Open Thread: SCOTUS Decisions [UPDATE-2]
[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]
With the end of the Supreme Court’s term just ahead, SCOTUS will dump clusters of decisions each week. The next batch drops at 10:00 a.m. this morning.
Decisions released today to follow in an update and will appear at the bottom of this post.
~ ~ ~
Time killing observations:
1 — from Nicole Sandler via Mastodon:
Laffy
@[email protected]
#dreadingVia Elie Mystal:
Welp, 15 minutes to Supreme Court decisions. Last Thursday was a dud. This Thursday, they’re adding a decision day Friday. Today could be impactful, OR deck clearing for tomorrow.
#SCOTUS
Jun 13, 2024, 09:49 AM
I guess I’d better draft and schedule a post for tomorrow, thanks for the heads up.
2 — Outrageous outrage about “fake outrage”
Of course Turley has to complain about complaints about SCOTUS’ lack of ethics evident in Alito’s gross arrogance and lack of respect for separation of church and state. It’s Turley’s schtick.
3 — I am shocked, SHOCKED…
…that a Catholic University professor would get a hardcore Catholic SCOTUS jurist’s back like this. At least DeGirolami has outed himself as being of the same ilk as Jonathan Turley.
~ ~ ~
UPDATE-1 — 10:10 AM. —
First decision addresses FDA-approved abortifacient mifepristone — FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine — and it’s surprisingly unanimous though the devil may be in the details.
From Associated Press:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously preserved access to a medication that was used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. last year, in the court’s first abortion decision since conservative justices overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago.
The justices ruled that abortion opponents lacked the legal right to sue over the federal Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the medication, mifepristone, and the FDA’s subsequent actions to ease access to it.
~ ~ ~
Second decision relates to trademarks and free speech, Vidal v. Elster, and the decision was written by Thomas with multiple opinions.
At the heart of this case is an anti-Trump logo. (I will come back and flesh this out after reading more about the case.)
~ ~ ~
Third decision was also written by Thomas in Starbucks Corp. v. McKinney.
Starbucks in Memphis TN fired workers after a unionization effort began. The union filed suit against Starbucks for unfair labor practices after the Memphis workers voted to join the union.
*sigh* Starbucks won this one. (McKinney is Regional Director, Region 15 of NLRB.)
Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a partial dissent in this case.
~ ~ ~
Still nothing on Trump’s presidential immunity.
Treat this as an open thread with preference for these and remaining cases before SCOTUS this term.
~ ~ ~
UPDATE-2 — FRIDAY 14-JUN-2024 — 10:00 AM —
This is the t-shirt at the heart of the dispute in Vidal v. Elster:
For those who can’t read the text on the t-shirt here’s the alt-text:
Image includes front and back of t-shirt colored Hawaiian blue with “Trump too small” on front with graphic outline of a hand making a too-small pinching gesture, and back of shirt with text reading,
“Trump’s package is too small
small on the environment
small on civil rights
small on immigrant rights
small on LGBTQ rights
small on workers’ rights
small on voting rights
small on affordable health care for all”
Trademark law prohibits trademarking the name of living persons, which means the Trump Too Small organization can’t trademark this shirt and license it for profit.
However, the organization could surely print untrademarked t-shirts anyhow — and perhaps some organizations might even want to buy these shirts in volume to be worn at various campaign related events. Heh.
Two boxes today.
Sorry for the bolo show below. All quotes are from Amy Howe at SCOTUSblog live chat.
ProPublica has been outed by Alito!
Lauren Windsor twittered.
Plot thickens.
Clutch my Pearls.
FDA vs AHM – in a unanimous opinion, the Court said the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the FDA on mifepristone!
Kavanaugh wrote for the Court.
This was a likely outcome. The argument for standing was always B.S. This is the kind of case that could only come out of the 5th circuit.
During oral arguments, Alito was groping around for reasons to grant standing to the plaintiffs. He’s already shown that he’d gladly wreck the courts to get his preferred outcome.
The crazies on the court have found a limit to how far they’ll go.
They’ve always got Comstock to fall back on.
Yup. They will continue to pick at this, terrorizing women all the while, until they find that strand of spaghetti which sticks to the wall.
Elizabeth Prelogar for the win.
Vidal v Elster – Court reversed the decision, “Lanham Act bars registration of a trademark that identifies a living individual without his consent. The court holds that this restriction does not violate the First Amendment.” They say it’s a narrow decision, and appears to be unanimous, but it’s tangled. Thomas wrote it.
