Tag: scotus

Sen. Rand Paul Slams Supreme Court’s Ruling Upholding Birthright Citizenship, Introduces Constitutional Amendment to End It for Children of Illegal Aliens

Senator Rand Paul expressed his strong disappointment Tuesday after the Supreme Court ruled to uphold birthright citizenship and strike down President Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at ending automatic citizenship for children born in the United States to parents who are illegal aliens or temporarily in the country.

Instead of sitting on his hands, the Kentucky senator said that he has already filed an amendment to fully end birthright citizenship for those in the country illegally.

In a post on X, Paul stated, “The Supreme Court’s decision on birthright citizenship is disappointing. That’s why I’ve already filed an amendment to end birthright citizenship for those here illegally. I’ll keep fighting to protect the integrity of American citizenship.”

The ruling addressed Executive Order 14160, which President Trump signed on his first day back in office.

The order directed that beginning 30 days later, children born in the United States to mothers who were either unlawfully present or lawfully present on a temporary basis, and to fathers who were not U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents at the time of the child’s birth, would not be recognized as U.S. citizens and would not receive federal documentation such as passports or Social Security numbers.

The executive order never took effect because lower courts had blocked it with nationwide injunctions, and the Supreme Court’s decision invalidated it entirely.

Chief Justice John Roberts authored the majority opinion, which was joined in the core holding by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

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Here’s How Devastating the Birthright Citizenship Ruling Is

The Supreme Court handed down some good rulings on Tuesday, but one of them, Trump v. Barbara, was truly stinking hot garbage, to put it as nicely as possible. It was one of the most consequential rulings in a generation, and if you’re not furious about it, you haven’t been paying attention.

As my PJ Media colleague Athena Thorne put it, the Supreme Court ruled that “any basic skank who can sneak onto American terra firma and give birth is automatically the parent of a U.S. citizen, with all the rights and benefits that implies.”

On The Five on Tuesday, Jesse Watters didn’t hold back in his reaction to the ruling.

“I’m angry,” he said. “Are you?”

And that set the tone for everything that followed.

He focused on Justice Samuel Alito’s dissent, which Watters described as a genuine alarm bell. Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas, he noted, saw this for what it was — a case with enormous implications that the court essentially fumbled. “He said in his dissent, this was one of the most important cases the court’s ever seen, and we blew it,” Watters said. “He and Thomas were basically like, ‘Yeah, this devalues and degrades U.S. citizenship because it opens it up for anchor babies and for birth tourists.’”

The example Watters used was, honestly, terrifying.

Under birthright citizenship as it currently stands, a Chinese Communist Party official could bring his pregnant wife to Guam, deliver the baby on American soil, then fly that infant back to Beijing, complete with a U.S. passport in hand. That child could grow up in China, get funneled through whatever the CCP wants him for, and then, at 18, have access to American welfare programs. He could vote. And theoretically, at 35, he could become eligible to run for president.

It’s a scary thought, because yes, that’s what the decision would enable.

“That’s the stupidest thing anyone ever thought of,” Watters said. “Literally.”

The historical context makes the ruling even harder to swallow.

Watters noted that the senator who authored the relevant language in the 19th century made it clear that it was never intended to cover foreign nationals or the families of foreign diplomats. The amendment’s architect agreed. So did the president at the time, Ulysses S. Grant. “The guy that sponsored it,  the guy that initiated, the architect of, this 14th amendment, the AG, the president at the time, Grant, all said, yeah, no foreigners, no visitors,” Watters said.

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Supreme Court Rules Police Conduct a Fourth Amendment “Search” When Grabbing Your Google Location History Data Through Geofence Warrants

The U.S. Supreme Court held Monday that law enforcement officers conduct a Fourth Amendment search when they obtain cell phone users’ precise Location History data from Google using a geofence warrant.

In a 6-3 decision in Chatrie v. United States, the Court ruled that Americans have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their cell phone location information, even when that data is stored by a third-party technology company such as Google. The ruling represents one of the Court’s most significant digital privacy decisions since its 2018 Carpenter decision involving historical cell-site location data.

Justice Elena Kagan authored the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Jackson separately concurring.

Justice Neil Gorsuch concurred only in the judgment, while Justice Samuel Alito dissented, joined in part by Justices Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett. Justice Barrett also filed a separate dissent.

This builds directly on the landmark Carpenter v. United States (2018) decision, which already required warrants for cell-site location information (CSLI).

The Court made clear that Google’s even more precise and sweeping Location History data — which logs a user’s location every two minutes or so, within about 20 meters, and can even reveal elevation and which floor of a building someone is on — deserves at least the same protection.

The case, Chatrie v. United States (No. 25-112), arose from a May 20, 2019, armed robbery of a credit union in Midlothian, Virginia. Police had surveillance footage and witness statements but no suspect. On June 14, they obtained a Virginia magistrate’s geofence warrant directed at Google.

