USSC decisions

The Supreme Court ruling for this case occurred through the shadow docket, with a lack of explicit reasoning among the six conservatives, except for referencing the lower court’s decision to uphold the law, which then subsequently ruled to block it. Thus, it’s blocked again, I think, lol. I guess Texas will now need to appeal to unblock it.

The yo-yo and the timing are embarrassingly funny.


https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sb4-te...preme-court-allowed-state-to-arrest-migrants/


5th Circuit Court of Appeals panel dissolved a pause that it issued in early March to suspend a lower court ruling that found SB4 to be unconstitutional.

The order reinstated a rulingfrom U.S. District Court Judge David Ezra, who concluded in late February that SB4 conflicted with federal immigration laws and the Constitution.

Supreme Court denied a request from the Justice Department to void the initial 5th Circuit order that had paused Ezra's ruling.

 

It's more complicated then that, and yes embarassing, but mainly the fault of the 5th for feet dragging. The outcome of this case is that Texas will lose on the merits, with the question being how big of a loss vs some modified loss like the "show me your papers" law in Arizona.

 

This is all factually problematic. The Judicial Conference has a great proposal, but it doesn't set policy. My understanding may be incorrect, but I think reporters have been getting wrong info for years and have just been running with it.

 

Says on their website "The Judicial Conference of the United States is the national policymaking body for the federal courts." If they don't who does? I didn't know this entity existed until I read the article.

https://www.uscourts.gov/about-fede...judicial-conference/about-judicial-conference

 

Policy is not law. I did not realize there had been an update to this in the news, and the news actually got it right. This has been a long-time internal federal courts struggle over how stuff gets done vs how stuff should be done. And the Judicial Conference actually puts out info that sometimes says they decide how stuff gets done, but that is factually incorrect, lol. They decide on how stuff shoud be done, and then it's up to the circuits to decide whether or not to adopt that practice.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-ju...etion-adopt-judge-shopping-policy-2024-03-15/
"In a memo on Friday to district court judges nationwide, the chair of the Judicial Conference committee that developed the policy, U.S. District Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove of the Eastern District of Kentucky, acknowledged that statute and said the Judicial Conference's policies "should not be viewed as impairing a court's authority or discretion."

 

On a bigger point, this has all been more problematic (judge shopping, crazy judges) ever since Obama. Dems argue that it's the Rebpubs' fault and Repubs say the opposite. When Obama became president, the Repub senators just flat out refused to consent to any federal judicial appointments (and federal appointments in general). Dems controlled the senate, so they changed the rules (because Congress controlls their own rules, per the Constitution) to make it majority confirms judges instead of 60, except for SCOTUS. Fast forward to the Trump era, the Repubs changed it for SCOTUS, netting them Gorsich, Kavanaugh, and Barrett.

Prior to Obama, judges used to be more quiet about politics. I remember listening to an appellate court judge at a conference in 1998 talking about how the judicial confirmation hearing was the most dumb thing she ever went through, because they asked her all about politics and nothing about the law. Judges tended to be centrists with some poilitical leanings, but not radical, because it's hard to get 60 votes being radical. Fast forward to now, and for the last 10+ years, all the crazy is getting loose. Truly crazy judges are less scared of being crazy because you only need 51. Non-crazy judges don't mind acting a little crazier because the attention helps them get promoted or appointed.

F Congress. They screw up everything. There is this now divide between older judges and newer judges (not all crazy, but many are crazy). Going back to 60 should be a constitutional amendment.

 

Going back to 60 requires good faith actors voting on nominees. McConnell was a bad-faith actor and explicitly stated that part of his strategy in undermining Obama's popularity was to make government inefficient and chip away at the idea that the new Obama era would positively change things. He knew that if he mucked up the machinery of government enough by denying votes on federal and judicial nominees, voters would blame Obama for failing to enact "change" and not McConnell for cynically manipulating the system.

If 60 votes were a Constitutional requirement, I don't think anyone would get appointed to anything. The era of good-faith voting is over now that every vote is a litmus test on national politics.

 

I think for the sake of a better functioning judiciary, you have to hold the Senate's feet to the fire. Obama admin was playing too nice. Of course it's hindsight now, but I think the damage done by crazy judges who wouldn't have ever met the 60 threshold is worse for this country than an extended stalemate over appointing new judges.

