Supreme Court Justices heard arguments in a potentially landmark case on whether Puerto Ricans in the island should be denied some federal benefits.
Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/supreme-court-seems-divided-puerto-ricos-exclusion-federal-benefits-rcna4969
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Nicole Acevedo
Case brought by NRA affiliate in New York seeks to overturn law that largely prohibits concealed weapons being carried in public
The supreme court will hear arguments on Wednesday in a gun rights case that could lead to more guns on the streets of New York and California, and affect restrictions on carrying firearms in airports, bars, churches and schools.
The case centers on a New York law that prohibits people from carrying a concealed handgun in public unless they can demonstrate a need to carry the weapon.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/03/supreme-court-gun-rights-case-new-york-law
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Adam Gabbatt and agencies
The legal challenge comes from coal companies and energy-producing states, led by West Virginia.
Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-agrees-consider-epa-s-authority-limit-greenhouse-gasses-n1282751
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Pete Williams
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments on Texas’ novel abortion ban but declined for a second time to temporarily halt the law as litigation proceeds over its constitutionality.
The justices will take up a pair of challenges to the law on a highly accelerated timetable with arguments scheduled for Nov. 1, the court said in an order issued Friday.
One of the suits was filed by abortion providers who said they were intimidated by the new law’s threat of private lawsuits and civil penalties starting at $10,000 for anyone who performs an abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy or aids someone in getting such an abortion. The justices, by a 5-4 vote, refused emergency relief in that case two days after the Texas law took effect last month.
The other case was brought by the Justice Department on behalf of the federal government and has the backing of President Joe Biden’s administration.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor released a partial dissent from the high court’s Friday order. She argued that the court should block the Texas law while it considers the issues involved.
Sotomayor also said the court was making a mistake by allowing Texas to keep its law in place by using a private enforcement mechanism that the law’s drafters have boasted was designed to evade quick action by the courts.
“Women seeking abortion care in Texas are entitled to relief from this Court now,” Sotomayor, an appointee of President Barack Obama, wrote. “Because of the Court’s failure to act today, that relief, if it comes, will be too late for many.”
The arguments in the Texas cases are set for a month before the court is scheduled to hear a challenge to a Mississippi law that seeks to ban abortion of fetuses older than 15 weeks.
That case is seen by advocates on both sides of the abortion debate as a direct threat to Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that found a constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy. In a filing with the Supreme Court Thursday, lawyers for Texas said they believe that Roe v. Wade should be overruled, but that such a step is unnecessary to reject the challenges to their state’s unusual statute.
While litigants normally have at least a month to file briefs, and often much longer, attorneys handling the cases will have to prepare those submissions in a matter of a few days. The initial briefs, including the expected slew of amicus briefs that are filed in any abortion case, are due by Wednesday afternoon.
Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/22/supreme-court-texas-abortion-ban-hearing-516775
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Josh Gerstein
The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear two cases challenging Texas’ abortion law, which bans the procedure as soon as six weeks into pregnancy, but left the law in place in the meantime.
Why it matters: The high court will now officially hear three major abortion cases this term: Two on Texas and Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a challenge to a Mississippi law that bans nearly all abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy.
Source: https://www.axios.com/supreme-court-abortion-challenge-texas-ban-edd62275-dd7e-4288-aa03-3515505e46a5.html
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Oriana Gonzalez
Texas on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to keep in place a law that bans abortions after an embryo’s cardiac activity is detected, which can be as soon as six weeks and before many people know they are pregnant.
Driving the news: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is asking the high court to ignore the Justice Department’s emergency request that they temporarily block the law while federal courts consider its constitutionality since it “lacks standing because it has not been injured by SB 8.”
The big picture: The court, which currently has a 6-3 conservative majority, previously allowed the law to go into effect but did not rule on its constitutionality.
Context: Instead of being formally enforced by the state, the law encourages private citizens to sue anyone who assists pregnant people with getting an abortion.
