Words should have meaning; at least they did until Harry Blackmun decided abortion was health care, Anthony Kennedy found homosexuality to be in a “realm of personal liberty,” and John Roberts declared Obamacare was not a tax.

The Supreme Court should take this as an opportunity to reiterate two precedents that backstop the black-letter words of the Constitution and the English language. Taxing people on money they haven’t made is obscene. Opening the door to the government confiscating wealth is a betrayal of the country because that is where this concept leads. //

anon-onh5
9 hours ago
Roberts is a legalist not a justice. We're hosed. //

bk
12 hours ago
Next up: Increasing property values start affecting income taxes, not just property taxes. //

A-Nony-Mouse
3 minutes ago
taxing income at all is "obscene", IMO. The entire 16th Amendment should be repealed. While we are repealing Amendments, repeal the 17th as well and go back to the senators being appointed by the state legislatures.

If Thomas had done what a new AP report says Justice Sonia Sotomayor did, the Democrats would be parked in front of the Supreme Court now, demanding impeachment, with AOC on the bullhorn leading the charge. The report says that not only were institutions that had her speak prodded to buy her books, but that her Supreme Court staff was also used in the effort.

The Supreme Court’s Thursday decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College dealt an overdue blow to race-based college admissions, and some of the best punches were thrown by Justice Clarence Thomas in his concurrence. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf

The court ruled that so-called “affirmative action” at Harvard and the University of North Carolina were in violation of the 14th Amendment and its application via the Civil Rights Act. Policies that discriminate based on race without demonstrating a compelling public interest, the six justices in the majority agreed, are not compatible with our founding principles of equal rights under the law for every American.

In addition to signing on to the majority opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, Thomas wrote a nearly 60-page concurrence to express his horror at the idea of institutionalized racial discrimination in 21st-century America. Here are 15 of his best lines.

1. The best way to fix discrimination is not more discrimination.

"The solution to our Nation’s racial problems thus cannot come from policies grounded in affirmative action or some other conception of equity," Thomas writes. "Racialism simply cannot be undone by different or more racialism. Instead, the solution announced in the second founding is incorporated in our Constitution: that we are all equal, and should be treated equally before the law without regard to our race," he adds. "Only that promise can allow us to look past our differing skin colors."

Elsewhere in his concurring opinion, Thomas lays bare the left's flawed — and quite racist — beliefs about different races.

"In fact, all racial categories are little more than stereotypes, suggesting that immutable characteristics somehow conclusively determine a person’s ideology, beliefs, and abilities. Of course, that is false," Thomas notes. "Members of the same race do not all share the exact same experiences and viewpoints; far from it," he explains. "A black person from rural Alabama surely has different experiences than a black person from Manhattan or a black first-generation immigrant from Nigeria, in the same way that a white person from rural Vermont has a different perspective than a white person from Houston, Texas."

Despite this obvious reality, Thomas reminds that "universities’ racial policies suggest that racial identity 'alone constitutes the being of the race or the man.'"

"That is the same naked racism upon which segregation itself was built," Thomas rightly concludes. "Small wonder, then, that these policies are leading to increasing racial polarization and friction." //

Justice Jackson uses her broad observations about statistical relationships between race and select measures of health, wealth, and well-being to label all blacks as victims. Her desire to do so is unfathomable to me. I cannot deny the great accomplishments of black Americans, including those who succeeded despite long odds.

Nor do Justice Jackson's statistics regarding a correlation between levels of health, wealth, and well-being between selected racial groups prove anything. Of course, none of those statistics are capable of drawing a direct causal link between race—rather than socioeconomic status or any other factor—and individual outcomes. So Justice Jackson supplies the link herself: the legacy of slavery and the nature of inherited wealth. This, she claims, locks blacks into a seemingly perpetual inferior caste. Such a view is irrational; it is an insult to individual achievement and cancerous to young minds seeking to push through barriers, rather than consign themselves to permanent victimhood.

