On an intellectual level, this should be an easy case for the justices. Undocumented immigrants and visa recipients are indisputably “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. They can be taxed, arrested, fined, imprisoned, executed, and much more while on U.S. soil. There is also ample precedent supporting birthright citizenship, including Supreme Court rulings […]
Read MoreTag: John Roberts
How the Supreme Court’s Judicial Sanewashing Wrecked the Legal System
According to the sanewashed facts in Shelby County, the VRA was no longer necessary because racially discriminatory voting practices were “rare” and the remaining sections of the statute would be sufficient to protect minority voting rights. In the decade since the Court offered those tepid reassurances, states formerly subject to the VRA’s preclearance requirements have […]
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John Roberts and the Cynical Cult of Federalist No. 70
“‘Decision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch will generally characterize the proceedings of one man in a much more eminent degree than the proceedings of any greater number,’” he wrote, quoting from No. 70. “The centralization of authority in the president alone is particularly crucial in matters of national defense, war, and foreign policy choices, where a […]
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For Once, the Supreme Court May Not Give Republicans What They Want
A group of challengers, including the GOP’s Senate campaign-finance arm and Vice President J.D. Vance, argued that the ban violates their First Amendment rights to political speech through campaign spending. “The coordinated party spending limits are at war with this Court’s recent First Amendment cases,” Noel Francisco, who argued on behalf of the plaintiffs, told […]
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The Supreme Court Is Set to Pick Financial Predators Over the People
This does not appear to have deterred the justices. If anything, it may have encouraged them. Sauer expressed concern at one point about the “real-world consequences” of agencies “exercising enormous governmental authority with a great deal of control over individuals and small and large businesses and so forth” if they “ultimately do not answer to […]
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Trump Is About to Find Out What It’s Like to Be a Democrat
“Why do you think Presidents Clinton, Bush, [or] Obama have not used IEEPA to impose tariffs?” the justice asked Sauer at one point. “Because there have been trade disputes and, certainly, you know, President Bush, steel imports, and the like. Why do you think IEEPA has not been used?” Sauer replied that his team had […]
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The Best Way to Replace Trump’s Lost Tariff Revenue? Ask Joe Biden.
Raise corporate taxes. When Donald Trump was first elected president in 2016 the top corporate tax rate was 35 percent. Trump lowered that to 21 percent. Biden proposed raising it to 28 percent, still well below where it stood before Trump. Doing so, the Treasury Department estimated, would raise, on average, $135 billion per year. […]
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The Gun Rights of Drug Users Are Up for Grabs at the Supreme Court
“These laws may address a comparable problem—preventing intoxicated individuals from carrying weapons—but they do not impose a comparable burden on the right holder,” Judge Kurt Engelhardt wrote for the panel. “In other words, they pass the ‘why’ but not the ‘how’ test. Taken together, the statues provide support for banning the carry of firearms while […]
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The Supreme Court’s War on the Voting Rights Act Is Almost Over
The Supreme Court upheld a lower-court ruling in 2023 that required Alabama to create a second majority-Black district, ruling that it was the proper application of the court’s precedents. At the same time, Kavanaugh signaled in his concurring opinion that he would be willing to hear a case in the future on whether Section 2’s […]
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Is the Supreme Court Teeing Up a Broader Attack on LGBTQ Rights?
