Tag Archives: Supreme Court

Biden Reminds Everyone That Black Justices Can Be Just As Smart As Rich Ones

Posted on January 27, 2022 | Leave a comment

From The Babylon Bee:

WASHINGTON, D.C.—As Biden prepares to nominate a woman of color to the Supreme Court, he took the time to remind the country that black Justices can be just as smart as rich ones.

“Listen, folks, black Justices can be just as smart, articulate, and clean as the rich ones,” said Biden to reporters. “Just because they mostly stock the spaghetti sauce on the shelves in the ladies department of the department store and hang out with bad dudes like Corn Pop doesn’t mean they can’t be judges too! Come on folks! This ain’t complicated! If I haven’t nominated you for SCOTUS, then you ain’t black!”

Biden went on to say that he will choose a SCOTUS Justice based on qualifications, as long as those qualifications belong to someone with very dark skin and a female body.

“Mixed race judges don’t qualify,” said Biden, insisting they “aren’t black enough.”

It is so far unclear whether Biden will also nominate black men who identify as women, or whether he knows what a SCOTUS Justice is or even where he is right now.

“I’m proud to be the first President in history to get one of them blacks on the Supreme Court,” said Biden. “Clarance Thomas doesn’t count. He’s a bit too uppity for my taste.”

Biden then saluted his framed portrait of Robert Byrd and took a nap.

https://babylonbee.com/news/biden-reminds-aids-black-justices-can-be-just-as-smart-as-rich-ones

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Study Finds Supreme Court Has Now Shared More COVID Misinformation Than Your Crazy Facebook Aunt

Posted on January 9, 2022 | Leave a comment

From The Babylon Bee:

U.S.—A landmark study conducted by Columbia University has found that The U.S. Supreme Court has now spread more COVID misinformation than your crazy aunt who shares conspiracy theories on Facebook.

“This is very startling,” said Dr. Holson Bogtruggles, who conducted the study. “Because your Facebook Aunt is insane. Facebook has an entire department dedicated to monitoring the sheer volume of misinformation she shares, and the Supreme Court topped her in one day.”

Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor dismissed the study, saying: “With more than 32 trillion people and 12 billion malfunctioning toaster ovens dying of COVID every three seconds, I think we have more important things to worry about here.”

Social media platforms have warned users against sharing any quotes from the oral arguments on Biden’s vaccine mandate this week, warning that such posts will be deleted, and possibly cause for suspension. “One cannot overstate how dangerous these deranged conspiracy theorists on the Supreme Court are,” said Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. “I hope they’re not, like, in charge of interpreting the law of the land or anything.”

https://babylonbee.com/news/study-finds-supreme-court-has-now-shared-more-covid-misinformation-than-your-crazy-facebook-aunt

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This Coming Friday . . ., by Eric Peters

Posted on January 5, 2022 | Leave a comment

This Friday the Supreme Court hears arguments on the Biden administration’s vaccination mandates. Either way the decision goes the consequences will be enormous. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

This coming Friday could be the tipping point – and either way will be a good way.

The nine people who – somehow – have acquired the absolute and arbitrary power to impose their will on 330-plus million people will decide whether the federal government has the constitutional power to apply force to those 330-plus million, in order to compel them all to submit to medical procedures many of them object strongly to being forced to submit to.

This is plain language – as opposed to the opaque language used by government to mask the true nature of itself and its actions.

“Government” – itself – being an example of this.

It sounds vaguely benign. It is force – lethal force, when carried to its inevitable conclusion. If you do not obey government – which isn’t an entity, by the way but rather just a relative handful of people who have acquired the power to force you to do things – you will be punished. Probably – initially – expected to hand over money as a corrective.

This being extortion. If you fail to hand over the extortion money, ultimately, you will be “arrested” – another one of those words – which in fact means you’ll be kidnapped by force and taken into custody. Which is to say, caged – no differently than if you’d been kidnapped by a serial killer. If you attempt to “resist” – that is, to defend yourself, to get away – the government (those people) will then resort to the ultimate violence.

Maybe well before then, as happens commonly.          

Well, these nine people who wear the black garb of executioners are about to decide whether that other group of people – the “government” – can “constitutionally” force all of the people to submit to medical procedures – plural, mark that –  they oppose submitting to, by using the force of government to force employers to un-employ any employees who “resist” – i.e., continue to refuse to submit.

