6-3 SCOTUS Curtails Courts' Power to Check Illegal White House Actions

[system1]

Originally published at: 6-3 SCOTUS Curtails Courts’ Power to Check Illegal White House Actions - TPM – Talking Points Memo

The Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision on Friday limited the ability of courts to block presidential actions that they deem illegal, with all three liberals dissenting. The ruling, written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, checks courts ability to issue universal injunctions. Friday’s decision largely restricts judges to issuing orders that apply to parties in…

[danf]

I think we need to just start massive nationwide strikes to protest (waves hands) everything…

[old_guru]

This SCOTUS is/has been sowing the groundwork for utter Chaos. They are nit-picking the law to pay obeisance to a Fool.
It becomes more and more necessary to neuter this bunch of sycophants. Either by enlarging the Court to dilute their power, or the best way…which is to impeach Roberts, Thomas, Gorsuch and Alito.

[publishermike]

This will create balkanization of the nation as some laws will apply in some jurisdictions and not in others.

This just furthers the Right drive to create a New Confederacy where people of color, women and anyone not a white male will be second class citizens or even slaves.

[enceladus]

scotus - We defer to the dictator. The dictator shall decide what’s good and proper for the country, as the founders intended. Also, please mr dictator don’t say any more mean things about sir leonard leo.

(If only it were our @dicktater with the power to set policy.)

[noonm]

As per usual, Jackson explains the absolute absurdity of the majorities position:

I agree with every word of JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR’s dissent. I write separately to emphasize a key conceptual point: The Court’s decision to permit the Executive to violate the Constitution with respect to anyone who has not yet sued is an existential threat to the rule of law.

It is important to recognize that the Executive’s bid to vanquish so-called “universal injunctions” is, at bottom, a request for this Court’s permission to engage in unlawful behavior. When the Government says “do not allow the lower courts to enjoin executive action universally as a remedy for unconstitutional conduct,” what it is actually saying is that the Executive wants to continue doing something that a court has determined violates the Constitution—please allow this. That is some solicitation. With its ruling today, the majority largely grants the Government’s wish. But, in my view, if this country is going to persist as a Nation of laws and not men, the Judiciary has no choice but to deny it.

Stated simply, what it means to have a system of government that is bounded by law is that everyone is constrained by the law, no exceptions. And for that to actually happen, courts must have the power to order everyone (including the Executive) to follow the law—full stop. To conclude otherwise is to endorse the creation of a zone of lawlessness within which the Executive has the prerogative to take or leave the law as it wishes, and where individuals who would otherwise be entitled to the law’s protection become subject to the Executive’s whims instead.

The majority cannot deny that our Constitution was designed to split the powers of a monarch between the governing branches to protect the People. Nor is it debatable that the role of the Judiciary in our constitutional scheme is to ensure fidelity to law. But these core values are strangely absent from today’s decision. Focusing on inapt comparisons to impotent English tribunals, the majority ignores the Judiciary’s foundational duty to uphold the Constitution
and laws of the United States. The majority’s ruling thus not only diverges from first principles, it is also profoundly dangerous, since it gives the Executive the go-ahead to sometimes wield the kind of unchecked, arbitrary power the Founders crafted our Constitution to eradicate. The very institution our founding charter charges with the duty to ensure universal adherence to the law now requires judges to shrug and turn their backs to intermittent lawlessness. With deep disillusionment, I dissent.

[carolson]

@publishermike

This will create balkanization of the nation as some laws will apply in some jurisdictions and not in others.

This just furthers the Right drive to create a New Confederacy where people of color, women and anyone not a white male will be second class citizens or even slaves.

When those demographic groups are forced to leave red states for their survival and livelihood, perhaps the GOP elite in those states - who run nursing homes, rural hospitals, and farms - might have second thoughts.

[justruss]

When this country is a smoking wreck, remediation needs to consider seriously the SCOTUS and how it could be gamed. I have zero doubt this administration is going to go down in flames, but it will be a lot of work to make things right. But heck, we are a brash and gnarly country. It will be done.

