Ongoing discussion of SCOTUS cases (1 Viewer)

[MT15]

With the increased scrutiny due to recent revelations in the press I thought maybe we can use a SCOTUS thread. We can discuss the impending Senate investigation and the legislation proposed today by Murkowski and King in the Senate that will formalize ethical guidelines.

We can also use this thread to highlight cases that possibly don’t deserve their own thread, like the following.

I saw this case today, and I cannot believe the US Government is allowed to do this. Unreasonable search and seizure? The examples he gives in the rest of the thread are just sickening:

 

[LA - L.A.]

Can't the district court draw the map and force them to use it? That should definitely be done if it's possible. You let one state defiy the orders of the SC and soon every state will be defying their orders whenever the Republcians don't want to follow them.

That would mean getting the Alabama secretary of state to abide by that ruling. We're approaching Nullification Crisis levels now with states telling the federal level to fork off.

I think that the courts can't really enforce anything without federal or state executive and/or legislative branches assistance. I don't know if that's correct.

What we are learning is that a lot of our governmental checks and balances work on an honor system requiring people to act cooperatively and in good faith. There seems to be real issues as soon as someone is uncooperative or acts in bad faith.

 

[DaveXA]

I think that the courts can't really enforce anything without federal or state executive and/or legislative branches assistance. I don't know if that's correct.

What we are learning is that a lot of our governmental checks and balances work on an honor system requiring people to act cooperatively and in good faith. There seems to be real issues as soon as someone is uncooperative or acts in bad faith.

There's a good way to get them to adhere to the law. Declare their electors invalid because they failed to follow the law. If their want to disenfranchise their voters, that's their choice.

 

[LA - L.A.]

There's a good way to get them to adhere to the law. Declare their electors invalid because they failed to follow the law. If their want to disenfranchise their voters, that's their choice.

Is that allowed under the Constitution? I'm all for it if it is.

 

[DaveXA]

Is that allowed under the Constitution? I'm all for it if it is.

That I don't really know, but I think it should be.

 

[DaveXA]

Is that allowed under the Constitution? I'm all for it if it is.

Fwiw, I think this will need to be litigated long before the election. SCOTUS need to speak in no uncertain terms as to the consequences of not adhering to their order. I'm not sure there's any precedence for this so I would think this would be a landmark case in testing the boundaries of the federal court.

 

[MT15]

I think part of the decision mentioned that the court would appoint someone to draw the map if AL legislature didn’t comply. Whether they will do it or not -

 

[GrandAdmiral]

fork it. Go full Andrew Jackson and send in troops.

 

[DaveXA]

I think part of the decision mentioned that the court would appoint someone to draw the map if AL legislature didn’t comply. Whether they will do it or not -

Hmm, I didn't know this. If so, they need to do that now, because you know Bama is gonna try and challenge it. Not sure how that would work though.

 

[GrandAdmiral]

So Alabama is basically giving a big fork you to SCOTUS...

Analysis: US Supreme Court faces ‘outright defiance’ from Alabama | CNN Politics

It was a legitimate surprise when the conservative-dominated US Supreme Court ordered Alabama’s conservative-dominated state government last month to redraw its congressional map and include either a second majority-Black congressional district or something quite close to it.

www.cnn.com

As expected...

“We are deeply troubled that the State enacted a map that the State readily admits does not provide the remedy we said federal law requires,” the judges, two of whom were appointed by former President Donald Trump, wrote.

This redistricting battle – and separate, pending litigation over congressional maps in states like Georgia and Florida – could determine which party controls the US House of Representatives after next year’s elections. Republicans currently hold a razor-thin majority in the chamber.

The judges ordered a special master to submit three proposed maps that would create a second Black-majority district by September 25.

Federal court strikes down Alabama congressional map after legislature snubbed Supreme Court | CNN Politics

A federal court blocked a newly drawn Alabama congressional map on Tuesday because it didn’t create a second majority-Black district as the Supreme Court had ordered earlier this year.

www.cnn.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

The rightwing activist Leonard Leo has helped fund a network of groups involved in a crucial US supreme court case that could fundamentally weaken the federal government’s ability to hold corporations to account, a leading watchdog said as the conservative-dominated court prepared for its new term.