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Supreme Court Says President Trump Cannot Fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook – Trump Responds

The US Supreme Court on Monday said President Trump cannot fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.

The high court, in a 5-4 vote ruled that Trump cannot remove Cook.

Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion.

“To accept any of those arguments would in effect transform the Federal Reserve’s for-cause protection into at-will employment,” Roberts wrote.

Justice Thomas dissented.

Lisa Cook filed a lawsuit against President Trump, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell after Trump fired her last summer.

The Trump Administration previously asked the US Supreme Court to intervene after a federal appeals court blocked Trump from firing Lisa Cook.

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SCOTUS Rules 5-4 to Permit Counting of Mail-In Ballots that Arrive After Election Day

The Supreme Court (SCOTUS) ruled that state laws allowing for the counting of mail-in ballots after election day are not in violation of federal law, a blow to the Republican National Committee and President Donald Trump’s administration.

On Monday, SCOTUS issued a 5-4 ruling that permits states to count mail-in ballots — sent on or before election day — that are received by state election officials after election day.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the majority’s opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts as well as Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

“Two principles are important here. First, post-election-day receipt, considered on its own, does not conflict with the election-day statutes,” the Court writes:

Second, state law is preempted by the federal election-day statutes only “‘so far as the conflict extends.’” So even if plaintiffs are right about Mississippi law, they would still lose the challenge they have pressed in this litigation: that post-election-day ballot receipt is itself unlawful. [Emphasis added]

The Framers recognized the difficulty of crafting election laws “applicable to every probable change in the situation of the country.” So instead of constitutionalizing election law, they decided that “a discretionary power over elections” needed to be lodged “somewhere.” Suffice it to say, that power was not lodged in this Court. The election-day statutes say nothing about ballot receipt, and we cannot add to the words Congress chose. [Emphasis added]

Justice Samuel Alito filed a dissenting opinion, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined most of the dissenting opinion as well.

“The Court … concludes that the election-day statutes merely require that each individual cast a vote on or before election day,” Alito writes for the minority:

But if that is all that the election-day statutes require, there is no sense in which the electorate as a whole can be seen as making its choice on election day. Rather, the electorate’s choice would be made piecemeal over an extended period prior to election day, and that prospect is blatantly contrary to what the election-day statutes demand. [Emphasis added]

Election day is a specified date, not a span of multiple days. The election-day statutes require that federal elections occur on that date. Under the challenged Mississippi law, however, the collection of ballots continues for five more days, and therefore the “election” is not held until the end of that period. Because federal law requires that the election occur on election day, it preempts Mississippi’s statute. [Emphasis added]

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Justices Barrett, Gorsuch, Thomas: Public Opinion Can’t Block Constitutional Gun Rights

In a concurring opinion to the Supreme Court’s (SCOTUS) Wolford decision, Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas noted public opinion cannot block the exercise of a constitutional right.

Breitbart News reported that SCOTUS ruled 6-3 against a Hawaii gun control in Wolford, finding the limitations against licensed concealed carry on private property violated the 2nd and 14th Amendments.

Justices Barrett, Gorsuch, and Thomas used a concurring opinion to note that “The Second Amendment secures the pre-existing right of the people to have and carry weapons for their defense.”

They opined that “States may regulate the keeping and bearing of arms so long as they do not ‘infring[e]’ the right, as originally understood.”

The justices went on to explain that a state must be able to prove a given law’s constitutionality by passing Bruen’s (2022) two-step test.

Justices Barrett, Gorsuch, and Thomas then tested Hawaii’s law and found the major reason for its adoption and enforcement was that it served to reflect the majority of the Hawaiian people’s disdain for the public carrying of firearms. But such a basis is not sufficient, as the three concurring justices indicated: “While most Hawaiians might prefer that no one carry firearms in public places, a majority’s opposition to a constitutional right is not a permissible basis for restricting it. After all, ‘[t]he very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy” and “to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials.’”

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Justice Jackson Hit With a Major Constitutional Lesson Following Her Dissent in Hawaii Gun Rights Case – State Relied on an Old ‘Black Code’ Law to Disarm Residents

Gun rights experts are schooling Far-left Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson following her stupid dissent in a key gun rights case earlier this week.

As TGP’s Jordan Conradson reported, the Supreme Court sided with three Hawaii residents on Thursday, overturning a law that barred concealed-carry permit holders from exercising their rights in public.

All three liberal justices, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Jackson, dissented in the 6-3 ruling.

To defend disarming its residents, Hawaii relied in part on a blatantly racist 1865 Louisiana statute enacted as part of the post-Civil War Black Codes. This made it illegal to carry firearms onto another person’s property without the owner’s consent.

Of course, this was due to the fact that Louisiana, which was ruled at the time by racist white Democrats, feared an armed black populace.

“It is disgraceful that any state would rely on a law specifically aimed at taking away the Second Amendment rights or any constitutional right of Black Americans as it was at that time,” attorney Kevin O’Grady, who represented the plaintiffs, told Fox News.

