The Joe Biden debate fallout continues.
And the Supreme Court hands out some really big decisions.
Finally
According to the Daily Wire:
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Friday that an Oregon city’s law restricting camping on public property does not violate the Constitution’s prohibition against enacting cruel and unusual punishments under the Eighth Amendment.
Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch said that the courts did not have the right to strike down laws enacted by the city of Grants Pass in response to the homelessness crisis. Gorsuch was joined by Justices Brett Kavanaugh, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, and Amy Coney Barrett, with Clarence Thomas writing a concurring opinion.
“The Constitution’s Eighth Amendment serves many important functions, but it does not authorize federal judges to wrest those rights and responsibilities from the American people and in their place dictate this Nation’s homelessness policy,” Gorsuch wrote.
Previously, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Grants Pass could not enforce its restrictions on sleeping on public property if the number of publicly available beds for the homeless was less than the number of homeless estimated in the area. The city’s laws, including fines of $295 for sleeping on public property, were challenged under the Eighth Amendment on behalf of a group of homeless people in the area.
“Yes, people will disagree over which policy responses are best; they may experiment with one set of approaches only to find later another set works better; they may find certain responses more appropriate for some communities than others,” Gorsuch wrote. “But in our democracy, that is their right.
“Nor can a handful of federal judges begin to ‘match’ the collective wisdom the American people possess in deciding ‘how best to handle’ a pressing social question like homelessness,” he added.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Elena Kagan all dissented.
“Sleep is a biological necessity, not a crime. For some people, sleeping outside is their only option,” Sotomayor wrote. “For people with no access to shelter, that punishes them for being homeless. That is unconscionable and unconstitutional.”
https://www.dailywire.com/news/scotus-rules-in-favor-of-oregon-citys-ban-on-homeless-encampments
ThisIs Huge!
According to the Daily Wire:
In a massive decision handed down that will limit the power of unelected agencies in the executive branch to interpret laws that Congress had left ambiguous, and a power Democratic administrations have used to impose additional regulations, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to overturn the 1984 ruling in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council.
“It authorized a massive shift in power from Congress and the courts to the president,” Henry Olsen noted of the Chevron decision. “Most of the administrative agencies subject to Chevron are run by presidential appointments. These officials might have subject matter expertise, but their knowledge does not negate the fact that they make inherently political judgments, which the Constitution envisioned would be made by elected legislators.”
“Under Chevron, a statutory ambiguity, no matter why it is there, becomes a license authorizing an agency to change positions as much as it likes. Chevron accordingly has undermined the very ‘rule of law’ values that stare decisis exists to secure,” Ed Whelan pointed out.
“During Barack Obama’s presidency … courts increasingly relied on Chevron to uphold a slew of new, progressive regulations,” Slate stated in an article titled, “The Supreme Court Is About to Seize Way More Power From Democratic Presidents.”
The case in which the Court overturned the 1984 ruling was Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. The plaintiffs, who are fishermen, sued Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. A subagency of the Commerce Department, the National Marine Fisheries Service, forced the fishermen to “pay the salaries of the federal inspectors that federal law forces them to carry aboard their boats,” the Heritage Foundation explained, adding that the fishermen claimed there was no law that the National Marine Fisheries Service could cite giving them the right to force them to do so.
The National Fisheries Service cited the Chevron decision, saying that the law’s silence gave the agency its right to speak. As a result, inspectors’ salaries ought to be paid by fishermen.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled for the Fisheries Service. But in the petition for writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court, the plaintiffs asked, “Whether the Court should overrule Chevron or at least clarify that statutory silence concerning controversial powers expressly but narrowly granted elsewhere in the statute does not constitute an ambiguity requiring deference to the agency.”
“Under the Chevron doctrine, courts have sometimes been required to defer to ‘permissible agency interpretations of the statutes those agencies administer—even when a reviewing court reads the statute differently,” the Supreme Court stated. “In each case below, the reviewing courts applied Chevron’s framework to resolve in favor of the Government challenges by petitioners to a rule promulgated by the National Marine Fisheries Service pursuant to the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which incorporates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).”
“The Administrative Procedure Act requires courts to exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, and courts may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous; Chevron is overruled,” the Court ruled.
Perhaps most fundamentally, Chevron’s presumption is misguided because agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do. The Framers anticipated that courts would often confront statutory ambiguities and expected that courts would resolve them by exercising independent legal judgment. Chevron gravely erred in concluding that the inquiry is fundamentally different just because an administrative interpretation is in play. The very point of the traditional tools of statutory construction is to resolve statutory ambiguities. That is no less true when the ambiguity is about the scope of an agency’s own power—perhaps the occasion on which abdication in favor of the agency is least appropriate,” the Court wrote.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/massive-conservative-win-supreme-court-overrules-chevron-deference
Another Just Decision
According to the Daily Wire:
The Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the Justice Department went too far in slapping obstruction charges on hundreds of January 6 defendants.
