SUPREME COURT: JUSTICE SCALIA DEATH AND SCOTUS CHANGES

[Maggot]

He's gonna have to pick someone like Snow White or Mother Teresa maybe someone nobody has heard about that was brought up in another country that moved to America and has no past to speak of. 

[Maggot]

I think it may come down to a wall for a judge. I do not believe that one side is any better than the other. 300 people talking and  posturing and preening is easier to negotiate than an entire nation

I've had a premonition R.B.G. 1/11/19

[Maggot]

I can understand why Pelosi did not want the SOTU address until later. it would be bad optics to have a Supreme court sitting in with Ruth Bader missing. Maybe she will make it to work later. I have not heard a word on her condition in a while. Although I do know names have been tossed around Washington lately.

[Duchess]

I can understand why Pelosi did not want the SOTU address until later.

*ahem* That everything to do with trump and nothing to do with RBG but you know that given how that information is readily available.

[Fry Guy]

No it was Pelosi and a power play. She admitted that

[Maggot]

Weekend at Ruthy's  IDK she's pretty friggin old.

[Fry Guy]

As long as her eyes are moving and her heart is beating, they will say she is able yo fulfill her obligations and duties on the Supreme Court

[Maggot]

Actually she could fulfill; the responsibility's of most congressmen and half the janitorial staff. but those janitors are pretty swift.

[Fry Guy]

"Ruth can you talk?"
"Mmmm..."
"Well you all just heard her say she is not retiring and doesnt want Amy Barrett replacing her"

[HairOfTheDog]

Supreme Court Rulings 2019 -- Follow Up to Posts 573 - 576

With less than two weeks left in the U.S. Supreme Court's term, the justices handed down four decisions on Monday. Defying predictions, three were decided by shifting liberal-conservative coalitions.

Below are the summary details.

1. Double Jeopardy Case:  dual sovereignty upheld
In a 7-2 vote, the court reaffirmed its 100-year-old rule declaring that state governments and the federal government may each prosecute a person separately for the same crime, without violating the Constitution's double jeopardy clause. Dissenting were the court's leading liberal justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and one of its most conservative justices, Neil Gorsuch.

(continued)

[HairOfTheDog]

2.  Republican Racial Gerrymandering: Republicans denied in their appeal 
Spurning pleas from Virginia Republicans, the court let stand decisions by lower courts finding that 11 state House districts were racially gerrymandered in violation of the Constitution. 

The Supreme Court said the Republican-dominated Virginia House of Delegates had no legal standing to appeal to the Supreme Court on its own when the state Senate and the state's attorney general had decided against appealing.

Ginsburg wrote the opinion for the 5-4 majority. She was joined by conservative justices Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas and liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Dissenting were conservative justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts, as well as liberal justice Stephen Breyer.

(continued)

[HairOfTheDog]

3. States' Rights to Ban Uranium Mining (despite Federal objection):  states prevail 
The court upheld Virginia's ban on uranium mining. In a 6-3 vote, the justices said that the state law was not superseded by the federal Atomic Energy Act.

Writing for the court's majority, Gorsuch said the Atomic Energy Act gives the federal government the authority to regulate nuclear safety but not the authority to regulate mining itself. 

Fellow conservatives Thomas and Kavanaugh joined the Gorsuch opinion in full, but liberal justices Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan agreed only with his bottom line. They refused to sign on to Gorsuch's broad language about matters that they said, "sweep well beyond the confines of this case." Dissenting were Roberts, Breyer and Alito.

(continued)

[HairOfTheDog]

4. Controlled Speech / Discrimination by Private Business in Public Forum:  private business' rights upheld
The only classic conservative-liberal split on Monday came in a case testing whether a private corporation that runs a public access TV channel in New York City is a public forum that, like a public park, cannot discriminate against speakers.

The court, in a 5-4 vote, concluded that the public access channel was owned by Time Warner, not by the city. And because it was privately owned, the channel could not be sued for refusing to air a movie.

Kavanaugh wrote the decision for the five conservative justices, declaring that "[M]erely hosting speech by others is not a traditional, exclusive public function."

Therefore, channel operators cannot be sued for violating the First Amendment guarantee of free speech. At first blush, at least, the decision would seem to preclude First Amendment lawsuits against private platform operators, like Twitter and Facebook, though Kavanaugh warned that the decision should not be read "too broadly."

Dissenting were the court's four liberal justices.

[HairOfTheDog]

June Rulings Pending

On Thursday, the court is expected to hand down more of the 20 remaining decisions on its current docket. 

Among those are three blockbuster cases of the term:

• Separation of Church & State -- The American Legion v. American Humanist Association: a case from Maryland that tests whether a giant World War I memorial in the shape of a Latin cross is, as the challengers maintain, a symbol of Christianity that violates the Constitution's ban on establishment of religion. The objectors are seeking its removal to private property and an end to taxpayer funding of the cross.
  

