Tag: scotus

Gorsuch Gets NAACP Lawyer To All But Admit Support For Racial Discrimination In Redistricting

UPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES — Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch got a lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to all but admit support for states intentionally discriminating on the basis of race in the redistricting process.

The moment came during the Supreme Court’s Wednesday oral arguments for a pair of cases known as Louisiana v. Callais and Robinson v. Callais, which center on the Louisiana Legislature’s use of race when creating its recent congressional map.

As The Federalist previously reported, the matter first arose “following ‘a previous lawsuit … where plaintiffs argued that the prior map’ put forward by the state ‘violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by diluting minority votes,’ according to Oyez.” A district court order and subsequent legal battle prompted the Louisiana Legislature to “draft a new map last year ‘that included a second majority-black district,’ which plaintiffs in Louisiana v. Callais contend violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause by ‘prioritizing race in its creation.’”

While the Supreme Court was initially supposed to issue a verdict on the matter during its 2024-2025 term, the court announced on the last day of the session that it would be rehearing arguments in the case this fall. The justices notably issued an order over the summer instructing parties in the case to address the question of “[w]hether [Louisiana’s] intentional creation of a second majority-minority congressional district violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.”

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KBJ Suggests Black People Can’t Vote, Compares Them To The Disabled

During oral arguments for a major case that could put an end to race-based gerrymandering on Wednesday, Democrat-appointed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson suggested that race should be a consideration when drawing congressional districts because black people are systemically “disabled” and don’t have proper access to voting systems.

Jackson drew a comparison between the redistricting cases in question, Louisiana v. Callais and Robinson v. Callais, and accessibility under the Americans with Disabilities Act. She implied that minorities like black people are systemically blocked from accessing voting polls (a demonstrably false claim) and compared this to disabled people not being able to access a building. She used this faulty comparison to bolster her underlying argument that past race-based discrimination should allow for a present race-based remedy.

“Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act against the backdrop of a world that was generally not accessible to people with disabilities, and so it was discriminatory in effect because these folks were not able to access these buildings,” Jackson said. She argued that whether such discrimination is intentional is irrelevant.

“I guess I don’t understand why that’s not what’s happening here. … We are responding to current-day manifestations of past and present decisions that disadvantage minorities and make it so that they don’t have equal access to the voting system, right? They’re disabled. … We say that’s a way in which you see that these processes are not equally open.”

The case considers possible 14th Amendment violations of a congressional district map in Louisiana. As The Federalist’s Shawn Fleetwood has reported, the origins of the case date back to 2022, “when the Louisiana Legislature drafted a congressional map with a single black-majority district.” This led to a lawsuit by a group of plaintiffs — “represented by left-wing groups like the ACLU” — who alleged that the map violated Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act by “dilut[ing] black voting strength.” 

“Following an injunction barring the map’s implementation by a district court judge, continued litigation in the case ultimately resulted in the state redrawing the map to include a second black-majority district. This led to another lawsuit from a different group of plaintiffs, who claimed the state unlawfully prioritized race in the map’s creation and therefore violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause,” Fleetwood reported. “A three-judge panel on a separate district court agreed with these plaintiffs and blocked the new map’s implementation.”

The Supreme Court was initially slated to decide the case during its 2024-2025 term, but announced in June that it would rehear the case this fall.

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Will the Supreme Court upend the Voting Rights Act?

The Supreme Court may very well upend one of the last remaining central pieces of the Voting Rights Act – that elections or voting practices cannot discriminate based on race.

And, in doing so, the high court may bolster efforts by Republican state legislatures to redraw congressional maps to expand the party’s majority.

The justices’ ruling could actually crush minority representation in Congress.

According to two voting rights groups, Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matter Fund, a ruling gutting the race provision would let the GOP nationwide redraw up to 19 House seats to favor the party.

It could also prevent Black voters from challenging political maps they believe don’t accurately represent them.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Wednesday in Louisiana v. Callais.

Arguments lasted for more than two hours in an unusually lengthy, complicated debate.

It stems from a complex congressional redrawing dispute starting in 2022.

Louisiana’s GOP-led legislature drew a map that only had one Black majority district and five mostly white districts, despite Louisiana’s population being one-third Black. So, a group of Black voters sued.

A federal judge struck the map down and ordered a redraw. Instead of letting the judge redraw it, Louisiana Republicans passed the current map that added a second Black majority district (but protected districts of key Republicans in the state, like House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise).

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Supreme Court Won’t Hear Project Veritas Challenge to State Law Blocking Secret Recording

The Supreme Court has decided against hearing an investigative journalism organization’s First Amendment-based challenge to a decades-old Oregon law prohibiting most secret recordings of oral conversations.

Undercover journalism group Project Veritas had argued that the state’s conversational privacy statute violated the First Amendment. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled 9–2 in January that the law did not violate the group’s free speech rights.

The Supreme Court dismissed the petition in Project Veritas v. Vasquez without comment in an unsigned order on Oct. 6. No justices dissented.

The respondents were sued in their official capacities. One is Nathan Vasquez, district attorney for Multnomah County, Oregon; the other is Dan Rayfield, attorney general of Oregon.

