SCOTUS

[raison de arizona]

I don't think they put a Pride flag up for Pride Month just to annoy Mrs. Alito.

That was just a happy side effect.

[pipistrelle]

The banality of evil.

[RVInit]

I don't think they put a Pride flag up for Pride Month just to annoy Mrs. Alito.

That was just a happy side effect.

[sterngard friegen]

His wife is just as vapid

Here's a better flag for Martha-Ann.

[neonzx]

Supreme Court maintains access to abortion pill mifepristone

The Supreme Court has rejected a lawsuit challenging the Food and Drug Administration’s approach to regulating the abortion pill mifepristone with a ruling that will continue to allow the pills to be mailed to patients without an in-person doctor’s visit.

The ruling is a significant setback for the anti-abortion movement in what was the first major Supreme Court case on reproductive rights since the court’s conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

The appeal was filed by anti-abortion doctors who said their practices have been affected because they must treat women who had complications from the drug.

The FDA and outside medical groups have stressed that mifepristone is safe. The doctors have faced scrutiny over whether they have been harmed in a way that gives them standing to sue.

Sorry. no link but is on CNN.

[SuzieC]

I'm amazed.

[raison de arizona]

https://x.com/AWeissmann_/status/1801267433925149024

A cynical person might think that the conservative Justices (who routinely ignore "standing" doctrine when it suits them) did this to keep the entire issue of reproductive rights out of the election cycle (where vast majority reject what they are doing), so they can take a hatchet to them after November.

No standing in the mifepristone case, opinion by Kavanaugh.
https://supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-235_n7ip.pdf

[AndyinPA]

IANAL, but I am not surprised. This SC is very political. This is a very political year. They are very aware of what happened two years ago in the Dobb's decision. They are not about to fuel the fire.

There was never any standing here, anyway.

Get a new president~and it could go away in a day by executive action, or we could wait for the new head of the FDA to declare it too dangerous.

[bob]

What I find interesting is that 5th Circuit held there was standing. In unanimously reversing the 5th here, SCOTUS leaned on U.S. v. Texas, last term's 8-1 case that reversed a standing holding from ... the 5th Circuit. (But do say more about the 9th "Circus.")

Thomas did write a concurrence about a form of standing not really implicated in the case (he's against it, so at least that is doctrinally consistent).

[raison de arizona]

A unified court?

SCOTUS opinion today in Vidal v. Elster raised important 1st Amend questions vis-a-vis trademark rights. Let's see how well the Justices of the Supreme Court clarified the law for us today:

[raison de arizona]

Senator Durbin says Justice Thomas is still dirty(er) and not coming clean. News at 11.

Tapper: Breaking, right now, Senator Durbin says Justice Clarence Thomas took several additional free trips on the private plane of GOP megadonor, Harlan crow. Durbin says Thomas did not disclose these additional trips..

[raison de arizona]

You know. The usual.
https://x.com/BillKristol/status/1801277056170225875

It’s been SIX months since Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court for an expedited ruling on immunity so we could get to a trial on the January 6th case.

But hey, no rush. The Justices have been busy revising incomplete ethics forms, flying weird flags, and laboring over patent law.

[Ben-Prime]

A unified court?

SCOTUS opinion today in Vidal v. Elster raised important 1st Amend questions vis-a-vis trademark rights. Let's see how well the Justices of the Supreme Court clarified the law for us today:

just to confirm my understanding: this used the Lanham act as justification, so it came down to the name. If the trademark was for '45 Too Small' would that have been acceptable?

[AndyinPA]

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/suprem ... rcna154651

WASHINGTON — In a loss for the Biden administration, the Supreme Court on Friday ruled that federal ban on “bump stocks,” gun accessories that allow semi-automatic rifles to fire more quickly, is unlawful.

In a 6-3 ruling on ideological lines with the court's conservatives in the majority, the court held that an almost 100-year-old law aimed at banning machine guns cannot legitimately be interpreted to include bump stocks.

Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas said that a firearm equipped with the accessory does not meet the definition of "machinegun" under federal law.

The ruling prompted a vigorous dissent from liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

"When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck," she wrote. Sotomayor also took the rare step of reading a summary of her dissent in court.

Even with the federal ban out of the picture, bump stocks will still not be readily available nationwide. Eighteen states have already banned them, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit gun-control group. Congress could also act.

The Trump administration the imposed prohibition after the Las Vegas mass shooting in 2017, in which Stephen Paddock used bump stock-equipped firearms to open fire on a country music festival, initially killing 58 people.

The Supreme Court in 2019 declined to block the regulation. The already conservative court has tilted further to the right since then, with conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, replacing liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in 2020.

Conservatives now have a 6-3 majority that has backed gun rights in previous cases.

The National Firearms Act was enacted in 1934 to regulate machine guns in response to Prohibition-era gangster violence.

The lawsuit was brought by Texas-based gun owner Michael Cargill, a licensed dealer who owned two bump stocks before the ban went into effect and later surrendered them to the government.

Bump stocks use the recoil energy of a trigger pull to enable the user to fire up to hundreds of rounds with what the federal government calls “a single motion.”
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Cargill’s lawyers say it is a difficult skill to master.

Some gun rights advocates, including the National Rifle Association, initially backed President Donald Trump’s move to regulate bump stocks after the Las Vegas shooting, but have since lined up in opposition to it.

The case does not implicate the scope of the right to bear arms under the Constitution’s Second Amendment. The challengers argue that the government does not have the authority to ban bump stocks under the 1934 law.

The 1968 Gun Control Act defined “machine gun” to include accessories “for use in converting a weapon” into a machine gun, and the ATF concluded that bump stocks meet that definition.

