Tag: scotus

Ailing Justice Sonia Sotomayor Traveled with Medic, Needed “Medical Supplies” and “Medical Gear”

Trump was right. Again.

Far-left Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is in really bad shape. The 69-year-old justice is overweight and suffers from type 1 diabetes.

According to newly released US Marshals Service records, Sonia Sotomayor, the oldest left-leaning justice on the bench, traveled with a medic and needed “medical supplies,” and “medical gear.”

“Justice Sotomayor’s health concerns are also apparent throughout the documents. On a Feb. 2018 trip to south Florida with no public events, Sotomayor appears to have a medic from Grand Junction, Colo. accompanying her, and another is with her during an Oct. 2018 swing through Chicago and Nashville for book events. Four of Sotomayor’s 2021 trips mention “medical gear” or “medical supplies.” What’s more, some version of the phrase, “PPE will be utilized for the duration of this mission,” appears to have been written on a dozen of her 2021 USMS travel reports, including one where deputies are directed: “Wear masks regardless of vaccination status,” p. 281.” the records stated.

“Per the documents she appears to have done what many Americans who could afford to did during the pandemic: spend months in a warm place working remotely, as the reports indicate she spent the last six weeks of 2020 and first six weeks of 2021 in south Florida, including for the Court’s Dec. 2020 and Jan. 2021 sittings.” the records said.

Joe Biden has only appointed one Supreme Court Justice since he was installed in January 2021.

Biden picked far-left Ketanji Brown Jackson to replace Justice Stephen Breyer.

Court watchers have long speculated Sotomayor would retire early since she suffers from a host of health problems.

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US Supreme Court Defends Free Speech on Palestine

Free-speech defenders welcomed the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to take up a lawsuit that outlandishly claimed a civil society group provided “material support” for terrorism by advocating for Palestinian human rights.

The Supreme Court’s punting of Jewish National Fund v. U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR)— which comes over three months into Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip — marks the third consecutive time a federal court has dismissed the case, which USCPR said casts “collective activism and expression of solidarity as unlawful.”

In the case’s first dismissal in March 2021, a federal judge said that the plaintiffs’ argument was “to say the least, not persuasive.”  

USCPR Executive Director Ahmad Abuznaid hailed Monday’s move by the nation’s highest court, reiterating the group stands for “justice for all and an end to funding genocide.”

“There’s no lawsuit in the world that can stop us from pushing our demands for human rights,” he said. “We will remain focused on opposing Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people and pursuing justice and freedom for the Palestinian people.”

According to USCPR: 

“At issue were USCPR’s fiscal sponsorship of the Boycott National Committee and expressions of support for the rights and demands of Palestinians participating in the Great Return March [2108-19], when Palestinians protested to demand respect for their right to return to the villages from which Israeli settlers expelled them in 1948.”

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Supreme Court Declines To Hear X’s Challenge to FBI Surveillance Gag Orders

The social network formerly known as Twitter has been undergoing more than just “superficial” branding transformations as of late, going from a reliable ally of state-driven censorship, to a platform that became the first major one to try to shed light on the mechanisms and practices of deep censorship.

The Twitter Files disclose more than just a private company exercising the right to be wrong in suppressing users’ free speech: they also implicated the US federal government with damning proof of serious transgressions, such as (explicitly unconstitutional) state collusion in censorship.

However, the US Supreme Court has now refused to consider X’s request to be able to publish some relevant numbers.

The original filing dates all the way back to 2014, in the wake of the revelations by whistleblower Edward Snowden, that sent shock waves both among citizens and politicians.

But those behind the company/platform, now called X, seem well-aware that this story by no means ended with some government concessions (regarding disclosure) made after the Snowden revelations, or with the Twitter Files.

And so, possibly as a defense tactic going forward, X tried to be granted the right to reveal the number of times federal law enforcement “gets in touch” to get information, framed as pertaining to national security.

The Supreme Court decision came after X appealed when a lower instance court said that the FBI had every right to constrain X in sharing the information about the “national security investigations requests” number with the public.

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Supreme Court Wipes Out Three Rulings Rejecting Federal COVID Vaccine Mandate

The U.S. Supreme Court vacated the rulings in three lower court cases that had challenged the Biden administration’s federal COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal agency employees and military service personnel. The decision by the nation’s highest court to grant the Biden administration’s request to set aside the previous judicial rulings rejecting a federal COVID vaccine mandate erases the legal precedent set by the lower courts.

The Appellate courts were split in their decisions about the COVID vaccine mandate with those challenging the federal vaccine mandate succeeding in some cases and the Biden administration prevailing in other cases.

The Supreme Court majority instructed the lower court to dismiss the cases as moot after the vaccine mandates were rescinded. By wiping out the historical record, the Supreme Court has ensured that any legal challenges to future vaccine mandates will be cases of first impression without precedent.1 2

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Biden Administration Urges Supreme Court To Overturn Injunction on Federal Agencies Influencing Tech Censorship

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit recently affirmed an injunction against federal agencies to stop the current White House from colluding with Big Tech’s social media.

