Tag: Supreme Court of the United States

New bill would combat right-wing ‘assault’ on democracy — and change the Supreme Court forever

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Democrats in the House and Senate on Thursday are planning to introduce legislation to expand the number of seats on the U.S. Supreme Court from nine to 13, a proposal hailed by progressive advocacy groups as a critical step in combating the conservative takeover of the high court and protecting key constitutional rights.

Led by Reps. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), and Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) in the House and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) in the upper chamber, the Judiciary Act of 2021 is set to be unveiled just days after President Joe Biden signed an executive order forming a 36-member commission tasked with studying potential Supreme Court reforms, including expansion.

But Demand Justice executive director Brian Fallon said in a statement late Wednesday that “we cannot afford to wait six months for an academic study to tell us what we already know: the Supreme Court is broken and in need of reform.” Continue reading.

John Roberts comes face to face with the mess he made

Washington Post logoThere is justice in John Roberts being forced to preside silently over the impeachment trial of President Trump, hour after hour, day after tedious day.

The chief justice of the United States, as presiding officer, doesn’t speak often, and when he does the words are usually scripted and perfunctory:

“The Senate will convene as a court of impeachment.” Continue reading.

DOJ asks SCOTUS to delay case that would void ObamaCare and steal health care from millions until after election

AlterNet logoEven while promising to protect popular aspects of the Affordable Care Act behind the scenes President Donald Trump and his administration have been hard at work trying to kill ObamaCare.  The Dept. of Justice is supporting a lawsuit brought by Republican governors and state attorneys general that has already received a ruling finding the individual mandate is unconstitutional. The DOJ then asked the court to declare the entire law – all of ObamaCare – unconstitutional.

Now that case is moving to the Supreme Court, but the Trump administration knows if it kills the now-popular health care law that bears his predecessor’s name, they will lose the support of millions whose lives literally depend on it.

So on Friday the U.S. Dept. of Justice under Attorney General Bill Barr asked the Supreme Court to delay deciding if it will hear the case, so any subsequent ruling would be handed down after the November, 2020 election. Continue reading.

Appeals court rejects Trump’s attempt to withhold tax returns from local prosecutors, setting stage for Supreme Court fight

Washington Post logoA federal appeals court on Monday unanimously rejected President Trump’s effort to block New York grand jury subpoenas for his tax records, setting up a possible Supreme Court showdown.

New York prosecutors are seeking eight years of Trump’s tax returns from his accounting firm in their investigation of hush-money payments made by Trump’s then-attorney Michael Cohen before the 2016 election.

Trump’s attorneys have argued that as president, Trump is immune not only from prosecution but from investigations. But in the decision, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that “any presidential immunity from a state criminal process does not bar the enforcement of such subpoena.”

View the complete November 4 article by Jonathan O’Connell and Ann E. Marimow on The Washington Post website here.

‘Everything conservatives hoped for and liberals feared’: Neil Gorsuch makes his mark at the Supreme Court

Washington Post logoSome justices ascend to the Supreme Court quietly, deferring to their elders and biding time before venturing out too far to offer their own views of the law.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, on the other hand, appears to have been shot from a cannon.

At his inaugural oral argument in April 2017, President Trump’s first choice for the Supreme Court asked 22 questions. In the term just completed, Gorsuch wrote more dissents than any other justice and typed out a whopping 337 pages of opinions. Again, more than anyone else.

View the complete September 6 article by Robert Barnes and Seung Min Kim on The Washington Post website here.

Despite Supreme Court Ruling, Trump Still Aims For Citizenship Query In Census

President Donald Trump and the Republican Party were seemingly dealt a major blow when the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling late last month that blocked, at least for now, a citizenship question from being included on the 2020 U.S. Census. After the high court’s ruling, the Trump administration appeared to give up on the idea; as recently as July 2, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross (who oversees the Census) said the administration would be printing Census forms without a question on citizenship.

But Trump is refusing to give up on the possibility of a citizenship question somehow being included on the 2020 Census and appears to be looking for possible ways to do so without running afoul of the Supreme Court’s ruling.

On Friday, Trump told reporters he was weighing his options and was considering some type of “executive order” on a citizenship question for the Census.

View the complete July 5 article by Alex Henderson from AlterNet on the National Memo website here.

Supreme Court rejects bid to restore Alabama abortion law

The Hill logoThe Supreme Court on Friday declined to hear a case on a 2015 Alabama abortion law that bans a common form of the procedure during the second trimester of pregnancy.

Alabama had sought to overturn lower court rulings that struck down the law, but the justices rejected that bid in their order.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a concurring opinion that he agreed the court should not hear the case, but called it a “stark reminder that our abortion jurisprudence has spiraled out of control.”

View the complete June 28 article why Jacqueline Thomsen on The Hill website here.

It was a terrible day for democracy in the Supreme Court

Don’t let the census case fool you.

The Supreme Court handed down two opinions on Thursday which could shape American democracy for decades.

The first, Rucho v. Common Cause, held that suits challenging partisan gerrymanders are entirely beyond the power of the federal courts to adjudicate. Henceforth, state lawmakers may draw the most aggressively partisan gerrymanders they (and their computers) can come up with. They may draw, as Wisconsin did, a gerrymander so impervious to democracythat Republicans win nearly two-thirds of the state assembly seats even in an election where they won 54% of the popular vote.

And the entire federal bench must sit on its hands and allow this to happen.

View the complete June 27 article by Ian Millhiser on the ThinkProgress website here.

Trump rage-tweets an idea that would violate the Constitution in furious response to the Supreme Court

AlterNet logoIn a blow to the Trump administration’s plans, Chief Justice of the United State John Roberts issued an opinion Thursday ruling against the Commerce Department’s plan to include a citizenship question on the upcoming 2020 Census.

While the administration claimed that the question was designed to help the Justice Department enforce the Voting Rights Act, Roberts and a majority of the court found that this explanation was not supported by the evidence in the case, and the Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision to remand the decision back to the agency. Many observers argued this will likely prevent the department from adding the question to the Census in time for the upcoming Census (though there’s some debate about this), and President Donald Trump, in two rage-filled tweets sent from his Japan trip, said he wants to delay the process:

View the complete Jun 27 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.