Of course, the government already has the power to do this. The angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin question to be “ruled” upon (another one of those words) by the nine people – which is actually just a majority of the nine, so only five of the nine will rule as regards the use of force against 330-plus million people – is whether the use of this force is “constitutional.”

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Tick, Tick, Tick…: The Supreme Court Readies an Explosive Docket for 2022, by Jonathan Turley

Posted on January 4, 2022 | Leave a comment

The Supreme Court has a big docket this year, starting with the Biden administration’s mandates. From Jonathan Turley at jonathanturley.org:

Below is my column in the Hill on upcoming year for the Supreme Court. The Court’s docket is likely to put the institution at ground zero of a heated election year. Major decisions on abortion and gun rights are expected by June 2022. Even with Chief Justice John Roberts denouncing attempts at “inappropriate political influence” on the Court, the threats of Court packing and other measures are likely to become even more shrill as these decisions rollout in the new year.

Here is the column:

The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg once observed that “it’s hard not to have a big year at the Supreme Court.” However, there are some years that are bigger than others. That’s what 2022 is likely to be.

The court has accepted a series of transformative cases with few available exit ramps. It recently added to that list.

In other words, it is likely to issue historic rulings on abortion, gun rights and an assortment of other issues.

The fact that the Supreme Court is going to hand down such decisions in a major election year is also noteworthy. The court tends to be more conservative in the selection of cases before major elections, but 2022 will put the court at ground zero in one of the most heated elections in history.

For those calling to pack the court to ensure a liberal majority, the already furious commentary is likely to reach near hysteria if the conservative majority rules as expected in some of these cases in the first half of 2022.

Here’s just a partial list of what is coming in the new year:

Abortion

The country is awaiting a decision by June in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. At issue is whether Mississippi can impose a 15-week limit on abortions. That is earlier than previously allowed by the court, but the United States is one of only seven among the world’s 198 countries to allow abortions after 20 weeks. While the court could simply overturn Roe v. Wade and return the area to the states, it is more likely that the court will increase the authority of the states while recognizing constitutional protections for such reproductive rights. That could result in a major reframing of “previability” cases.

After Dobbs was accepted, advocates sought to enjoin a Texas law that banned abortion after just six weeks. The court ruled 5-4 to allow the Texas law to be enforced. The Biden administration and other litigants then forced a reconsideration of that decision. The court — as expected — allowed the appeal to go forward for some of the litigants in the lower court but again refused to enjoin the law. To make matters worse, it declared the Biden administration’s appeal to be “improvidently granted.”

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The Two COVID Questions Before the Court, by Rob Jenkins

Posted on December 30, 2021 | Leave a comment

Logically and legally (they’re not the same thing) the case against the Biden administration mandates should win at the Supreme Court. However, you could have said the same thing concerning the case against Obamacare, and we know how that went. From Rob Jenkins at americanthinker.com:

The Supreme Court has agreed to take up two vaccine mandate cases — the one involving OSHA and the one for health care workers (CMS).

A third mandate, aimed at federal contractors, remains in a kind of legal limbo. The temporary injunction granted by a Georgia judge was recently upheld by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Whether that decision will also be appealed to SCOTUS, and if so whether they will agree to hear it, remain to be seen.

However, according to Jenin Younes, an attorney with the New Civil Liberties Alliance and charter member of Team Reality, “It is likely that whatever decision [the court] makes about [the first two] mandates will affect the contractor one as well, since the principles are similar.”

So the importance of the upcoming arguments against the OSHA and CMS mandates cannot be overstated. They will almost certainly be for all the marbles.

Far be it from me to tell lawyers things they already know, much less what they ought to say or do. But you’ll have to forgive me if, after the ObamaCare and Obergefell fiascos, I’m not exactly brimming with confidence in our side’s ability to make winning arguments before the nation’s highest court.

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Supreme Court To Take Up Challenges To Biden’s Vaccine Mandates, by Isabel van Brugen

Posted on December 23, 2021 | Leave a comment

This issue was destined to wind up before the Supreme Court. From Isabel van Brugen at The Epoch Times via zerohedge.com:

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear oral arguments on challenges to the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

In an announcement on Wednesday (pdf), the nation’s highest federal court said it would on Jan. 7 take up two separate disputes challenging the Biden administration’s mandate for businesses with more than 100 employees, and for some 17 million health care workers at facilities receiving Medicaid and Medicare funding.