Much of the legal fight hinged on the definition of machine gun as a weapon that can automatically fire more than one shot “by a single function of the trigger.”

The government argued that the phrase refers to the actions of the shooter, with a single action required to fire multiple shots. Cargill’s lawyers argued that it refers to the action inside the firearm when the trigger is engaged. Because a bump stock still requires the trigger to be engaged for each shot, it is not a machine gun, they argued.

Lower courts were divided over the issue, with both the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the Cincinnati-based 6th Circuit ruling that the ban was unlawful.

The Biden administration appealed in both cases, while gun rights advocates contested ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that upheld the ban.

The court has backed gun rights in cases directly addressing the scope of the Second Amendment, including the 2022 ruling that found there is a right to carry a handgun outside the home.

But in a case argued in November, the court indicated it might stop short of striking down some long-standing gun laws in a case involving a ban on possessing firearms by people accused of domestic violence.
Lawrence Hurley

Lawrence Hurley covers the Supreme Court for NBC News.

[pipistrelle]

Bump stocks use the recoil energy of a trigger pull to enable the user to fire up to hundreds of rounds with what the federal government calls “a single motion.”

And in what non-combat situation do you need that ability? Maybe mass murdering?

[zekeb]

Bump stocks use the recoil energy of a trigger pull to enable the user to fire up to hundreds of rounds with what the federal government calls “a single motion.”

And in what non-combat situation do you need that ability? Maybe mass murdering?

"A well-regulated militia ...... "

[keith]

Bump stocks use the recoil energy of a trigger pull to enable the user to fire up to hundreds of rounds with what the federal government calls “a single motion.”

And in what non-combat situation do you need that ability? Maybe mass murdering?

"A well-regulated militia ...... "

Well snap... right here is yer WELL REGULATED MILITIA

Article 1 Section 8
The Congress shall have power...

• To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;
• To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;
• To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

[Shizzle Popped]

[raison de arizona]

https://x.com/alaynatreene/status/1804163603026542888

Justice Samuel Alito was not present for a second day in a row as the justices handed down opinions in the Supreme Court’s courtroom Friday.

The Supreme Court has not responded to questions about his absence.

[raison de arizona]

Coincidence, I'm sure.
https://twitter.com/anyonewantchips/sta ... 8413093150

Your reminder that Neil Gorsuch tried to sell his $10.8M property for 2 years with no luck - but only 9 days after getting confirmed as a Supreme Court justice, he sold it to a lawyer with numerous cases before SCOTUS. Plus, he didn’t report it. Talk about stench on the bench.

Moar: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/2 ... e-00093579

[raison de arizona]

https://x.com/tribelaw/status/1803895149191188849

By the time the Court decides how much or how little king-like immunity Trump & future presidents will enjoy, everyone who hasn’t been asleep for the past 6 months will know it has granted Trump the indefensible gift of immunity by sheer delay.

That the Court doesn’t care what We the People think about that dishonest strategy bespeaks a boundless arrogance that should embolden efforts at enlarging the Court, imposing term limits, creating enforceable ethics rules, and requiring greater transparency.

[RTH10260]

opinion piece

Rightwing cases built on made-up stories keep making it to the US supreme court
Again and again, the conservative movement promotes cases based on inaccuracies, falsehoods and outright deceptions

Moira Donegan
Fri 21 Jun 2024 12.00 CEST

The first of many lies at the center of Moore v United States, the major tax case that the supreme court decided on Thursday, was that the issue at stake was an existing tax law.

Conservative movement lawyers had taken up the cause of Charles and Kathleen Moore, a Washington state couple who own a substantial stake in an India-based company that manufactures farm equipment. The Moores were given a one-time, $15,000 tax bill for their stake in the company under 2017’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the law colloquially known as the Trump tax cut. To pay for the steep cuts to federal revenue, that bill included a tax on foreign assets held by American shareholders – hence the bill that the Moores received from the IRS.

The Moores were nominally arguing that this provision was unconstitutional under the 16th amendment. But their argument was not confined to a narrow argument about that specific tax, because the case wasn’t really about the 2017 law at all. Rather, the Moores’ lawyers sought to use their case to drastically limit the scope of Congress’s taxation power, with an eye toward pre-emptively banning the wealth tax that has been proposed by the senator Elizabeth Warren.

The 2017 provision, then, was a mere pretext: the case that came before the court was a much broader project, one that, by some estimates, would have unraveled as much as a third of the federal tax code.

Ultimately, the court ruled 7-2 to uphold the tax, thereby preserving both the theoretical possibility of a future wealth tax and also much of the federal government’s funding structure. The majority opinion was authored by Brett Kavanaugh. Clarence Thomas, joined by Neil Gorsuch, dissented, and would have thrown out the tax, narrowing congressional taxation power only to “realized income”. That interpretation has not carried the day – not yet.

But the fact that the case came before the supreme court at all reflects a troubling trend in the conservative legal movement, aided by Republican-controlled lower courts: the advancement of cases that promise to promote rightwing policy priorities even when the alleged facts are demonstrably untrue. Because Moore v United States was based on another lie, too: the lie that the Moores have not received income from their investment in the Indian company. They have.



https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... vative-lie

[pipistrelle]

I’m not allowed to accept more than nominal gifts, partly due to government contracts. That’s fine by me. SCOTUS should be held to same standard.

[raison de arizona]

Can they do that? Seems like Roberts would just shoot them the finger.

[Ben-Prime]

Also, any gift that doesn't involve travel or hospitality which is of direct benefit to the justice will simply be routed as a good or service to the spouse of the justice. I mean, it will effectively end cruises, flights, mansion stays, etc., but not things like RVs.