If they rule for plaintiffs, Biden and the blue states should all sign EOs they will no longer follow Marbury
Exact same principle, that power not listed in constitution
We are about at the point where states will ignore federal law. Think legal pot, just on a large scale.
depending on what party has the presidency and the enforcement mechanism you are going to get alternating red and blue america ignoring federal law and getting away with it.
Add that to states trying to regulate the activities of other states (abortion and suing people in states where it’s legal) and we are very close to a complete breakdown in being able to function as a country
A Supreme Court decision upholding a law, overturning a law, or ruling on any constitutional right is meaningless if it rules against a blue state and a blue president isn’t going to enforce it or against a red state with a red president
Federalising the national guard to enforce civil rights law of the 60’s as a historical example, that I can see as being totally normal when the party of the president changes over going forward
Supreme Court takes up key voting rights case from Alabama
By MARK SHERMAN
2 hours ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is taking up an Alabama redistricting case that could have far-reaching effects on minority voting power across the United States.
The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in the latest high-court showdown over the federal Voting Rights Act, lawsuits seeking to force Alabama to create a second Black majority congressional district. About 27% of Alabamians are Black, but they form a majority in just one of the state’s seven congressional districts.
A similar ruling to create an additional Black majority district in Louisiana also was put on hold.
Conservative high-court majorities have made it harder for racial minorities to use the Voting Rights Act in ideologically divided rulings in 2013 and 2021. A ruling for the state in the new case could weaken another powerful tool civil rights groups and minority voters have used to challenge racial discrimination in redistricting.
The case also has an overlay of partisan politics. Republicans who dominate elective office in Alabama have been resistant to creating a second district with a Democratic-leaning Black majority that could send another Democrat to Congress.
Two appointees of President Donald Trump were on the three-judge panel that unanimously held that Alabama likely violated the landmark 1965 law by diluting Black voting strength.
The judges found that Alabama has concentrated Black voters in one district, while spreading them out among the others to make it impossible for them to elect a candidate of their choice.
Alabama's Black population is large enough and geographically compact enough to create a second district, the judges found.
The state argues that the lower court ruling would force it to sort voters by race, insisting that it is taking a “race neutral” approach to redistricting.
That argument could resonate with conservative justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts. He has opposed most consideration of race in voting both as a justice and in his time as a lawyer in Republican presidential administrations.
Tuesday's arguments are the first Supreme Court case involving race for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black female justice.
A challenge to affirmative action in college admissions is set for arguments on Oct. 31.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawyers for former President Donald Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to step into the legal fight over the classified documents seized during an FBI search of his Florida estate.
The Trump team asked the court to overturn a lower court ruling and permit an independent arbiter, or special master, to review the roughly 100 documents with classified markings that were taken in the Aug. 8 search.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawyers for former President Donald Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to step into the legal fight over the classified documents seized during an FBI search of his Florida estate.
The Trump team asked the court to overturn a lower court ruling and permit an independent arbiter, or special master, to review the roughly 100 documents with classified markings that were taken in the Aug. 8 search.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawyers for former President Donald Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to step into the legal fight over the classified documents seized during an FBI search of his Florida estate.
The Trump team asked the court to overturn a lower court ruling and permit an independent arbiter, or special master, to review the roughly 100 documents with classified markings that were taken in the Aug. 8 search.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawyers for former President Donald Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to step into the legal fight over the classified documents seized during an FBI search of his Florida estate.
The Trump team asked the court to overturn a lower court ruling and permit an independent arbiter, or special master, to review the roughly 100 documents with classified markings that were taken in the Aug. 8 search.
Negative. There is so much misunderstanding about this case.
What is requested to go to the SCOTUS is the appeal of the 9th circuit's unanimous ruling that the classified documents may NOT be reviewed by the special master. The DOJ already won on the merits that documents from the executive branch cannot be privileged against itself (the DOJ is in the exec branch). The DOJ had originally filed a very limited appeal of Judge Cannon's order, and they won and the Trump team was slapped down by the 3 judge appeals court.
So after that happened, Judge Cannon, on a technicality, instructed the special master to continue sorting the documents. The DOJ said "fine, you are going to do that, we will file a much broader appeal against your ENTIRE ruling that you could even appoint a special master. There are two reasons for this: 1. Equitable jurisdiction - the DOJ is arguing that Cannon had no jurisdiction on this case. 2. Richey - there is a precedent that a target of a criminal investigation cannot file civil litigation against law enforcement to delay the criminal case. That's what Trump is doing here.
The 9th Circuit already signaled that it completely disagreed with Cannon and they have little chance to prevail. This is why the Trump legal team is trying to go to the SCOTUS, because they will get smoked by the 9th. But the reality is that the SCOTUS should not take this case. It does not involve litigation between the states, it's not a split decision and it is not unsettled or contradictory law coming from two different circuits.
There's an old legal saying.. "When you don't have the law, you argue the facts. When you don't have the facts, you argue the law. When you don't have either, you delay.". Trump is delaying.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawyers for former President Donald Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to step into the legal fight over the classified documents seized during an FBI search of his Florida estate.
The Trump team asked the court to overturn a lower court ruling and permit an independent arbiter, or special master, to review the roughly 100 documents with classified markings that were taken in the Aug. 8 search.
Negative. There is so much misunderstanding about this case.
What is requested to go to the SCOTUS is the appeal of the 9th circuit's unanimous ruling that the classified documents may NOT be reviewed by the special master. The DOJ already won on the merits that documents from the executive branch cannot be privileged against itself (the DOJ is in the exec branch). The DOJ had originally filed a very limited appeal of Judge Cannon's order, and they won and the Trump team was slapped down by the 3 judge appeals court.
So after that happened, Judge Cannon, on a technicality, instructed the special master to continue sorting the documents. The DOJ said "fine, you are going to do that, we will file a much broader appeal against your ENTIRE ruling that you could even appoint a special master. There are two reasons for this: 1. Equitable jurisdiction - the DOJ is arguing that Cannon had no jurisdiction on this case. 2. Richey - there is a precedent that a target of a criminal investigation cannot file civil litigation against law enforcement to delay the criminal case. That's what Trump is doing here.
The 9th Circuit already signaled that it completely disagreed with Cannon and they have little chance to prevail. This is why the Trump legal team is trying to go to the SCOTUS, because they will get smoked by the 9th. But the reality is that the SCOTUS should not take this case. It does not involve litigation between the states, it's not a split decision and it is not unsettled or contradictory law coming from two different circuits.
There's an old legal saying.. "When you don't have the law, you argue the facts. When you don't have the facts, you argue the law. When you don't have either, you delay.". Trump is delaying.
I understand but I just don’t trust this body of SCOTUS!
WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawyers for former President Donald Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to step into the legal fight over the classified documents seized during an FBI search of his Florida estate.
The Trump team asked the court to overturn a lower court ruling and permit an independent arbiter, or special master, to review the roughly 100 documents with classified markings that were taken in the Aug. 8 search.
Negative. There is so much misunderstanding about this case.
What is requested to go to the SCOTUS is the appeal of the 9th circuit's unanimous ruling that the classified documents may NOT be reviewed by the special master. The DOJ already won on the merits that documents from the executive branch cannot be privileged against itself (the DOJ is in the exec branch). The DOJ had originally filed a very limited appeal of Judge Cannon's order, and they won and the Trump team was slapped down by the 3 judge appeals court.
So after that happened, Judge Cannon, on a technicality, instructed the special master to continue sorting the documents. The DOJ said "fine, you are going to do that, we will file a much broader appeal against your ENTIRE ruling that you could even appoint a special master. There are two reasons for this: 1. Equitable jurisdiction - the DOJ is arguing that Cannon had no jurisdiction on this case. 2. Richey - there is a precedent that a target of a criminal investigation cannot file civil litigation against law enforcement to delay the criminal case. That's what Trump is doing here.