The case comes from Kaley Chiles, a licensed counselor in Colorado Springs with a master’s degree in clinical mental health. She practices talk therapy and does not prescribe medications or other medical treatments. The conflict arises from the fact that her religious beliefs are inextricably linked to her therapeutic practices. “Chiles views her work as […]
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The Democrats’ Most Formidable Foe Is Not Donald Trump
Or … almost? As it turns out, Democrats are planning to take on the GOP—in a few weeks, anyway. “House Democrats are plotting to turn the August recess into the opening salvo of the midterms, including through town halls and organizing programs,” reports Politico, as the party is experiencing “renewed bravado after months in the […]
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The Supreme Court Is Poised to Wreck Campaign-Finance Laws Again
Since Colorado II, the Supreme Court has significantly loosened restrictions on money in politics. The court’s conservative majority struck down limits on independent expenditures by corporations and unions during an election campaign in the landmark 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. FEC. That ruling helped fuel the rise of super PACs, which can make unlimited […]
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Get Ready for Another Rightward Lurch in the New Supreme Court Term
Another case, Chiles v. Salazar, will allow the justices to scrutinize Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy for young LGBTQ patients on First Amendment grounds. Nearly two dozen states forbid medical professionals from using treatments that try to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, citing the scientific consensus that such treatments are both psychologically […]
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The Supreme Court’s Trump Enablers May Have Screwed Themselves
During and prior to this second Trump administration, Republican-appointed judges and justices rejected his efforts to overturn the 2020 election over 60 times. In April and May of this year the court enjoined, pending a final decision, the administration’s effort to summarily deport undocumented, alleged Venezuelan gang members; the Justice Department claimed as authority the […]
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The Roberts Court Is Winning Its War on American Democracy
“That is the oath that I just took,” he continued. “I will try to ensure, in the discharge of my responsibilities, that, with the help of my colleagues, I can pass on to my children’s generation a charter of self-government as strong and as vibrant as the one that Chief Justice Rehnquist passed on to […]
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Jimmy Kimmel’s New Best Friend Is the Supreme Court
It is important to explain exactly what the problem is here. If ABC fired Kimmel because he wanted to do something different in the 11 PM hour on weeknights, or because he didn’t think Kimmel was particularly funny, or because Kimmel took the last slice of pizza in the Disney cafeteria, it would not be […]
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What If the Next Democratic President Governs Like Trump?
The greatest share of these employees came from Homeland Security Investigations, an ICE sub-agency that typically investigates important crimes such as human trafficking and child-exploitation crimes. At the moment, 87 percent of HSI’s agents now work for Enforcement and Removal Operations, the other major ICE subcomponent. Restoring those agents to their original workforces would significantly […]
Read MoreHow the Supreme Court Stacked the Shadow Docket Deck for Trump
Rehnquist agreed with the agency. He disagreed with the lower courts’ decision on multiple grounds, many of which were related to the merits of the case itself. Here is the paragraph from which Roberts got the quote. I include it at length here not because the overall legal argument is relevant, but because it illustrates […]
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Trump’s Tariff Losses Are a Moment of Reckoning for the Supreme Court
The court even included a reference to Chief Justice John Roberts’s landmark ruling in 2012 that upheld the Affordable Care Act. Tariffs, in practical terms, are a tax paid by individuals and companies on foreign-made goods at the time of import. “Contrary to the government’s assertion, the mere authorization to ‘regulate’ does not in and […]
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This Probably Won’t Be the SCOTUS Case That Kills Marriage Equality
As for the three remaining conservatives, it’s more complicated and less clear. None of them have signaled an interest in overturning it since joining the court. Justice Neil Gorsuch joined with Thomas and Alito in a post-Obergefell summary judgment case on birth certificates, but his main issue wasn’t with Obergefell itself, but with how the […]
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The Supreme Court Has Hit Rock Bottom
The three-sentence explanation the court gave in Wilcox, Kagan argued, was insufficient to justify Wednesday’s order. “So only another under-reasoned emergency order undergirds today’s,” she continued. “Next time, though, the majority will have two (if still under-reasoned) orders to cite.” At that point, Kagan noted, the court’s reasoning would be “turtles all the way down.” […]
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The Supreme Court Says Laws Aren’t Real
“I may have views on the fairness of that and mine don’t count,” Roberts continued. “We like to usually leave situations of that sort, when you’re talking about spending the government’s money, which is the taxpayers’ money, to the people in charge of the money, which is Congress.” He then asked if that should be […]
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The Supreme Court’s Most Worrisome Non-Decision
In Milligan, one of Alabama’s arguments was that this framework, which allows courts to remedy racial-gerrymandering claims by ordering or drawing new maps, itself amounts to race-based redistricting and therefore violates the Equal Protection Clause. Roberts noted in his majority opinion that the Supreme Court had held otherwise for the last four decades, and Kavanaugh […]
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The Supreme Court’s Anti-Transgender Ruling Is a Tortured Mess
The ruling, on its own terms, drew sharp criticism from the court’s three liberal justices. In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor castigated the majority for what she saw as a blow to sex-based discrimination protections in general—and for the impact it would have on transgender Americans across the country. “By retreating from meaningful judicial review […]
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A Major Search and Seizure Case Is Coming to the Supreme Court
Expanding the community-caretaking doctrine beyond Cady’s bounds, however, is more controversial. Cars and other motor vehicles, which did not exist when the Fourth Amendment was drafted in 1791, generally receive less protection from warrantless searches under the court’s precedents than, say, a residence. For that exact reason, the court recently declined to extend the doctrine […]
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