The court, which has a 6-3 conservative-leaning majority, delayed action on emergency requests in both cases that sought an immediate decision. The workplace mandate is currently in effect nationwide, while the health care worker mandate is blocked in half of the 50 U.S. states.

The mandate for health care workers was issued last month by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and affects roughly 17 million workers. It requires facilities that receive Medicare or Medicaid funding to require workers to get vaccinated, and has no testing opt-out.

The deadline for meeting the mandate is Jan. 4, 2022. However, OSHA said on Dec. 18 that it would not be issuing fines to businesses for noncompliance until Jan. 10.

The Biden administration’s private employer COVID-19 vaccine mandate, meanwhile, was promulgated by the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). If allowed to take effect next month, it will force every business with 100 or more employees to require proof of a negative COVID-19 test on at least a weekly basis or proof of vaccination from each worker. Companies that don’t comply would face escalating fines.

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Abortion and the Constitution, by Andrew P. Napolitano

Posted on December 9, 2021 | Leave a comment

The key Constitutional concept in the abortion debate, according to Andrew Napolitano, is not viability but personhood. From Napolitano at lewrockwell.com:

“The fetus has an interest in having a life.”
–Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., Dec. 1, 2021

Last week’s oral argument in the Supreme Court about abortion was both humdrum and arcane. Humdrum because we already knew where the nine justices stand on the morality of abortion. Arcane because the questions and answers were largely not about abortion, but about stare decisis, the legal doctrine that calls for settled law not to be lightly disturbed. What brought this about?

Mississippi has enacted into law a statute that prohibits abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy. That statute directly conflicts with two major Supreme Court opinions on abortion, Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

The 1973 Roe decision establishes a trimester system during which the state’s interest in protecting the life of the baby in the womb does not come into being until the third trimester of pregnancy. More importantly, Roe holds that the states may not ban abortions prior to fetal viability, roughly at the end of the first trimester, around 23 weeks.

The Casey opinion, 19 years after Roe and with a largely different membership in the court, upheld Roe’s no-abortions-until-viability standard and added a new rule that prohibited the states from imposing any undue burden on mothers seeking abortions.

Thus, Mississippi — and Texas, which prohibits abortions after six weeks, right behind it — is effectively asking the court to overrule both Roe and Casey. The Mississippi argument states that because the Constitution is silent on abortion or any kind of killing, its Framers must have intended to leave regulation of those subjects to the states. The counterargument is that women have personal autonomy over their bodies and that autonomy trumps any state interest at any time.

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Locked and Loaded: The Supreme Court Argument Appears To Confirm A Major Gun Rights Victory in the Making, by Jonathan Turley

Posted on November 5, 2021 | Leave a comment

It looks like the Supreme Court is going to come down on the side of the Second Amendment. From Jonathan Turley at jonathanturley.org:

We have been discussing (here and here and here) the Supreme Court challenge in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. (NYSRPA) v. Bruen, the first Second Amendment case before the Supreme Court in over ten years. Yesterday’s oral argument appeared to confirm the expectations in those columns on the likely reversal of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and a reinforcement of Second Amendment rights.

In 2008, the Supreme Court recognized the right to bear arms as an individual right in District of Columbia v. Heller. Two years after Heller, in McDonald v. City of Chicago, the court ruled that this right applied against the states.

This case concerns concealed-carry restrictions under N.Y. Penal Law § 400.00(2)(f) that require a showing of “proper cause.” Lower courts have upheld the New York law, but there are ample constitutional concerns over its vague standard, such as showing that you are “of good moral character.” New York wants to exercise discretion in deciding who needs to carry guns in public while gun owners believe that the law flips the constitutional presumption in favor of such a right.

The oral argument quickly confirmed the likely votes of five justices against the New York law. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh appeared clearly committed to a reversal as well as a possible expansion of protections for gun rights. Chief Justice John Roberts appeared committed to vote against the law but not necessarily on board with a significant expansion of protections from the earlier holdings of the Court.

The surprise of the argument came from Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who wrote a strong Second Amendment opinion as an appellate judge.  Barrett appeared open to arguments that greater regulation of guns may be appropriate in cities or “sensitive places.”

As I wrote earlier, justices like Roberts could vote down the law but retain the view in Heller that “like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.” That includes restrictions in “sensitive places.”