The 9th Circuit already signaled that it completely disagreed with Cannon and they have little chance to prevail. This is why the Trump legal team is trying to go to the SCOTUS, because they will get smoked by the 9th. But the reality is that the SCOTUS should not take this case. It does not involve litigation between the states, it's not a split decision and it is not unsettled or contradictory law coming from two different circuits.
There's an old legal saying.. "When you don't have the law, you argue the facts. When you don't have the facts, you argue the law. When you don't have either, you delay.". Trump is delaying.
I understand but I just don’t trust this body of SCOTUS!
Okay, but the issue is very minor. Even if they ruled that the SM could continue, it is just going to delay not absolve, pardon or otherwise clear Trump.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawyers for former President Donald Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to step into the legal fight over the classified documents seized during an FBI search of his Florida estate.
The Trump team asked the court to overturn a lower court ruling and permit an independent arbiter, or special master, to review the roughly 100 documents with classified markings that were taken in the Aug. 8 search.
Negative. There is so much misunderstanding about this case.
What is requested to go to the SCOTUS is the appeal of the 9th circuit's unanimous ruling that the classified documents may NOT be reviewed by the special master. The DOJ already won on the merits that documents from the executive branch cannot be privileged against itself (the DOJ is in the exec branch). The DOJ had originally filed a very limited appeal of Judge Cannon's order, and they won and the Trump team was slapped down by the 3 judge appeals court.
So after that happened, Judge Cannon, on a technicality, instructed the special master to continue sorting the documents. The DOJ said "fine, you are going to do that, we will file a much broader appeal against your ENTIRE ruling that you could even appoint a special master. There are two reasons for this: 1. Equitable jurisdiction - the DOJ is arguing that Cannon had no jurisdiction on this case. 2. Richey - there is a precedent that a target of a criminal investigation cannot file civil litigation against law enforcement to delay the criminal case. That's what Trump is doing here.
The 9th Circuit already signaled that it completely disagreed with Cannon and they have little chance to prevail. This is why the Trump legal team is trying to go to the SCOTUS, because they will get smoked by the 9th. But the reality is that the SCOTUS should not take this case. It does not involve litigation between the states, it's not a split decision and it is not unsettled or contradictory law coming from two different circuits.
There's an old legal saying.. "When you don't have the law, you argue the facts. When you don't have the facts, you argue the law. When you don't have either, you delay.". Trump is delaying.
I understand but I just don’t trust this body of SCOTUS!
Okay, but the issue is very minor. Even if they ruled that the SM could continue, it is just going to delay not absolve, pardon or otherwise clear Trump.
exactly. the elephant in the room is the possession of government property AND theft by a no longer authorized person to even see those documents much less have them.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawyers for former President Donald Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to step into the legal fight over the classified documents seized during an FBI search of his Florida estate.
The Trump team asked the court to overturn a lower court ruling and permit an independent arbiter, or special master, to review the roughly 100 documents with classified markings that were taken in the Aug. 8 search.
Negative. There is so much misunderstanding about this case.
What is requested to go to the SCOTUS is the appeal of the 9th circuit's unanimous ruling that the classified documents may NOT be reviewed by the special master. The DOJ already won on the merits that documents from the executive branch cannot be privileged against itself (the DOJ is in the exec branch). The DOJ had originally filed a very limited appeal of Judge Cannon's order, and they won and the Trump team was slapped down by the 3 judge appeals court.
So after that happened, Judge Cannon, on a technicality, instructed the special master to continue sorting the documents. The DOJ said "fine, you are going to do that, we will file a much broader appeal against your ENTIRE ruling that you could even appoint a special master. There are two reasons for this: 1. Equitable jurisdiction - the DOJ is arguing that Cannon had no jurisdiction on this case. 2. Richey - there is a precedent that a target of a criminal investigation cannot file civil litigation against law enforcement to delay the criminal case. That's what Trump is doing here.
The 9th Circuit already signaled that it completely disagreed with Cannon and they have little chance to prevail. This is why the Trump legal team is trying to go to the SCOTUS, because they will get smoked by the 9th. But the reality is that the SCOTUS should not take this case. It does not involve litigation between the states, it's not a split decision and it is not unsettled or contradictory law coming from two different circuits.
There's an old legal saying.. "When you don't have the law, you argue the facts. When you don't have the facts, you argue the law. When you don't have either, you delay.". Trump is delaying.
I understand but I just don’t trust this body of SCOTUS!
Okay, but the issue is very minor. Even if they ruled that the SM could continue, it is just going to delay not absolve, pardon or otherwise clear Trump.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawyers for former President Donald Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to step into the legal fight over the classified documents seized during an FBI search of his Florida estate.
The Trump team asked the court to overturn a lower court ruling and permit an independent arbiter, or special master, to review the roughly 100 documents with classified markings that were taken in the Aug. 8 search.
Negative. There is so much misunderstanding about this case.
What is requested to go to the SCOTUS is the appeal of the 9th circuit's unanimous ruling that the classified documents may NOT be reviewed by the special master. The DOJ already won on the merits that documents from the executive branch cannot be privileged against itself (the DOJ is in the exec branch). The DOJ had originally filed a very limited appeal of Judge Cannon's order, and they won and the Trump team was slapped down by the 3 judge appeals court.
So after that happened, Judge Cannon, on a technicality, instructed the special master to continue sorting the documents. The DOJ said "fine, you are going to do that, we will file a much broader appeal against your ENTIRE ruling that you could even appoint a special master. There are two reasons for this: 1. Equitable jurisdiction - the DOJ is arguing that Cannon had no jurisdiction on this case. 2. Richey - there is a precedent that a target of a criminal investigation cannot file civil litigation against law enforcement to delay the criminal case. That's what Trump is doing here.
The 9th Circuit already signaled that it completely disagreed with Cannon and they have little chance to prevail. This is why the Trump legal team is trying to go to the SCOTUS, because they will get smoked by the 9th. But the reality is that the SCOTUS should not take this case. It does not involve litigation between the states, it's not a split decision and it is not unsettled or contradictory law coming from two different circuits.
There's an old legal saying.. "When you don't have the law, you argue the facts. When you don't have the facts, you argue the law. When you don't have either, you delay.". Trump is delaying.
I understand but I just don’t trust this body of SCOTUS!
Okay, but the issue is very minor. Even if they ruled that the SM could continue, it is just going to delay not absolve, pardon or otherwise clear Trump.
We shall see! It’s pathetic that it even is a ?
It's not an actual question. That's literally not even a question about this case. This litigation is civil, not criminal.
Loud and clear: New Justice Jackson speaks volumes at bench
By JESSICA GRESKO
Today
WASHINGTON (AP) — Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman on the Supreme Court and its newest justice, said before the term began that she was “ready to work.” She made that clear during arguments in the opening cases.
The tally: 4,568 words spoken over nearly six hours this past week, about 50% more than any of the eight other justices, according to Adam Feldman, the creator of the Empirical SCOTUS blog.
At one point, she spoke uninterrupted for more than three and a half minutes to lay out her understanding of the history of the post-Civil War 14th Amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing formerly enslaved people equal rights. Jackson's statement ran three transcript pages, the longest Feldman could remember ever seeing.
“I can’t think of a time where you’ve seen a junior justice take hold of the arguments” to the same extent, Feldman said using the court’s shorthand title for the newest justice.
A jurist with a liberal record, Jackson joined a court where conservatives hold a 6-3 advantage, so in many of the most most contentious cases her vote likely does not matter to the outcome. But her performance during arguments seemed to show she intends to make herself heard.
In three of the four cases the court heard this past week, she was the most active speaker among the justices.
Feldman said new justices usually sit back and take things in but “poke their heads up occasionally” to ask a question. “This was a different approach," he said.
By the end of arguments, she had probed the meaning of the word “adjacent," asked whether a marsh in a 1985 case was “visually indistinguishable from the abutting creek" and prefaced another question by saying: "Let me try to bring some enlightenment to it by asking it this way."
Justices themselves have acknowledged it takes time to get used to sitting on the highest court in the land. Justice Elena Kagan once compared starting the job to “ drinking out of a fire hose ” with a learning curve that “is extremely steep, sometimes it seems vertical.” Some justices have said it takes five years to feel really comfortable in the role.