“Leonard Leo spent years stacking the court with ideological kindred spirits,” said Caroline Ciccone, president of Accountable.US. “Now he’s funding a dark web of special interest groups to push an extreme agenda.”

The case in question, in the term that starts on Tuesday, is Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v Community Financial Services Association of America, or CFPB v CFSAA.

The CFPB was set up under the Obama administration after the global recession of 2008 to 2009, to better protect ordinary Americans from predatory business interests. The CFSAA is an umbrella for a group of payday lenders.

Last week, writing for Scotusblog, Amy Howe, a law professor and counsel in supreme court cases, said: “The stakes in the case are high. The Biden administration … warns that a ruling for the challengers could call into question not only the payday-lending rule at the center of this case but also a wide swath of other regulations that protect consumers.

“And more broadly, the case is the first of several on the court’s docket this term in which the justices will weigh in on the division of authority between the three branches of government, as well as the power of administrative agencies.”

Leo is an immensely successful activist and fundraiser, vastly influential in the appointment of three conservative supreme court justices under Donald Trump and last year the recipient of the largest known US political donation, $1.6bn from the businessman Barre Seid.

Accountable.US is among watchdog groups increasingly scrutinising Leo’s activities. Now, it says, he is playing a central supportive role in a case that could severely damage the federal administrative state, a long-term target of conservative politicians, activists and donors including Leo.

According to Accountable.US research, entities backed by Leo have invested more than $9m in groups that have filed amicus briefs in support of the payday lenders in CFPB v CFSAA.

Sums donated by Leo’s network include $5.3m to the Foundation for Government Accountability, $2m to the New Civil Liberties Alliance, $1m to America’s Future and $737,000 to the Americans for Prosperity Foundation. Other groups received smaller amounts.…….

Rightwing activist helps fund ‘predatory payday lenders’ in supreme court case

Watchdog group says entities backed by Leonard Leo have invested over $9m in ‘dark web’ of special interest groups

www.theguardian.com

 

[MT15]

Interesting

 

[Optimus Prime]

The Koch network, a web of rightwing groups cultivated by billionaire businessman Charles Koch and his late brother David Koch, is spearheading the attack on federal agencies and government regulations that dominates the US supreme court agenda this term.

The network has been working behind the scenes to bring cases before the court that, if successful, could undermine many of the core functionings of the US government. At least two of the biggest cases to be considered by the justices this term have been spurred by groups bankrolled and coordinated within the Koch universe.

Footage of an internal panel discussion between senior operatives from Koch entities held in the summer of 2022 reveals that the network has been quietly planning the current assault on the “administrative state”. The groups are seeking to exploit the supreme court’s new six-to-three rightwing majority secured by Donald Trump to dismantle vital executive powers.

Regulatory controls in their sights include environmental standards to combat pollution and the climate crisis, consumer protections against predatory lenders, and safeguards for workers’ rights. At stake is what the Strict Scrutiny podcast has called “the future of government as we know it”.

The footage, which is made public here for the first time, was obtained by the investigative watchdog Documented and shared with the Guardian. During the 37-minute panel discussion, legal strategists with several Koch-related groups expressed excitement that the new hard-right supreme court supermajority has created the potential for a concerted attack on the functions of federal agencies.

Jorge Lima, an economic policy strategist at the Koch network’s central coordinating group, Stand Together, said that the new composition of the court amounted to a huge “landscape opportunity, particularly on the administrative state. We’re doubling down on this strategy.”

Lima added: “Every dog has its day, and it’s a big day for the administrative state.”

Casey Mattox, a legal strategist at the main Koch advocacy group, Americans for Prosperity, argued that the supreme court was now “primed for a real change in the law” on federal regulations which he said amounted to a “paradigm shift”. Mattox said: “That’s why we are partnering with organizations that can get the right cases to the supreme court.”

