Tag: scotus

‘Color-Blind’ Supreme Court Bars Consideration Of Race In College Admissions

The Supreme Court has ruled that it is unconstitutional to consider race in university admissions.

In Thursday’s 6-3 decision (along ideological lines), the justices rejected arguments by Harvard College and the University of North Carolina that their admissions programs are warranted to ensure campus diversity.

The high court majority effectively overturned a 2003 decision, known as Grutter v. Bollinger, that had reaffirmed the right of universities to consider race as one of many admissions factors.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas said that ruling “is, for all intents and purposes, overruled.”

As The Wall Street Journal reports, the ruling will force a reworking of admissions criteria throughout American higher education, where for decades the pursuit of diversity has been an article of faith.

Specifically, The 14th Amendment ensures that individuals receive equal protection of the laws from state agencies including public universities, a standard that also applies to most private colleges that receive federal funding.

In general, the court has permitted racial preferences only to remedy specific acts of illegal discrimination, not compensate for general social injustices said to stem from historical practices.

Does it really need SCOTUS to decide this? Of course, race should not be considered!

“Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.

“And the Equal Protection Clause, we have accordingly held, applies ‘without regard to any differences of race, of color, or of nationality’—it is ‘universal in [its] application.’”

The court’s three liberals dissented. Society “is not, and has never been, colorblind,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

“The Court ignores the dangerous consequences of an America where its leadership does not reflect the diversity of the People.”

The dissenters exclaimed that the court’s conservative majority was “entrenching racial inequality in education.”

“Today, this Court stands in the way and rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress. It holds that race can no longer be used in a limited way in college admissions to achieve such critical benefits,” wrote Sotomayor.

“In so holding, the Court cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter.”

Brace for the snowflakes to unleash their hatred of this color-blind ruling…

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Supreme Court Refuses To Expand the ‘True Threats’ Exception for Free Speech

SCOTUS ruling in Facebook threats case “neither the most speech-protective nor the most sensitive to the dangers of true threats.” For statements to be considered true threats, unprotected by the First Amendment, the person making them must have some understanding the statements could be construed as threatening, the Supreme Court held yesterday. The case—Counterman v. Colorado—involves a defendant convicted of stalking after sending a bevy of Facebook messages to someone identified as C.W.

In a 7-2 ruling issued yesterday, the Court vacated the conviction and remanded the case back to the lower court. The court’s three liberal justices were joined by Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, John Roberts, and Samuel Alito.

“True threats of violence are outside the bounds of First Amendment protection and punishable as crimes,” noted Justice Elena Kagan in the majority’s opinion:

Today we consider a criminal conviction for communications falling within that historically unprotected category. The question presented is whether the First Amendment still requires proof that the defendant had some subjective understanding of the threatening nature of his statements. We hold that it does, but that a mental state of recklessness is sufficient. The State must show that the defendant consciously disregarded a substantial risk that his communications would be viewed as threatening violence. The State need not prove any more demanding form of subjective intent to threaten another.

In this case, Billy Counterman sent C.W.—a singer and musician who lived in his community—hundreds of Facebook messages between 2014 and 2016. “Some of his messages were utterly prosaic (‘Good morning sweetheart’; ‘I am going to the store would you like anything?’)—except that they were coming from a total stranger,” notes Kagan. “Others suggested that Counterman might be surveilling C. W.,” and some expressed anger at her.

“Fuck off permanently,” said one message. Another read: “You’re not being good for
human relations. Die.”

Understandably, the messages frightened C.W., who worried that Counterman was following her and might hurt her. She contacted local police, who charged him under a Colorado stalking statute that prohibits “repeatedly . . . make[ing] any form of communication with another person” in “a manner that would cause a reasonable person to suffer serious emotional distress.”

Counterman argued that his messages were not true threats and thus were protected by the First Amendment.

The trial court weighed whether Counterman’s messages were true threats using a “reasonable person” standard: would some hypothetical, objective “reasonable person” find them threatening? It found that they would, meaning the messages were not protected speech. The case was put before a jury, which found Counterman guilty under the stalking statute.

