The US Supreme Court

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Sean Hayden
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Re: The US Supreme Court

Post by Sean Hayden » Thu Jun 17, 2021 9:15 pm

“While the Supreme Court avoided overturning precedent that is vital to maintaining church-state separation, we are nonetheless stuck with a ruling, albeit narrow, that gives the Church a special privilege to discriminate against same-sex couples,” said Monica Miller, AHA’s Legal Director and Senior Counsel. “This ruling is yet another example of the Supreme Court setting aside the Rule of Law to benefit religion to the detriment of society.”
https://americanhumanist.org/press-rele ... 969858befc

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L'Emmerdeur
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Re: The US Supreme Court

Post by L'Emmerdeur » Fri Jun 18, 2021 12:16 am

Yeah, 'religious freedom' marches on, though in this instance the decision was based on the fact that the the city's ordinances allow it to waive the non-discrimination provision. As the AHA counsel in the article acknowledges, that meant the Catholics' suit was going to succeed given a strict scrutiny standard.

On the other hand, all but two justices decided to uphold the Affordable Care Act--the third Supreme Court case it has survived.

'Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare brings relief, hope to patients'
Obamacare patients and advocates expressed feelings of deep relief, hope and cynicism Thursday after the Supreme Court upheld the health care law against a challenge by Texas and 17 other Republican-led states.

The court, by a 7-2 vote, rejected the states' claim that Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act, was unconstitutional and that therefore the entire law should be scrapped. It's the third Supreme Court challenge the law has survived since President Barack Obama signed it in 2010.

Patients who depend on Obamacare and activists who fought to defend it said that they hoped this would be an opportunity to pivot the country's focus to building upon the law and expanding health care access and that they want to believe this would be the final existential battle for the Affordable Care Act.

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Re: The US Supreme Court

Post by L'Emmerdeur » Fri Jun 18, 2021 4:48 am

The US Supreme Court, protecting the rights of religious bigots and corporations.

'"Dangerous Precedent": US High Court Sides With Corporate Giants Nestle and Cargill in Child Slavery Case
Human rights advocates Thursday denounced a Supreme Court decision in favor of the U.S. corporate giants Nestlé USA and Cargill, which were sued more than a decade ago by six men who say the two companies were complicit in child trafficking and profited when the men were enslaved on cocoa farms as children.

The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 against the plaintiffs, saying they had not proven the companies' activities in the U.S. were sufficiently tied to the alleged child trafficking. The companies had argued that they could not be sued in the U.S. for activities that took place in West Africa.

Neal Katyal, former acting solicitor general under the Obama administration, represented the two companies and also argued that they could not be sued for complicity in child trafficking because they are corporations, not individuals.

...

Lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that Nestlé and Cargill have total control over the production of cocoa in Côte d’Ivoire, where child labor is widespread and where the men said they were forced to work long hours and to sleep in locked shacks at night.

The U.S. Department of Labor recently reported that the use of child labor on family farms in cocoa-growing areas of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana increased from 31 percent to 45 percent between 2008 and 2019.

...

EarthRights International, which filed an amicus brief with the court on behalf of the plaintiffs, called the ruling "a giant step backward for U.S. leadership on international law and protecting human rights."

"The ruling implies that U.S. corporations whose executives decide, from comfortable American boardrooms, to profit from murder, torture, and slavery abroad cannot be sued in U.S. federal courts for violating international law," said Marco Simons, general counsel for the organization. "This ruling has disturbing implications for future victims of human rights abuses seeking justice against businesses in U.S. courts. This ruling also sets a dangerous precedent, giving corporations impunity for profiting from human rights abuses."

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Re: The US Supreme Court

Post by Tero » Fri Jun 25, 2021 7:54 pm

US court had to decide about federal employees. The Constitution says nothing. It says the presdent could have any number of secretaries. The enforcement of federal law was not detailed. So they just made up the few million jobs now reporting to the president. Fed chief et al are also made up posts. So is money.

https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2021/6 ... il-gorsuch

The Founding Fathers, mostly, wanted no laws. Laws? That's some Federalist idea. Wars? No way do we leave our borders. We just defend them.
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Re: The US Supreme Court

Post by Tero » Tue Jun 29, 2021 11:52 am

Congress may not create new rights (rights not in constitution or its amendments). Court expands its own powers
For many years, conservative justices complained about Congress’ ability to create new, enforceable rights like these. And for just as long, more moderate justices like Anthony Kennedy rejected their view, preserving lawmakers’ authority to establish new rights by statute.