And now, the Biden Administration is going to the US Supreme Court in a last-ditch attempt to reverse this decision.

The big picture effect – or at least, the intended meaning – of the Fifth Circuit ruling was to stop the government from working with Big Tech in censoring online content.

There’s little surprise that this doesn’t sit well with that government, which now hopes that the federal appellate court’s decision can be overturned.

The White House says the ruling is banning its “good” work done alongside social media to combat “misinformation”; instead of admitting its actions to amount to collusion with Big Tech – which has been amply documented now, not least by the Twitter Files – the government insists its actions are serving the public, and its “ability” to discuss relevant issues.

We obtained a copy of the petition for you here.

US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy is back again here – to say that what those now in power in the US (a message amplified by legacy media) did ahead of the 2020 presidential election, as well as subsequently regarding the pandemic “misinformation” – which is now fairly widely accepted to be censorship (“moderation”) – is what Murthy still calls, justified.

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California Defies SCOTUS by Imposing Myriad New Restrictions on Public Gun Possession

A California law that is scheduled to take effect on January 1 will impose a host of new restrictions on public possession of firearms. That may seem counterintuitive, since Senate Bill 2 is the state legislature’s response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which upheld the Second Amendment right to carry guns for self-defense outside the home. But California, like several other states with discretionary carry-permit policies that had to be revised because of Bruen, is attempting an end run around that decision by simultaneously making permits easier to obtain and much harder to use.

In Bruen, the Supreme Court said states may not require permit applicants to demonstrate “a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community.” Accordingly, S.B. 2, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law on September 26, eliminates California’s “good cause” requirement, along with a similarly amorphous “good character” criterion (although it still disqualifies applicants deemed “reasonably likely” to pose a danger to themselves or others). By limiting the discretion of licensing authorities, S.B. 2 notes, those changes could have opened the door to “broadly allowing individuals to carry firearms in most public areas.” Deeming that outcome intolerable, legislators instead decreed that guns may not be carried in most public areas.

Copying the constitutionally dubious approach taken by states such as New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Hawaii, S.B. 2 designates myriad locations as “sensitive places” where guns are not permitted. It also establishes a default rule that people may not bring guns into a business unless the owner “clearly and conspicuously posts a sign at the entrance of the building or on the premises indicating that licenseholders are permitted to carry firearms on the property.”

As a federal lawsuit challenging those rules notes, the law “turns the Bruen decision on its head, making nearly every public place in California a ‘sensitive place’ (in name only)” and “forbidding firearm carry even after someone has undertaken the lengthy and expensive process to be issued a concealed handgun license.” California’s gun-free zones  “include every park and playground, every hospital, all public transportation, any place that sells alcohol (which, in California, includes most gas stations and convenience and grocery stores), all land under the control of the Department of Parks and Recreation or the Department of Fish and Wildlife (with exceptions for hunting), libraries, churches, banks, and many more.” S.B. 2 “even transforms private businesses into ‘gun-free zones’ by default, imposing an unprecedented affirmative duty on private business owners to post signage to authorize people exercising an enumerated constitutional right to enter the property.”

As a result, says the complaint in May v. Bonta, “Californians who desire to exercise their enumerated right to carry are essentially limited to some streets and sidewalks (so long as those public places are not adjacent to certain other ‘sensitive’ places), plus a few businesses willing to post a ‘guns allowed’ sign at the risk of potentially losing other customers by doing so.” The law “creates a patchwork quilt of locations where Second Amendment rights may and may not be exercised, thus making exercise of the right so impractical and legally risky in practice that ordinary citizens will be deterred from even attempting to exercise their rights in the first place.”

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US Supreme Court hears arguments over domestic-violence gun curbs

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday was hearing arguments on the legality of a federal law that makes it a crime for people under domestic violence restraining orders to have guns in the latest major case to test the willingness of its conservative majority to further expand gun rights.

The justices heard an appeal by President Joe Biden’s administration of a lower court’s ruling striking down the law – intended to protect victims of domestic abuse – as a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms.”

The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that the measure failed a stringent test set by the Supreme Court in a 2022 ruling that required gun laws to be “consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation” in order to survive a Second Amendment challenge.

Some of the conservative justices questioned Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, defending the law on behalf of the Biden administration, and expressed skepticism about her argument that the Second Amendment permits laws that prohibit people who are not law abiding and responsible from possessing firearms, including domestic abusers.

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Several Justices Express Dismay at Long Delays in Returning Seized Cars to Innocent Owners

In February 2019, police in Satsuma, Alabama, pulled over Halima Culley’s son and arrested him for possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia. They seized the car, which belonged to Culley, and tried to keep it under Alabama’s civil forfeiture law. Although Culley ultimately got her car back as an “innocent owner,” that process took 20 months.

That same month, a friend borrowed Lena Sutton’s car. He was pulled over in Leesburg, Alabama, and arrested for methamphetamine possession. Like Culley, Sutton successfully invoked the “innocent owner” defense to get her car back after police seized it. But that did not happen for over a year. In the meantime, her lawyer told the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, “she missed medical appointments, she wasn’t able to keep a job, she wasn’t able to pay a cell phone bill, and as a result” she “was not in a position to be able to communicate about the forfeiture proceedings.”