[demosthenes59]

Today’s decision by the MAGA 6 rewards lawlessness and bad faith lying by the Trump regime. The MAGA 6 are gradually either cutting off entirely or making difficult for Trump regime opponents to sue and obtain relief from facially unconstitutional/illegal decisions. If you are favored (right wing political groups seeking banning of Planned Parenthood or favoring the forcible imposition of religion on public places), you get the world. If you seek to enforce the Constitution (the instant case), too bad. It’ll be expensive and time consuming— even if you win. Second, in the meantime, the Trump regime will act in bad faith, as it did in the case today, and they’re being rewarded for thwarting the law.

The decision today makes it easier to implement a fascist dictatorship.

[demosthenes59]

@publishermike

This will create balkanization of the nation as some laws will apply in some jurisdictions and not in others.

It’s worse, since the distinction won’t be red versus blue state, but based upon the judge who hears the case. If a Trump regime sycophant “judge” in Chicago hears a case and “rules” the 22nd Amendment doesn’t say what it says, it’s irrelevant it’s in a Democratic run jurisdiction. The lawlessness will be allowed to continue for years, no matter what is the final Supreme Court decision.

And, honestly, who has even a scintilla of confidence in the current Supreme Court in the end?

[coprophagoussmile]

The cruelest slave owners of the South screamed the loudest about their personal freedoms, and in much the same way the fanatics on this Court drone on about government overreach while doing everything to further the imperial Republican presidency. The irony that the biggest beneficiary is an idiot totally divorced from reality and held in the sway of cretins like Miller and Vought doesn’t faze them at all.

[canadachris]

The decision does not rule out judges’ ability to issue bans that have a nationwide scope if the circumstances are appropriate

There’s a lot in that sentence. What circumstances are appropriate, and who decides? That’s very different from a class action.

Separately, and as a practical matter, I find one of the key differences in ideology with this SCOTUS (for the justices other than Alito and Thomas who have an ideology separate from ‘screw the libs’) is the way they constantly imagine a judiciary process that doesn’t match reality. Like, okay, individuals can always bring a case for themselves… setting aside that suing the government is prohibitively expensive and out of reach for most people, they’re just willfully ignoring that federal courts are massively overloaded already, and even attempting the remedy is out of reach as a practical matter. Wait times can be years for these cases, and if they’re brought as individual cases that makes it so much worse. The purpose of a (legitimate) injunction is to hit pause and curtail further harm while the matter is litigated up the chain. This is the court ruling to protect their own case load, while simultaneously making the case load worse for everyone below them.

[josephebacon]

Welcome back to the Articles Of Confederation folks!

[terryelc]

So, does this mean a Democratic President can write an executive order ignoring the second amendment? Who is going to stop him?

[musgrove]

SCOTUS would. When they want to put a stop to something they can do so very quickly.

[terryelc]

Unless they just don’t bother to rule on it. For instance, this ruling is not about birth right citizenship. It is about whether or not a federal judge can protect it from a tyrant. If they wanted to rule on birth right citizenship today they could and then this particular right would be safe. Maybe. However, my point is that some Democrat could go after the second amendment and in time the Supreme Court would stop it. But how long? How many guns would be confiscated before they did so? That is what makes this so crazy.

[musgrove]

It wouldnt take long, they have shown in other cases how fast they can move. Dont get me wrong though, Dems need to play this game and start absuing the system SCOTUS has made.

[26degreesrising]

Disgusting. Just bloody disgusting.

[becca656]

I appreciate the statement in the dissent that says it was fine to allow these nation-wide injunctions under the Biden administration, but now not so much.

IOKIYAR, now writ into the law.

ETA:

But after years of district judges, most infamously the Northern District of Texas’s Matthew Kacsmaryk, blocking Biden policies on a nationwide basis, it’s five months into the second Trump administration that the high court decides to limit the practice.

[moreyampersand]

@carolson

When those demographic groups are forced to leave red states for their survival and livelihood, perhaps the GOP elite in those states - who run nursing homes, rural hospitals, and farms - might have second thoughts.

On the bright side, this is one way to pave the road to secession by the states that still want to follow the Constitution instead of the whims of a vicious and senile monarch…