Yup. Justice Thomas wrote the 9-0 decision, joined in full by only by Alito and Gorsuch. Everyone else wrote or joined concurrences in various combinations—for a unanimous decision, interesting.
Here’s the decision blurb from SCOTUSblog:
This reminds me of a description I saw of another case a decade or more ago, revolving around whether offshore industrial workers counted as seamen for some legal purposes. The decision was unanimous or nearly so, but there were several factions between the main opinion and the concurrences. The description said that the justices definitely thought that the workers were seamen, but didn’t agree on why.
Last for the day, another Thomas opinion on Starbucks v McKinley: “The question in this case was whether the traditional four-factor test for a preliminary injunction governs requests by the National Labor Relations Board under Section 10(j) of the National Labor Relations Act for a preliminary injunction while administrative enforcement proceedings against employers and labor unions for engaging in unfair trade practices are taking place. The court holds that it does, and it vacates and remands the Sixth Circuit’s decision.”
How can they find against Alliance Defending Freedom? Yep, all those so called conservative justices are on George Soros’ payroll after all.
Rayne, I’m so glad you brought up the NYT “Guest Essay” by Marc O. DeGirolami.
Catholic Law’s Center for Law and the Human Person
https://humanperson.law.edu/
One example:
Begins Lecture Series With “Dobbs and the Future of Constitutional Interpretation”
https://www.law.edu/news-and-events/2022/02/2022-0202-the-center-lecture-series.html
February 03, 2022
DeGirolami joined the law school in 2024 and is
“the inaugural St. John Henry Newman Professor of Law and
Co-Director of the Center for Law and the Human Person”.
He wrote a book in 2013 called The Tragedy of Religious Freedom.
As soon as I saw “Center for Law and the Human Person” I thought: dog whistle for blastocyst-embryo-and-fetus-as-human-person.
That school with DeGirolami has established a program to pump out more DeGirolamis and Alitos.
Exactly. I wonder who funds it.
Ugh. I could have predicted this (via Wikipedia):
USCCB are a bunch of misogynistic dickheaded penguins.
Another really scary fact about CUA: it has a STEM program including the Center for Advanced Training in Cell and Molecular Biology. Can you imagine what students learn from them, and how that knowledge is used?
Yup, they’re part of an ultra-conservative DC-based triumvirate (a Trinity if you will):
Catholic University of America (US Conference of Bishops)
Catholic Information Center (K Street Lobby and Communications shop)
Faith & Reason Institute (Thinktank)
You’ll recall two years ago, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone sent a letter to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi saying:
Speaker Pelosi…declined. A couple Washington Post columnists criticized Archbishop’s Cordileone and—n exactly the spirit of the NYT’s publication of Prof DeGirolami’s Guest Essay—the WaPo published a guest Op-Ed in response. It was written by “Mary Eberstadt…the Panula Chair in Christian Culture at the Catholic Information Center…[and] a senior research fellow with the Faith & Reason Institute.”
If you’ll indulge me, here’s part of a Wapo comment I wrote on the Eberstadt piece, hooking it to an earlier but oddly similar piece:
Sigh. It’s worse than Rayne said at 11:58am (PDT?). At no level from freshman to PhD does their biology department offer a course on evolution, even though the Catholic Church in general is officially ok with it. And, their lowest level freshman course in Biology:
After this I’m not sure I have it in me to go over to the Alito v Science post.
@ Eschscholzia:
That course is a general education offering for non-science majors. The mainstream courses on general biology do include evolution as a topic. Most of the department’s offerings are basically chemistry, but that’s the current state of the field – very few people actually do studies of entire creatures any more. Thank heavens for the few!
In general, Catholic universities let the scientists do their thing. (The Church may have learned something of the error of its ways with, say, Galileo or Bruno.) CU is way over on the conservative side but still has a reputation as an R1 institution to protect. The right-wing crazies hole up in certain departments and especially in mysteriously funded institutes like the Center for Law and the Human Person.
My juvenile brain immediately focused on your use of “pump out more …” and thought that’s exactly what they are dreaming of – more good Catholics just like them (with willing or unwilling handmaidens to be the vessels.) Sort of like the Scalia Law School at George Mason pumping out RW JDs, and of course, the Jerry Falwell type religious right schools of lower education.