• Fair & Representative Elections --   Rucho v. Common Cause (North Carolina) and Lamone v. Benisek(Maryland): cases from North Carolina and Maryland that test whether there is any constitutional limit to extreme partisan gerrymandering that serves to entrench one-party domination of congressional seats in states that are more narrowly divided.
  

• Census Citizenship Questions -- Department of Commerce v. New York: State and local governments are challenging the Trump administration's plan to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. The Census Bureau's own experts have warned that adding the question will lead to a serious and uneven undercount of the population, with potentially profound political consequences.
  

Ref:  
https://www.npr.org/2019/06/17/733408135...hree-cases
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme...s-n1014771

[Maggot]

They could just add 10-20 million for any illegals..........

[HairOfTheDog]

June Rulings Pending

• Census Citizenship Questions -- Department of Commerce v. New York: State and local governments are challenging the Trump administration's plan to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. The Census Bureau's own experts have warned that adding the question will lead to a serious and uneven undercount of the population, with potentially profound political consequences.

Follow-up:

The Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s decision to include a citizenship question in the 2020 census, finding that the administration’s explanation for the question appeared to be “contrived.”

Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court’s four liberal justices in ruling against the Trump administration. The ruling sends the case back to a federal district court in New York for further consideration, but it leaves the Trump administration little time to make a new case for the citizenship question because the government must soon begin printing materials to carry out the decennial census.

Many federal funding programs are calculated using data from the once-a-decade census. The country’s 435 congressional seats are also apportioned based on census data.

The Constitution requires the U.S. government to count every person living in the United States every ten years. (Adding a question pertaining to citizenship, especially in today's political climate, could discourage undocumented immigrants from getting counted and lead to a population under-count and unrepresentative congressional seat counts in diverse regions of the country.)

But, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and other Trump officials have argued that adding a citizenship question, which hasn’t been in the full decennial census for over 50 years, will help the federal government enforce the Voting Rights Act.

The court’s 5-4 decision held that Ross came into office determined to add a citizenship question to the census, and appeared to invent the argument about enforcing the Voting Rights Act much later.

“It is rare to review a record as extensive as the one before us when evaluating informal agency action— and it should be. But having done so for the sufficient reasons we have explained, we cannot ignore the disconnect between the decision made and the explanation given,” Roberts wrote.

In two separate dissents, conservative justices argued the court’s decision trampled on the executive branch.

Ref:  https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politic...17942.html

[Fry Guy]

The Supreme Court has no business second guessing intent or thought policing. If it is against the law and has no legal precedent it should be rejected otherwise it is legal or illegal. Roberts copped a lot of warranted shit for this decision from his own peers

[HairOfTheDog]

June Rulings Pending

[*]Separation of Church & State -- The American Legion v. American Humanist Association: a case from Maryland that tests whether a giant World War I memorial in the shape of a Latin cross is, as the challengers maintain, a symbol of Christianity that violates the Constitution's ban on establishment of religion. The objectors are seeking its removal to private property and an end to taxpayer funding of the cross.

Follow-up:

In a 7 - 2 ruling, the court held the cross did not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because (1) it was significant as a secular World War I symbol and (2) it acquired historical importance.

Justice Alito wrote the majority opinion. Justice Breyer filed a concurring opinion, joined by Justice Kagan. Justice Gorsuch filed a concurring opinion, joined by Justice Thomas. Justice Kavanaugh filed a concurring opinion. Justice Thomas filed an opinion concurring in judgment. Justice Kagan concurred in part. 

Justice Ginsburg filed a dissenting opinion, joined by Justice Sotomayor, writing, "Decades ago, this Court recognized that the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution demands governmental neutrality among religious faiths, and between religion and nonreligion. ... Numerous times since, the Court has reaffirmed the Constitution’s commitment to neutrality. Today the Court erodes that neutrality commitment, diminishing precedent designed to preserve individual liberty and civic harmony in favor of a 'presumption of constitutionality for longstanding monuments, symbols, and practices.'"

Case summary and Justice opinions:  https://ballotpedia.org/The_American_Leg...ssociation

[HairOfTheDog]

June Rulings Pending

• Fair & Representative Elections --   Rucho v. Common Cause (North Carolina) and Lamone v. Benisek(Maryland): cases from North Carolina and Maryland that test whether there is any constitutional limit to extreme partisan gerrymandering that serves to entrench one-party domination of congressional seats in states that are more narrowly divided.
  

Follow-up:  

I really wish the Supreme Court had ruled against extreme partisan gerrymandering anywhere in the country, but unfortunately they kicked the issue back down to the lower courts.  

On June 27, 2019, the court ruled 5-4 that partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions that fall beyond the jurisdiction of the federal judiciary. The high court remanded the case to the lower court with instructions to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction.

All of the conservative Justices concurred with the opinion that voter districting guidelines should be left solely to the states, while all of the liberal judges disagreed.

Case summary and Justice opinions:  https://ballotpedia.org/Rucho_v._Common_Cause

[aussiefriend]

Hang in there Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Saw a documentary on her here in Australia, what a woman, what a life.