Catch up quick: Earlier this month, a three-judge panel for the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the DOJ’s initial emergency request to suspend the ban.
Between the lines: In its request, the DOJ also raised the possibility that the Supreme Court could take up their case (U.S. v. Texas) before lower courts reach a decision.
What’s next: The Supreme Court could either grant or reject the DOJ’s application, or it could decide to take up the entire case.
Read Texas’ response:
Source: https://www.axios.com/texas-supreme-court-leave-abortion-ban-75372304-7c2c-4274-9a3a-83c849ba15dc.html
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Oriana Gonzalez
The rulings are a further sign the court is unwilling to second-guess police officers responding to emergency calls.
Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-rules-police-two-lawsuits-claiming-excessive-force-n1281763
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Pete Williams
The Biden administration has asked the Supreme Court to take emergency action that would block Texas’ novel abortion ban from being enforced while litigation over its constitutionality goes forward.
The Justice Department’s new filing, submitted Monday, asks the justices to restore a preliminary injunction a federal district court judge in Texas issued earlier this month after concluding that the law violates longstanding legal precedent by seeking to ban abortions after about six weeks gestation.
“Allowing S.B. 8 to remain in force would irreparably harm those interests and perpetuate the ongoing irreparable injury to the thousands of Texas women who are being denied their constitutional rights,” acting Solicitor General Brian Fletcher wrote in the 39-page application. “Texas, in contrast, would suffer no cognizable injury from a preliminary injunction barring enforcement of a plainly unconstitutional law.”
The new request appears to face an uphill battle at the high court because a previous submission from abortion providers for an emergency order blocking the law was turned down by the justices, 5-4.
However, the Biden administration argued that the new request stands on firmer ground for technical reasons. Fletcher said that the doctrine of sovereign immunity undercut the abortion providers’ case but poses no obstacle to the suit filed by the Justice Department last month.
“This suit does not raise those questions because it was brought against the State of Texas itself, and the State has no immunity from suits by the United States,” Fletcher wrote.
The New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals plans to hold oral arguments on the Texas law in December, right around the time the Supreme Court is set to take up Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban and the fate of the nearly-half-century-old precedent guaranteeing abortion rights, Roe vs. Wade.
The high court is likely to act in the coming days or weeks on the latest request to freeze enforcement of Texas’ ban. But for now, nearly all abortions in the state have halted, forcing those who have the financial means to travel out of state for the procedure.
Texas’s abortion ban took effect Sept. 1 after the justices failed to rule on the abortion providers’ emergency motion before the law’s effective date. It was not until the early hours of the following day that the high court’s ruling emerged formally rejecting the request.
The justices’ decision not to step in last month made Texas the first state to implement a ban on abortion early in pregnancy since the Supreme Court found a constitutional right to the procedure in 1973.
The Texas law was designed to be difficult to preempt in court because its enforcement depends on suits filed by private parties, rather than state or local prosecutors. The measure, dubbed a “heartbeat” law by its proponents, prohibits abortions from the time cardiac activity can be detected in the fetus — typically about six weeks into pregnancy.
Under the law, individuals who assist someone in obtaining an abortion face a minimum penalty of $10,000 if successfully sued under the statute. The threat of such suits — and a smattering of them actually filed in court in recent weeks — have led most abortion providers in the state to stop providing most abortions.
One of the biggest forces behind the law, the anti-abortion advocacy group Texas Right to Life, said because of this unusual enforcement mechanism they are confident the law “will ultimately withstand this legal challenge and succeed where other states’ heartbeat bills have not.”
The statute was briefly blocked by Austin-based U.S. District Court Judge Robert Pitman on Oct. 6, but was reinstated just 48 hours later by a 5th Circuit panel, which clinics said caused chaos for patients across the state.