"Justice Jackson’s race-infused world view falls flat at each step," Thomas declares. "Individuals are the sum of their unique experiences, challenges, and accomplishments. What matters is not the barriers they face, but how they choose to confront them," he notes. "And their race is not to blame for everything—good or bad—that happens in their lives. A contrary, myopic world view based on individuals’ skin color to the total exclusion of their personal choices is nothing short of racial determinism," Thomas adds. //

The great failure of this country was slavery and its progeny. And, the tragic failure of this Court was its misinterpretation of the Reconstruction Amendments, as Justice Harlan predicted in Plessy. We should not repeat this mistake merely because we think, as our predecessors thought, that the present arrangements are superior to the Constitution.

The Court’s opinion rightly makes clear that Grutter is, for all intents and purposes, overruled. And, it sees the universities’ admissions policies for what they are: rudderless, race-based preferences designed to ensure a particular racial mix in their entering classes. Those policies fly in the face of our colorblind Constitution and our Nation’s equality ideal. In short, they are plainly—and boldly—unconstitutional. See Brown II, 349 U. S., at 298 (noting that the Brown case one year earlier had “declare[d] the fundamental principle that racial discrimination in public education is unconstitutional”).

While I am painfully aware of the social and economic ravages which have befallen my race and all who suffer discrimination, I hold out enduring hope that this country will live up to its principles so clearly enunciated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States: that all men are created equal, are equal citizens, and must be treated equally before the law.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rebuffed a legal theory that argued that state legislatures have the authority to set election rules with little oversight from state courts, a major decision that turns away a conservative push to empower state legislatures.

By a 6-3 vote, the court rejected the “independent state legislature” theory in a case about North Carolina’s congressional map. The once-fringe legal theory broadly argued that state courts have little — or no — authority to question state legislatures on election laws for federal contests.

The court’s decision in Moore v. Harper closes the path to what could have been a radical overhaul of America’s election laws.

A particularly robust reading of the theory — which the court turned aside — would have empowered state legislatures to make decisions on all aspects of elections, from congressional lines to how people register to vote and cast a ballot, without any opportunity for challengers to contest those decisions in state courts under state laws or constitutions. Opponents of the theory argued that it could have led to unchecked partisan gerrymandering, and laws that would make it harder for people to vote.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the court’s opinion, joined by the three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, along with two conservatives, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented.

While Justice Kavanaugh’s majority opinion only runs 17 pages, Justice Alito’s dissent clocks in at 28 pages. He opens with his sharp disagreement with the majority, noting:

The Court holds Texas lacks standing to challenge a federal policy that inflicts substantial harm on the State and its residents by releasing illegal aliens with criminal convictions for serious crimes. In order to reach this conclusion, the Court brushes aside a major precedent that directly controls the standing question, refuses to apply our established test for standing, disregards factual findings made by the District Court after a trial, and holds that the only limit on the power of a President to disobey a law like the important provision at issue is Congress’s power to employ the weapons of inter-branch warfare—withholding funds, impeachment and removal, etc. I would not blaze this unfortunate trail. I would simply apply settled law, which leads ineluctably to the conclusion that Texas has standing. //

Alito concludes by cautioning against the continued expansion of executive power and chiding the majority for shirking its duty:

This sweeping Executive Power endorsed by today’s decision may at first be warmly received by champions of a strong Presidential power, but if Presidents can expand their powers as far as they can manage in a test of strength with Congress, presumably Congress can cut executive power as much as it can manage by wielding the formidable weapons at its disposal. That is not what the Constitution envisions.

I end with one final observation. The majority suggests that its decision rebuffs an effort to convince us to “‘usurp’” the authority of the other branches, but that is not true. Ante, at 3. We exercise the power conferred by Article III of the Constitution, and we must be vigilant not to exceed the limits of our constitutional role. But when we have jurisdiction, we have a “virtually unflagging obligation” to exercise that authority. Colorado River Water Conservation Dist. v. United States, 424 U. S. 800, 817 (1976). Because the majority shuns that duty, I must respectfully dissent.

The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 on Thursday in favor of a 94-year-old widow in her battle with a rapacious Hennepin County, MN, government which sold her home for a small tax debt and pocketed the change. //

The court did not rule on the “excessive fines” claim, but the concurrence by Justice Gorsuch indicates that Hennepin County would not have fared better on that issue. //

This decision is a great victory for freedom. It follows the same direction the courts have been taking in regards to Civil Asset Forfeiture; //

Mtnjacket
2 hours ago
One governmental crime bites the dust. Time for similar treatment of civil asset forfeiture and no-knock warrants.