The Colorado Court of Appeals then affirmed this decision, holding that “a speaker’s subjective intent to threaten” is not necessary to convict the speaker for threatening communications. The Colorado Supreme Court declined to review the case.

“Courts are divided about (1) whether the First Amendment requires proof of a defendant’s subjective mindset in true-threats cases, and (2) if so, what mens rea”—that is, level of intent or knowledge—”standard is sufficient,” noted Kagan. Thus, the Supreme Court decided to hear Counterman’s case.

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The Supreme Court’s latest opinion means innocent people must remain in prison

The Supreme Court just ruled that at least some federal prisoners who are completely innocent must serve out their entire sentence, with no meaningful way to challenge their unlawful conviction.

One of the most fundamental principles of criminal law is that no one may be convicted of a crime unless the legislature previously passed a law making their actions illegal. If there is no law on the books that, say, marijuana possession is unlawful, then a judge cannot toss someone in jail because they were found with a joint.

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in Jones v. Hendrix, handed down Thursday, does not directly attack this foundational principle. Instead, it does so indirectly by prohibiting many prisoners from ever challenging their convictions in court.

The case centers on Marcus DeAngelo Jones, a federal prisoner who was convicted in 2000 of possessing a firearm after being convicted of a felony. Nineteen years later, in Rehaif v. United States (2019), the Supreme Court held that no one may be convicted under this felon-in-possession statute unless they knew they had a felony conviction at the time that they possessed the gun.

Jones says that he (incorrectly, but genuinely) believed that his previous felony conviction had been expunged when he purchased a gun, and thus his conviction was invalid under Rehaif. In essence, he claims that no federal law criminalized his possession of a firearm, because he did not know he had a felony conviction.

Thanks to Thomas’s opinion in Jones, however, we will never know if Rehaif invalidates Jones’s conviction — that is, if he is innocent of the crime that caused him to spend nearly a quarter-century in prison — because the Court held that Jones may not challenge his conviction at all.

The reason why is a federal law, known as Section 2255, which ordinarily prevents federal prisoners from challenging their conviction or sentence more than once.

After he was sentenced, but before Rehaif raised a cloud of doubt over whether Jones belonged in prison at all, Jones successfully petitioned a federal court to vacate part of his sentence. Thomas’s opinion holds that Jones’s pre-Rehaif challenge to his sentence blew his only chance to challenge his conviction — even though Jones couldn’t have known before Rehaif was decided that he had a potentially valid claim that he is innocent.

Section 2255 contains several exceptions which allow some federal prisoners to bring a second challenge — one of which provides that Jones may bring a second challenge if § 2255’s usual process “is inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention.”

But Thomas construes this “inadequate or ineffective” language very narrowly — so narrowly, in fact, that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson mocks Thomas in her dissenting opinion for ruling that someone like Jones may only seek relief “if the courthouse where a § 2255 motion would have otherwise been filed has burned to the ground or been carried away by a mudslide.”

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Supreme Court Overrules Local Governments For Seizing Homes

The U.S. Supreme Court reversed court rulings in which local governments seized two homes over unpaid tax debts and kept sale proceeds that far exceeded the tax owed.

Critics call the practice “home equity theft.”

The case came after Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), which represented the homeowners in both cases, released a report late last year saying that 12 states and the District of Columbia allow local governments and private investors to seize dramatically more than what is owed from homeowners who fall behind on property tax payments. PLF is a national nonprofit public interest law firm that takes on governmental overreach.

The U.S. Supreme Court released unsigned orders (pdf) on June 5 summarily reversing two rulings of the Supreme Court of Nebraska.

The nation’s highest court did not explain why it was issuing the orders. No justices dissented.

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SCOTUS Allows IRS to Carry Out Secret, Warrantless Searches of Innocent Taxpayers’ Bank Accounts

In a unanimous opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court is allowing the IRS to go on secret, warrantless fishing expeditions through innocent taxpayers’ bank records in order to identify and collect unpaid taxes from family members and associates who have no legal interest in those bank accounts.