In her Library of Congress appearance, Jackson talked about the attention on her as the first Black woman to be a justice. People approach her with “what I can only describe as a profound sense of pride and what feels to me like renewed ownership," she said.
Their message to her is “in essence, ‘You go, girl,”’ Jackson said. “They're saying ‘Invisible no more. We see you and we are with you.’”
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Shocking but oh so not shocking news. SCOTUS rejects Trump's petition to allow special master review classified materials. This means it goes back to the entire 11th for a full review. Since I got this prediction right, I'm going to predict that Trump and judge Cannon get shellacked by the Appellate court and soon enough there shall be no Special Master.
Has Ginny been subpoenaed and given testimony under oath? How’s about Clarence? Seems being on the highest court of the land, you wouldn’t have anything to hide, right?
Rebuffing Trump, the justices stake a claim for ideology over partisanship Opinion by Ruth Marcus November 24, 2022 at 7:00 ET There isn’t a lot nice to say about the Supreme Court these days. But the court’s recent series of rebuffs to former president Donald Trump and his fellow election deniers offer an opportunity to do that, and to examine the distinction between ideology and partisanship. The line between the two is more blurry than crisp, with an enormous overlap between Republican political interests and conservative ideology. Meantime, partisanship exists along a continuum, from the kind of slavish loyalty that Trump expects from justices he appointed to a more general predisposition toward the GOP. Still, in a moment when progressives routinely flay the conservative justices for supposedly rabid partisanship, it’s worth pausing to recognize that the situation is more nuanced than that: It’s not that this, or any court, is free from the temptations of partisanship, but this majority is far more driven by conservative ideology than by a desire to boost Republican political interests.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Rebuffing Trump, the justices stake a claim for ideology over partisanship Opinion by Ruth Marcus November 24, 2022 at 7:00 ET There isn’t a lot nice to say about the Supreme Court these days. But the court’s recent series of rebuffs to former president Donald Trump and his fellow election deniers offer an opportunity to do that, and to examine the distinction between ideology and partisanship. The line between the two is more blurry than crisp, with an enormous overlap between Republican political interests and conservative ideology. Meantime, partisanship exists along a continuum, from the kind of slavish loyalty that Trump expects from justices he appointed to a more general predisposition toward the GOP. Still, in a moment when progressives routinely flay the conservative justices for supposedly rabid partisanship, it’s worth pausing to recognize that the situation is more nuanced than that: It’s not that this, or any court, is free from the temptations of partisanship, but this majority is far more driven by conservative ideology than by a desire to boost Republican political interests.
continues.....
When it come to setting election rules, the conservative justices are 100% partisan-
“Partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts,” Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by the Court’s other four conservatives, wrote in the 5-4 Rucho v. Common Cause decision. “Federal judges have no license to reallocate political power between the two major political parties, with no plausible grant of authority in the Constitution, and no legal standards to limit and direct their decisions.”
When it comes to decisions regarding political power, the conservatives almost if not always vote with the Rs.
edit, there was one time scotus deferred gerrymandering case to the state courts, although positive, not exactly supporting equal voting power or access for all.
This, to me, is more dangerous as it legitimizes discrimination and gives the anti-woke crowd impetus. And like the cake baker, I hope she goes out of business. Stay unwoke 'Murica for these are the weighty issues of the day. But, with this conservative court, where does it end? Mechanics can refuse to work on a gay couple's car? Fire department doesn't respond to a fire at a house with a trans youth? ER doctor or nurse refuses to provide care or treatment to a gay person? Any service provider can deny service? Can a gun store refuse to sell a gun to a gay man? What about his 2A? Where does it end?
Supreme Court seems to side with web designer opposed to same-sex marriage
Colorado’s Lorie Smith says being forced to create websites for gay couples would violate her right to free speech
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemed sympathetic Monday to an evangelical Christian graphic artist from Colorado who does not want to create wedding websites for same-sex couples, despite the state’s protective anti-discrimination law.
Those justices seemed amenable to businesswoman Lorie Smith’s argument that the state may not compel her to create speech that violates her religious belief that marriage is only between a man and a woman. But several appeared to be looking for ways to narrow their decision, saying both sides in the dispute agreed, for example, that not all wedding vendors should receive such exemptions.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said during oral arguments that a win for Colorado would mean some businesses that provide custom speech for customers could be forced to “espouse things they loathe.”
The three liberal justices, in contrast, questioned whether the websites Smith would create would be her own speech or simply reflect the wishes of the couples who hired her.
If the court ruled against Colorado, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said, it would be “the first time in the Supreme Court’s history” that it would allow a business open to the public to “refuse to serve a customer based on race, sex, religion or sexual orientation.”
The case is something of a follow-up to the court’s decision in 2018, when it ruled narrowly for Colorado baker Jack Phillips, who refused to create a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. The court left undisturbed, however, Colorado’s law that forbids companies open to the public from denying goods or services to customers based on “disability, race, creed, color, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, or ancestry.”
Graphic-designer Smith says that law violates her deeply held religious views and free speech rights by forcing her to create messages she does not believe.
Smith wants to create wedding websites to tell “through God’s lens” the stories of heterosexual couples. And she wants to be able to explain to same-sex couples on her 303 Creative LLC website that she will not create such platforms for them.
The court came to Monday’s argument equipped with hypotheticals — mall Santas who might refuse to take photographs with minority children, political speechwriters who might be forced to write for the opposition, newspapers or websites told theycould not choose which wedding announcements to publish.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson brought up the mall Santa, wondering whether a photographer who wanted to create the ambiance of the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” might be able to exclude Black children.
Alito countered by conjuring up a Black Santa at the other end of the mall who wanted to be free to refuse a photograph to a child wearing a Ku Klux Klan outfit.
When Justice Elena Kagan said that Santa could refuse anyone wearing such an outfit, regardless of their race, Alito said it would be unlikely that his example would be a Black child.
A thread throughout the arguments was whether the refusal to provide wedding-related services for a same-sex couple could be compared to the same treatment of interracial couples.
Smith’s attorney Kristen Waggoner said it could not and pointed out that in its decision finding a constitutional right to marriage for gay couples, the court noted that respect was due to those who disagreed with same-sex marriage as a matter of religious belief.
Colorado Solicitor General Eric R. Olson said Smith was conflating speech with commerce.
A store would be free to sell only Christmas items if it wanted to, Olson said. But it couldn’t post a sign that said “No Jews allowed.”
At this point, Smith’s objections are theoretical. She has not created such language on her 303 Creative website and has not had to tell a same-sex couple that she would not work for them.
Two courts have ruled against Smith, saying Colorado has a compelling interest in requiring that businesses that are open to the public serve all of the state’s citizens.
When the high court took Smith’s case, it declined to hear her claim that Colorado’s law violates her religious freedom. Nor did it agree to hear her request to overturn Supreme Court precedent on neutral laws that might have implications for religious believers.
Instead, the justices propose to answer this question: “Whether applying a public-accommodation law to compel an artist to speak or stay silent violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.”
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who wrote the opinion in Phillips’s case as well as the court’s landmark decisions on gay rights, has retired. Also gone is a dissenter in the Phillips case, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who warned against treating same-sex couples who marry differently from opposite-sex ones.
Kennedy and Ginsburg were replaced by more-conservative justices on a court that has been protective of free speech rights and increasingly sympathetic to challenges brought by religious interests.
In 1995, the court unanimously ruled — in Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston — that a public-accommodation law could not be used to compel organizers of Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day parade to admit a gay rights group. And Waggoner’s brief begins with the court’s famous 1943 decision that Jehovah’s Witnesses students in West Virginia could not be compelled to salute the flag or recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
Colorado responds that even if the websites Smith wants to produce are expressive, she is conflating free speech with selling a product.
The law’s application “does not turn on what a business chooses to sell,” Colorado said in its brief. “It simply requires that, once a business offers a product or service to the public, the business sells it to all.”