“When the Fifth Circuit panel stayed the preliminary injunction last weekend, more than 20 patients at Planned Parenthood health centers had urgent care ripped away from them — even though they had access less than 24 hours before,” said Helene Krasnoff of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “We appreciate the Department of Justice moving quickly to ask the Supreme Court to intervene.”
The law includes no exemptions for victims of rape or incest, and it has prompted patients as young as 12 to seek out abortion clinics hours away in neighboring states.
Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/18/supreme-court-texas-abortion-ban-biden-administration-516192
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Josh Gerstein and Alice Miranda Ollstein
Overhauling the Supreme Court may turn out to be too heavy a lift for the high-powered legal panel that President Joe Biden tapped to consider reforms to the structure of the nation’s highest court, but the commission might have a bit more traction tinkering with the court’s beleaguered feeder system: the U.S. Senate.
While proposals to expand the court or put term limits on the justices seem all but dead on arrival given the opposition of some moderate Democrats, the 36-member commission — which is set to hold its next meeting on Friday — has also delved into the perceived failings of the Senate confirmation process for presidential nominees.
That process has grown increasingly contentious in recent decades. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was confirmed by a near-unanimous, 96-3 vote in 1993. But more recent nominations have triggered anger, division and recriminations. Those include then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s refusal to consider President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland in 2015, as well as the political conflagration that surrounded last-minute sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh in 2018.
Democrats and Republicans often describe the process as broken but typically blame the other side for the deterioration.
During a public but largely below-the-radar video conference meeting in July, Biden’s Supreme Court commission heard from reformers who said that establishing stronger rules and official timelines for hearings and votes on high court nominees could rein in what many see as epic dysfunction.
“I was very pleasantly surprised,” said Jeffrey Peck, who served as a counsel to Biden when he chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee in the late 1980s and is the author of one set of confirmation reform proposals. “I got some nice emails. … I’m cautiously optimistic.”
Peck carried out anonymous interviews with 25 people who’d served as former senior Senate staffers — and even some people who served as senators. He says the group was roughly evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. From that he crafted a series of proposals to overhaul the process.
The plan Peck floated seeks to guarantee Supreme Court nominees a vote under nearly all circumstances. Hearings would happen between 30 days and 50 days after a nomination, a committee vote would take place 10 days to 21 days after the hearings end, and consideration on the Senate floor would follow soon after.
Only a nomination made after Aug. 1 in an election year would be exempt from the timeline.
An initial “discussion” draft of the commission’s report, released on Thursday, sounded positive about the reforms, but wavered on whether the issue was squarely in the remit of the commission, which Biden established by executive order in February.
The draft report says confirmation reforms “merit close attention and consideration,” and notes “extensive and bipartisan testimony we received concerning the intense conflict that now characterizes that process.” The preliminary materials refer to an addendum that would address confirmation reforms, but no draft of that appeared to have been released on Thursday.
What was released did not sit well with those on the left demanding major changes to the court, such as increases in the number of justices, rotating panels or limits on justices’ terms, which currently run for life. While many casual observers might not have realized it, the commission was never asked to provide explicit recommendations on any of those proposals, but solely to review the arguments for and against them.
“This was not even close to being worth the wait,” said Brian Fallon of Demand Justice, a legal advocacy group. “The paralysis-by-analysis reflected here is exactly what you would expect from a commission made up mostly of academics, including several diehard conservatives who are fully content with the status quo.”
“From the beginning, the purpose of this commission was not to meaningfully confront the partisan capture of the Supreme Court, but rather to buy time for the Biden administration while it fights other legislative battles,” Fallon added.
Still, some liberals deeply concerned about the court’s current six-justice conservative majority said they welcomed any public discussion about the high court’s make-up and its future.
“The conversations the Supreme Court Commission has started are an important step towards achieving the reforms we so desperately need — up to and including expanding the Supreme Court,” said Rakim Brooks of the Alliance for Justice, another progressive judicial advocacy group. “The need for reform is substantial. Only democracy can save this court, and the commission’s report will help raise awareness that reform is not only possible, but necessary.”