Despite acknowledging that “the authority vested in tax collectors may be abused, as all power is subject to abuse,” and that “Congress has given the IRS considerable power,” the Supreme Court’s 9-0 ruling in Polselli v. IRS declined to restrict the IRS’s authority. Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute and Cato Institute had filed an amicus brief in Polselli arguing that the sweeping investigatory power wielded by the IRS—to circumvent the Fourth Amendment by carrying out warrantless searches of the bank accounts and records of innocent people, who are given no notice or right to object to the search, merely because they may be associated with a delinquent taxpayer—offends every constitutional sensibility on the right to privacy.

“This practice of investigating the bank records of innocent taxpayers because they may have family members or associates who are delinquent on their taxes is merely a perverse form of guilt by association,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “At a minimum, Fourth Amendment protections should not disappear just because sensitive information is shared with third parties, such as banks and attorneys.”

The case arose after an IRS Revenue Officer, seeking to collect underpaid federal taxes by Remo Polselli, served summonses on the banks of Polselli’s wife and attorney in order to find account and financial records concerning Polselli. The IRS agent did not notify Polselli’s wife or attorney of the summonses, but the banks voluntarily did so. Polselli’s wife and attorney subsequently filed motions in federal district court to quash the IRS’s summonses. In siding with the IRS, the district court held that Polselli’s wife and attorney are not entitled to notice of the summons and have no right to even be heard on their motions to quash the summonses.

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Hunter Biden, Second Amendment Warrior?

President Joe Biden has long been an advocate for strict restrictions on guns, so his son makes something of an unlikely advocate for expanded gun rights. But Hunter Biden may soon find himself on the opposite side of his father’s gun control crusade in at least one aspect. The younger Biden is reportedly considering a challenge to a federal law that bans illegal drug users from owning guns.

The issue hits close to home for Hunter: The Department of Justice is investigating a gun purchase he made in 2018. This is a time period during which he has admitted to regularly using crack cocaine. That could put him afoul of the law against drug users having guns.

Hunter Biden’s “lawyers have already told Justice Department officials that, if their client is charged with the gun crime, they will challenge the law under the Second Amendment, according to a person familiar with the private discussions granted anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly,” reported Politico. “That could turn a case that is already fraught with political consequences into a high-profile showdown over the right to bear arms.”

Here’s hoping?

The provision in question—part of the Gun Control Act of 1968—is, frankly, insane, preventing any person “who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance” from buying a gun. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms has interpreted this provision to mean that anyone who has used any illegal drug in the past 12 months cannot legally purchase a gun.

And the time may be just right for challenging it. This Supreme Court has proved willing to strike down overreaching gun laws.

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COVID emergency orders are among `greatest intrusions on civil liberties,′ Justice Gorsuch says

The Supreme Court got rid of a pandemic-related immigration case with a single sentence.

Justice Neil Gorsuch had a lot more to say, leveling harsh criticism of how governments, from small towns to the nation’s capital, responded to the gravest public health threat in a century.

The justice, a 55-year-old conservative who was President Donald Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, called emergency measures taken during the COVID-19 crisis that killed more than 1 million Americans perhaps “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.”

He pointed to orders closing schools, restricting church services, mandating vaccines and prohibiting evictions. His broadside was aimed at local, state and federal officials — even his colleagues.

“Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale,” Gorsuch wrote in an eight-page statement Thursday that accompanied an expected Supreme Court order formally dismissing a case involving the use of the Title 42 policy to prevent asylum seekers from entering the United States.

The policy was ended last week with the expiration of the public health emergency first declared more than three years ago because of the coronavirus pandemic.

From the start of his Supreme Court tenure in 2017, Gorsuch, a Colorado native who loves to ski and bicycle, has been more willing than most justices to part company with his colleagues, both left and right.

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The Internet Dodges Censorship by the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court today refused to weaken one of the key laws supporting free expression online, and recognized that digital platforms are not usually liable for their users’ illegal acts, ensuring that everyone can continue to use those services to speak and organize.

