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SCOTUS Preview of Coming Attractions
The Big Five, as the season ends. Get out the popcorn!
Murthy v. Missouri: State Attorneys General claim the federal government pressured social media companies to censor conservative views and criticism of the Administration in violation of the First Amendment right to freedom of expression.
Prediction: One for the good guys.
Moody v. Netchoice; Netchoice v. Paxton: A significant, but complicated, First Amendment case concerning state restrictions on internet companies’ “content moderation,” including deplatforming.
Prediction: Could go either way depending on views of the First Amendment. Loss is a defeat for Florida law.
Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, etc.: Big-time case questioning so-called “Chevron” deference to administrative agency interpretations.
Prediction: Scalia said Chevron was the decision that he most regretted in his career, and it’s going down here.
Trump v. United States: Immunity for a former President.
Prediction: Split the baby. Some, but not complete, immunity.
Fischer v. United States: Legality of federal felony obstruction charges for 1/6 defendants.
Prediction: The statute was not designed for this purpose, although the D.C. Circuit thinks so. Should be 6-3 against the gov, hopefully. Contentious.
Ricochet, add your predictions below!
Published in Law
On the Three Whisky Happy Hour, John Yoo thinks that if Chevron was going to survive then the Bump Stock case would have gone differently.
I may be wrong, but this year appears to be one of the most momentous in recent history. I am encouraged by some of the unusual groupings in the voting, such as in the Erlanger case, where Roberts wrote the opinion, and Kavanaugh, Alito, and Jackson dissented. Or Diaz, where Thomas wrote the opinion, in which Jackson concurred, and Gorsuch, Kagan, and Sotomayor dissented. I’m going to take this as a healthy sign for the Court, and particularly important since it is under fire from the usual suspects.
I think Moody will go badly. I think the only solution is federal legislation to establish some due process for social media users/content providers. The downside of doing that is that it also creates opportunity for regulatory mischief.
I think this is another case where the Democrats overplayed their hand. They would have split the baby, except the New York prosecutors demonstrated what happens if you leave any crack in immunity.
I’m an outsider, not a lawyer, but I wonder, if SCOTUS said that the president, i.e., Biden doesn’t have a constitutional right to forgive student loans and he does it anyway, do SCOTUS rulings/opinions matter anyway?
That was basically the subject of my recent post. Are those “cancellations” reversible by President Trump?
Woo hoo!
Agree. Hope springs eternal.
I don’t really know enough about this case and issue to comment intelligently but based on what little I do know, plus the fact that Kavanaugh was very vocal about his opposition to Chevron when he was on the lower court, it appears your prognosis is correct. I pray it is.
I listened to the Oral Arguments and did an extensive post on this case—https://ricochet.com/1640833/a-rule-for-the-ages-presidential-immunity-at-the-high-court/ — with all the usual provisos about he fact that you cannot predict an outcome based on the Oral Arguments what I heard convinced me that this is going for Trump and, in the process, common sense. I fully agree with @MuleSkinner and as a matter of fact as I was listening to the Government’s counsel argument I kept thinking of the Manhattan case and how it gave the lie to most everything he ws saying about all the “multiple layers of protection” afforded Defendants. See the discussion in my post about the questions Justice Alito had on this point and especially his comment about the frequency of eclipses. 5-4 in favor of limited immunity? What say you?
I don’t remember doing a post about this issue but I did do quite a bit of reading of the commentary about it and based on what I read it seems crystal clear that this decision should go for Fischer, and, ergo, for President Trump and also for hundreds of the J6 defendants. If this is the outcome it will be one of the most glorious days in the history of the Republic in my not-at-all-humble and totally biased in favor of President Trump opinion. That said, I shudder to think what the bloodthirsty jackboots in the US Attorneys office in DC will dream up as a work around; they have far too much of their lives and reputations wrapped up in sending cancer-ridden Grandmothers to prison for walking in the Rotunda of the Capitol to just give up. Monsters.
Query for you: do you think there is actually a chance that Judge Cannon will find that Garland’s appointment of Smith was unconstitutional? I think there is a better than even chance that she will and would welcome any opinions on that issue. It would be almost too much to hope for that we might actually see that very large rodent have to scurry away to find other lives to ruin although the way the Government protects its own I’m sure he will wind up somewhere with a gargantuan salary and more scalps to hunt.
The Court has announced an additional decision day-Wednesday. Does one have to be a conspiracy theorist to note the simple fact that this is the day before the “Debate”, in quotes due to the in-your-face biased line up of the Co-Hosts? Considering how rare to the point of never happening it is for the Court to schedule an additional decision day, I think it’s worth pondering why they did it and on this particular day at that?
Andrew McCarthy just published a brief post on the immunity issue, here.
Bonus question: For those rulings by a “conservative” majority, is there any chance EK, KBJ, or SS will join in? If so which one(s)?
Probably not, but, if I had to pick one, it would be Murthy. In a better world . . .
And only EK; no way the other two will – far too extreme. Hope I’m wrong.
Murthy decided on standing grounds. I’m 0-1.