In separate class-action lawsuits, Culley and Sutton unsuccessfully argued that they and similarly situated property owners have a due process right to a prompt post-seizure hearing aimed at determining whether they can keep their cars while a forfeiture case is pending. The issue for the Supreme Court in Culley v. Marshall is which standard to apply in deciding that question. During oral arguments in the case, several justices showed a heartening awareness of the injustices inflicted by civil asset forfeiture, a system of legalized larceny that allows law enforcement agencies to pad their budgets by confiscating allegedly crime-tainted property.

“I’m very sympathetic [to] the problem that you’ve identified,” Justice Neil Gorsuch, who has previously expressed concern about civil forfeiture abuses, told Shay Dvoretzky, the attorney representing Culley and Sutton. “Clearly, there are some jurisdictions that are using civil forfeiture as funding mechanisms,” he noted. They therefore are not keen to expedite innocent owners’ challenges, he said, and may impose onerous requirements, such as telling forfeiture victims, “You can get your car back if you call between 3 and 5 p.m. on a Tuesday and speak with someone who is never available.”

In other words, Gorsuch said, “there are arguments to be made that there are attempts to create processes that are deeply unfair and obviously so in order to retain the property for the coffers of the state.” He also noted “allegations before us” that “some states, because law enforcement uses these forfeitures to fund themselves,” have been known to demand that an owner surrender some of his property in exchange for getting the rest back or “engage in other concessions outside of regular process.” The due process test that Alabama prefers “would seem to strip the courts of tools to deal with those kinds of cases,” he told Alabama Solicitor General Edmund G. LaCour Jr., who argued that “the forfeiture proceeding without more provides the post-seizure hearing required by due process.”

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Supreme Court Allows Biden Admin to Continue Enforcing Ghost Gun Regulations

On Monday, the Supreme Court vacated an order from a lower court, allowing the Biden administration’s new regulations on ghost guns to take effect.

A Texas-based judge ruled against President Joe Biden’s new rules on ghost guns, firearms without serial numbers. However, a request to vacate the order was filed to Justice Samuel Alito and referred to the full court, which ruled in favor of vacating the order.

Alito issued an order on October 6, giving ghost gun manufacturers Blackhawk Manufacturing Group and Defense Distributed until Wednesday to provide a better reason as to why they should not have their firearms regulated the same way as other gun manufacturers.

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FBI interviewed individuals who accuse Amy Coney Barrett faith group of abuse

The FBI has interviewed several individuals who have alleged they were abused by members of the People of Praise (PoP), a secretive Christian sect that counts conservative supreme court justice Amy Coney Barrett as a lifelong member, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The individuals were contacted following a years-long effort by a group called PoP Survivors, who have called for the South Bend-based sect to be investigated for leaders’ handling of sexual abuse allegations. The body, which has 54 members, has alleged that abuse claims were routinely mishandled or covered up for decades in order to protect the close-knit faith group.

It is not clear whether the FBI has launched a formal investigation into the PoP.

The Guardian has confirmed that at least five individuals were contacted by the FBI and four gave detailed accounts to agents of abusive behavior they allegedly experienced or witnessed. Individuals spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity and said they believed the FBI interviews were part of an initial inquiry.

One woman who was interviewed by agents from Minneapolis, Minnesota, said she received an update last week and was told by agents that the investigation into her own claims, which involved allegations of sexual abuse by a teacher, had been closed. The woman told the Guardian that news had left her disappointed and defeated, and full of “a lot of questions”, because the agents had seemed interested in pursuing the matter.

A spokesperson for PoP Survivors said: “We urge the FBI to use their power to unearth the long-standing pattern of child sexual abuse and coverup in the People of Praise. All perpetrators and their enablers must finally be held accountable. We must ensure that no child is victimized and silenced by a People of Praise member ever again.”

The FBI did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the PoP did not respond to a request for comment.

The PoP was founded in the 1970s as part of a Christian charismatic movement. The group is led exclusively by men. Like other charismatic communities, it blends Catholicism and Protestant Pentecostalism – its members are mostly Catholic but include some Protestants. In meetings, members are encouraged to share prophecies and speak in tongues. One former member said adherents believe God can speak through members to deliver messages, sometimes about their future.

A PoP handbook states that members are expected to be obedient to male authorities, or group heads, and are expected to give 5% of their earnings to the group. Heads are influential decision-makers in members’ lives, weighing in on issues ranging from dating to marriage, and determining where members should live.

After a waiting period, members agree to a covenant – a lifelong vow – to support each other “financially and materially and spiritually”.

The group has been criticized for endorsing discriminatory practices. Members who engage in gay sex are expelled, and private schools closely affiliated with the group – the Trinity Schools – have admission policies that in effect ban the children of gay parents from attending.

Single members are encouraged to live with other members of the community, including families with children, a practice that former members and adults who grew up in the sect say created opportunities for sexual abuse.

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