Moreover, allowing Smith to post on her website that she would not create websites for same-sex couples would amount “to an announcement of illegal discrimination similar to a ‘white applicants only’ sign.”
It is also not enough that other companies would provide similar marriage services to same-sex couples, the state says. The court made that clear decades ago, ruling against a motel that wanted to serve only White guests and a restaurant owner who said an integrated dining room would violate his religious beliefs.
Opinion | Why Kavanaugh partying with right-wing conservatives raises ethical questions Opinion by Ruth Marcus December 13, 2022 at 18:22 ET I’m not worked up about Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s appearance at a conservative-studded holiday party. But the episode serves to highlight a disturbing trend among the justices, more prevalent on the right than the left: funneling their public appearances into compatible ideological silos. Some background on Kavanaugh’s partying: Politico reported that the justice attended a Christmas party last weekend at the home of American Conservative Union chair Matt Schlapp. The two men worked together at the George W. Bush White House; Schlapp went to bat for Kavanaugh during his contentious confirmation hearings in 2018; and Kavanaugh has been to Schlapp’s party in previous years. This time, though, it created some fuss. “Kavanaugh’s Holiday Party Appearance Renews Supreme Court Ethics Questions,” Bloomberg News reported. The party featured some of the usual Washington types, including journalists Ben Terris of The Post, Steve Holland of Reuters and Greta Van Susteren, along with members of what President Biden might call the ultra-MAGA crowd: Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz and former Trump advisers Sebastian Gorka and Stephen Miller. America First Legal Foundation, Miller’s new organization, has filed friend-of-the-court briefs in cases pending at the high court. I think it might have been the better part of valor for Kavanaugh to send regrets this year, but my head is not exploding here. Even Supreme Court justices get to have social lives, and the Kavanaughs and Schlapps are longtime friends. Justices aren’t responsible for vetting their hosts’ guest lists. And Kavanaugh’s mere presence at an event at which another attendee filed an amicus brief hardly seems problematic. So where does discretion come in? This is a tough time for the court, ethics-wise. The institution doesn’t need another headache, on top of the still-unsolved, as far as we know, leak of the abortion draft opinion in early May and reporting more recently about an effort by a religious right organization to curry favor with conservative justices. A conservative justice partying with conservative activists feeds into a perception of the court, fairly or not, as an institution tainted with partisanship. The Code of Judicial Conduct for federal judges, which doesn’t bind Supreme Court justices, has this to say on the subject: “A judge must expect to be the subject of constant public scrutiny and accept freely and willingly restrictions that might be viewed as burdensome by the ordinary citizen.” Which gets to the more concerning development: the tendency among justices to speak to, or attend events sponsored by, groups and institutions with which they are ideologically attuned. This is not solely a conservative phenomenon — Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and, before his retirement, Stephen G. Breyer, have given speeches to the liberal American Constitution Society. But the conservative justices — with the distinct exception of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. — seem lately inclined to favor friendly institutions, religious and conservative organizations. Consider: In 2021, according to his financial disclosure form, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. spoke to Notre Dame Law School, St. Thomas Aquinas College, and the St. John’s University Law School Center for Law and Religion; this year, he appeared at the conservative Heritage Foundation, Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law and the Notre Dame Law School’s Religious Liberty Summit in Rome.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Sundance doc looks into Brett Kavanaugh investigation
By LINDSEY BAHR
Today
PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — A new documentary looks into the sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and raises questions about the depth of the FBI investigation in 2018.
“Justice,” from filmmaker Doug Liman, debuted Friday night at the Sundance Film Festival to a sold-out theater surrounded by armed guards.
The film, made under intense secrecy, focuses on allegations made by Kavanaugh's Yale classmate Deborah Ramirez that were detailed in a New Yorker article in 2018. Ramirez alleged that at a gathering with friends when she was a freshman in 1983, Kavanaugh pulled down his pants and thrust his penis at her. Kavanaugh has denied those claims. “Justice” also plays a taped recording of a tip given to the FBI from another Yale classmate, Max Stier, that describes a similar incident that the FBI never investigated.
The Stier report was previously detailed in 2019 by New York Times reporters Robin Pogebrin and Kate Kelly as part of their book “The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation.” But the details of it came under scrutiny. After the story was posted online but before it was in the print edition, the Times revised the story to add that the book reported that the woman supposedly involved in the incident declined to be interviewed, and that her friends say she doesn’t recall the incident.
Stier was not directly interviewed for the film and declined the filmmakers' request to comment on the contents. An unnamed person whose voice was manipulated for anonymity provided the Stier tape to the filmmakers.
Kavanaugh was sworn in as the 114th justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in October of 2018 after a narrow 50-48 roll call following a wrenching debate over sexual misconduct. He strenuously denied the allegations of Christine Blasey Ford, who says he sexually assaulted her when they were teens.
Many people referenced in the film, from Kavanaugh himself to several of Ramirez's friends who were allegedly there, similarly declined to speak or never responded.
“Justice” is especially critical of the FBI investigation that took place after the hearings. Through FOIA requests the filmmakers found that there were some 4,500 tips sent to the tipline that went uninvestigated.
One of Ramirez’s friends from Yale who was interviewed for the film provided text messages in which a mutual friend admits to being contacted by “Kavanaugh’s people” and participated in the narrative that Ramirez didn’t remember things correctly.
Blasey Ford appears in new footage only in the first several moments of “Justice,” asking Liman, a filmmaker known for “Swingers” and “The Bourne Identity,” why he’s making this film — a question that he doesn’t quite answer.
In a Q&A after the film, Liman said he was simply outraged after watching her testimony in 2018. The making of the film, which they self-financed, was shrouded in secrecy. Everyone signed nondisclosure agreements, Liman said, and they even had code names for those who agreed to participate. He said that people are “terrified” and that those who came forward are “heroes.”
Most of the focus is on telling Ramirez’s story — where she came from, how she ended up at Yale and what kind of person she is and was. Several academics specializing in trauma, as well as lawyers, help explain why memory of traumatic events is reliably fractured and how those gaps can be weaponized by prosecutors.
“Justice’s” surprise inclusion in the festival was announced on Thursday, the first day of the festival, but it quickly became one of the most anticipated films in a slate of over 100. At least part of the reason for something like “Justice” to debut at Sundance is to drum up buzz and secure a distributor. As many of the lawyers in the film say, the stakes are whether or not Kavanaugh perjured himself under oath.
Asked what he wants to happen when audiences see “Justice,” Liman said, “I kind of feel like the job ends with the film and what happens afterwards in beyond my control.”
Standing beside him, his producer Amy Hardy said she disagreed. Hardy said she hopes it triggers outrage and leads to “a real investigation with subpoena powers.”
___
Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr: www.twitter.com/ldbahr.
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you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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Supreme Court: Justices interviewed as part of leak probe
By JESSICA GRESKO and MARK SHERMAN
Yesterday
WASHINGTON (AP) — Eight months, 126 formal interviews and a 23-page report later, the Supreme Court said it has failed to discover who leaked a draft of the court’s opinion overturning abortion rights.
The report released by the court Thursday is the apparent culmination of an investigation ordered by Chief Justice John Roberts a day after the May leak of the draft to Politico. Notably the report did not indicate whether the justices themselves had been questioned. On Friday, seemingly in response to widespread questions from the media and legal community, the head of the investigation added in a statement that the court's nine justices had been interviewed as part of the probe and that nothing implicated them.
The leak touched off protests at justices’ homes and raised concerns about their security. And it came more than a month before the final opinion by Justice Samuel Alito was released and the court formally announced it was overturning Roe v. Wade.
The report also offers a window into the court's internal processes. It acknowledges that the coronavirus pandemic, which expanded the ability of people to work from home, “as well as gaps in the Court’s security policies, created an environment where it was too easy to remove sensitive information from the building and the Court’s IT networks.” The report recommends changes so that it's harder for a leak to happen in the future.
IF THE INVESTIGATION DIDN'T FIND THE LEAKER, WHAT DID IT FIND?