Late last month, we reported on the case of 94-year-old grandmother Geraldine Tyler, whose Minneapolis condo was sold by Hennepin County in Minnesota for $40,000 to pay off a $15,000 tax debt: 94-year-old Grandmother Fights Home Equity Theft at the U.S. Supreme Court

The kicker was that instead of returning the $25,000 surplus over the amount Geraldine owed the state, Hennepin County decided to keep the whole amount! Even worse, the County’s retention of those funds was entirely in keeping with Minnesota state law, as we reported: //

in a unanimous opinion authored by Chief Justice Roberts, the Court gave short shrift to the Eighth Circuit’s “state law controls” argument:

The Takings Clause does not itself define property…For that, the Court draws on ‘existing rules or understandings’ about property rights…State law is one important source…But state law cannot be the only source. Otherwise, a State could sidestep the Takings Clause by disavowing traditional property interests in assets it wishes to appropriate.

In other words, a state cannot just pass a state statute that lets them take your property without compensation, which is apparently what the County, and the federal district and appeals court thought. Or as the Supreme Court puts it: “The Takings Clause would be a dead letter if a state could simply exclude from its definition of property any interest that the state wished to take.” //

The Court then gives a history lesson, going all the way back to the Magna Carta, which said that “when [a] sheriff or bailiff came to collect any debts owed [the King] from a dead man, they could remove property ‘until the debt which is evident shall be fully paid to us; and the residue shall be left to the executors to fulfill the will of the deceased.” Blackstone, the leading legal authority in England in the 1700s, said, “[i]f a tax collector seized a taxpayer’s property, he was ‘bound by an implied contract in law to restore [the property] on payment of the debt, duty, and expenses, before the time of sale; or, when sold, to render back the overplus.'” //

The taxpayer must render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but no more.

Chuck Schumer @SenSchumer
·
This MAGA Supreme Court is continuing to erode our country’s environmental laws.

Make no mistake—this ruling will mean more polluted water, and more destruction of wetlands.

We’ll keep fighting to protect our waters.

The Washington Post @washingtonpost

Breaking news: The Supreme Court on Thursday cut back the power of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate the nation’s wetlands and waterways, another setback for the agency’s authority to combat pollution. https://wapo.st/3q9g6Nx

Readers added context
All 9 judges agreed that the EPA overstepped its authority and that the plaintiffs' property should not be subject to EPA regulation. However, 4 judges disagreed with the majority's opinion on the limits of EPA authority with respect to wetlands.

nytimes.com/2023/05/25/us/…
12:02 PM · May 25, 2023

Gorsuch has this right. The Title 42 restrictions have long since run their course and the were being used as a proxy in the fight over the Biden White House’s lawless immigration policy. At best they were questionable. They were probably unconstitutional when President Trump put them into force. It seems like at least one justice has learned the right lesson from what we went through.

Supreme Court may finally end rule of bureaucrats with ‘tragic’ Chevron case
By John Fund
May 2, 2023 8:29pm

The Supreme Court made a tragic mistake almost 40 years ago.

In the 1984 case of Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, it ruled federal judges must defer to a regulatory agency’s interpretations of federal laws, so long as Congress has not addressed the issue in question and the agency’s view can be construed as “reasonable.”

Since then, the power of the unelected administrative state has ballooned so that it now dictates much of our economy and daily lives.

The court announced Monday it will revisit that precedent, raising hopes that this enormous federal power might be reined in.

The Constitution set up a system of separated powers in which Congress would pass the laws, the president would administer them and the courts would interpret them.

Since the New Deal, Congress has shirked its accountability by increasingly giving unelected agencies the power to make decisions of vast economic and political significance. //

In West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, a 6 to 3 court majority ruled that from now on Congress must explicitly grant regulatory agencies the power they wield.

That infuriated the activist left.

Since the spectacular collapse of President Barack Obama’s cap-and-trade scheme to rein in carbon emissions, which failed to even get a Senate floor vote in 2010, environmentalists have become experts at twisting and distorting old laws to accomplish by the back door what they could never do using legitimate constitutional approaches.

