indicated there was “substantial evidence” that the US government violated the First Amendment by engaging in a widespread censorship campaign and that “if the allegations made by plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.”

The Biden Administration appealed the decision in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that the officials exercised a form of permissible government speech because they only pointed out content that violated the platforms’ policies to reduce the harms of online misinformation.

On September 8, 2023, the Fifth Circuit largely affirmed Judge Doughty’s order stating that US government officials were engaging “in a broad pressure campaign designed to coerce social-media companies into suppressing speakers, viewpoints, and content disfavored by the government.”

It was determined that the harms of such censorship radiated far beyond the plaintiffs in the case, essentially impacting every social-media user.

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Porn industry asks Supreme Court to block Texas law requiring age verification before accessing sites

The adult entertainment industry will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to block a Texas law that requires porn websites to verify the age of users. The case presents the justices with a chance to opine on the legal protections afforded to pornography, particularly in the context of the internet.

The nation’s most conservative appeals court — the New Orleans-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit — ruled on March 7 to overturn a district court injunction that blocked Texas H.B. 1181. The law requires internet companies whose content consists of more than one-third “sexual material harmful to minors” to “use reasonable age verification methods” to limit their distribution to adults, and to display a health warning before showing any such materials. Embattled Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton began enforcing the law in February, and shortly thereafter began a $1.6 million civil action against PornHub for noncompliance. The Free Speech Coalition, an association of the adult film industry, sued to block the Texas law, claiming that it both violated the First Amendment and conflicts with Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Section 230 is the federal statute that protects internet platforms from liability based on third-party content that violates the law.

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‘Hamstringing the Government’: A Viral Narrative Distorts Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Understanding of Free Speech

“My biggest concern,” said Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on Monday, “is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways.”

That comment came during oral arguments in Murthy v. Missouri, the case that asks if President Joe Biden’s administration violated the First Amendment when it sought to pressure social media apps to remove information it deemed harmful. It took almost no time for Jackson’s tidbit to set off the viral narrative that she doesn’t grasp basic constitutional principles, particularly when considering the point of the First Amendment is indeed to hamstring what the government can do in response to speech it may not like.

“Jackson raises eyebrows with comment that First Amendment ‘hamstrings’ government,” wrote Fox News. “Leftists want unlimited government — which is why they hate the Constitution,” lamented The Federalist. It was “literally one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R–Ohio).

But like so many viral narratives, Jackson’s comments were fairly benign in context, and were actually echoed by Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Perhaps most ironically, her remark spoke fundamentally to the crux of the case: The government, of course, does not have the right to punish someone criminally for the vast majority of speech. But does it have the right to persuade?

Jackson may think it does. Her “hamstringing” comment came attached to a hypothetical scenario she posed to Benjamin Aguiñaga, Louisiana’s solicitor general, who argued the Biden administration had overstepped when it contacted social media platforms and attempted to pressure them to remove posts it found objectionable. Suppose a challenge circulated on social media concerning “teens jumping out of windows at increasing elevations,” Jackson said. Could the government try to persuade those platforms to remove that content?

No, Aguiñaga said, because that’s still protected speech, no matter how dangerous.

That might very well be the correct interpretation. But Jackson’s take—that such a view could place too much restraint on the government—is one that’s held by many, including, it appears, some of her more conservative colleagues. Kavanaugh, for example, invoked his experience working with government press staff, who regularly call reporters to criticize them and try to influence their coverage. Would it be illegal for the feds to prosecute those journalists for pieces that cast them in a negative light? Absolutely. Is it beyond the pale for the government to express what it believes to be true in seeking better coverage? Not necessarily, Kavanaugh said.

That doesn’t mean they’re correct. But the great irony of the viral Jackson pile-on is that, based on oral arguments, her view may very well prevail.

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Despite Supreme Court Ruling, States Are Still Confiscating People’s Homes

Horses taught Christine Searle the importance of being fair. Intelligent and innately honest creatures, horses know deceit when they see it. She wishes they could teach that principle to the state of Arizona.

The 70-year-old horse trainer and Arizona native is on the verge of losing her life’s savings over an unpaid $1,607.68 property tax bill.

“I owed them the money. And that’s what they should get—the money I owe them,” Ms. Searle told The Epoch Times.

“I don’t think that they should have the right to take all of it.”