The effort appears to have born fruit. Two of the most significant cases before the court in the 2023-24 term, brought with the backing of Koch-linked organizations, attempt to rein back the government’s power to impose regulations on corporations.

The prominence of the cases underlines how the libertarian empire created by the Kochs is still a force to be reckoned with within US politics. Since David Koch’s death in 2019, and the Koch network’s decision to come out in opposition to Trump ahead of next year’s presidential election, the network has receded from public attention.

But the scope of Charles Koch’s reach remains formidable, as was demonstrated earlier this month when the 87-year-old told Forbes that he had given $4.3bn of his Koch Industries stock to Believe in People, a newly-created group named after his book of the same title. He has transferred a further $975m to another new entity, CCKc4, which carries the initials of his son Chase Koch.

The massive combined $5.3bn in donations, one of the largest acts of giving to non-profits in US history, will ensure that the Koch influence will continue to push the US to the right for years to come. Undermining government regulations is central to those ambitions.

Lisa Graves, the executive director of the progressive watchdog True North Research who is a long-time Koch watcher, said that Charles Koch has shown a “fundamental hostility to government regulation” since his early political writings in the 1960s. “This is the through-line of his career. His business operations have a substantial self-interest in assailing regulations that impede his profits.”................

‘Get the right cases to the supreme court’: inside Charles Koch’s network

Billionaire’s web of rightwing groups works to bring cases to court that could undermine core functionings of the US government

www.theguardian.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

Guess this can go here
==================

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has described being on the highest court in the land as living in frustration, saying that every loss the liberal justices face “traumatises” her.

As one of the three liberal justices on the court, Justice Sotomayor and her colleagues can typically anticipate they will be outnumbered when deciding cases.

Over the last few years, rulings around issues of abortion rights, LGBT+ rights and racial equality have swung in conservatives’ favour.

“Every loss truly traumatises me in my stomach and in my heart,” Justice Sotomayor said on Monday while speaking with students at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.

Justice Sotomayor, who was the first Latina woman appointed to the court, has become known for crafting passionate dissents. Last year, she wrote that the “symbolic damage” of the court’s decision in 303 Creative LLC v Elenis, an LGBT+ rights case, was “done”.

“But I have to get up the next morning and keep on fighting,” Justice Sotomayor said. “What choice do you have to be to fight the good fight.”…….

Justice Sotomayor says she’s ‘traumatised’ by Supreme Court losses

Supreme Court has limited access to abortion, LGBT+ rights and racial equality in rulings over the last three years

www.independent.co.uk

 

[Optimus Prime]

The US supreme court is poised to deliver a raft of politically sensitive decisions as it ends its judicial term, addressing tumultuous issues including whether Donald Trump can be prosecuted for his role in the January 6 insurrection in 2021, abortion access for millions of women and the basic functioning of the federal government.

With the court entering its traditional June climax, observers are bracing themselves for yet another potentially seismic four weeks that could radically reshape American public life. Matters before the court include a possible loosening of gun laws in a country with already exceptionally lax controls, and new guardrails on how social media platforms deal with misinformation.

This will be the third full year under the new six-to-three supermajority of rightwing justices created by Donald Trump’s three appointments. How the court rules on the biggest cases will help cement its increasingly partisan and extremist reputation, against the backdrop of grating ethical scandals that call into question the justices’ ability to deliver impartial judgments.


Top of the list of white-hot pending decisions are two cases relating to Trump’s federal prosecution. They embroil the supreme court in the presidential election to a greater degree than at any time since Bush v Gore in 2000, which handed the White House to George W Bush.

The justices have already allowed Trump to stay on the ballot by overturning a Colorado ruling that barred him from public office as an insurrectionist under the 14th amendment to the US constitution. Now the court must decide, in Trump v US, whether he can claim absolute presidential immunity from prosecution relating to the federal case in which he is charged with conspiracy to subvert the 2020 election.