From regulations aimed at climate change to the overriding of local zoning laws in New York, activists have used that approach to lobby federal agencies to implement an agenda Congress would never approve on its own. //

One former federal regulator, appalled at left-wing efforts to ban gas stoves, told me: “They go through federal agencies like burglars who try every door in a neighborhood in the belief one of them will be unlocked.”

The court may not overturn the case in full, but the fact that at least four justices have agreed to reexamine the decision indicates Chevron deference is likely to be curbed.

Jonathan Turley
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6h
@JonathanTurley
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Today the Supreme Court granted review in Loper Bright v. Raimondo, which involves a challenge to the Chevron doctrine and its heavy agency deference. Notably, the Court granted only on one of the questions concerning Chevron...
Jonathan Turley
@JonathanTurley
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...Here is the question: “whether the Court should overrule Chevron or at least clarify that statutory silence concerning controversial powers expressly but narrowly granted elsewhere in the statute does not constitute an ambiguity requiring deference to the agency.” Show more
10:27 AM · May 1, 2023 //

The federal government has been completely out of control for decades, and the Chevron Doctrine has been at the heart of many of the abuses.

Now, the Supreme Court is poised to overturn the doctrine at some major level. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is already recused from the case, meaning that the conservative wing would only need to muster four votes. On that front, most of the conservatives on the court have already signaled a willingness to curb the power of the bureaucratic state by rolling back the Chevron Doctrine.

The facts of Shurtleff were simple enough: Boston city officials barred the display of a flag bearing a Christian message in a square that for decades had welcomed the flags of a wide spectrum of causes, movements, and organizations. They did so because the application submitted by the sponsoring group referred to it as a “Christian flag.”

But it was not just the justices affirming that the First Amendment protects religious expression that makes Shurtleff a landmark decision of immense significance. The justices also laid the groundwork for reversing the “Lemon Test” the Court had established way back in 1971 in Lemon v. Kurtzman.

As Anne Howe on Scotus Blog explained following the Court’s Kennedy v. Bremerton School District decision, the Lemon test was used for decades by the Court “to decide that a law or practice will pass constitutional muster if it has a secular purpose, its principal effect does not advance or inhibit religion, and it does not create an ‘excessive entanglement with religion.’”

The Bremerton decision affirmed that high school football coach Joseph Kennedy had the right to pray in public at the 50-yard line after games in which his players competed, representing a public school.

In a statement earlier this week, Liberty Counsel described the significance of Bremerton and the connection to Shurtleff:

In addition, the High Court also finally buried the “Lemon Test,” citing Liberty Counsel’s 9-0 decision in Shurtleff v. City of Boston involving the Christian flag. The Justices wrote: “In fact, just this term, the Court unanimously rejected a city’s attempt to censor religious speech based on Lemon and the endorsement test (See Shurtleff, 596 U. S.).”

There are multiple positive consequences of these developments that ought to put huge smiles on the faces of First Amendment/civil liberties/religious freedom advocates across the political spectrum. Here are four, as described by Liberty Counsel:

• Government shall not discriminate against religious viewpoints whether expressed in speech, symbols, displays, or performances.
• Public schools must permit after school religious student clubs the same access they allow similar secular clubs.
• Churches can rent public schools for worship services.
• Since the “Lemon Test” is dead and the Establishment Clause must be interpreted according to its historical intent, all the cases that relied on the Lemon test are no longer good law, including cases that struck down prayer, Ten Commandments, Nativity displays or other religious symbols, religious performances, religious speech and expression, rental of public school facilities for church services when other secular use is permitted, student aid programs, and much more.