Of course, one reason the commission’s marching orders don’t call for explicit recommendations is because Biden appears opposed to the idea of packing the court.
While he dodged on the issue during last year’s presidential campaign, as a senator in 1983 Biden called President Franklin Roosevelt’s attempt to add justices “bone-headed” and “a terrible, terrible mistake.”
Almost all the proposals to reform the court itself would require passage of a new law. Some may require a constitutional amendment. Those looking to improve the confirmation process emphasize that its rules could be reformed through a majority vote.
“I think they’re certainly more viable than some of the more structural reforms,” said Peck, the former Senate Judiciary counsel. “There’s a recognition on both sides of the aisle that the current process just does not work.”
Curt Levey, a prominent advocate for Republican Supreme Court nominees, said he thought the power McConnell used to halt the Garland nomination would be worth trading for a guarantee that future nominees won’t be bottled up.
“I hope something is done, because I think we’re heading towards the point where it will be almost impossible to confirm someone when the Senate and presidency are controlled by different parties,” Levey said. “That could be something some Republicans and some Democrats want, but I think it is not a good thing for the country.”
Levey, president of the Committee for Justice, conceded that it wasn’t really possible to lock in rules that a future Congress could not change. But he said an agreement on the process might prove difficult to dispose of in the heat of a future nomination.
Many of the proposals also include a delayed implementation to 2025 or later, meaning lawmakers and their staff wouldn’t know whether they or the opposition would be in charge in the Senate or in the White House when they kicked in.
“Part of the game has been delaying nominees for a variety of reasons, but nobody says that has to continue,” Levey said. “I’ve long been in favor of some sort of timetable to assure you get through the entire confirmation process. You may be defeated, but at least you’d get a vote, at least it incentivizes things in that direction.”
Asked last week about the commission’s forthcoming report, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said he didn’t have much insight into it. “I’m paying attention to it, but I don’t have any information,” he said.
Asked by POLITICO whether he was open to the changes to the confirmation process discussed by the panel, Durbin said, “Of course.”
Others close to the process say they think the reform effort is a fool’s errand.
“What they’re trying to do is force votes in committee and force votes on the Senate floor, and that’s just not going to happen,” said Mike Davis, a former Senate Judiciary Committee counsel under Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). “It’s up to the chairman and the majority leader, and they aren’t going to give that up.”
“That’s the biggest power of the chairman and majority leader. They get to control the agenda in the committee and on the floor,” Davis added. “There’s no chance they give away that power. … It’s a navel-gazing exercise by an irrelevant commission.”
While Democrats might be willing to take a gamble on the proposals, Republicans could be less willing. If the reforms had been in place in the past few years, then-President Donald Trump might have gotten to name only one or two Supreme Court justices instead of three. And GOP lawmakers who think they stand a decent chance of capturing control of the Senate in next fall’s elections may be loath to give up power they expect to soon regain.
Even some who endorse many of the confirmation reform proposals say that getting them adopted is basically hopeless.
Ben Wittes, a Brookings Institution scholar who wrote a book 15 years ago on the breakdown of the confirmation process, told the commission at its last hearing that increasing polarization had likely doomed the effort for rules-based changes.
“My main concern is interrupting that prisoner’s-dilemma mentality that both sides are operating under, and I don’t think we’re going to do that through that kind of technical reforms of rules,” said Wittes, a founder of the Lawfare blog. “That said, if we can, I think it would be a wonderful thing.”
Marianne LeVine contributed to this report.
Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/14/biden-scotus-panel-confirmation-process-516061
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Josh Gerstein
Capitol Police are investigating a suspicious vehicle in front of the Supreme Court on Tuesday morning, a day after the court convened for a new session.A notice from the Capitol Police’s Twitter account shortly be…
Source: https://thehill.com/homenews/news/575320-capitol-police-investigating-suspicious-vehicle-outside-supreme-court
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Cristina Marcos
The Supreme Court said Friday that Justice Brett Kavanaugh has tested positive for COVID-19.