Fischer v US concerns whether rioters at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 can be charged under an obstruction statute. Should the justices rule against the use of that provision, as they indicated they would in oral arguments, two of the fourcriminal charges facing Trump in the January 6 prosecution would fall.……

America braced as supreme court to hand down rulings on raft of key issues

Justices to address abortion, guns, social media – and whether Donald Trump can be prosecuted for role in January 6 insurrection

www.theguardian.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

Far-right fossil fuel allies have launched a stunning and unprecedented campaign pressuring the supreme court to shield fossil fuel companies from litigation that could cost them billions of dollars.

Some of the groups behind the campaign have ties to Leonard Leo, the architect of the rightwing takeover of the supreme court who helped select Trump’s supreme court nominees. Leo also appears to have ties to Chevron, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

“He’s really crafted the supreme court,” said Lisa Graves, executive director of the progressive watchdog group True North Research and an expert on Leonard Leo’s network.


Honolulu is one of 40 cities and states suing big oil for an alleged decades-long effort to sow doubt about the dangers of burning fossils. If successful, the case could force the defendants to pay for climate damages.

In October, the Hawaii supreme court ruled that the suit can go to trial. But oil companies petitioned the US supreme court in February to review the state court’s decision; they argued the cases should be thrown out because emissions are a federal issue that shouldn’t be tried in state courts.

Supreme court justices met on Thursday to consider whether or not to take up the fossil fuel companies’ request, and the justices could grant or reject the petition in the coming days.

If granted, the request could catalyze the dismissal of the wave of climate accountability lawsuits against big oil – a major win for the defendants seeking to limit their liability for the climate crisis. But it’s the kind of ask about which the supreme court would not normally offer its opinion, advocates and legal experts say.

“The court would probably not think this request is important, unless someone told them it was very important,” said Kert Davies, a director at the Center for Climate Integrity, which supports the litigation against big oil.

Some conservatives have been telling them exactly that.


“I have never, ever seen this kind of overt political campaign to influence the court like this,” said Patrick Parenteau, professor and senior climate policy fellow at Vermont Law School.

In recent weeks, conservatives have published opinion pieces in Bloomberg, the Hill, the Wall Street Journal and the National Review calling on the court to grant the petition.

“Honolulu is attempting to use the law of one state to dominate the others,” wrote Carrie Severino, president of the conservative dark money group JCN, formerly known as the Judicial Crisis Network, in the rightwing National Review.……

Far-right fossil fuel company allies pressure US supreme court to shield firms in unprecedented campaign

Groups linked to billionaire Leonard Leo, who seems to have ties to Chevron, are pressing the court to intervene in lawsuits that could cost billions

www.theguardian.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

……..In truth, the Moores invested much more money in the company than they initially claimed; Charles Moore, the husband, served as the director of its board for years.

He traveled repeatedly to India to oversee it, and was reimbursed for that travel; he lent the company almost a quarter-million dollars and earned back interest.

He seems to have worked closely with the founder of the company, a friend of his, to lower his stake in the company, so as to avoid the 2017 tax liability – and, perhaps, so as to make himself a more plausible plaintiff for a conservative movement legal vehicle.

These lies did not persuade the court in this case. But Moore v United States is one of a growing number of high-profile, high-stakes lawsuits brought before the supreme court by the conservative legal movement that have turned out to be based on inaccuracies, falsehoods and outright deceptions as to the underlying facts that are presented by rightwing lawyers in their briefings.

Some of these lie-based cases have had dramatic policy implications.

In 303 Creative v Elenis, a case challenging a Colorado civil rights law that required companies to provide equal service to gay people, a website creator alleged that her religious freedom had been violated by the prospect of having to design wedding websites for same-sex couples, and cited a request for such a website she had received from a man named Stewart, who was planning to marry his partner, Mike.

Only Stewart never asked for a wedding website: when the New Republic’s Melissa Gira Grant contacted him, she discovered that the “Stewart” whose supposed request was at the center of the case was a straight man living in San Francisco, who had long been married to a woman; he was never going to marry a man named “Mike” let alone ask a bigoted religious extremist to make him a website in the process.