Lax security and loose lips. Too many people have access to certain sensitive information, the report concluded, and the court’s policies on information security are outdated. The court can't actively track, for example, who is handling and accessing highly sensitive information.
Beyond that, some people interviewed by federal investigators called in to help with the probe acknowledged they didn't scrupulously follow the court’s confidentiality policies. In some cases, employees acknowledged "telling their spouses about the draft opinion or vote count,” the report said.
The leak doesn't appear to have been the result of a hack, but the report said investigators could not rule out that the opinion was inadvertently disclosed, “for example, by being left in a public space either inside or outside the building.”
HOW THOROUGH WAS THE INVESTIGATION?
Investigators conducted 126 formal interviews of 97 employees. They looked into connections between employees and reporters, including those at Politico. They looked at call logs of personal phones. They looked at printer logs. They even did a fingerprint analysis of “an item relevant to the investigation.”
Every person who was interviewed signed a sworn statement that they were not the source of the leak. Lying about that could violate a federal law on false statements.
After all that, former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, himself a onetime federal judge, was asked to assess the investigation. Chertoff described the investigation as “thorough” in a statement issued through the court.
The court did not respond to reporters' questions Thursday about whether the justices were interviewed. On Friday, the day after the report was released, Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley who headed the investigation, said in a statement that she also spoke with each of the justices, who cooperated in the investigation. “I followed up on all credible leads, none of which implicated the Justices or their spouses,” she wrote. She said she didn't believe it was necessary to ask the justices to sign sworn affidavits as others did.
WHAT WILL CHANGE AS A RESULT?
It seems clear the court will tighten its procedures, maybe upgrade equipment and likely do more training of personnel in response to the leak. But what it has done already or will do in the future, the court isn't saying. Investigators made a list of recommendations, but those weren't attached to the public version of the report to guard against “potential bad actors.”
WHAT ABOUT SPECULATION OF WHO IT WAS?
After the leak, speculation swirled in Washington about who the source could be. Conservatives pointed fingers at the liberal side of the court, speculating that the leaker was someone upset about the outcome. Liberals suggested it could be someone on the conservative side of the court who wanted to ensure a wavering member of the five-justice majority didn’t switch sides.
On social media, there was speculation that various law clerks could be the leaker because of their personal backgrounds, including connections to Politico and past writing. The report acknowledged investigators were watching.
“Investigators also assessed the wide array of public speculation, mostly on social media, about any individual who may have disclosed the document. Several law clerks were named in various posts. In their inquiries, the investigators found nothing to substantiate any of the social media allegations regarding the disclosure,” the report said.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
The report says investigators aren't quite done, but it suggests that any active investigation is winding down. “Investigators continue to review and process some electronic data that has been collected and a few other inquiries remain pending,” they said. “To the extent that additional investigation yields new evidence or leads, the investigators will pursue them.”
The final paragraph of the report said, “In time, continued investigation and analysis may produce additional leads that could identify the source of the disclosure.”
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Supreme Court: Justices interviewed as part of leak probe
By JESSICA GRESKO and MARK SHERMAN
Yesterday
WASHINGTON (AP) — Eight months, 126 formal interviews and a 23-page report later, the Supreme Court said it has failed to discover who leaked a draft of the court’s opinion overturning abortion rights.
The report released by the court Thursday is the apparent culmination of an investigation ordered by Chief Justice John Roberts a day after the May leak of the draft to Politico. Notably the report did not indicate whether the justices themselves had been questioned. On Friday, seemingly in response to widespread questions from the media and legal community, the head of the investigation added in a statement that the court's nine justices had been interviewed as part of the probe and that nothing implicated them.
The leak touched off protests at justices’ homes and raised concerns about their security. And it came more than a month before the final opinion by Justice Samuel Alito was released and the court formally announced it was overturning Roe v. Wade.
The report also offers a window into the court's internal processes. It acknowledges that the coronavirus pandemic, which expanded the ability of people to work from home, “as well as gaps in the Court’s security policies, created an environment where it was too easy to remove sensitive information from the building and the Court’s IT networks.” The report recommends changes so that it's harder for a leak to happen in the future.
IF THE INVESTIGATION DIDN'T FIND THE LEAKER, WHAT DID IT FIND?
Lax security and loose lips. Too many people have access to certain sensitive information, the report concluded, and the court’s policies on information security are outdated. The court can't actively track, for example, who is handling and accessing highly sensitive information.
Beyond that, some people interviewed by federal investigators called in to help with the probe acknowledged they didn't scrupulously follow the court’s confidentiality policies. In some cases, employees acknowledged "telling their spouses about the draft opinion or vote count,” the report said.
The leak doesn't appear to have been the result of a hack, but the report said investigators could not rule out that the opinion was inadvertently disclosed, “for example, by being left in a public space either inside or outside the building.”
HOW THOROUGH WAS THE INVESTIGATION?
Investigators conducted 126 formal interviews of 97 employees. They looked into connections between employees and reporters, including those at Politico. They looked at call logs of personal phones. They looked at printer logs. They even did a fingerprint analysis of “an item relevant to the investigation.”
Every person who was interviewed signed a sworn statement that they were not the source of the leak. Lying about that could violate a federal law on false statements.
After all that, former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, himself a onetime federal judge, was asked to assess the investigation. Chertoff described the investigation as “thorough” in a statement issued through the court.
The court did not respond to reporters' questions Thursday about whether the justices were interviewed. On Friday, the day after the report was released, Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley who headed the investigation, said in a statement that she also spoke with each of the justices, who cooperated in the investigation. “I followed up on all credible leads, none of which implicated the Justices or their spouses,” she wrote. She said she didn't believe it was necessary to ask the justices to sign sworn affidavits as others did.
WHAT WILL CHANGE AS A RESULT?
It seems clear the court will tighten its procedures, maybe upgrade equipment and likely do more training of personnel in response to the leak. But what it has done already or will do in the future, the court isn't saying. Investigators made a list of recommendations, but those weren't attached to the public version of the report to guard against “potential bad actors.”
WHAT ABOUT SPECULATION OF WHO IT WAS?
After the leak, speculation swirled in Washington about who the source could be. Conservatives pointed fingers at the liberal side of the court, speculating that the leaker was someone upset about the outcome. Liberals suggested it could be someone on the conservative side of the court who wanted to ensure a wavering member of the five-justice majority didn’t switch sides.
On social media, there was speculation that various law clerks could be the leaker because of their personal backgrounds, including connections to Politico and past writing. The report acknowledged investigators were watching.
“Investigators also assessed the wide array of public speculation, mostly on social media, about any individual who may have disclosed the document. Several law clerks were named in various posts. In their inquiries, the investigators found nothing to substantiate any of the social media allegations regarding the disclosure,” the report said.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
The report says investigators aren't quite done, but it suggests that any active investigation is winding down. “Investigators continue to review and process some electronic data that has been collected and a few other inquiries remain pending,” they said. “To the extent that additional investigation yields new evidence or leads, the investigators will pursue them.”
The final paragraph of the report said, “In time, continued investigation and analysis may produce additional leads that could identify the source of the disclosure.”
according to a letter obtained by The New York Times.
In his letter last month, Kendal Price, a 66-year-old Boston lawyer, argued that the justices should be required to disclose more information about their spouses’ work. He did not cite specific Supreme Court decisions, but said he was worried thata financial relationship with law firms arguing before the court could affect justices’ impartiality or at least give the appearance of doing so.
“I do believe that litigants in U.S. courts, and especially the Supreme Court, deserve to know if their judges’ households are receiving six-figure payments from the law firms,” Mr. Price wrote.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Comments
If they rule for plaintiffs, Biden and the blue states should all sign EOs they will no longer follow Marbury
Exact same principle, that power not listed in constitution
depending on what party has the presidency and the enforcement mechanism you are going to get alternating red and blue america ignoring federal law and getting away with it.