Jackson, however, had a different take. Jackson claimed in her dissent that the Court ignored what she considered an important constitutional question.

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DHS Lawyers Praise SCOTUS Rulings as ‘Victories for the Rule of Law, Common Sense’

Officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are praising decisions issued by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) on Thursday, all of which make it easier to enforce federal immigration law.

As Breitbart News reported, SCOTUS ruled 6-3 in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, clarifying that a migrant who has not physically set foot into the U.S. is not entitled to apply for asylum and does not have to be inspected by an immigration officer.

Similarly, SCOTUS ruled 6-3 in Mullin v. Doe that President Donald Trump’s administration can end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians living in the U.S. — making them deportable.

And, in a third case, SCOTUS ruled 6-3 in Blanche v. Muk Choi Lau, which will make it easier for DHS officials to deport green card-holders who have been convicted of crimes in the U.S.

DHS General Counsel James Percival said the rulings reinforce that the nation’s borders are critical to its sovereignty.

“These three rulings are all victories for the rule of law and common sense,” Percival said:

This includes barring aliens from applying for asylum if they haven’t set foot in the United States, making it easier to remove lawful permanent residents who commit a crime, and reaffirming that TPS was always supposed to be temporary and can be cancelled at the appropriate time. Thanks to these decisions, we now have several more important tools to continue securing our borders. [Emphasis added]

Meanwhile, Democrats have panicked over the rulings. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus, for instance, claimed SCOTUS is “enabling the Trump administration’s worst anti-immigrant policies, and in the process dealing our communities and our economy an undue blow.”

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Supreme Court ruling blocks thousands of lawsuits against maker of Roundup weedkiller

The Supreme Court sided with the maker of the Roundup weedkiller Thursday in a ruling expected to block thousands of lawsuits alleging it failed to warn people the product could cause cancer.

The case came before the justices after a tidal wave of litigation that included some multibillion-dollar verdicts against the global agrochemical manufacturer Bayer, which acquired Roundup when it bought its original manufacturer Monsanto in 2018.

The decision is a victory for the Trump administration, but one that could be tricky politically since allies in the Make America Healthy Again movement want to rein in pesticide use.

The high court, in a 7-2 ruling, found that the company can’t be sued in state courts because federal regulations have found a cancer link unlikely and do not require a warning label.

The decision “is good for science, farmers, and industries that depend on regulatory clarity for innovation,” Bayer said in a statement. “It should help significantly contain the Roundup litigation after nearly a decade of legal battles.”

Though Bayer said the ruling should result in the dismissal of pending lawsuits containing failure-to-warn allegations, the company said it plans to proceed with a proposed $7.25 billion class-action settlement intended to resolve many of the remaining claims.

Lawyers for some residents pursuing Roundup litigation criticized the court’s decision.

“This Supreme Court ruling wrongly slams the courthouse door on Americans sickened by pesticides,” said attorney Christopher Seeger, who is proposed as a claimants’ representative in the settlement. But he said a settlement still would allow some people to receive compensation.

The case before the Supreme Court was filed by Missouri resident John Durnell. He developed a cancer called non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after more than 20 years of serving as the neighborhood association’s “spray guy,” using Roundup on parks in his historic St. Louis community.

A jury agreed that the company failed to warn him about possible cancer dangers and awarded him $1.25 million. It’s one of thousands of similar cases, including some multibillion-dollar damage awards.

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Supreme Court calls out state for violating TWO constitutional amendments with one law

The Supreme Court has called out the state of Hawaii, after an earlier law that essentially made it impossible to get a license to carry a firearm was struck down, for replacing it with a similar demand that accomplished essentially the same thing.

That law, too, now has been banished.

The court ruled 6-3 that Hawaii’s newest gun ban was unconstitutional under the Second and 14th Amendments.

The majority opinion was a major win for gun rights activists as it threw out Hawaii’s insistence that it could require gun owners to get “permission” to carry firearms on any private property that is open to the public in the state.

The opinion pointed out that “For years, the State of Hawaii made it almost impossible to obtain a license to carry a firearm. Four years ago, however, this Court held in New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U. S. 1, that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect the right to carry hand guns outside the home for self-defense.

“Hawaii responded by replacing its old law on carry permits with new laws that achieved a similar result,” the court said.

The fight this time is over the state’s “law that prohibits firearms on private property open to the public without the express and affirmative consent of the property owner.”

The court found the law a burden.

“When these permit holders leave home, not only must they take care to avoid all the territory where the possession of a gun is prohibited outright, but they may also be barred from entering many places that people routinely visit in the course of their daily routines, such as gas stations, restaurants, and stores.”

The ruling said Hawaii officials were flipping the default rule at common law, “under which anyone has an implied license to enter property held open to the public unless the property owner withdraws consent.”

The opinion cited both the earlier Heller and McDonald rulings, which struck down gun limits imposed by extremists.

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