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Chief Justice Roberts, joined by the four liberal justices (Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor), declared that “the evidence tells a story that does not match the explanation the Secretary gave for his decision.” The “sole stated reason” for adding the citizenship question to the census, he observed, “seems to have been contrived.” Federal agencies must “offer genuine justifications for important decisions, reasons that can be scrutinized by courts and the interested public.” Otherwise, judicial review becomes “an empty ritual.” In dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, correctly called the...

(Image via Wikimedia) Today the Supreme Court issued two major opinions with profound implications for American politics. It blocked, for now, adding a question about citizenship on the 2020 Census in Department of Commerce vs. New York . In Rucho v. Common Cause , the Court permanently killed off allowing federal courts to decide that a legislative map gave one side too much of a partisan advantage. It was a bad day for the right, a very bad day for the left, and an extremely bad day for Chief Justice John Roberts. First, the very bad day for the...

NPR's Michel Martin speaks with journalist Carl Hulse about his book "Confirmation Bias: Inside Washington's War Over the Supreme Court, From Scalia's Death to Justice Kavanaugh." ns are expected this week. Many will likely be decided by the five-vote conservative majority that the public has come to expect. But long before any of the current term's cases were decided, achieving that majority was part of a long-term plan, a calculated political maneuver by Republicans after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. That battle and its aftermath are the subject of a new book by Carl Hulse, chief Washington correspondent for...

The Supreme Court on Friday ruled 5-4 to overturn a decades-old precedent on property rights, a decision that marks a victory for conservatives. The previous 1985 ruling found that an individual whose property is taken by a local government cannot file a federal suit under the Fifth Amendment until that challenge fails in state court. But on Friday the justices ruled along ideological lines to reverse that precedent, finding that the requirement “imposes an unjustifiable burden,” conflicts with other similar rulings and “must be overruled.” “A property owner has an actionable Fifth Amendment takings claim when the government takes his...

On Thursday, the Supreme Court in American Legion et. al. v. American Humanist Association, decided that the Bladensburg Peace Cross, which was erected nearly 100 years ago and has stood on public land in Maryland for roughly 50 years, does not violate the Establishment Clause. This decision should be celebrated, but the reasoning that the Court used does not entirely protect religious monuments or other displays in the future. Seven of the justices decided that the Cross does not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. However, this was a plurality decision, which means there was not a majority...

The Supreme Court on Friday ruled 5-4 to overturn a decades-old precedent on property rights, a decision that marks a victory for conservatives. The previous 1985 ruling that found that an individual whose property is taken by a local government cannot file a federal suit under the Fifth Amendment until that challenge fails in state court. But on Friday the justices ruled along ideological lines to reverse that precedent, finding that the requirement “imposes an unjustifiable burden,” conflicts with other similar rulings and “must be overruled.” “A property owner has an actionable Fifth Amendment takings claim when the government takes...

Justice Clarence Thomas on Monday said that the Supreme Court should take more action to overturn prior “demonstrably erroneous decisions.” In a concurring opinion issued in a double-jeopardy case, Thomas wrote that he believes the court was correct in not overturning a doctrine that allows an individual to be charged with the same crime by federal and state prosecutors. However, he wrote that the Supreme Court should revisit its use of the “stare decisis” doctrine, under which a past precedent is not be overturned unless there’s a compelling reason to do so. Thomas wrote that the use of the judicial...

The ACLU asks SCOTUS to delay ruling in Department of Commerce v. New York. Sometime during the next two weeks, the Supreme Court is expected to hand down its ruling on whether the Census Bureau may include a question in the 2020 census asking if the person filling out the form is a U.S. citizen. If you think that’s a sensible question to ask in a nation whose population swells every year with immigrants from all over the planet, that means you’re in step with 60 percent of registered voters. It does, however, put you at odds with the Democrats,...

Supreme Court hands Virginia Democrats a win in gerrymandering case © Greg Nash The Supreme Court has ruled against the Virginia House of Delegates in a racial gerrymandering case that represents a victory for Democrats in the state. In the 5-4 ruling, the justices found that the House didn't have the standing to appeal a lower court ruling that found that the new district maps must be used ahead of the 2020 election. Those new maps are already in use. Democrats claimed that the districts were unlawful because they featured too many black voters, and diminished their power across the...