Driving the news: Kavanaugh, who has been fully vaccinated since January, has no symptoms, per the Court.
The big picture: Kavanaugh’s positive test comes just days ahead of the start of a new term, which is expected to be the first in-person session with all nine justices since the pandemic forced proceedings to be held virtually.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with additional details throughout.
Source: https://www.axios.com/justice-brett-kavanaugh-tests-positive-covid-c5b096a0-bf19-4af1-8b4b-0499d89549ff.html
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Erin Doherty
Abortion is now effectively banned in Texas, and the U.S. Supreme Court decided not to block the 6-week “heartbeat” law in a 5-4 decision. Roe v. Wade is not formally overturned, but it is as good as dead to the women who need abortions in America’s second-most populous state and to anyone suspected of helping them—the law offers up to a $10,000 bounty to “abortion hunters” who privately sue them. — Read the rest
Source: https://boingboing.net/2021/09/02/supreme-court-refuses-to-block-texas-abortion-ban-in-5-4-decision.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=supreme-court-refuses-to-block-texas-abortion-ban-in-5-4-decision
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Rob Beschizza
Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer remains undecided about his future on the United States’ highest court, the longtime jurist said in an interview published Friday.
Breyer, who at 83 years old is the oldest member sitting on the court, has been cagey about any potential retirement plans in the face of a political pressure campaign to get him to step down while Democrats control the White House and the Senate.
In an interview with the New York Times timed to the release of his forthcoming book, Breyer indicated he is still weighing his decision.
“There are a lot of blurred things there, and there are many considerations,” he told the Times’ Adam Liptak. “They form a whole. I’ll make a decision.”
Still, Breyer, who was nominated to the high court by President Bill Clinton in 1994, gave some indications that he is mindful of the dynamics looming over his potential retirement. He cited the late Justice Antonin Scalia, whom he served on the court with, as saying he didn’t want his legacy on the court washed away by an ideologically opposed successor.
“He said, ‘I don’t want somebody appointed who will just reverse everything I’ve done for the last 25 years,’” Breyer said in the interview, which was conducted Thursday.
Breyer also signaled that he did not want to follow in the path of Scalia or Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, both of whom died while serving on the Supreme Court in recent years. Those vacancies immediately became bitter political battles that were ultimately won by Republicans and shifted the ideological balance of the court to the right.
“I don’t think I’m going to stay there till I die — hope not,” Breyer said.
Breyer also expressed reservations about proposals to dramatically alter the Supreme Court, such as expanding the number of justices as some progressives have suggested. The justice said proponents should “think twice, at least,” before such an undertaking.
“If A can do it, B can do it. And what are you going to have when you have A and B doing it?” he said.
Breyer said his concern is that such machinations risk undermining the court’s legitimacy in the eyes of the public.
“Nobody really knows, but there’s a risk, and how big a risk do you want to take?” he said.
Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/27/breyer-mulling-retirement-decision-506987
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Nick Niedzwiadek
The U.S. Supreme Court has ended the Biden administration’s executive moratorium on evictions during the Covid pandemic, ruling that congress must authorize it if it is to continue. The lifting of the moratorium was demanded by landlords eager to turf out tenants unable to pay their rent. — Read the rest
Source: https://boingboing.net/2021/08/27/supreme-court-blocks-pandemic-eviction-ban.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=supreme-court-blocks-pandemic-eviction-ban
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Rob Beschizza
Supreme Court Justice …
Source: https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/568740-barrett-rejects-bid-to-stop-obama-library-construction
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Rachel Frazin
President Joe Biden’s audacious move to assuage liberals by extending a pandemic-related moratorium on evictions puts him in a position he has so far avoided: inviting a high-profile showdown with the Supreme Court.