A Supreme Court decision upholding a law, overturning a law, or ruling on any constitutional right is meaningless if it rules against a blue state and a blue president isn’t going to enforce it or against a red state with a red president
Federalising the national guard to enforce civil rights law of the 60’s as a historical example, that I can see as being totally normal when the party of the president changes over going forward
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is taking up an Alabama redistricting case that could have far-reaching effects on minority voting power across the United States.
The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in the latest high-court showdown over the federal Voting Rights Act, lawsuits seeking to force Alabama to create a second Black majority congressional district. About 27% of Alabamians are Black, but they form a majority in just one of the state’s seven congressional districts.
The court’s conservatives, in a 5-4 vote in February, blocked a lower court ruling that would have required a second Black majority district in time for the 2022 midterm elections.
A similar ruling to create an additional Black majority district in Louisiana also was put on hold.
Conservative high-court majorities have made it harder for racial minorities to use the Voting Rights Act in ideologically divided rulings in 2013 and 2021. A ruling for the state in the new case could weaken another powerful tool civil rights groups and minority voters have used to challenge racial discrimination in redistricting.
The case also has an overlay of partisan politics. Republicans who dominate elective office in Alabama have been resistant to creating a second district with a Democratic-leaning Black majority that could send another Democrat to Congress.
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Two appointees of President Donald Trump were on the three-judge panel that unanimously held that Alabama likely violated the landmark 1965 law by diluting Black voting strength.
The judges found that Alabama has concentrated Black voters in one district, while spreading them out among the others to make it impossible for them to elect a candidate of their choice.
Alabama's Black population is large enough and geographically compact enough to create a second district, the judges found.
The state argues that the lower court ruling would force it to sort voters by race, insisting that it is taking a “race neutral” approach to redistricting.
That argument could resonate with conservative justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts. He has opposed most consideration of race in voting both as a justice and in his time as a lawyer in Republican presidential administrations.
Tuesday's arguments are the first Supreme Court case involving race for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black female justice.
A challenge to affirmative action in college admissions is set for arguments on Oct. 31.
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you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawyers for former President Donald Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to step into the legal fight over the classified documents seized during an FBI search of his Florida estate.
The Trump team asked the court to overturn a lower court ruling and permit an independent arbiter, or special master, to review the roughly 100 documents with classified markings that were taken in the Aug. 8 search.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-mar-a-lago-supreme-court_n_633c9182e4b04cf8f367880e
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
What is requested to go to the SCOTUS is the appeal of the 9th circuit's unanimous ruling that the classified documents may NOT be reviewed by the special master. The DOJ already won on the merits that documents from the executive branch cannot be privileged against itself (the DOJ is in the exec branch). The DOJ had originally filed a very limited appeal of Judge Cannon's order, and they won and the Trump team was slapped down by the 3 judge appeals court.
So after that happened, Judge Cannon, on a technicality, instructed the special master to continue sorting the documents. The DOJ said "fine, you are going to do that, we will file a much broader appeal against your ENTIRE ruling that you could even appoint a special master. There are two reasons for this:
1. Equitable jurisdiction - the DOJ is arguing that Cannon had no jurisdiction on this case.
2. Richey - there is a precedent that a target of a criminal investigation cannot file civil litigation against law enforcement to delay the criminal case. That's what Trump is doing here.
The 9th Circuit already signaled that it completely disagreed with Cannon and they have little chance to prevail. This is why the Trump legal team is trying to go to the SCOTUS, because they will get smoked by the 9th. But the reality is that the SCOTUS should not take this case. It does not involve litigation between the states, it's not a split decision and it is not unsettled or contradictory law coming from two different circuits.
There's an old legal saying.. "When you don't have the law, you argue the facts. When you don't have the facts, you argue the law. When you don't have either, you delay.". Trump is delaying.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
WASHINGTON (AP) — Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman on the Supreme Court and its newest justice, said before the term began that she was “ready to work.” She made that clear during arguments in the opening cases.
The tally: 4,568 words spoken over nearly six hours this past week, about 50% more than any of the eight other justices, according to Adam Feldman, the creator of the Empirical SCOTUS blog.
The justices as a whole are generally a talkative bunch, questioning lawyers in rapid succession. For now, Jackson's approach seems less like Justice Clarence Thomas, who once went 10 years without asking a question, and more like Justice Neil Gorsuch, who in his first year was one of the more active questioners.
On Tuesday, in a case that could weaken the landmark Voting Rights Act, which sought to bar racial discrimination in voting, Jackson was particularly vocal.
At one point, she spoke uninterrupted for more than three and a half minutes to lay out her understanding of the history of the post-Civil War 14th Amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing formerly enslaved people equal rights. Jackson's statement ran three transcript pages, the longest Feldman could remember ever seeing.
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“I can’t think of a time where you’ve seen a junior justice take hold of the arguments” to the same extent, Feldman said using the court’s shorthand title for the newest justice.
A jurist with a liberal record, Jackson joined a court where conservatives hold a 6-3 advantage, so in many of the most most contentious cases her vote likely does not matter to the outcome. But her performance during arguments seemed to show she intends to make herself heard.
“I have a seat at the table now and I’m ready to work,” she said last week at an appearance at the Library of Congress following her ceremonial investiture at the high court.
In three of the four cases the court heard this past week, she was the most active speaker among the justices.
Feldman said new justices usually sit back and take things in but “poke their heads up occasionally” to ask a question. “This was a different approach," he said.
Monday was the court's opening day and Jackson's first on the Supreme Court bench. The justices were about five minutes into their questioning in what turned out to be a nearly two-hour argument in a dispute over the nation’s main anti-water pollution law when Jackson asked her first question; she was the fourth justice to do so.
By the end of arguments, she had probed the meaning of the word “adjacent," asked whether a marsh in a 1985 case was “visually indistinguishable from the abutting creek" and prefaced another question by saying: "Let me try to bring some enlightenment to it by asking it this way."
Jackson was confirmed in April but did not take her seat until the court began its summer recess in June, giving her months to study cases the court had granted. Other justices spent some of that time finalizing opinions in cases that included decisions overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion rights case and expanding gun rights.
Speaking at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in early April, days before Jackson was confirmed, Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted “fortunately there will be some lead time” for the new justice to ease into her role. Barrett, in contrast, heard her first arguments a week after she was confirmed. Justice Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in on a Saturday and heard his first argument the following Tuesday.
Justices themselves have acknowledged it takes time to get used to sitting on the highest court in the land. Justice Elena Kagan once compared starting the job to “ drinking out of a fire hose ” with a learning curve that “is extremely steep, sometimes it seems vertical.” Some justices have said it takes five years to feel really comfortable in the role.
In her Library of Congress appearance, Jackson talked about the attention on her as the first Black woman to be a justice. People approach her with “what I can only describe as a profound sense of pride and what feels to me like renewed ownership," she said.
Their message to her is “in essence, ‘You go, girl,”’ Jackson said. “They're saying ‘Invisible no more. We see you and we are with you.’”
___
Follow AP’s coverage of the Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/13/supreme-court-trump-mar-a-lago-classified-documents/
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"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/02/politics/clarence-thomas-trump-eastman-emails/index.html
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Brilliantati©
Opinion by Ruth Marcus
November 24, 2022 at 7:00 ET
There isn’t a lot nice to say about the Supreme Court these days. But the court’s recent series of rebuffs to former president Donald Trump and his fellow election deniers offer an opportunity to do that, and to examine the distinction between ideology and partisanship.
The line between the two is more blurry than crisp, with an enormous overlap between Republican political interests and conservative ideology. Meantime, partisanship exists along a continuum, from the kind of slavish loyalty that Trump expects from justices he appointed to a more general predisposition toward the GOP.
Still, in a moment when progressives routinely flay the conservative justices for supposedly rabid partisanship, it’s worth pausing to recognize that the situation is more nuanced than that: It’s not that this, or any court, is free from the temptations of partisanship, but this majority is far more driven by conservative ideology than by a desire to boost Republican political interests.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
edit, there was one time scotus deferred gerrymandering case to the state courts, although positive, not exactly supporting equal voting power or access for all.
