Senate The Supreme Court

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/16/politics/supreme-court-cfpb-thomas/index.html

I'm wondering if they ruled this way on the CFPB to soften the blow for when they likely overrule Chevron at the end of the term. That would allow conservative lower-level judges to basically gut any agency's agenda without striking down the existence of the agency itself.

Thoughts?

 

Absolutely. The Supreme Court is a little gun-shy after the blowback from gutting Roe was much larger than anticipated. Plus, Thomas needs something to make him look "impartial".
Also, lol at Alito referring to the "Stuart kings" in his dissent. The guy is so hyper Originalist he doesn't want to use references dated after 1800.

 

I just read about that on Yahoo News. No one should be surprised by his stance.

 

Today is an opinion announcement day.

We could get a ruling on EMTALA today (although I suspect the controversial stuff will wait until the end of the month), but keep your eyes peeled.

 

Emily Baden was awesome to stand up to Alito and his wife. She deserves cudos with a c.

 

Now that Mrs. Alito has said that she will be “liberated” to sue Ms. Baden for defamation, this indicates that Alito plans to retire before she sues Ms. Baden for defamation. He’s most likely waiting for Trump to nominate his successor and that of Thomas.

Also, it's pretty odd that she's still upset over reporters complaining about her clothes in 2006. She's had a long time to get over it.

 

Both Alito and his wife are unhinged. And they come off as angrier than Kavanaugh and Thomas. I can see why they like each other. They are fully radicalized Trump supporters, being white Christian nationalists (as my anti-racist and LBGTQ-friendly church would call them).

I seem to recall hearing that Bush deliberately crashed the Harriet Miers nomination to get Alito in. Was that speculation incorrect?

 

I think at that point in his Presidency, Bush was already in retreat from his hard right phase under Cheney. My impression was that he was trying to do a wink and nod "trust me" thing with conservatives where he hoped Meiers lack of record would quiet Democratic dissent while his personal relationship could ensure they way he liked on a couple key cases. As it turned out, conservatives didn't trust him at all and demanded someone who was more openly and flagrantly conservative, even at the cost of raising the hackles of Senate Democrats.

 

Oh, okay. That makes more sense. Bush was never that crafty. He was pretty skilled sometimes at making his lies and the lies of Cheney and Co. sound reasonable in speeches, but not that sneaky beyond it.

And I recall that's correct, JabbaWocky. If memory serves, Bush stopped listening to Cheney almost completely by the final two years, and he had had a rift with Cheney as early as late 2003 or early 2004. So, by 2005, when this went down, that would explain this. He was going with Miers because she as an unqualified but loyal sycophant and friend. So, maybe Alito was insecure about being the second choice or something. Overall, his wife and he both come off as insecure in aggressive ways. Thanks for the reminder of all that, JW.

The main important thing is that these recording reveal that Alito doesn't care about admitting how biased and hard-right he is. He's just as unqualified as Thomas to be on the bench. He may not be as corrupt as Thomas in a financial sense, but he is just as much in a moral sense.

 

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the abortion pill opinion for a unanimous court
From CNN's John Fritze


The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a lawsuit challenging the Food and Drug Administration’s approach to regulating the abortion pill mifepristone.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the opinion for a unanimous court.

The court ruled that the doctors and anti-abortion groups that had challenged access to the drug did not have standing to sue. Though technical, the court’s reasoning is important because it might encourage other mifepristone challenges in the future.

“We recognize that many citizens, including the plaintiff doctors here, have sincere concerns about and objections to others using mifepristone and obtaining abortions,” Kavanaugh wrote.

“But citizens and doctors do not have standing to sue simply because others are allowed to engage in certain activities – at least without the plaintiffs demonstrating how they would be injured by the government’s alleged under-regulation of others.”

***

They left the door open for future challenges. While the outcome was good, this was a technical ruling that completely ignored the merits (which is the only reason it got nine votes).

I'm far less optimistic about the EMTALA case. That one will probably drop at the end of the term.

 

There seems to be a number of cases over the years - especially from the "legislate from the bench" case mill of the 5th Appeals Court - where the disgruntled conservative judges technically rule against them while legally grumbling about how they went about it the wrong way.
But it also lends itself to obnoxious bothsiders to pretend that the court is nonpartisan because of rulings like this.

 

This case was meant to "soften the blow" for when they overrule Chevron and carve emergency federally-guaranteed abortion care out of EMTALA. Both are coming.

Also, technical-based rulings do not shut the door on merits-based ones, so the availability of mifepristone could easily come back before them (Kavanaugh's opinion practically invited that).

 

I mean, they've had rulings that basically read "With deepest regret we are forced to rule against this, please go back and do it right this time"

 

And of course, they're hemming and hawing on Trump's immunity plea.

 

8-1 against the NLRB demonstrates that Republican appointees aren't the only problem with the courts when it comes to defending the interests of working people.

 

That decision isn't as clear-cut as people are making it out to be. To be clear, I'm also not a fan -- but the NLRB had, more or less, unilaterally imposed a new standard of national preliminary injunctions vs. what SCOTUS had previously more or less endorsed.

Now, I'd also love to see the Fifth Circuit hung on its own petard with these decisions since Matt K. tends to issue injunctions at the drop of a hat... it won't happen of course, but that's the hope.

 

Bump stocks are legal. The most important value of this country is to murder as many people as quickly as possible.

 

Fertilized eggs count more than people. I'm simultaneously disgusted and not-at-all surprised.

 

essentially the only restriction on guns to result from a mass shooting in the last 7 years. Mass shootings have been completely decoupled from doing something about mass shootings.

 

You can tell that the conservative majority is still sore about their bad reputation because
1) They keep pleading technicalities ('technically the bump stock does not increase the number of shots per trigger pull')
2) They defer to Congress, knowing full well that they won't do ****
Even Alito's traditional "Legally I can't find fault but I still disagree because I find it immoral" dissents haven't been showing up that much.

 

They are the SUPREME COURT. They are above petty calculations like consequentialism or weighing winners and losers. Without fear or prejudice, they just call balls and strikes.

. . .

Also, have you considered the consequences of just letting the law kick-in automatically to disqualify Donald Trump for his insurrection? That would make him an automatic loser in the Presidential elections, and make Republican mega-donors that usually fund million dollar vacations to Bali quite unhappy. You can't just blindly interpret rules without considering whose lives would be affected. One has to be nuanced about these things.