However, in one telling moment, Roberts noted that gun rights should be more expansive in cities to allow self-defense. After all, he asked New York Solicitor General Barbara Underwood, “How many muggings take place in the forest?”

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The Supreme Showdown: Bruen Has The Makings of a Major Second Amendment Victory, by Jonathan Turley

Posted on November 3, 2021 | Leave a comment

The Supreme Court has an opportunity to clarify and expand gun rights under the Second Amendment, and the betting is that they will do so. From Jonathan Turley at jonathanturley.com:

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will take up arguably the oldest and most controversial right in our history. New York State Rifle Association v. Bruen is the first major gun rights case in over ten years to come before the Supreme Court and it has the makings of a major gun rights victory in the making.

The case concerns concealed-carry restrictions under N.Y. Penal Law § 400.00(2)(f) that require a showing of “proper cause.” Lower courts have upheld the New York law, but there are ample constitutional concerns over its vague standard, such as showing that you are “of good moral character.” New York wants to exercise discretion in deciding who needs to carry guns in public while gun owners believe that the law flips the constitutional presumption in favor of such a right.

There are few constitutional rights that have been debated so long in this country as gun rights. Indeed, before other Englishmen were given a written guarantee of the right to bear arms, colonists in Virginia in 1607 were given such a written guarantee by the Crown.  Since that time, the right to bear arms has been an engrained part of our culture and ultimately our Constitution.

Despite that history, the meaning of the right has remained the subject of heated debate. That is evident from the fact that it was not until 2008 that the Supreme Court finally recognized the right to bear arms as an individual right in District of Columbia v. Heller. Two years after Heller, in McDonald v. City of Chicago, the court ruled that this right applied against the states.

This is actually the second time in two years that the New York State Rifle Association has come knocking on the door of the Supreme Court. The Association previously challenged a New York law that imposed stringent conditions on the ability of gun owners to even transport their guns outside of their homes. The law was viewed by some of us as unconstitutional under existing case law, but New York politicians insisted that it would be defended all the way up to the Supreme Court.  However, when the Court called their bluff and accepted the case, those politicians quickly changed the law and pulled the case before the Court could rule.

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Locked and Loaded: Supreme Court is Ready for a Showdown on the Second Amendment, by Jonathan Turley

Posted on October 19, 2021 | 1 comment

The Supreme Court has been looking for the right case to reaffirm the Second Amendment and it looks like they’ve found it. From Jonathan Turley at jonathanturley.org:

Below is my column in the Hill on the makings of a blockbuster case in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, the first major gun rights case before the Supreme Court in ten years.  Justices have been openly discussing a case to push back on lower courts that have been chipping away at its Second Amendment jurisprudence. They found that case with a strikingly familiar plaintiff.

Here is the column:

In the movie “True Grit,” federal marshal Rooster Cogburn is asked if the gun that he brandished at a crime scene was loaded. Cogburn, played by John Wayne, dryly responds, “A gun that’s unloaded and cocked ain’t good for nothing.” Something similar might be said of a Supreme Court docket, particularly when there is a Second Amendment case that could prove one of the most impactful decisions of the term.

The court will soon take up New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, more than a decade after its last major gun rights decision. The case promises to be a showdown between the Supreme Court and lower courts, which have been chipping away at the high court’s prior Second Amendment rulings.

In 2008, the Supreme Court handed down a landmark ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, recognizing the Second Amendment as encompassing an individual right to bear arms. Two years after Heller, in McDonald v. City of Chicago, the court ruled that this right applied against the states.

The new case concerns concealed-carry restrictions under N.Y. Penal Law § 400.00(2)(f) that require a showing of “proper cause.” Lower courts have upheld the New York law, but there are ample constitutional concerns over its vague standard, such as showing that you are “of good moral character.” The case presents a single short, direct question — whether New York’s denial of petitioners’ applications for concealed-carry licenses for self-defense violated the Second Amendment.

The high court has been carefully waiting for just the right case to address states and cities that have sought to limit gun rights. Indeed, just this week, the court turned down a challenge of a Wisconsin law imposing a lifetime ban on gun ownership for former felons, including cases involving nonviolent crimes. That and other cases seemed tailor-made for Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who wrote a strong defense of the Second Amendment in a similar case as an appellate judge.

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