Supreme Court seems to side with web designer opposed to same-sex marriage
Colorado’s Lorie Smith says being forced to create websites for gay couples would violate her right to free speech
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemed sympathetic Monday to an evangelical Christian graphic artist from Colorado who does not want to create wedding websites for same-sex couples, despite the state’s protective anti-discrimination law.
Those justices seemed amenable to businesswoman Lorie Smith’s argument that the state may not compel her to create speech that violates her religious belief that marriage is only between a man and a woman. But several appeared to be looking for ways to narrow their decision, saying both sides in the dispute agreed, for example, that not all wedding vendors should receive such exemptions.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said during oral arguments that a win for Colorado would mean some businesses that provide custom speech for customers could be forced to “espouse things they loathe.”
If the court ruled against Colorado, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said, it would be “the first time in the Supreme Court’s history” that it would allow a business open to the public to “refuse to serve a customer based on race, sex, religion or sexual orientation.”
Wedding websites are the latest gay rights battleground in Colorado
The case is something of a follow-up to the court’s decision in 2018, when it ruled narrowly for Colorado baker Jack Phillips, who refused to create a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. The court left undisturbed, however, Colorado’s law that forbids companies open to the public from denying goods or services to customers based on “disability, race, creed, color, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, or ancestry.”
Graphic-designer Smith says that law violates her deeply held religious views and free speech rights by forcing her to create messages she does not believe.
Smith wants to create wedding websites to tell “through God’s lens” the stories of heterosexual couples. And she wants to be able to explain to same-sex couples on her 303 Creative LLC website that she will not create such platforms for them.
The court came to Monday’s argument equipped with hypotheticals — mall Santas who might refuse to take photographs with minority children, political speechwriters who might be forced to write for the opposition, newspapers or websites told they could not choose which wedding announcements to publish.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson brought up the mall Santa, wondering whether a photographer who wanted to create the ambiance of the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” might be able to exclude Black children.
Alito countered by conjuring up a Black Santa at the other end of the mall who wanted to be free to refuse a photograph to a child wearing a Ku Klux Klan outfit.
A Texas culture clash: Dueling parades over the meaning of Christmas
When Justice Elena Kagan said that Santa could refuse anyone wearing such an outfit, regardless of their race, Alito said it would be unlikely that his example would be a Black child.
A thread throughout the arguments was whether the refusal to provide wedding-related services for a same-sex couple could be compared to the same treatment of interracial couples.
Smith’s attorney Kristen Waggoner said it could not and pointed out that in its decision finding a constitutional right to marriage for gay couples, the court noted that respect was due to those who disagreed with same-sex marriage as a matter of religious belief.
Colorado Solicitor General Eric R. Olson said Smith was conflating speech with commerce.
A store would be free to sell only Christmas items if it wanted to, Olson said. But it couldn’t post a sign that said “No Jews allowed.”
At this point, Smith’s objections are theoretical. She has not created such language on her 303 Creative website and has not had to tell a same-sex couple that she would not work for them.
Two courts have ruled against Smith, saying Colorado has a compelling interest in requiring that businesses that are open to the public serve all of the state’s citizens.
When the high court took Smith’s case, it declined to hear her claim that Colorado’s law violates her religious freedom. Nor did it agree to hear her request to overturn Supreme Court precedent on neutral laws that might have implications for religious believers.
Instead, the justices propose to answer this question: “Whether applying a public-accommodation law to compel an artist to speak or stay silent violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.”
The case comes before a court much changed since the 2018 cake bakery decision, in which the court said the state enforced the law unfairly against Phillips because of religious bias on the part of some. (Phillips is currently in litigation over his refusal to create a cake for a transgender customer.)
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who wrote the opinion in Phillips’s case as well as the court’s landmark decisions on gay rights, has retired. Also gone is a dissenter in the Phillips case, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who warned against treating same-sex couples who marry differently from opposite-sex ones.
Man charged with threatening doctor caring for trans patients, LGBTQ kids
Kennedy and Ginsburg were replaced by more-conservative justices on a court that has been protective of free speech rights and increasingly sympathetic to challenges brought by religious interests.
In 1995, the court unanimously ruled — in Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston — that a public-accommodation law could not be used to compel organizers of Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day parade to admit a gay rights group. And Waggoner’s brief begins with the court’s famous 1943 decision that Jehovah’s Witnesses students in West Virginia could not be compelled to salute the flag or recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
Colorado responds that even if the websites Smith wants to produce are expressive, she is conflating free speech with selling a product.
The law’s application “does not turn on what a business chooses to sell,” Colorado said in its brief. “It simply requires that, once a business offers a product or service to the public, the business sells it to all.”
Moreover, allowing Smith to post on her website that she would not create websites for same-sex couples would amount “to an announcement of illegal discrimination similar to a ‘white applicants only’ sign.”
It is also not enough that other companies would provide similar marriage services to same-sex couples, the state says. The court made that clear decades ago, ruling against a motel that wanted to serve only White guests and a restaurant owner who said an integrated dining room would violate his religious beliefs.
Supreme Court seems to side with 303 Creative in gay rights case - The Washington Post
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
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Opinion by Ruth Marcus
December 13, 2022 at 18:22 ET
I’m not worked up about Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s appearance at a conservative-studded holiday party. But the episode serves to highlight a disturbing trend among the justices, more prevalent on the right than the left: funneling their public appearances into compatible ideological silos.
Some background on Kavanaugh’s partying: Politico reported that the justice attended a Christmas party last weekend at the home of American Conservative Union chair Matt Schlapp. The two men worked together at the George W. Bush White House; Schlapp went to bat for Kavanaugh during his contentious confirmation hearings in 2018; and Kavanaugh has been to Schlapp’s party in previous years.
This time, though, it created some fuss. “Kavanaugh’s Holiday Party Appearance Renews Supreme Court Ethics Questions,” Bloomberg News reported. The party featured some of the usual Washington types, including journalists Ben Terris of The Post, Steve Holland of Reuters and Greta Van Susteren, along with members of what President Biden might call the ultra-MAGA crowd: Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz and former Trump advisers Sebastian Gorka and Stephen Miller. America First Legal Foundation, Miller’s new organization, has filed friend-of-the-court briefs in cases pending at the high court.
I think it might have been the better part of valor for Kavanaugh to send regrets this year, but my head is not exploding here. Even Supreme Court justices get to have social lives, and the Kavanaughs and Schlapps are longtime friends. Justices aren’t responsible for vetting their hosts’ guest lists. And Kavanaugh’s mere presence at an event at which another attendee filed an amicus brief hardly seems problematic.
So where does discretion come in? This is a tough time for the court, ethics-wise. The institution doesn’t need another headache, on top of the still-unsolved, as far as we know, leak of the abortion draft opinion in early May and reporting more recently about an effort by a religious right organization to curry favor with conservative justices. A conservative justice partying with conservative activists feeds into a perception of the court, fairly or not, as an institution tainted with partisanship.
The Code of Judicial Conduct for federal judges, which doesn’t bind Supreme Court justices, has this to say on the subject: “A judge must expect to be the subject of constant public scrutiny and accept freely and willingly restrictions that might be viewed as burdensome by the ordinary citizen.”
Which gets to the more concerning development: the tendency among justices to speak to, or attend events sponsored by, groups and institutions with which they are ideologically attuned. This is not solely a conservative phenomenon — Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and, before his retirement, Stephen G. Breyer, have given speeches to the liberal American Constitution Society. But the conservative justices — with the distinct exception of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. — seem lately inclined to favor friendly institutions, religious and conservative organizations.
Consider: In 2021, according to his financial disclosure form, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. spoke to Notre Dame Law School, St. Thomas Aquinas College, and the St. John’s University Law School Center for Law and Religion; this year, he appeared at the conservative Heritage Foundation, Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law and the Notre Dame Law School’s Religious Liberty Summit in Rome.
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PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — A new documentary looks into the sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and raises questions about the depth of the FBI investigation in 2018.