DeGirolami posted a link to his NYT “Guest Essay” on the school website,
with this introduction [and an excerpt]:
On Justice Alito, Godliness, and Moral Polarization
https://humanperson.law.edu/on-justice-alito-godliness-and-moral-polarization/
That’s MY typo in his intro. uggg
[Fixed – I’ll delete this comment in a bit. :-) /~Rayne]
Above which the Center’s homepage reads:
“Studying Law in the Light of the Catholic Tradition.”
LOL Catholic tradition.
I guess we should expect the Spanish Inquisition here forward.
That includes advising and scheming how to move sexual predator priests around to various diocese to avoid (i.e., cover up) their breaking our secular laws! ffs – for facts sake! ;-)
Amazing that this character has avoided having an entry in wikipedia. It’s the sort of accomplishment a hard right wing academic would achieve to stay under the popular radar, while flooding the academy and the legal profession with his overtly religious legal analysis.
Clearly, one of Leonard Leo’s candidates for the next opening on the Supreme Court.
Well, you know what to do. Just remember it has to be written from a neutral point of view and have footnotes. Needn’t be long. I’ll help with the formatting if you want.
The point is how much work it takes to avoid being publicly documented, while having so large a footprint in the academy. You’d think DeGirolami was preparing for a Senate hearing on his nomination. It’s standard protocol for Len Leo’s pets.
I was reminded by this “guest essay” that the NYT’s has perfected conflict of interest practices for the purpose of defending conservatives.
Why does America permit cannibals to dictate reproductive freedom?
Leonard Leo and the army of Catholic Conservatives dream of having their own Pope, but I think it’s out of grasp. Perhaps not. I love the idea of Leonard Leo selecting the pope.
Eventually I think that crowd is going to establish an American Catholic Church. There have been a few instances in recent years of clergy going off the reservation. Obviously the Roman church is overtaken with Communists. (sarcasm alert)
To a very large extent the acceptance of fascism by ‘serious’ people, Catholics like Bill Barr, Alito, Leo, and squadrons of Catholic thinkers and haver’s of opinion is what is making it acceptable to mainstream, employed news people. Same as it ever was. Though Hitler was confirmed Catholic I hold no brief against The Church as the root of fascism. Every religion has it’s authoritarians. It’s just that here they are so sober and respectable. Not like those snake handlers with very very close family relationships.
So…what would be an appropriate location for this new American Avignon? Might I suggest…Amarillo?
I’d say Dallas. No association or uncomfortable closeness to dirty brownish Mexico. Dallas is not a Spanish word or association. I’ve heard that nobody knows where the name Dallas came from. At any rate it’s pure American. Omaha or Boise might work as well, Someplace West of the Mississippi in the Heartland. Or back to Dallas, if Musk takes his $56 billion and rides Texas to indepencence, imagine the possibilities. I truly believe Musk envisions himself the President of the Republic of Texas.
Guantanamo has room for them!
Probably not Texas but Florida, home of Ave Maria.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ave_Maria,_Florida
Ah yes, when the Jesuits of UDM Law School are not sufficiently “conservative” because they allowed Michigan Supreme Court Justices (who just happen to follow precedent in Roe v Wade) to appear at the Red Mass.
Monoghan is an absolute Catholic zealot and fits right in with Alito and Thomas.
“Florida, home of Ave Maria…”
Oh, I thought thought that was Dallas? Wikipedia…
You’ll want your new Papal (PayPal?) center to be near the centers of power. Obviously to influence the congress, I’d think in Virginia (Maryland being too blue and too many intellectual types.) I could suggest the Trump National Golf Club on the banks of the Potomac. Lots of room for grift there!
The FDA case seems to be part of the Court’s one step back – two steps forward approach. The case was laughably not strong enough to use to promote the majority’s religious project, but it keeps it in the news.
From “Alliance Defending Freedom [sic]” website:
FDA’s recklessness continues for now
https://adflegal.org/press-release/fdas-recklessness-continues-now
Published June 13, 2024 Published 1 hour ago
Also: WHY is it possible for hospitals to hire and place into ERs
[alleged] Emergency Room physicians who REFUSE to do emergency medicine?
Along the same lines, why are hospitals permitted to operate ERs that decline to offer emergency care as a matter of corporate policy?
