Republican SCOTUS Decides Who Has Rights

 

We recently passed the two- year anniversary of the Dobbs decision, where the illegitimate Republican Supreme Court overturned 50 years of precedent in deciding women no longer had a Constitutional right to an abortion.  In its recent decisions, they did, however decide who does have rights:

Student loan agencies (Biden v. Nebraska)

By a vote of 6-3, the justices ruled that the Biden administration overstepped its authority last year when it announced that it would cancel up to $400 billion in student loans. The Biden administration had said that as many as 43 million Americans would have benefitted from the loan forgiveness program; almost half of those borrowers would have had all of their student loans forgiven.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court in Biden v. Nebraska, characterizing the decision as a straightforward interpretation of federal law.

Justice Elena Kagan dissented, in an opinion joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson...

People wanting to have and use machine guns (Garland v. Cargill)

The Supreme Court on Friday struck down a rule that banned bump stocks, issued by the Trump administration after a 2017 mass shooting at a concert in Las Vegas. By a vote of 6-3, the justices rejected the federal government’s argument that rifles equipped with bump stocks are machine guns, which are generally prohibited under federal law. In an opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas, the court’s conservative justices emphasized that Congress could have enacted a law that banned all weapons capable of high rates of fire, but it did not – and so the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives was wrong to interpret the federal ban on machine guns to extend to bump stocks...

People wanting to bribe state and local officials (Snyder v. United States)

The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that a federal anti-bribery law does not make it a crime for state and local officials to accept a gratuity for acts that they have already taken. Writing for a six-justice majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh explained that state and local governments already regulate gifts to officials, and so the federal law “does not supplement those state and local rules by subjecting 19 million state and local officials to up to 10 years in federal prison for accepting even commonplace gratuities.”...

Polluters (Ohio v. EPA)

The Supreme Court on Thursday temporarily blocked a rule issued by the Environmental Protection Agency to reduce air pollution from power plants and other industrial facilities in 23 states. By a vote of 5-4, the justices granted a request from three states, as well as several companies and trade associations affected by the rule, to put the rule on hold while a challenge to it continues in a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, whose mother Anne Burford McGill served as the head of the EPA during the Reagan administration, wrote for the majority...

Fraudsters (SEC v. Jarkesy)

The court ruled on Thursday that the Securities and Exchange Commission’s routine practice of imposing fines in its administrative proceedings, used to penalize securities fraud, violates the Seventh Amendment “right of trial by jury” in all “suits at common law.” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for a 6-3 majority in Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy that the SEC cannot continue to handle this cases in house without a jury. The decision will have a far-reaching impact on dozens of federal administrative agencies that use similar processes.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented. Reading from the bench on Thursday, Sotomayor called the majority’s decision “a devastating blow to the manner in which our government functions.”...

"Drown government in a bathtub" radicals (Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo)

In a major ruling, the Supreme Court on Friday cut back sharply on the power of federal agencies to interpret the laws they administer and ruled that courts should rely on their own interpretion of ambiguous laws. The decision will likely have far-reaching effects across the country, from environmental regulation to healthcare costs.

By a vote of 6-3, the justices overruled their landmark 1984 decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which gave rise to the doctrine known as the Chevron doctrine. Under that doctrine, if Congress has not directly addressed the question at the center of a dispute, a court was required to uphold the agency’s interpretation of the statute as long as it was reasonable. But in a 35-page ruling by Chief Justice John Roberts, the justices rejected that doctrine, calling it “fundamentally misguided.”

Justice Elena Kagan dissented, in an opinion joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Kagan predicted that Friday’s ruling “will cause a massive shock to the legal system.”...

Insurrectionist and convicted felon candidate Trump (Trump v. Anderson) 

Because the Constitution makes Congress, rather than the states, responsible for enforcing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment against federal officeholders and candidates, the Colorado Supreme Court erred in ordering former President Donald Trump excluded from the 2024 presidential primary ballot.

Judgment: Reversed in a per curiam opinion on March 4, 2024. Justice Barrett filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgement. Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Jackson filed an opinion concurring in the judgment.

Then, of course, the cherry on top of the dung heap, Trump v. United States, where the six Republican partisans dropped any pretense of judicial restraint or neutrality and joined the fascist Trump on-going coup plot, deciding the buffoon has the right to immunity for crimes as long as he defined them as "official acts."

This radical, dishonorable Court and its ultra-reactionary decisions will be on the ballot in November.  Then (fingers crossed) it's time for an overhaul, one as radical as the six Republican partisans who've decided who has rights and who doesn't.