In its April 7 petition, Project Veritas described Oregon’s audio recording law as “a national outlier” because it requires that “anyone in almost any conversation [be informed] that their words are being recorded.”

This requirement “severely hampers modern investigative journalism” and undermines the First Amendment “by effectively prohibiting the use of today’s most powerful reporting tools—discreet audio recordings,” the petition states.

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SCOTUS To Decide If Free Speech Applies To Biology-Affirming Therapists And Their Clients

n Oct. 7, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in Chiles v. Salazar. This is the latest in a seemingly unending series of cases from Colorado that my colleagues at Alliance Defending Freedom have argued. The cases stem from the state’s apparent aversion to the First Amendment.

Not content with their failed attempts to coerce speech from artists like Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop or Lorie Smith of 303 Creative, and not deterred by clear rebukes from the Supreme Court in those cases, the state of Colorado has set its sights on professional counselors.

The law in question bans specific, voluntary counseling conversations, silences the viewpoint disfavored by the government, and leaves struggling youth and their parents with only one government-approved option. Colorado’s law bans counselors like Kaley Chiles from helping minors realign their thoughts and feelings with their biological sex — even when that is the young person’s goal for counseling.

Counseling that affirms so-called “gender transition” is fine by Colorado. Counseling that affirms biological reality is fined by Colorado, up to $5,000 per offense, and could include the loss of licensure.

This is not just an esoteric debate for law school faculty lounges; children’s health and well-being are at stake. Colorado’s defense of this blatant viewpoint discrimination and government censorship hinges on the contention, without a hint of irony, that the state is regulating conduct, not speech. How do Kaley Chiles and her clients engage in the “conduct” of talk therapy without it being speech? Perhaps a high-stakes game of charades? The notion would be laughable if the consequences were not so serious.

If government places an authoritarian thumb on the scale, allowing only one viewpoint, invading the vulnerable space between counselor and client, and dictating one outcome, the victims are children and their families. If the Supreme Court does not protect the speech of counselors like Kaley Chiles and her clients, children in Colorado and more than 20 other states with similar censorship laws will be trapped on a one-way journey to the perils of “gender transition.”

The eventual destination is one of irreversible physical damage, potential sterilization, and a lifetime of being a patient. Our nation’s struggling youth deserve compassionate counseling directed by their goals with assistance from loving parents and professionals, not a government-sponsored pathway to chemicals and surgeries that can leave permanent mental and physical scars.

Adding rhetorical insult to injury is the fact that under Colorado’s law, counseling clients to align their feelings with their biology is deemed “conversion therapy,” while counseling a client to transition from his or her sex to the opposite sex is “gender affirming care.” The assault on common sense and the English language may pale in comparison to the harm suffered by Chiles and her clients, but the First Amendment protects speech because words matter, truth matters, and any attempt by government to silence citizens matters.

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‘Blatant Viewpoint Discrimination’: Alito Slams Colorado For Telling Therapists They Can’t Affirm Kids’ Natural Sex

Associate Justice Samuel Alito exposed the absurdity of a Colorado law prohibiting so-called “conversion therapy” for minors during a high-profile case before the Supreme Court on Tuesday.

The moment came during oral arguments in Chiles v. Salazar, a case focused on a legal challenge brought by Colorado resident Kaley Chiles. A licensed therapist who provides counseling to children struggling with issues related to sexual orientation and gender dysphoria, Chiles alleges that the Centennial State’s “conversion therapy” law infringes upon her First Amendment right to free speech by inhibiting the types of discussions she has with her minor clients.

When questioning Colorado Solicitor General Shannon Stevenson, Alito posed a pair of hypothetical scenarios undermining the state’s argument that the statute does not engage in “viewpoint discrimination.” Alito’s questioning exposed the state’s policy of permitting therapists to encourage a child’s homosexual- or transgenderism-related behaviors, while at the same time prohibiting therapists from offering counseling that could help a child overcome them.

“So in the first situation, an adolescent male comes to a licensed therapist and says he’s attracted to other males, but he feels uneasy and guilty with those feelings. He wants to end or lessen them, and he asks for the therapist’s help in doing so,” Alito said. “The other situation is a similar adolescent male comes to a licensed therapist, says he’s attracted to other males, feels uneasy and guilty about those feelings, and he wants the therapist’s help so he will feel comfortable as a gay young man.”

The Bush appointee went on to argue that Colorado’s interpretation of the statute “dictates opposite results in those two situations … based on the viewpoint expressed.” “One viewpoint,” he noted, “is the viewpoint that a minor should be able to obtain talk therapy to overcome same-sex attraction, if that’s what … he or she wants,” while “the other is the viewpoint that the minor should not be able to obtain talk therapy to overcome same-sex attraction, even if that is what he or she wants.”

This “[l]ooks like blatant viewpoint discrimination,” Alito said.

In response, Stevenson claimed that both examples would “be permissible” under Colorado’s law “because it didn’t sound like in either case the goal was to actually change sexual orientation.”

“And again, that’s the touchstone because that’s where the harms come from,” Stevenson said.