***Off topic to thread, but germane to this side discussion***
My local hospital’s ER is 100% not in any way, shape, or form, afflicted with the hospital in the same building. The ER is a separate company with separate billing and is “out of network” for insurance purposes while the hospital, that literally surrounds and envelopes the ER, is “in network.”
The ambulance that takes folks to this ER – the ambulance company is “out of network” as well.
Emergency medical care has become a total scam.
Why is private equity allowed to slice and dice the most profitable bits of medical practice, organize them as separate practices within what a patient sees as the same hospital, and charge separately for them – at out-of-network rates? All while the patient finds out what the charges are only after they’ve incurred them?
Seems like regulators could say that every service under a hospital’s umbrella is in or out of network, rather than allow private equity to cherry pick and avoid the restraints of in-network pricing. Or we could just go national health insurance, which seems easier.
If the question begins with “why . . .” then the answer eventually gets to the word “money.”
Indeed.
As Mrs Dr Peterr noted when the opinion came down, “This will just make it easier for SCOTUS to rule in favor of Idaho in the case pitting their anti-abortion law against the federal law saying that state law and other lesser regulations do not supersede the federal requirement to treat all emergency medical cases, including when the treatment medically necessary is an emergency abortion.”
I agree. I await Alito’s ruling in this case, in which he says between the lines: “OK, we gave you mifepristone (at least for now), but we’re gonna rule for Idaho in this one. See – fair and balanced!”
It’ll be rape-gurney Joe 2.0: Idaho can just helicopter dying women to Washington for crucial medical treatment.
Rayne says:
June 13, 2024 at 12:16 pm
The Dominicans were founded to enforce canon law. Dominic was the leader in the crusade against the Albigensians.
My Dominican first grade teacher, Sister Ann Patrick was the sweetest person. Sister Calista, not so much.
The Dominican Order is complicated. There is the “dogs of God” history, and then there is the strong tradition of intellectual, even scientific, inquiry (see: Aquinas, Albertus Magnus). The Dominican Sisters are one of the most open-minded and liberal-thinking groups within the Catholic Church.
You’ll appreciate that the description of the Dominican Sisters within the Catholic Church might be said to run the gamut from A to B.
This would probably have been 7-2 with dissent from Alito and Thomas at least, if not for the public disclosure of their bribe-taking. Now, the deceitful Chief and his co-conspirators, in making the necessary judicial decisions reshaping American democracy towards plutocracy, Robert’s calling, will chill out a bit until the election results, likely logically presuming democrats will retake the House of Representatives, and look for a flip of the Senate, before they resume their conspiracy. Roberts, who has fluttered around the rich and powerful his entire career with the same instinctual necessity of a moth circling a porch light, can’t have his worst nightmare come true, a functional democratic party majority in the Senate, united government, and an expanded SCOTUS.
I 100% agree with your assessment that Alito and Thomas would have had a different opinion had they both not come under scrutiny in the past few weeks. I thought the very same this morning.
They’re simply flying low right now, to avoid any more of the scrutiny radar.
I agree that Thomas and Alito are merely laying low. Also, by rejecting the case due to a lack of standing, they’re telegraphing: come back with someone who has standing and we’ll revisit.
Jonathan Turley can’t analyze his way out of a paper bag. Every opinion that he writes for FoxNews.com where predicts the outcome of an event has been wrong. The guy is a joke – and not a very good/funny joke.
“There’s no question that Roberts will vote like William Rehnquist… If he swings, it will be from right to far right.” Jonathan Turley
“It’s highly ironic that it was the conservatives on the court who overturned so many statutes.” Jonathan Turley
“I’m making tapes for insomniacs to use in the future. I’m going to sell them as a kit to cure insomnia.” Jonathan Turley
There is a zero percent chance that you would comment negatively on the religion of a Jewish justice.
You are a bigot.
I was baptized and raised Catholic, attended catechism and Catholic school, and consider myself a lapsed Catholic because the U.S. church has fallen under the control of what are little more than Nazis in robes failing Christ’s Beatitudes. When jurists of Jewish/Muslim/Hindu/agnostic/atheist/other beliefs systematically treat women as if they are chattel I will trash them, too.
Go fuck yourself. And don’t think for a moment I can’t tell you’re a troll.
That you borrowed your nom de guerre from the extraordinarily dysfunctional Catholic family in Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited might be a clue to your overtly Catholic sympathies. Nominally, that’s fine. But calling Rayne a bigot seems as dysfunctional and self-destructive as your namesake.