The court voted 6-3 in favor of defendant Joseph Fischer, a former police officer seeking to dismiss his charge of obstructing an official proceeding, Congress’ certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory.
However, the court ruled that an obstruction charge may be filed if prosecutors are able to prove that a protester was trying to stop the arrival of certificates used to count electoral votes to certify the election results, not just force their way into the Capitol Building.
The decision could have implications for former President Donald Trump, who is also charged with obstruction, although special counsel Jack Smith has argued that Trump’s obstruction of Congress’ certification was much broader than the protesters’ actions.
It could also force prosecutors to reopen at least some of the January 6 cases.
The court determined that the law designating obstruction as a felony was not meant to be interpreted so broadly. The 2002 statute, enacted as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act after the Enron accounting scandal, was only meant to apply in cases involving tampering with physical evidence, the court ruled.
Chief Justice John Roberts penned the opinion for the majority.
He noted that the “breach of the Capitol delayed the certification of the vote” but said the law never intended for these defendants to be sentenced to decades in prison.
“Nothing in the text or statutory history suggests that [the law] is designed to impose up to 20 years’ imprisonment on essentially all defendants who commit obstruction of justice in any way and who might be subject to lesser penalties under more specific obstruction statutes,” Roberts wrote.
Later in the article:
A total of 247 January 6 cases could be affected by the court’s ruling in favor of Fischer, but only 52 of those have obstruction as the only felony offense.
A total of 27 defendants are currently in prison with obstruction as their only felony offense.
More than 1,400 people were charged for their actions on January 6.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/supreme-court-rules-doj-overstepped-in-charging-hundreds-of-january-6-defendants-with-obstruction
Can’t Win Them All
According to the Daily Wire:
The day after its decision was “inadvertently and briefly” posted online, the Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a block on portions of an Idaho abortion law after the Biden administration sued the state, claiming that the pro-life protections violated federal emergency medical treatment laws.
The court agreed to uphold a lower court ruling blocking Idaho’s “Defense of Life Act,” according to a decision officially published Thursday. Idaho’s law prohibits all abortions with exceptions if the mother’s life is in danger and punishes those who administer abortions with up to two to five years in prison.
In the 6-3 decision, the majority declined to rule on the merits of the whole law but wrote that litigation on the law should continue on the lower level while allowing a block on parts of the law to go back into effect. Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the decision to uphold a lower court’s ruling that “will prevent Idaho from enforcing its abortion ban when the termination of a pregnancy is needed to prevent serious harms to a woman’s health.”
The case revolves around whether the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act, known as EMTALA, conflicts with Idaho’s abortion ban.
Previously, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said that federal rules requiring emergency medical treatment applied to abortion situations. The Biden administration has argued that federal law would allow doctors to perform abortions in circumstances not allowed by state law.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson, John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett, and Brett Kavanaugh joined Kagan in the majority. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch dissented.
Alito argued that the court should have ruled on the broader issues of state abortion laws instead of deferring on procedural grounds.
“That question is as ripe for decision as it ever will be,” he wrote in the document. “Apparently, the court has simply lost the will to decide the easy but emotional and highly politicized question that the case presents. That is regrettable.”
Alito added that EMTALA “does not require hospitals to perform abortions in violation of Idaho law.”
https://www.dailywire.com/news/leak-confirmed-supreme-court-rules-against-red-state-in-pro-life-case-day-after-decision-inadvertently-posted-online
Two More Cases Against Trump Are Shot
According to Fox News:
The Supreme Court ruled Monday in Trump v. United States that a former president has substantial immunity from prosecution for official acts committed while in office, but not for unofficial acts.
In a 6-3 decision, the Court sent the matter back down to a lower court, as the justices did not apply the ruling to whether or not former President Trump is immune from prosecution regarding actions related to efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
“The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority.
“The President is not above the law. But Congress may not criminalize the President’s conduct in carrying out the responsibilities of the Executive Branch under the Constitution. And the system of separated powers designed by the Framers has always demanded an energetic, independent Executive,” he said.
“The President therefore may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled, at a minimum, to a presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. That immunity applies equally to all occupants of the Oval Office, regardless of politics, policy, or party,” he continued.
The question stemmed from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s federal election interference case in which he charged Trump with conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights.
Those charges stem from Smith’s months-long investigation into whether Trump was involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and any alleged interference in the 2020 election result.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented, saying the decision “makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law.”
“Relying on little more than its own misguided wisdom about the need for ‘bold and unhesitating action’ by the President … the Court gives former President Trump all the immunity he asked for and more. Because our Constitution does not shield a former President from answering for criminal and treasonous acts, I dissent,” she said.
President Trump had a comment:
“I have been harassed by the Democrat Party, Joe Biden, Obama and their thugs, fascists and communists for years, and now the courts have spoken.
“This is a big win for our Constitution and for democracy. Now I am free to campaign like anyone else. We are leading in every poll—by a lot—and we will make America great again.”
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-immunity-case-supreme-court-rules-ex-presidents-substantial-protection-prosecution