 

(F*)ederalist Society has an open cache of a billion dollars (not counting dark pool funding) to do whatever it pleases, whether it be train, lobby, groom, campaign, etc..., And they've been laying the groundwork since the 90s.

Everything Congress does is boiled down to checklists and scorecards. Even a great B+ A- report card can get you primaried with out of state funding by an even crazier maga mouthbreather willing to bend knees for every out of state megadonor.

If Conservative voters were slavishly devoted to their kids' report card in the same way, we'd have enough scientists to cure cancer by now

 

here's a more nuanced, detailed explanation of the standing issue:

Whether the challengers have standing

There are three separate questions before the justices on Tuesday. The first one is whether the challengers have a legal right to sue, known as standing, at all. The FDA maintains that they do not, because the individual doctors do not prescribe mifepristone and are not obligated to do anything as a result of the FDA’s decision to allow other doctors to prescribe the drug.

The court of appeals held that the medical groups have standing because of the prospect that one of the groups’ members might have to treat women who had been prescribed mifepristone and then suffered complications – which, the FDA stresses, are “exceedingly rare” – requiring emergency care. But the correct test, the FDA and Danco maintain, is not whether the groups’ members will suffer a possible injury, but an imminent injury.

The challengers have not made that showing, the government and Danco insist. The groups suggest that their members could have to treat a patient who was prescribed mifepristone by someone else but then suffers complications requiring emergency care, and it would violate their conscience to complete her abortion. That is not the kind of imminent injury that will confer standing, the FDA writes, “because it rests on a long and speculative chain of contingencies,” and the groups cannot point to a single example of one of their members actually having to provide care in such a situation.

Danco adds that, if the Supreme Court were to rule that the challengers have standing to sue, it would allow other medical groups “to challenge virtually every government regulation that touches on health or safety.” But the implications could be even broader, Danco warns: “Teacher associations could challenge regulations they believe affect students in a way that disrupts the classroom,” or firefighters could “challenge regulations of products they say present fire risks.”

The challengers counter that the FDA and Danco’s argument that the possibility of injury is too speculative for them to have a right to sue “blinks reality.” The FDA’s plan for the distribution of mifepristone specifically contemplates that women who use the drug and have complications will have to rely on emergency care, they emphasize.

The 2016 and 2021 changes increase the likelihood that the individual challengers will have to treat pregnant women who come to the emergency room, they argue, because the elimination of the initial in-person visit (2021), the extension of the drug’s availability until 10 weeks (2016), and the elimination of the follow-up visits (2016) all increase the risk of complications. This means, the challengers reason, that “tens of thousands” of women will have to go to the emergency room, which establishes the kind of “substantial risk” that the individual doctors will have to treat such women again in the future.

The FDA’s label for the drug shows that between 0.04-0.6% of users in three studies were hospitalized after taking mifepristone and misoprostol.

Treating these women when they arrive at the emergency room results in a variety of harms for the physicians there, the challengers explain. It violates their conscience by requiring them to provide or participate in care that they “find morally and ethically objectionable.” It requires them to “divert time and resources” away from their regular practice assisting their patients with labor and delivery, and it causes them “mental, emotional, and spiritual distress” to treat patients with complications from medication abortions. Finally, it exposes them to increased liability and, as a result, to increased insurance premiums.

The challengers push back against Danco’s argument that, if their lawsuit is allowed to go forward, it will open the door for countless other challenges to regulations. That “parade of horribles does not march,” they write, because of the unique circumstances of this case. Indeed, they suggest, holding that the challengers do not have standing would “create a hole in standing jurisprudence allowing agencies to conscript third parties into fixing problems caused by their regulatory actions without affording those parties judicial recourse.”

 

which extremists?

Supreme Court signals it is likely to reject a challenge to abortion pill access

 

by extremists, you mean judges appointed by republicans...

Spoiler

David Souter faints

 

we should call you and your twitter cites the Hysterics.

Extremists > Hysterics

 

you have no idea what Thomas and Alito "hoped to do."

Judges ask questions.

everything else is pure projection.

 

Although the Comstock Law remained on the books and still provides the basis for laws against obscenity and child p*rnography, its provisions about contraception and abortion fell into disuse. In 1971, Congress deleted the provision about contraception.