If the court — as expected — shoots down the policy following a legal challenge by Alabama and Georgia Realtors’ groups, it could also wind up fueling the progressive drive for Supreme Court reform that Biden has been so lukewarm about.
“It will be a powerful addition to the progressive bill of particulars against this court and it could well accelerate the demands for court-packing and other muscular steps,” said Jeff Shesol, a historian and former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton.
Under intense pressure from liberal Democratic lawmakers and activists, Biden announced Tuesday that a revamped version of the eviction ban that expired on July 31 would be re-imposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a pandemic mitigation measure. His reversal came after senior administration officials had said for a week that such a move would be fruitless and perhaps unlawful as a result of a Supreme Court ruling in June.
One striking part of Biden’s announcement was his candor that the policy might well be illegal.
“The bulk of the constitutional scholarship says that it’s not likely to pass constitutional muster,” the president told reporters, before adding: “But there are several key scholars who think that it may and it’s worth the effort.”
On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki insisted that the president felt perfectly comfortable with the legality of the new moratorium. But her comments defied the clear impression Biden had left — an impression he might come to regret.
“It’s a very rare example of a president outright acknowledging that the step he’s about to take might not pass constitutional muster, but he has to try it anyway,” Shesol said. “Typically when presidents have some sense of legal uncertainty about an action they’re taking, they’re unlikely to acknowledge that publicly at the time.”
There is some precedent for Biden here. In the lead up to the launch of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, President Barack Obama repeatedly declared publicly that congressional action was needed to help so-called Dreamers and his power to act without Congress was sharply limited.
“There’s a limit to the discretion that I can show because I am obliged to execute the law,” Obama said in an interview with Spanish-language TV outlet Univision in October 2010. “I can’t just make the laws up by myself. So, the most important thing that we can do is focus on changing the underlying laws.”
When U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen declared that DACA program invalid in a ruling last month, some nine years after Obama unveiled it, he effectively threw Obama’s words back at him.
“President Obama, before DACA was implemented, agreed with this underlying premise,” the judge wrote, before quoting Obama’s remarks.
Whether Biden will suffer a similar rebuke will become clear in time. But should the high court reverse the CDC’s revised eviction moratorium, it would do so amid growing liberal criticism of the conservative-majority court — as well as angst over the fate of Justice Stephen Breyer, who has thus far ignored calls to resign to make way for a younger Biden appointee. Breyer, 82, recently tapped a full slate of clerks and has a book coming out in September arguing that the court must steer clear of politics.
Some legal activists welcomed Biden’s move on the eviction ban, but sounded uncertain as to whether liberals would embrace the court-related battle with as much enthusiasm as their successful pressure campaign aimed at the president.
“I hope that progressives will put as much attention on the inevitable Supreme Court ruling swatting this down as they did on Biden the last few days,” said Brian Fallon of Demand Justice, a former Obama Justice Department spokesperson who advocates for enlarging the court. “I hope that all the energy and compassion for people who stand to suffer if the moratorium was not continued will remain when the Supreme Court becomes the villain instead of Joe Biden.”
Fallon said that “ideally” Biden would “castigate” the court if it torpedoes the eviction ban, but declined to predict that the president will do so.
Biden has publicly opposed plans to increase the number of justices on the court, but agreed to launch a presidential commission to study that and other reforms.
A high court ruling blocking the new Biden eviction policy could come in the lead-up to the release of the commission’s report, expected in November.
The grim legal outlook for the eviction moratorium stems from an emergency June 29 Supreme Court ruling in which the justices split, 5-4, to allow an earlier version of the CDC eviction ban to run through the end of July.
Only one member of the court, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, explained his or her vote. Kavanaugh joined the court’s liberals and Chief Justice John Roberts in the narrow majority allowing the ban to continue for another month, but Kavanaugh made clear he would have voted differently if the Biden administration sought to extend the policy by fiat without a blessing from Congress.