Arizona is one of almost a dozen states that allow creditors to keep all the proceeds from sales of homes foreclosed due to unpaid taxes—known as tax lien sales, according to the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF).

A 2022 U.S. Supreme Court case out of Minnesota offers some hope to property owners in these situations, but only if a similar case is brought in their state. In the 2022 case, the justices ruled that Minnesota’s practice of keeping all the proceeds of a tax sale constitutes an illegal seizure of property.

“The taxpayer must render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, but no more,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the unanimous decision.

But, under their current laws, 10 states and the District of Columbia have no means of returning the excess proceeds of a home sale; what Mountain States Legal Foundation lawyers representing Ms. Searle call “home equity theft.” The states include Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and South Dakota.

Ms. Searle hopes her case will be the one to set things right in Arizona.

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The Supreme Court Should Reject Clandestine Government Censorship of Online Speech

When federal officials persistently pressured social media platforms to delete or downgrade posts those officials did not like, a government lawyer told the Supreme Court on Monday, they were merely offering “information” and “advice” to their “partners” in fighting “misinformation.” If the justices accept that characterization, they will be blessing clandestine government censorship of online speech.

The case, Murthy v. Missouri, pits two states and five social media users against federal officials who strongly, repeatedly, and angrily demanded that Facebook et al. crack down on speech the government viewed as dangerous to public health, democracy, or national security. Some of this “exhortation,” as U.S. Deputy Solicitor General Brian Fletcher described it, happened in public, as when President Joe Biden accused the platforms of “killing people” by allowing users to say things he believed would discourage Americans from being vaccinated against COVID-19.

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, who echoed that charge in more polite terms, urged a “whole-of-society” effort to combat the “urgent threat to public health” posed by “health misinformation,” which he said might include “legal and regulatory measures.” Other federal officials said holding social media platforms “accountable” could entail antitrust action, new regulations, or expansion of their civil liability for user-posted content.

Those public threats were coupled with private communications that came to light only thanks to their discovery in this case. As Louisiana Solicitor General J. Benjamin Aguiñaga noted on Monday, officials such as Deputy Assistant to the President Rob Flaherty “badger[ed] the platforms 24/7,” demanding that they broaden their content restrictions and enforce them more aggressively.

Those emails alluded to presidential displeasure and warned that White House officials were “considering our options on what to do” if the platforms failed to fall in line. The platforms responded by changing their policies and practices.

Facebook executive Nick Clegg was eager to appease the president. In emails to Murthy, he noted that Facebook had “adjust[ed] policies on what we’re removing”; had deleted pages, groups, and accounts that offended the White House; and would “shortly be expanding our COVID policies to further reduce the spread of potentially harmful content.”

Facebook took those steps, Clegg said in another internal email that Aguiñaga quoted, “because we were under pressure by the administration.” Clegg expressed regret about caving to that pressure, saying, “We shouldn’t have done it.”

According to Fletcher, none of this implicated the First Amendment because “no threats happened.” He meant that federal officials never explicitly threatened platforms with “adverse government action” while urging suppression of constitutionally protected speech.

That position is hard to reconcile with the Supreme Court’s 1963 decision in Bantam Books v. Sullivan. In that case, the Court held that Rhode Island’s Commission to Encourage Morality in Youth had violated the First Amendment by pressuring book distributors to drop titles it deemed objectionable.

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Supreme Court Appears Wary of Blocking Biden Admin-Big Tech Censorship Collusion

During oral arguments in a major First Amendment case on Monday, the Supreme Court expressed reservations about restricting interactions between the Biden administration and social media platforms. This concern emerged during the Murthy v. Missouri (formerly Missouri v. Biden) case, which delves into the extent of governmental influence over online content.

Brian Fletcher, Principal Deputy Solicitor General of the United States, presented oral arguments for the petitioners in the case, Biden’s Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy and several other current and former members of the Biden administration.

The respondents in the case, the States of Missouri and Louisiana, and several other individuals who were subject to social media censorship, allege that the federal government had pressured platforms to block or downgrade posts on various topics, including some related to Covid and the Hunter Biden laptop story.

Several lower courts agreed with the respondents, with a district judge describing the Biden administration’s Big Tech-censorship collusion as “Orwellian” and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals finding that the Biden admin likely violated the First Amendment when pushing for social media censorship.