The Supreme Court left intact a century-old exception to the Fifth Amendment’s double jeopardy clause that permits a state and the federal government to prosecute a person for the same criminal offense. The court ruled 7-2 in declining to overturn the separate sovereigns doctrine, with Justice Samuel Alito delivering the opinion of the court. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Neil Gorsuch dissented. The case before the high court involved a challenge to the Supreme Court’s “separate sovereigns” doctrine, an exception to the Fifth Amendment’s double jeopardy clause, which states no one can be “subject for the same offense to be...

The Supreme Court on Monday denied a request to take up a challenge to a federal law requiring the registration of some firearms including silencers. Challengers in the case believe the Second Amendment protects such firearm accessories. An appeals court had held that a silencer is not a "bearable" arm protected by the Constitution. The case comes as a silencer was used during the recent Virginia Beach massacre and President Donald Trump suggested he'd look into restrictions on gun silencers. The Trump administration had also urged the court not to take up the issue. The order was issued without comment...

Republicans have been successfully leveraging the Supreme Court balance of power as a major campaign issue to ignite their base since the 1980s. For Democrats, the 2020 election may mark the first in modern times that they unite around the high court as a driving force in a presidential election. Democratic candidates are increasingly advocating "court packing," that is, upping the number of Supreme Court justices to balance the bench -- or ensure a liberal majority. The idea is unlikely to succeed for historical and practical reasons but its resonance on the campaign trail reflects Democrats' new emphasis on the...

Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Margaret Sanger Walk Into a Segregated Bar… Justice Thomas has set two bad leftist legal principles on a collision course. By John Zmirak Published on May 29, 2019 • John Zmirak Justice Clarence Thomas made history this week. He used a routine Supreme Court decision not to review an abortion law to force us to face the truth. An ugly truth, which our elites don’t want to face. A stark truth, attested by documents and facts. An inconvenient truth, which belongs in the Memory Hole.Margaret Sanger was a violent, passionate racist. Her whole crusade for...

In today's concurring opinion in Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, Justice Clarence Thomas dared speak the truth about the abortion industry in an area of law and policy infested with euphemisms, deception, and distortion. That "the Constitution itself is silent on abortion," for example, is a most obvious observation that anyone old enough to read can confirm. But to write it plainly in a Supreme Court opinion, as he did, is nothing short of an act of courage in today's day and age, when the darkness of abortion has such a firm grip on our political, legal,...

The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to take up a challenge to a transgender bathroom policy for a Pennsylvania school district, allowing it to go into effect. The court's unsigned order means that students in the Boyertown district will be allowed to use the bathroom or locker room aligned with their gender identity. DEVELOPING

The Supreme Court on Tuesday issued an order that will allow Indiana to enforce a law mandating the burial or cremation of fetal remains following an abortion. The order marks the first case under the more conservative Supreme Court makeup to challenge the parameters of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide. The Indiana case was closely watched since the Supreme Court began discussing it in January. The justices met about it more than a dozen times. The order by the Supreme Court overturns an appeals court decision from the 7th Circuit that held Indiana’s stated interest...

At crucial junctures, the Supreme Court has twisted the Constitution that guarantees liberty toward government oppression. Start with The Slaughter-House Cases (1873) and U.S. v. Cruikshank (1876), which blew away the protection of the Bill of Rights with which the 14th Amendment’s framers and ratifiers thought they had clothed freed slaves against depredations by state governments. The result was 90 years of Jim Crow tyranny in the South. “I have a personal interest in this,” Justice Thomas once said. “I lived under segregation.” He grew up in 1950s Savannah, Ga., where the law forbade him to drink out of this...

“It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind. These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities, to justify the most iniquitous opinions; and the judges never fail of decreeing accordingly.” So said Anglo-Irish essayist Jonathan Swift in Gulliver’s Travels in 1726. Unfortunately, something has changed almost three centuries later: Swift was rightly mocking the notion of “judicial precedent.” Yet it’s even more preposterous in our time...

Only title & url permitted . No excerpts of Gannett / USAToday. Conservatives' takeover of Supreme Court stalled by John Roberts-Brett Kavanaugh bromance https://www.jconline.com/story/news/politics/2019/04/07/supreme-court-bromance-john-roberts-brett-kavanaugh-tie-up-court/3342377002/

Chief Justice John Roberts' recent votes aligning with the Supreme Court’s liberal wing have raised questions about whether a widely anticipated "conservative revolution" on the nation's highest court will materialize anytime soon. On Wednesday, Roberts sided with a 5-3 majority decision to send a case concerning a death row inmate back to a lower court. In February, Roberts was the key vote in temporarily blocking a Louisiana law that would have placed restrictions on abortion clinics. And in December, Roberts voted to block President Trump from rejecting asylum to any immigrants who had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.