“Justice,” from filmmaker Doug Liman, debuted Friday night at the Sundance Film Festival to a sold-out theater surrounded by armed guards.
The film, made under intense secrecy, focuses on allegations made by Kavanaugh's Yale classmate Deborah Ramirez that were detailed in a New Yorker article in 2018. Ramirez alleged that at a gathering with friends when she was a freshman in 1983, Kavanaugh pulled down his pants and thrust his penis at her. Kavanaugh has denied those claims. “Justice” also plays a taped recording of a tip given to the FBI from another Yale classmate, Max Stier, that describes a similar incident that the FBI never investigated.
The Stier report was previously detailed in 2019 by New York Times reporters Robin Pogebrin and Kate Kelly as part of their book “The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation.” But the details of it came under scrutiny. After the story was posted online but before it was in the print edition, the Times revised the story to add that the book reported that the woman supposedly involved in the incident declined to be interviewed, and that her friends say she doesn’t recall the incident.
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Stier was not directly interviewed for the film and declined the filmmakers' request to comment on the contents. An unnamed person whose voice was manipulated for anonymity provided the Stier tape to the filmmakers.
Kavanaugh was sworn in as the 114th justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in October of 2018 after a narrow 50-48 roll call following a wrenching debate over sexual misconduct. He strenuously denied the allegations of Christine Blasey Ford, who says he sexually assaulted her when they were teens.
Many people referenced in the film, from Kavanaugh himself to several of Ramirez's friends who were allegedly there, similarly declined to speak or never responded.
“Justice” is especially critical of the FBI investigation that took place after the hearings. Through FOIA requests the filmmakers found that there were some 4,500 tips sent to the tipline that went uninvestigated.
One of Ramirez’s friends from Yale who was interviewed for the film provided text messages in which a mutual friend admits to being contacted by “Kavanaugh’s people” and participated in the narrative that Ramirez didn’t remember things correctly.
Blasey Ford appears in new footage only in the first several moments of “Justice,” asking Liman, a filmmaker known for “Swingers” and “The Bourne Identity,” why he’s making this film — a question that he doesn’t quite answer.
In a Q&A after the film, Liman said he was simply outraged after watching her testimony in 2018. The making of the film, which they self-financed, was shrouded in secrecy. Everyone signed nondisclosure agreements, Liman said, and they even had code names for those who agreed to participate. He said that people are “terrified” and that those who came forward are “heroes.”
Most of the focus is on telling Ramirez’s story — where she came from, how she ended up at Yale and what kind of person she is and was. Several academics specializing in trauma, as well as lawyers, help explain why memory of traumatic events is reliably fractured and how those gaps can be weaponized by prosecutors.
“Justice’s” surprise inclusion in the festival was announced on Thursday, the first day of the festival, but it quickly became one of the most anticipated films in a slate of over 100. At least part of the reason for something like “Justice” to debut at Sundance is to drum up buzz and secure a distributor. As many of the lawyers in the film say, the stakes are whether or not Kavanaugh perjured himself under oath.
Asked what he wants to happen when audiences see “Justice,” Liman said, “I kind of feel like the job ends with the film and what happens afterwards in beyond my control.”
Standing beside him, his producer Amy Hardy said she disagreed. Hardy said she hopes it triggers outrage and leads to “a real investigation with subpoena powers.”
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Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr: www.twitter.com/ldbahr.
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For more coverage of the Sundance Film Festival, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/sundance-film-festival
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Eight months, 126 formal interviews and a 23-page report later, the Supreme Court said it has failed to discover who leaked a draft of the court’s opinion overturning abortion rights.
The report released by the court Thursday is the apparent culmination of an investigation ordered by Chief Justice John Roberts a day after the May leak of the draft to Politico. Notably the report did not indicate whether the justices themselves had been questioned. On Friday, seemingly in response to widespread questions from the media and legal community, the head of the investigation added in a statement that the court's nine justices had been interviewed as part of the probe and that nothing implicated them.
The leak touched off protests at justices’ homes and raised concerns about their security. And it came more than a month before the final opinion by Justice Samuel Alito was released and the court formally announced it was overturning Roe v. Wade.
The report also offers a window into the court's internal processes. It acknowledges that the coronavirus pandemic, which expanded the ability of people to work from home, “as well as gaps in the Court’s security policies, created an environment where it was too easy to remove sensitive information from the building and the Court’s IT networks.” The report recommends changes so that it's harder for a leak to happen in the future.
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Some questions and answers about the report:
IF THE INVESTIGATION DIDN'T FIND THE LEAKER, WHAT DID IT FIND?
Lax security and loose lips. Too many people have access to certain sensitive information, the report concluded, and the court’s policies on information security are outdated. The court can't actively track, for example, who is handling and accessing highly sensitive information.
Beyond that, some people interviewed by federal investigators called in to help with the probe acknowledged they didn't scrupulously follow the court’s confidentiality policies. In some cases, employees acknowledged "telling their spouses about the draft opinion or vote count,” the report said.
The leak doesn't appear to have been the result of a hack, but the report said investigators could not rule out that the opinion was inadvertently disclosed, “for example, by being left in a public space either inside or outside the building.”
HOW THOROUGH WAS THE INVESTIGATION?
Investigators conducted 126 formal interviews of 97 employees. They looked into connections between employees and reporters, including those at Politico. They looked at call logs of personal phones. They looked at printer logs. They even did a fingerprint analysis of “an item relevant to the investigation.”
Every person who was interviewed signed a sworn statement that they were not the source of the leak. Lying about that could violate a federal law on false statements.
After all that, former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, himself a onetime federal judge, was asked to assess the investigation. Chertoff described the investigation as “thorough” in a statement issued through the court.
The court did not respond to reporters' questions Thursday about whether the justices were interviewed. On Friday, the day after the report was released, Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley who headed the investigation, said in a statement that she also spoke with each of the justices, who cooperated in the investigation. “I followed up on all credible leads, none of which implicated the Justices or their spouses,” she wrote. She said she didn't believe it was necessary to ask the justices to sign sworn affidavits as others did.
WHAT WILL CHANGE AS A RESULT?
It seems clear the court will tighten its procedures, maybe upgrade equipment and likely do more training of personnel in response to the leak. But what it has done already or will do in the future, the court isn't saying. Investigators made a list of recommendations, but those weren't attached to the public version of the report to guard against “potential bad actors.”
WHAT ABOUT SPECULATION OF WHO IT WAS?
After the leak, speculation swirled in Washington about who the source could be. Conservatives pointed fingers at the liberal side of the court, speculating that the leaker was someone upset about the outcome. Liberals suggested it could be someone on the conservative side of the court who wanted to ensure a wavering member of the five-justice majority didn’t switch sides.
On social media, there was speculation that various law clerks could be the leaker because of their personal backgrounds, including connections to Politico and past writing. The report acknowledged investigators were watching.
“Investigators also assessed the wide array of public speculation, mostly on social media, about any individual who may have disclosed the document. Several law clerks were named in various posts. In their inquiries, the investigators found nothing to substantiate any of the social media allegations regarding the disclosure,” the report said.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
The report says investigators aren't quite done, but it suggests that any active investigation is winding down. “Investigators continue to review and process some electronic data that has been collected and a few other inquiries remain pending,” they said. “To the extent that additional investigation yields new evidence or leads, the investigators will pursue them.”
The final paragraph of the report said, “In time, continued investigation and analysis may produce additional leads that could identify the source of the disclosure.”
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Follow the AP's coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.
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There are no kings inside the gates of eden
according to a letter obtained by The New York Times.
In his letter last month, Kendal Price, a 66-year-old Boston lawyer, argued that the justices should be required to disclose more information about their spouses’ work. He did not cite specific Supreme Court decisions, but said he was worried that a financial relationship with law firms arguing before the court could affect justices’ impartiality or at least give the appearance of doing so.
“I do believe that litigants in U.S. courts, and especially the Supreme Court, deserve to know if their judges’ households are receiving six-figure payments from the law firms,” Mr. Price wrote.
continues....
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14