“Somebody’s using false information in a supreme court filing document,” Stewart told Grant. No matter: the supreme court ruled in favor of the website designer anyway, thus dramatically limiting public accommodation non-discrimination protections in civil rights law.

At times, the blatant disregard for facts on the part of the conservative legal movement – and the willingness to concoct stories of imaginary injuries in order to further cases that have conservative policy implications – has seemed to baffle and frustrate the court’s liberals.

In her dissent in Kennedy v Bremerton, the so-called praying coach case, the justice Sonia Sotomayor included multiple photographs of the incidents in question – in which a Washington state high school football coach’s prayers before games were clearly public, coercive and made into a spectacle – to contradict the majority’s bold misrepresentation of the prayers as private and silent.

The fabricated-facts trend has already appeared before the court once so far this term: in the mifepristone case. In a challenge to the FDA’s regulation of access to the abortion drug, a group of anti-choice doctors fabricated far-fetched claims of their own injury, based on scientifically illegitimate studies that have since been retracted, in order to try to take the drug away from abortion seekers. That case didn’t work, either: the court unanimously threw it out on standing grounds.

But the fact that the case got all the way to the supreme court, with district and appellate judges either credulous of the false claims or indifferent to their veracity, says a lot about how far the conservative legal movement is willing to divorce its briefings from reality……..

Rightwing cases built on made-up stories keep making it to the US supreme court | Moira Donegan

Again and again, the conservative movement promotes cases based on inaccuracies, falsehoods and outright deceptions

www.theguardian.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

Did you know you could give your local government officials tips when they do things you like? Brett Kavanaugh thinks you can.

In fact, if you’re rich enough, says the US supreme court, you can now pay off state and local officials for government acts that fit your policy preferences or advance your interests. You can give them lavish gifts, send them on vacations, or simply cut them checks.

You can do all of this so long as the cash, gifts or other “gratuities” are provided after the service, and not before it – and so long as a plausible deniability of the meaning and intent of these “gratuities” is maintained.

That was the ruling authored by Kavanaugh in Snyder v United States, a 6-3 opinion issued on Wednesday, in which the supreme court dealt the latest blow to federal anti-corruption law.

In the case, which was divided along ideological lines, the court held that “gratuities” – that is, post-facto gifts and payments – are not technically “bribes”, and therefore not illegal.

Bribes are only issued before the desired official act, you see, and their meaning is explicit; a more vague, less vulgarly transactional culture of “gratitude” for official acts, expressed in gifts and payments of great value, is supposed to be something very different.

The court has thereby continued its long effort to legalize official corruption, using the flimsiest of pretexts to rob federal anti-corruption statutes of all meaning.

The case concerns James Snyder, who in 2013 was serving as the mayor of small-town Portage, Indiana. Late that year, the city of Portage awarded a contract to Great Lakes Peterbilt, a trucking company, and bought five tow trucks from them; a few weeks later, Snyder asked for and accepted a check for $13,000 from the company. Snyder was found guilty of corruption and sentenced to 21 months in federal prison.

He argued that the kickback was not illegal because it came after he awarded a contract to the company that ultimately paid him off, not before.

Absurdly the US supreme court agreed, classifying such payments as mere tokens of appreciation and claiming they are not illegal when they are not the product of an explicit agreement meant to influence official acts in exchange for money.……

But the glaring reality remains that this is largely a distinction without a difference. As Ketanji Brown Jackson noted in her dissent, this is an interpretation which no reasonable reading of the statute can support.

In a dissent whose tone seemed exasperated, almost sarcastic, she called the majority opinion “absurd and atextual”, saying it “elevates nonexistent federalism concerns over the plain texts of this statute and is a quintessential case of the tail wagging the dog”.

The “bribery” versus “gratuity” distinction, she said, allows officials to accept rewards for official acts in ways that are “functionally indistinguishable from taking a bribe”.