Frankly, I am just about done with Amy Coney Barret and Brett Kavanaugh. ChiefJusticeJohnRobertsHeWillNeverLetConservativesDown is a waste of space in the Chief Justice’s seat, and these two are such disappointments that it makes me wonder why conservatives fought to get them on the court in the first place. Ugh.
I understand why ChiefJusticeJohnRobertsHeWillNeverLetConservativesDown would not care to get involved in this case because, in the end, he is a totalitarian by nature who is perfectly fine with allowing the gov’t to do pretty much anything it wants to. ACB and Kavanaugh are the ones who appear to lack the intelligence or intestinal fortitude to care about the abuse of power by the gov’t in this case. ACB writes in her opinion:
One wonders how anyone who isn’t blinded by the ideology of either the left or of the desire for the gov’t to do anything it wants to can not see that this statement is completely and totally false. To write such a brazen lie calls into question the ethics and intelligence of the author. In a just world, this would be a reason to start an impeachment case against ACB for her lack of either ability to be on the court, or bias. Of course, this isn’t a just world, and that will never happen. ACB is, currently, the best we will have, and as she continues to betray the conservative movement that fought very hard to get her on the court she will be safe in her lifetime of her “growth” into the next Sandra Day O’Connor.
In short, ACB, Kavanaugh, and ChiefJusticeJohnRobertsHeWillNeverLetConservativesDown do not believe that we deserve to have our First Amendment rights protected from censorship by the gov’t pressuring private companies. To them, since the private companies didn’t remove every instance that was sent to them by the gov’t, that means that the gov;t wasn’t really censoring people. These mental gymnastics are reminiscent of ChiefJusticeJohnRobertsHeWillNeverLetConservativesDown’s herculean effort to salvage the ACA by re-writing the law to make it what the authors specifically said it wasn’t.
With friends like these…who needs Democrats, or loose interpretationalist Justices?
Like @dbroussa it’s hard for me to express my disappointment in this line up — our much-vaunted “conservatives” lining up with the likes of Sotomayor and Jackson ! — in polite terms as required by the Code of Conduct but I will give it a try. I agree with most of what he said above with the exception of “ACB is, currently, the best we will have” which seems to overlook Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch. Here is a portion of Alito’s dissent, heavy-laden with common sense as usual:
I know one of the current buzzwords in the so-called “elite” circles is “concerning” in describing a troubling outcome; that euphemism is miles short of what I feel about this decision and I can’t help but wonder if maybe the last respected institution in America, as Mollie Hemingway refers to it, is not descending almost as fast as the rest of American society.
I said “hope springs eternal” in response to @hoyacon ‘s prediction about this case; am I the only one who is starting to feel that hope is getting less and less “springier” with every passing day and that the end of “eternal” seems to be getting closer?
I agree with your analysis. I am skimming through the Dissent now and the more I read the less happy I am becoming. This decision might be the worst one since Sebelius and will go down (hopefully) as the worst opinion written by ACB. I say hopefully because she may further disappoint me.
I see that there has been another leak of another abortion decision from the Court; would have been absolutely unthinkable not many years ago and the lack of corrective action by the Court is extremely disappointing, to put it mildly. What in the world is happening to the Court and to the exceedingly high standards which once existed to gain employment there in any position? If a law clerk did this, he/she should be reported to the Bar Association for immediate disciplinary action; of course it appears a law clerk did exactly this in the Dobbs situation and that person is still employed at the Court and will go on to a phenomenal spot with some major law firm. How could that happen? I know I sound like I’m just like some liberal loon howling at the moon but it really does make you wonder, doesn’t it?
There were red flags on both, and Barrett’s relatively short tenure on the bench (i.e., little track record) should have been disqualifying. But she became the flavor of the month, and obviously is young and attractive as judges go.
For a trip down memory lane, I proposed my own candidate here. Too bad.
From that post:
Seems like Roberts’ Disease–the fear of being called a right-wing partisan makes one shy away from successive correct decisions. The left no longer has even a pretense of a judicial philosophy. The “living” constitution con at least required the step of extracting some higher principle to be applied in a novel form. Now it is just the lefty zeitgeist of the moment uber alles.
I think that ChiefJusticeJohnRobertsHeWillNeverLetConservativesDown is also stricken with “must not agree with Trump on anything disease”. Seems that he has convinced ACB and Kavanaugh that if they side too much with Trump it will “taint” the Court since he nominated them and their confirmation was controversial. Gorsuch seems to be made of sterner stuff since his nomination was even more controversial. ChiefJusticeJohnRobertsHeWillNeverLetConservativesDown thinks that when Trump is gone, the textualist/originalist wing will be able to shape things because “normal” Republicans will be in office. Of course, what he misunderstands is that I doubt that any Republican who ascribes to the Bush wing of the party will ever win another election. They have no base anymore. The social cons have seen that Trump did more for the Pro-Life movement, Religious Freedom, and Israel than any prior allegedly socially con President. The populist movement is reaching out to working-class people and even drawing in minorities. The suburban women who voted for Bush out of fear of terrorism are gone to the Dems with the promise of abortion and censoring “mean tweets”. There isn’t a neo-paleoconservative path to victory right now…and maybe not ever again.