What’s the problem here? “Money for businesses” (like the PPP loans) was passed in Congress, so that was following the Constitution. It was not a unilateral decision by Joe Biden without Constitutional authority, like the student debt move. Weingarten knows that she’s just being dishonest. If this was truly important to the Democrats, why didn’t they try to get it passed in Congress when they controlled both chambers? //

those protesters may owe a lot on their educations — which debt they voluntarily incurred — but they apparently didn’t learn that the SCOTUS isn’t supposed to be influenced by their protest. Indeed, their protest to try to influence the Court raises again the question of 18 U.S.C. § 1507, the provision that says you shouldn’t have “pickets or parades in or near a building housing a court of the United States” to try to influence any judge in the course of his/her duty. The Court is supposed to decide, based solely on the Constitution, not be pressured by screaming mobs. //

In final nutty remarks on the subject, I give you Democratic Socialist Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) as he inveighs the Court to “follow the law.” SCOTUS is following the law — the Constitution. There is no law supporting what Joe Biden did here. The government has no obligation to use our tax dollars to pay off your debt.

But the current border crisis is not a COVID crisis. And courts should not be in the business of perpetuating administrative edicts designed for one emergency only because elected officials have failed to address a different emergency. We are a court of law, not policymakersers of last resort. //

While acknowledging the dire threat to America in the current uncontrolled immigration across our southern border, we should all be opposed to using public health edicts for other policy goals. I thought we all learned that lesson over the last two years, but it may bear repeating. Likewise, we should be horrified that a policy based on an expired emergency is not only being used but is one of the few effective tools in combatting illegal immigration. It really isn’t possible to oppose DACA, which is based on a memorandum from a Secretary of Homeland Security who left office nearly a decade ago, and support Title 42.

I think Justice Gorsuch is correct. The Supreme Court is using this case as a vehicle to define the degree to which states have an interest in immigration law. So to that extent, it may be a victory.

But, as Justice Gorsuch also notes, the courts should not be forced into policymaking roles. As conservatives, we’ve opposed this consistently when the courts get involved in making up voting laws and the boundaries of congressional districts. Keeping Title 42 in place is wrong because the reason for the regulation has expired. It is wrong because it insulates Congress and the Biden White House from their failure to address the illegal immigration crisis. It is wrong to have the courts dragged into doing what the Legislative and Executive Branches will not do.

Alito said the unprecedented leak of the Supreme Court’s draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade earlier this year made the right-leaning justices on the nation’s highest court “targets for assassination.”

“The leak also made those of us who were thought to be in the majority and (in) support of overruling Roe and Casey targets for assassination because it gave people a rational reason to think they could prevent that from happening by killing one of us,” he said in remarks Tuesday at the Heritage Foundation. //

Actually, the court’s legitimacy depends not on its ideological majority nor public opinion but rather adherence to fīat jūstitia ruat cælum (“let justice be done though the heavens fall.”) If there is no obeisance to law, there is inevitable chaos.

Alito’s expressed views sharply contrast with recent comments by fellow Justice Elena Kagan, whose liberal views are no secret. It doesn’t help matters when the person in a black robe sitting next to you passive-aggressively undermines court authority with insinuations.

Kagan said that on the question of legitimacy, the popularity of the court’s rulings is not the issue. Instead, she added, a “court is legitimate when it’s acting like a court,” by respecting past precedents and not asserting authority to make political or policy decisions.

“When courts become extensions of the political process, when people see them as extensions of the political process, once people see them as trying just to impose personal preferences on a society, irrespective of the law, that’s when there’s a problem,” Kagan said.

One assumes that by respecting past precedents, Kagan isn’t referring to Dred Scott v. Sanford. This means “past precedents” translates into “earlier rulings I like regardless of their legal soundness,” which means you’re judging on emotions and not law, which is not precisely what the Supreme Court is supposed to be doing. But I digress.

This is the sad yet natural outgrowth of embracing feelings over facts; a view and implementation of government based on emotion and not law.

Regardless of the investigation’s status, however, Roberts’ failure to provide swift and deserved accountability to the individual responsible sets a dangerous precedent, one where overtly political figures operating at the high court can leak decisions ahead of their release without fear of repercussion. While the court’s current conservative majority stood firm in the face of vile threats coming from left-wing activists this time, there’s no guarantee that such a trend will hold regarding other high-profile cases in the future, or that future justices will possess similar fortitude.

If Roberts truly had any interest in preserving the image of the court as has been claimed, he should move to disclose any information about the status of the investigation and any of its conclusive findings. Anything short is simply playing politics and further contributing to Americans’ increasing distrust of their country’s institutions.