“In my view, clear and specific congressional authorization (via new legislation) would be necessary for the CDC to extend the moratorium past July 31,” Kavanaugh wrote.
Although numerous presidents have embarked on policies that faced peril at the court, few — if any — have made a policy move in such tension with a Supreme Court ruling so soon after that ruling was issued.
In a filing Wednesday night with a federal district court judge in Washington, lawyers for the Realtors argued that the June decision from the justices means Biden’s latest move is illegal and should be immediately blocked. “The Supreme Court’s ruling was hardly ambiguous. Indeed, the White House clearly acknowledged that the Supreme Court had ruled that the CDC lacked authority to extend the moratorium—and that the CDC was blocked from extending the moratorium,” they wrote.
Most of the early examples of presidents defying the court involved individual justices, when those justices did much of the work now done by appeals courts.
In 1808, President Thomas Jefferson erupted in anger after Justice William Johnson Jr. blocked an export embargo Jefferson imposed as part of a standoff with Great Britain. Jefferson told customs officials to ignore the ruling. They did.
And in the early days of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln was deeply aggrieved by a decision from Justice Roger Taney rebuking Lincoln for suspending habeas corpus in areas of hostilities against Union troops. Lincoln denounced the ruling in front of Congress and essentially ignored it until he managed to get lawmakers to suspend the writ two years later.
While even Biden suggested the new incarnation of the eviction ban won’t survive the high court’s scrutiny, at least one prominent legal scholar has been in close touch with the White House in recent days contends the latest policy has a fighting chance of surviving a constitutional challenge.
“I think the odds are greater this time around,” Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe said in an interview.
Tribe pointed to two changes that could affect the Supreme Court’s take: one in the new policy and another in the state of the pandemic.
While the earlier eviction ban applied nationwide — something Kavanaugh pointedly noted in his brief opinion in June — the new one applies only in areas of substantial or widespread Covid-19 transmission. “The initial moratorium was nationwide and not targeted in health-specific terms that are of a sort that fit the mandate of the CDC,” Tribe said.
The new pandemic development is the recent surge in cases, powered by the more transmissible Delta variant. “It’s a question of whether the CDC can act in response to the concern about the Delta variant and target its actions,” Tribe added.
The administration says the new ban will still cover about 90 percent of the U.S., including most major urban areas, and that it will last until Oct. 3. Tribe said he thinks those modifications might be enough to persuade the justices. “In a very large country, that leaves out a substantial part,” he said.
The Realtors’ attorneys disputed that in Wednesday night’s submission. “The CDC’s semantic recasting of the latest extension — which covers 90% of renters across the country, while leaving intact its ability to ratchet up to 100% — is a distinction without a difference because it has no bearing on the CDC’s legal authority,” they wrote.
At a minimum, the revisions and the new dangers may get the justices to leave the ban in place until billions in already appropriated rental assistance money is teed up to dole out or until Congress takes further action. Biden hinted as much in Tuesday’s remarks, saying he hoped the revived moratorium could give renters a few months of relief while legal challenges were heard in the courts.
“To make that impossible because of something of a legal cloud over what the administration opted to do would be quite irresponsible,” added Tribe, who acknowledged his conversations with the White House but said he wasn’t sure whether he’d have any ongoing involvement in crafting a defense of the policy.
For now, it appears that role will fall primarily to the administration’s top lawyer at the Supreme Court: Acting Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar.
Veterans of that office have long expected Prelogar to be nominated to the job on a permanent basis, but six months after Biden’s swearing-in, no nominee for the prestigious post has been announced. That makes it the highest-ranking vacancy in Justice Department leadership that remains without a nominee.
Courtwatchers, meanwhile, are bracing for a showdown in the weeks ahead.
“Biden’s move here definitely puts him on a collision course with the Supreme Court,” said Fallon.
Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/05/biden-supreme-court-eviction-moratorium-502517
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Josh Gerstein
The Supreme Court’s standing with the American public has dipped over the past year, as the high court and its makeup have taken on greater prominence in fractious political debates.