The decisions in Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh are great news for a free and vibrant internet, which inevitably depends on services that host our speech. The court in Gonzalez declined to address the scope of 47 U.S.C. § 230 (“Section 230”), which generally protects users and online services from lawsuits based on content created by others. Section 230 is an essential part of the legal architecture that enables everyone to connect, share ideas, and advocate for change without needing immense resources or technical expertise. By avoiding addressing Section 230, the Supreme Court avoided weakening it.

In Taamneh, the Supreme Court rejected a legal theory that would have made online services liable under the federal Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act on the theory that members of terrorist organizations or their supporters simply used these services like we all do: to create and share content. The decision is another win for users’ online speech, as it avoids an outcome where providers censor far more content than they do already, or even prohibit certain topics or users entirely when they could later be held liable for aiding or abetting their user’s wrongful acts.

Given the potential for both decisions to have disastrous consequences for users’ free expression, EFF is pleased that the Supreme Court left existing legal protections for online speech legal in place.

But we cannot rest easy. There are pressing threats to users’ online speech as Congress considers legislation to weaken Section 230 and otherwise expand intermediary liability. Users must continue to advocate for their ability to have a free and open internet that everyone can use.

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Here Are 7 Major Cases The Supreme Court Has Yet To Decide This Term

Among the dozens of opinions yet to be released by the Supreme Court this term are cases on affirmative action, compelled speech and social media companies’ liability for content posted on their platforms.

To date, the Court has released 18 opinions, issuing rulings that enabled those facing complaints from administrative agencies to press constitutional challenges in federal court and allowed a death row inmate’s request for a DNA test to proceed. But opinions in 40 more cases are expected to be released before the end of June, including some of the most consequential cases on this term’s docket.

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Police Get a Green Light to Use Force Against Unarmed Individuals Who Have Already Surrendered or Complied

The U.S. Supreme Court has once again refused to hold police accountable for using force on unarmed individuals who have already surrendered or complied with police orders. Despite a series of high-profile incidents involving the use of unnecessary and excessive force by police against unarmed individuals, the Court declined to narrow the scope of qualified immunity granted to officers who assault non-violent suspects who have ceased to resist arrest.

Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute and Cato Institute had filed a joint amicus brief before the Supreme Court in Salazar v. Molina, challenging a lower court ruling that essentially gives police a green light to punish and harm suspects solely based upon their initial nonviolent resistance or flight. The legal coalition warned that the ruling by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which granted qualified immunity to a police officer who tased a non-violent suspect in the back after he lay down to surrender, undermines public safety by discouraging suspects from surrendering or complying with police commands.

“The old police motto to ‘protect and serve’ has become ‘comply or die,’” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “This is how we have gone from a nation of laws—where the least among us had just as much right to be treated with dignity and respect as the next person (in principle, at least)—to a nation of law enforcers (revenue collectors with weapons) who treat ‘we the people’ like suspects and criminals.”

In March 2014, around 2:00 a.m., a sheriff’s deputy in Zapata County, Texas, tried to pull over Juan Carlos Salazar for speeding. However, Salazar accelerated and led police on a high-speed chase for approximately five minutes. After two vehicles pulled out in front of Salazar and blocked his way forward, Salazar stopped his car, got out, raised his hands, and then lay face-down on the ground with his arms above his head to surrender. There was no indication that Salazar had any weapon or was violent. But within seconds, a sheriff’s deputy ran up and fired his taser at Salazar’s back while he was still lying prone on the ground.

Salazar subsequently filed a lawsuit claiming that the deputy used excessive force in violation of his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable seizure. The deputy moved to dismiss the lawsuit by claiming that he was entitled to qualified immunity. Although the trial court disagreed with the deputy, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that when a suspect has tried to evade capture, officers can question whether the suspect’s purported surrender is a ploy. Despite there being no reasonable indication of any such ploy by Salazar, the Fifth Circuit found that the deputy was entitled to qualified immunity and therefore dismissed the lawsuit against him.

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