Frustrated by a slew of conservative legal victories, Democrats introduced the TERM Act, which would establish 18-year term limits for Supreme Court justices, after which they would “assume senior status,” a quasi-retirement that drastically reduces their caseload and corresponding influence. To fill these vacancies, the president would appoint a new justice during the first and third years of his term. Cast as “an effort to restore legitimacy and independence to the nation’s highest court,” the TERM Act would ironically undermine both, transforming the court from an institution of law to a panel of politicians. //

Our Founding Fathers created the judiciary to be the “bulwark” of a limited government. Judges were to keep the federal government and its constituent parts in their proper spheres of authority and safeguard political minorities against the depredations of the governing class. To do either, however, the framers understood that the judiciary must be independent of Congress and the president. Otherwise, warned James Madison, “the stronger faction c[ould] readily unite and oppress the weaker,” rendering the Constitution’s guarantees an empty promise.

Life tenure completely severs “all sense of dependence” between the judiciary and the politicians responsible for their commission, empowering judges to check government excess without fear for their livelihoods. If enacted, the TERM Act would spell the demise of judicial independence. Justices would no longer decide cases in accordance with the letter and spirit of the law. Instead, concern for future employment would sway reason and undermine the legitimacy of the Supreme Court as an impartial arbiter of the law. //

the TERM Act endangers our constitutional design and the individual liberty it secures.

Leo O'Malley
@LeoTOMalley
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New polling data out on #Dobbs:

1) Overturning #RoeVsWade: 45% Support/55% Oppose

2) 37% would ban abortion entirely w/ only rape and incest exceptions

3) 49% support abortion ban after 6 wks

4) 72%!! support abortion ban after 15wks

5) Only 10% support Dem. position of allowing abortion up until birth.

6) 44% say it is better for states to set abortion standards; 31% say Congress; and 25% say #SCOTUS

7) 63% say #SCOTUS is legitimate; 59% say it is wrong for Dems to call #SCOTUS illegitimate

8) 36% say #Dobbs makes it more likely they will vote GOP in '22; 36% say more likely to vote for Dem.; 29% no difference

https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/HHP_June2022_KeyResults.pdf
3:04 PM · Jul 4, 2022 //

These results are just mind-numbing because they are nothing but a ball of contradictions. 55 percent do not approve of the overturning of Roe. Yet, 44 percent, a plurality, believe that states should be able to make their own laws regarding abortion.

But the biggest “huh” moment comes when you see that 72 percent (!) of Americans believe that abortion should be banned after 15 weeks. Guess that that requires? The overturning of Roe (and Casey). //

So are Americans just really dumb? Or are they being fed so much misinformation that they don’t even know that they hold contradictory positions? I think the answer is mostly the latter. The media have been relentless in conflating the ending of Roe with a supposed federal ban on abortion that simply doesn’t exist. Pollsters also often choose to make their questions on the specific court decisions as inflammatory as possible.

Still, what we are seeing even in the contradictions of this poll is that Americans’ true feelings are far more in line with the Republican position than the Democrat position.

The film, Created Equal: Clarence Thomas In His Own Words was released in 2020, and offered a unique glimpse into Justice Clarence Thomas’ life and judicial philosophy. Since his 1991 confirmation hearings, the legacy media has delighted in poisoning the well with lies, smears, and racist tropes about the Justice. With the assistance of documentary filmmaker Michael Pack, Mark Paoletta decided to dig a new well, one that allowed people to draw their conclusions from Justice Thomas’ own life, words, and writings.

Pack spent 25 hours filming Justice Thomas, and six additional hours with his wife Ginni — a voluminous amount of discourse that was reduced to a two-hour documentary. Sadly, this left a prodigious amount of information on who the Justice is as a person, as well as his writings and viewpoints, unexplored. So, Paoletta decided that a book of the same name was in order. //

I sat down with Paoletta for an hour, and he stated that he is making it his life’s mission to present a true, candid, and unadorned portrait of this consequential jurist.

It’s a fascinating conversation that gives a glimpse not only into Clarence Thomas the United States Supreme Court Justice, but into Clarence Thomas the man and the humanitarian.