On Friday, however, Kavanaugh blew past those precedents, rejecting Kennedy’s moderation and announcing a new rule: Federal judges, not the people’s representatives, get to decide which rights may be vindicated in the federal judiciary. By extension, only federal judges get to decide what counts as a concrete harm sufficient to create standing. It is not enough for Congress to determine that certain rights deserve remedies in federal court.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... homas.html
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Said Peter...what you're requesting just isn't my bag
Said Daemon, who's sorry too, but y'see we didn't have no choice
And our hands they are many and we'd be of one voice
We've come all the way from Wigan to get up and state
Our case for survival before it's too late

Turn stone to bread, said Daemon Duncetan
Turn stone to bread right away...

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Re: The US Supreme Court

Post by laklak » Tue Jun 29, 2021 1:10 pm

Tero wrote:
Fri Jun 25, 2021 7:54 pm

The Founding Fathers, mostly, wanted no laws. Laws? That's some Federalist idea. Wars? No way do we leave our borders. We just defend them.
I miss the Founding Fathers.
Yeah well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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Re: The US Supreme Court

Post by NineBerry » Tue Jun 29, 2021 2:08 pm

The act of founding the US was a war. A land grab by people having just left their border.

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Re: The US Supreme Court

Post by Tero » Tue Jun 29, 2021 8:08 pm

Supreme Court passes gas
supreme court passes gas.jpg
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Said Peter...what you're requesting just isn't my bag
Said Daemon, who's sorry too, but y'see we didn't have no choice
And our hands they are many and we'd be of one voice
We've come all the way from Wigan to get up and state
Our case for survival before it's too late

Turn stone to bread, said Daemon Duncetan
Turn stone to bread right away...

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Re: The US Supreme Court

Post by laklak » Tue Jun 29, 2021 9:34 pm

NineBerry wrote:
Tue Jun 29, 2021 2:08 pm
The act of founding the US was a war. A land grab by people having just left their border.
Every place was a land grab if you go back far enough.
Yeah well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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Re: The US Supreme Court

Post by NineBerry » Tue Jun 29, 2021 9:58 pm

laklak wrote:
Tue Jun 29, 2021 9:34 pm
NineBerry wrote:
Tue Jun 29, 2021 2:08 pm
The act of founding the US was a war. A land grab by people having just left their border.
Every place was a land grab if you go back far enough.
True. Still contradicts the sentiments mentioned by the "founding fathers"

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Re: The US Supreme Court

Post by Hermit » Tue Jun 29, 2021 10:37 pm

laklak wrote:
Tue Jun 29, 2021 9:34 pm
NineBerry wrote:
Tue Jun 29, 2021 2:08 pm
The act of founding the US was a war. A land grab by people having just left their border.
Every place was a land grab if you go back far enough.
Not Australia. That was terra nullius There was no nation covering the land in question, there was no law in existence regulating land ownership. Ergo, that land was up for grabs. The doctrine stems from John Locke's writing* and became legal precedent in a case brought before the Privy Council in 1889, Cooper v Stuart. One of the judges, Lord Watson, put it thus:
There is a great difference between the case of a colony acquired by conquest or cession in which there is an established system of law, and that of a colony which consisted of a tract of territory practically unoccupied, without settled inhabitants or settled law, at the time when it was peacefully annexed to the British Dominion. The Colony of New South Wales belongs to the latter class.
and
there was no land law or tenure existing in the Colony at the time of its annexation to the Crown; and, in that condition of matters, the conclusion appears to their Lordships to be inevitable that, as soon as colonial land became the subject of settlement and commerce, all transactions in relation to it were governed by English law, in so far as that law could be justly and conveniently applied to them.
Although terra nullius does not imply Australia was uninhabited by humans, we ignored that by the simple expedient of regarding Aborigines as part of the colonies' fauna. That's why we shot them dead like kangaroos, and for the same reason: They were obstacles for the profitability of the wool industry. It is also why they were not even counted in any Australian census until 1971.

