Originally published at: 5th Circuit Panel Accuses Right-Wing Judge Of ‘Abuse Of Discretion’ In Obamacare Case
While it upheld the crux of a right-wing district judge’s ruling on a major Affordable Care Act case Friday, a panel of judges on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals accused that district judge of abusing his discretion by letting insurers nationwide stop offering free preventative care. The plaintiffs — which include some well-known ACA…
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this sort of knee-jerk, nationwide relief (a favorite tactic of right-wing judges)
The Republican Party does not believe in limited government or less government or small, or tiny, itty bitty, teenie weinee, minute or any kind of government answerable to the people.
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the more the practice comes under fire, the likelier that, eventually, something will be done to stop it — shutting down a hugely successful pipeline for right-wing litigants in the process.
“Nothing stops.” (I forget what movie that line comes from.) Why would anything stop? There are no penalties. There is effectively zero cost to those who launch these malicious assaults on ordered liberty.
I guarantee there is a lot more collaboration going on down there between these lunatic Federalist judges and the high-powered Libertarian-minded lawyers who cook up these vehicles.
You don’t have to visit Singer’s Alaskan Fishing Retreat For Billionaires to spend a bunch of time in private waxing philosophical about how awful it is that society has rules, or how great it would be to have a perfect case to “prove” those rules unworkable, or how delighted you’d be to play the George Eliot to their fraud.
A huge amount of our political system is based around the honor system: different groups who are formally forbidden from colluding. Their promises to that effect don’t mean squat, and every officer of the court who accepts those promises at face-value is practically an accomplice. See also: super PACs, Senate GOP in impeachment, SCOTUS ethics, McConnell’s dark money machine, the NRA, Fox News and the GOP, the Kochtopus, etc.
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And this will now likely be used to claim that the argument against Smith’s appointment is valid…
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Ah, Judge O’Connor. That brings back . . . nightmares.
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And by the way, “abuse of discretion” is the standard of review on appeal. It just means that the judge misapplied the law or there was insufficient evidence to sustain the ruling. The panel is not chiding O’Connor in any way for his bullshit.
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And the honor system is rooted in people acting in good faith, which we know many Republicans, including “justices” Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, do not.
“ Kavanaugh gave private assurances. Collins says he ‘misled’ her
June 24, 2022 at 9:04 pm Updated June 24, 2022 at 11:17 pm
WASHINGTON — During a two-hour meeting in her Senate office with Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh on Aug. 21, 2018, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine pressed him hard on why she should trust him not to overturn Roe v. Wade if she backed his confirmation.
Kavanaugh worked vigorously to reassure her that he was no threat to the landmark abortion rights ruling.
“Start with my record, my respect for precedent, my belief that it is rooted in the Constitution, and my commitment and its importance to the rule of law,” he said, according to contemporaneous notes kept by multiple staff members in the meeting. “I understand precedent and I understand the importance of overturning it.
“Roe is 45 years old. It has been reaffirmed many times. Lots of people care about it a great deal, and I’ve tried to demonstrate I understand real-world consequences,” he continued, according to the notes, adding: “I am a don’t-rock-the-boat kind of judge. I believe in stability and in the Team of Nine.”
Convinced, Collins, a Republican, gave a detailed speech a few weeks later laying out her rationale for backing the future justice that cited his stated commitment to precedent on Roe, helping clinch his confirmation after a bitter fight. On Friday, Kavanaugh joined the majority in overturning the decision he told Collins he would protect.”
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The only surprise is that there are Judges on the 5th Circuit who seem to care what the SCOTUS and other Circuits think on the topic:
“Because we do not find any support for the district court’s decision to vacate all agency actions taken to enforce the Task Force’s recommendations, we also cannot find any support for the district court’s universal (or nationwide) injunction,” the panel wrote. “The parties recognize that such injunctions are not ‘required or even the norm,’ and several justices on the Supreme Court have viewed them with conspicuous skepticism. Scholars and judges from our sister circuits have done the same.”
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Willett can be a perfectly capable jurist. But look out when he gets on a case where he thinks he can bring the crazy and thereby prove his bona fides for a SCOTUS nomination. (In reality, he’ll be 59 next year, too old to waste a SCOTUS seat on.)
ETA: BTW, Willet ended up on Leonard Leo’s bespoke list of trump’s potential SCOTUS picks in 2016. He got there by crazily suggesting in one of his SCOTX opinions that the law should go back to the Lochner era where the government couldn’t regulate bidness because freedumb. His appointment to the Fifth Circuit was widely (and correctly, IMHO) seen as a move to get him ready in case something opened up for him at SCOTUS.
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Dismissed for improper venue. The prosecutors will appeal, and I expect they have a good chance on appeal. I don’t know Nevada law on this, but generally prosecutors can bring charges in any county where any part of the charged conduct occurred. And I assume that at least some of the Nevada fake electors agreed to do it in Las Vegas.
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" plaintiffs — which include some well-known ACA foes — argued that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, or PSTF, is unconstitutional, as its members were not appointed properly."
This is their thing now. Don’t challenge a law on its substance, challenge the process. They know that they have nothing solid to argue so say, in legalese, It’s not fair! I-lean Cannon is hearing such a case today. Mifepristone is another example of this we-got-nothing approach to law. I am so very sick of this.
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The headline should say “holds” or “rules” not “accuses.” “Abuse of discretion” is not an opinion or commentary or secular condemnation, it’s the applicable standard of review. On appellate review of a trial court judgment or order, the issue is whether the ruling was correct under the standard of review the law applies to a given type of legal finding. Most cases entail the application of one of six (eh, more or less) appellate standards of review. From most to least deferential they are:
- a) non-reviewable applicable to a very few kinds of agency actions and to prosecutorial non-prosecution decisions;
- b) abuse of discretion (applicable to matters such as the scope of injunctive relief deemed within the discretion of the trial court);
- c) arbitrary and capricious (applicable on appeal from informal agency determinations a/k/a “Chevron deference,” one of the Federalist Society’s bete noirs);
- d), substantial evidence (i.e. whether there was at least some evidence to support findings of fact even if the appellate court disagrees, and whether the legal determinations were reasonable in light of facts found, applicable to jury verdicts and formal agency decisions);
- e) clearly erroneous, applicable to judicial fact finding; and,
- f) de novo (applicable to purely legal determinations).
The Fifth’s finding that Judge Shitkicker’s abused his discretion was what a reviewing court must find in order to reverse a ruling on one of the matters, such as the scope of injunctive relief.
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How is this not perjury? He was sworn in for this testimony unless I am mistaken.
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Reed O’Conor is a Nazi moron who cares not at all for We the People. He should be removed from bench and assigned to the traffic ticket bureau somewhere hot and dry in West Texas amid the sagebrush and sand.
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Thanks for the clarification!
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You know we want you to dish, and we know you can’t. Too bad!
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No, thank you. We are well-supplied with assholes out here.
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Ha, I like the timing here. Look out “I lean”.
Yeah, I know the 5th is not the 11th, but still…
Storm is a coming.
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Maybe he could be assigned to small claims which can be quite entertaining or aggravating.
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