The court’s narrow vision of corruption – one in which only explicit, whispered deals in shadowy, smoke-filled back rooms count as “corruption”, and all other forms of influence and exchange are something other than the genuine article – also fundamentally misunderstands how influence-peddling works.

In his controlling opinion, Kavanaugh emphasizes that in order to be an illegal bribe, a gift or payment must be accompanied by “a corrupt state of mind” on behalf of the official or benefactor.

But corruption, influence-peddling, and unfair and undue methods of persuasion are more subtle and complicated than this in practice………

The US supreme court just basically legalized bribery | Moira Donegan

By sheer coincidence, this ruling concerns the sort of generous ‘gifts’ and ‘gratuities’ that justices have been known to accept

www.theguardian.com

 

[MT15]

Did you know you could give your local government officials tips when they do things you like? Brett Kavanaugh thinks you can.

In fact, if you’re rich enough, says the US supreme court, you can now pay off state and local officials for government acts that fit your policy preferences or advance your interests. You can give them lavish gifts, send them on vacations, or simply cut them checks.

You can do all of this so long as the cash, gifts or other “gratuities” are provided after the service, and not before it – and so long as a plausible deniability of the meaning and intent of these “gratuities” is maintained.

That was the ruling authored by Kavanaugh in Snyder v United States, a 6-3 opinion issued on Wednesday, in which the supreme court dealt the latest blow to federal anti-corruption law.

In the case, which was divided along ideological lines, the court held that “gratuities” – that is, post-facto gifts and payments – are not technically “bribes”, and therefore not illegal.

Bribes are only issued before the desired official act, you see, and their meaning is explicit; a more vague, less vulgarly transactional culture of “gratitude” for official acts, expressed in gifts and payments of great value, is supposed to be something very different.

The court has thereby continued its long effort to legalize official corruption, using the flimsiest of pretexts to rob federal anti-corruption statutes of all meaning.

The case concerns James Snyder, who in 2013 was serving as the mayor of small-town Portage, Indiana. Late that year, the city of Portage awarded a contract to Great Lakes Peterbilt, a trucking company, and bought five tow trucks from them; a few weeks later, Snyder asked for and accepted a check for $13,000 from the company. Snyder was found guilty of corruption and sentenced to 21 months in federal prison.

He argued that the kickback was not illegal because it came after he awarded a contract to the company that ultimately paid him off, not before.

Absurdly the US supreme court agreed, classifying such payments as mere tokens of appreciation and claiming they are not illegal when they are not the product of an explicit agreement meant to influence official acts in exchange for money.……

But the glaring reality remains that this is largely a distinction without a difference. As Ketanji Brown Jackson noted in her dissent, this is an interpretation which no reasonable reading of the statute can support.

In a dissent whose tone seemed exasperated, almost sarcastic, she called the majority opinion “absurd and atextual”, saying it “elevates nonexistent federalism concerns over the plain texts of this statute and is a quintessential case of the tail wagging the dog”.

The “bribery” versus “gratuity” distinction, she said, allows officials to accept rewards for official acts in ways that are “functionally indistinguishable from taking a bribe”.

The court’s narrow vision of corruption – one in which only explicit, whispered deals in shadowy, smoke-filled back rooms count as “corruption”, and all other forms of influence and exchange are something other than the genuine article – also fundamentally misunderstands how influence-peddling works.

In his controlling opinion, Kavanaugh emphasizes that in order to be an illegal bribe, a gift or payment must be accompanied by “a corrupt state of mind” on behalf of the official or benefactor.

But corruption, influence-peddling, and unfair and undue methods of persuasion are more subtle and complicated than this in practice………

The US supreme court just basically legalized bribery | Moira Donegan

By sheer coincidence, this ruling concerns the sort of generous ‘gifts’ and ‘gratuities’ that justices have been known to accept

www.theguardian.com

Well, Kavanaugh seemingly accepted money to pay off his many debts before he became a Justice. So, under his own logic, he is corrupt.