*"Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property." John Locke, The Second Treatise of Civil Government, 1690, Ch. V Of Property, §27
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. - Stephen J. Gould

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Re: The US Supreme Court

Post by laklak » Wed Jun 30, 2021 8:59 pm

Pretty much what we did here. The only good injun is a dead injun and all that.
Yeah well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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Re: The US Supreme Court

Post by Tero » Fri Jul 02, 2021 12:33 am

Alito all but cheers the states to do whatever the fuck they want with eleections(because they can, and the Constitution is not about voting, it is about state rights):

The majority opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, adopts five “guideposts” to assess voting rules, while explicitly declining to announce a test to govern future cases. That approach is arguably in tension with the series of withering opinions Alito has issued in other cases in recent months accusing his colleagues of failing to provide clarity for lower courts.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/0 ... tes-497736
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Said Peter...what you're requesting just isn't my bag
Said Daemon, who's sorry too, but y'see we didn't have no choice
And our hands they are many and we'd be of one voice
We've come all the way from Wigan to get up and state
Our case for survival before it's too late

Turn stone to bread, said Daemon Duncetan
Turn stone to bread right away...

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Re: The US Supreme Court

Post by Tero » Fri Jul 02, 2021 1:11 pm

"What this case from Arizona did was effectively really weaken the one remaining section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965,"
@neal_katyal
reacts to the Supreme Court upholding Arizona voting restrictions.
tweet with video link

https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1410939087243075584

actual video only
https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-ho ... d_ms_tw_ma

judge Kagan points out the court is "legislating from the bench."

The court rejected all claims of fraud in 2020. This all means that the states can indeed put in measures to stop voting in the pretext of fraud prevention. But the supreme court will not interfere with elections, and state supeme courts can indeed reject elections and throw the elector business to state legislatures.
https://esapolitics.blogspot.com
http://esabirdsne.blogspot.com/
Said Peter...what you're requesting just isn't my bag
Said Daemon, who's sorry too, but y'see we didn't have no choice
And our hands they are many and we'd be of one voice
We've come all the way from Wigan to get up and state
Our case for survival before it's too late

Turn stone to bread, said Daemon Duncetan
Turn stone to bread right away...

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Re: The US Supreme Court

Post by L'Emmerdeur » Thu Jul 08, 2021 4:20 am

Nothing to see here, everything is just fine, move along please.

'The Supreme Court's Inadequate Recusal Policy'
U.S. Supreme Court justices can use concurring opinions to clarify, amplify, or even distance themselves from the majority opinion of the Court. Sometimes, the simple fact of concurrence, without any explanation, can tell us a great deal—perhaps more than intended—about a justice’s outlook and approach to the law. That is what happened when Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined Chief Justice Roberts’s 6-3 majority opinion in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta, a case in which she should have recused herself.

The Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFPF) brought the lawsuit to challenge a California law requiring charitable organizations to disclose the identities of their major donors to the state attorney general’s office. Organizations across the political spectrum, including the Cato Institute, the ACLU, and the NAACP, joined the litigation as amici curiae. It was the lead plaintiff, however, that created the conflict of interest for Justice Barrett. The AFPF happens to be the nonprofit arm of Americans for Prosperity, a Koch-financed advocacy organization that had publicly committed over $1 million to securing Barrett’s confirmation.

...

We know that Justice Barrett was well aware of Americans for Prosperity’s lobbying on her behalf, because she was alerted to it by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA). In a letter to Justice Barrett, dated April 16, 2021, the three Democrats called on her to recuse herself from the AFPF case, which had recently been accepted by the Supreme Court.

Detailing Americans for Prosperity’s efforts to secure Justice Barrett’s confirmation, the letter accurately pointed out that the federal recusal statute, 28 U.S.C. § 455(a), provides that a Supreme Court justice is disqualified in any proceeding in which her “impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” The test under the statute, as articulated by SCOTUS in Liljeberg v. Health Services (1988), is an objective one. It does not require evidence of actual bias, but only a showing of circumstances in which the judge’s or justice’s “impartiality could reasonably be doubted.”

There is also a relatively recent Supreme Court case on point, holding that extensive campaign contributions can raise sufficiently disqualifying doubts about a justice’s impartiality. In Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co. (2009), the Court found that a justice of the West Virginia Supreme Court should have recused himself in a case involving a major campaign contributor, stating that “there is a serious risk of actual bias—based on objective and reasonable perceptions—when a person with a personal stake in a particular case had a significant and disproportionate influence” in placing the justice on the bench.

If there is any distinction between the AFPF and Caperton cases, Justice Barrett did not make it. Unlike her mentor, the late Justice Antonin Scalia—who wrote an extensive opinion explaining his 2004 non-recusal in the controversial duck-hunting case—Justice Barrett did not respond at all to the letter from Sen. Whitehouse and his colleagues. She participated vigorously in the oral argument of the AFPF case, and fully joined the majority opinion in favor of AFPF without ever acknowledging the significant question about her impartiality.

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