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Eric Holder Says Democrats Should Make Packing And Rigging Supreme Court Part Of 2028 Platform

Former Attorney General Eric Holder said the next Democratic nominee for President should make “reform” of the Supreme Court a major item in their 2028 platform.

Then-President Joe Biden proposed reforms to the Supreme Court in a July 2024 op-ed in the Washington Post, citing the court’s ruling in United States v. Trump that granted immunity from prosecution for a president’s official acts and claiming the reforms, including 18-year terms for Supreme Court justices, were necessary to “strengthen the guardrails of democracy.” Holder said the conservative jurisprudence of the Supreme Court had to be stopped when former Democratic National Committee Chairman Jamie Harrison asked if Democrats should target the court in the next presidential race.

“I think the Supreme Court has to be reformed, potentially, you know, expanded. We cannot simply allow this court to continue to do that which it has done,” Holder responded.

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Deranged Leftist Arrested with 200 Explosives, Molotov Cocktails, and Manifesto in Tent Outside Annual Red Mass for Supreme Court

Another deranged leftist was arrested Sunday outside of St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington, D.C., before a mass for the Supreme Court.

Several SCOTUS Justices were likely to attend the special mass.

Leftist Louis Geri was positioned outside the cathedral in a tent filled with 200 explosives, containers filled with chemicals, and a manifesto.

Geri warned the police to move so they would not be hurt:

Via Chillinois: LOUIS GERI told police, “You might want to stay back and call the federales, I have explosives,” according to an affidavit.

A member of the Metropolitan Police Department’s Bomb Squad then told him he needed to move because of a special event.
He replied, “I’m aware of that (referring to the Red Mass),” police wrote, and threatened to throw a bomb into the street as a demonstration, adding, “I have a hundred plus of them.”

Police said they would remove him against his will, and he replied, “Several of your people are gonna die from one of these.”

With a lighter in one hand, he handed them nine pieces of paper that amounted to a manifesto entitled, “Written Negotiations for the Avoidance of Destruction of Property via Detonation of Explosives.”

The threat against the Red Mass caused the justices to skip the annual event.

DC detectives found several canisters inside Geri’s tent, including containers with nitro methane. The detectives discovered what they described as grenades and explosives.

Louis Geri used a rubber band to secure a fuse on the explosives.

The deranged leftist also had modified bottle rockets with aluminum foil heads treated in Thermite solution.

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Supreme Court to Decide If Colorado Ban on ‘Conversion Therapy’ Violates Free Speech

The Supreme Court is scheduled to consider on Oct. 7 a free speech case involving a Colorado law that bans therapists from providing so-called conversion therapy to minors experiencing same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria.

A therapist challenging the law argues that it violates her First Amendment rights. On the other side of the debate, Colorado contends that it has the right to regulate mental health treatments for minors that it deems harmful and ineffective. It is among more than 20 states with such bans.

Colorado’s Prohibit Conversion Therapy for a Minor law, passed in 2019, prohibits licensed therapists from trying to “change an individual’s sexual orientation, including efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.”

Therapists who violate the law could be stripped of their licenses and face fines of up to $5,000.

Colorado has stated that its regulation was enacted in response to “overwhelming” scientific evidence that conversion therapy for minors is unsafe and not effective in the long term.

A practitioner of such therapy told The Epoch Times that the therapist’s work focuses on mending psychological wounds and is not coercive or harmful.

Opponents of conversion therapy, including the American Medical Association, point to practices such as electric shock and negative feedback methods such as smelling salts or chemically induced nausea to create a psychological aversion to the unwanted behaviors or attractions.

However, according to licensed counselor Christopher Doyle of the Institute for Healthy Families, modern therapists avoid these methods and instead favor exploring clients’ attitudes on sexuality, trauma, self-perception, and relationships.

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US Supreme Court Takes Up Challenge to Hawaii’s Gun Law

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Oct. 3 to take up a new Second Amendment case related to a Hawaii law that bars the carrying of handguns on private property open to the public, such as restaurants, malls, and many businesses.

The nine justices took up an appeal by three Hawaii residents who have concealed carry licenses, and a state-based gun rights advocacy group challenging Hawaii’s law while seeking to reverse a lower court’s determination that the state law complies with the Second Amendment.

Hawaii’s gun law bans firearms on private property unless the owner has specifically allowed them on the premises. It also blocks firearms in places such as beaches, parks, bars, and restaurants that serve alcohol.

Hawaii’s measure was challenged by state residents Jason Wolford, Alison Wolford, and Atom Kasprzycki—who own firearms and have concealed carry licenses—along with the Hawaii Firearms Coalition, a gun rights organization. The defendant is listed as Hawaii Attorney General Anne E. Lopez.

In a petition to the high court submitted earlier this year, the plaintiffs ask whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which upheld the state law, “erred in holding … that Hawaii may presumptively prohibit the carry of handguns by licensed concealed carry permit holders on private property open to the public.”

A judge blocked the Hawaii law after it was challenged in court by the gun rights group and the three Maui residents. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, however, largely reversed that decision and allowed Hawaii to enforce the law.

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