During the oral arguments today though, the justices displayed skepticism towards a broad prohibition on governmental communications with social media platforms. They raised concerns that such a ruling could unduly restrain the government’s ability to address pressing issues.

Fletcher defended the Biden admin’s actions and framed them as the government exercising its right to “speak for itself by informing, persuading, or criticizing private speakers.” He argued that the government is entitled to communicate with social media companies to influence their content moderation decisions, as long as these interactions do not veer into coercion. According to Fletcher, the litmus test for legality should be the presence or absence of threats from the government, asserting that using the bully pulpit for exhortations is a right protected under the First Amendment.

Fletcher also tried to argue for the significant power and autonomy of social media companies, noting their capability to resist governmental pressures.

The solicitor general of Louisiana, Benjamin Aguiñaga, representing one of the Republican-led states behind the lawsuit, argued that the government’s actions amounted to coercion, effectively leading to censorship by social media platforms. He highlighted a significant shift in the focus of government-led content moderation. Initially aimed at tackling foreign interference and misinformation, these efforts increasingly targeted speech by American citizens, particularly around the contentious topics of the 2020 election and the pandemic.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson challenged Louisiana Solicitor General Benjamin Aguiñaga’s viewpoint. “And so I guess some might say that the government actually has a duty to take steps to protect the citizens of this country. And you seem to be suggesting that that duty cannot manifest itself in the government encouraging or even pressuring platforms to take down harmful information. So, can you help me? Because I’m really worried about that.”

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Supreme Court Extends Temporary Block on Texas From Enforcing Immigration Law

The U.S. Supreme Court has extended a temporary freeze barring Texas from enforcing a new law that allows state police to arrest immigrants suspected of crossing the U.S.–Mexico border illegally.

Justice Samuel Alito, who oversees the federal circuit handling the case, on March 18, extended an administrative stay on Texas Senate Bill 4 that was initially issued on March 4 and then extended on March 12 to allow the court time to review the case. The stay was extended “pending further order” of the court, according to the order.

The order is a setback to Texas and other red states in stemming the tide of illegal immigrants whom they have deemed an “invasion.”

SB4, signed into law by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in December 2023, was scheduled to go into effect on March 5. The Supreme Court is currently considering emergency appeals brought by the Biden administration challenging the law.

The law makes it a state crime to cross the Texas–Mexico border outside legal ports of entry. Punishment for the Class B misdemeanor is up to six months in jail. However, repeat offenders could face second-degree felony charges and up to 20 years in prison.

Judges are granted leeway under the law to drop the charges if the illegal immigrants agree to return to Mexico.

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Supreme Court Declines to Consider Case of Indiana Couple Who Lost Custody of ‘Transgender’ Teen Son for Refusing to Use Female Pronouns

The Supreme Court has declined to hear a case from an Indiana couple who lost custody of their “transgender” teenage son for refusing to use female pronouns.

The court rejected the case without providing any commentary or a reason why.

As the Gateway Pundit previously reported, Mary and Jeremy Cox, who are Catholic, opted to bring their son to therapy when he decided he wanted to be a girl in 2019.

Becket Legal, who is representing the Cox family, explained in a press release, “Because of their religious belief that God creates human beings with immutable sex—male or female—they could not refer to him using pronouns and a name inconsistent with his biology. The Coxes also believed that he needed help for underlying mental health concerns, including an eating disorder.”

“To address both issues, they provided therapeutic care for their child’s gender dysphoria and scheduled appointments with a specialist to help him with the eating disorder. In 2021, Indiana began investigating the Coxes after a report that they were not referring to their child by his preferred gender identity. Indiana then removed the teen from the parents’ custody and placed him in a home that would affirm his preferred identity.”

The state did not find evidence of abuse — but claimed the couple’s non-acceptance of their son’s gender identity was harmful to the child’s mental health.

“If this can happen in Indiana, it can happen anywhere. Tearing a child away from loving parents because of their religious beliefs, which are shared by millions of Americans, is an outrage to the law, parental rights, and basic human decency,” said Lori Windham, vice president and senior counsel at Becket. “If the Supreme Court doesn’t take this case, how many times will this happen to other families?”

In a statement responding to the Supreme Court’s rejection, the Cox family said, “We can’t change the past, but we will continue to fight for a future where parents of faith can raise their children without fear of state officials knocking on their doors.”

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