Sixty percent of Americans approve of the job the court is doing, according to a poll released Wednesday by Marquette University Law School. That’s down 6 points from a similar survey conducted in September 2020 just days before the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Close to 40 percent disapproved of the Supreme Court’s job performance, according to Wednesday’s poll, up from 33 percent nearly a year. The court was still the most trusted of the three branches of the federal government, an image it has long sought to cultivate by positioning itself as above the partisan fray.
Independents were slightly more inclined to support the Supreme Court, with 61 percent approving of its job performance versus 57 percent of Republicans and 59 percent of Democrats. However, that fell within the poll’s margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.
GOP respondents’ support for the court was down substantially from last September, when it registered 80 percent job approval, while the results for independents and Democrats were largely unchanged.
Ginsburg’s death set off a monthlong sprint by then-President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans to install Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court in the lead-up to the November presidential election and secure a 6-3 conservative majority on the bench. Barrett was Trump’s third Supreme Court confirmation in four years, more than his predecessor President Barack Obama had in eight, and it has fanned a pressure campaign on the left to get Democrats and liberal judges to think more strategically about judicial vacancies.
Much of this effort has been directed at Justice Stephen Breyer, who turns 83 later this month and was put on the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton, though the justice said in mid-July that he had yet to make plans to retire. Axios reported on Monday that President Joe Biden and some of his top advisers think it is unwise to try to lean on Breyer so that the vacancy can be filled while Democrats have control of the Senate.
The pollsters posed the question two ways, one to each half of the randomized sample. When asked generally whether justices time their retirement based on who controls the White House and Senate, 41 percent of Democratic respondents said they should, compared with only 16 percent of Republicans.
When survey takers more specifically described Breyer’s situation, Democratic support shot up to 58 percent while Republican and independent opposition softened somewhat.
Ironically, Breyer was also the least known of all nine sitting Supreme Court justices, with 43 percent saying they had never heard of him and another 33 percent saying they didn’t know enough to form an opinion of him.
Respondents were split on whether to alter the size of the Supreme Court, with 51 percent opposing expansion and 48 percent in favor of it. However, only 26 percent of Republicans supported expansion, compared with 73 percent of Democrats — signifying which side voters stand to benefit given the current composition of the court.
Marquette’s pollsters conducted the survey July 16-26 among 1,010 people.
Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/04/poll-public-opinion-of-supreme-court-sags-over-past-year-502309
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Nick Niedzwiadek
The Supreme Court has decided it will hear a case against Maine’s ban on using financial aid through a state program to attend religious schools, the court announced Friday.Families have challeng…
Source: https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/561338-supreme-court-to-hear-maine-ban-on-religious-school-funding
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Lexi Lonas
The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a California law that required nonprofits to hand over a list of their biggest donors.
Why it matters: Some campaign-finance advocates have feared the court will begin chipping away at disclosure rules more broadly, making it harder and harder to figure out who’s funding major political causes.
The big picture: In a 6-3 ruling authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court said California had subjected donors to the threat of public harassment and intimidation, undermining their First Amendment right to free association.
Background: California requires nonprofit organizations to give the state a list of their biggest donors each year. The state is supposed to keep that information private, but it has routinely failed to do so. Donors’ names and addresses have often become easily available to the public, according to briefs in the case.
The other side: California said it collected donor information to help investigate potential fraud, but that argument didn’t get very far with the justices.
Source: https://www.axios.com/supreme-court-political-donors-california-709684f8-7374-449d-a02d-275f3f150339.html
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Sam Baker
For the first time in more than a decade, a legislative effort to capture Supreme Court hearings and other federal court proceedings on camera has cleared the Senate committee.
Source: https://gizmodo.com/senate-committee-approves-legislation-to-broadcast-supr-1847169696
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Alyse Stanley
