Transcript
The Final Rulings of the Supreme Court Term (Part 1)
Amicus: A Law Review · Sat Jun 28, 2025
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I am your host, both this hour and next hour here on the broadcast stations of Civic Media, as we once again gather together remotely, admittedly, but gather together on what are some of the most important days in recent American history.
Plainly, plainly all of us know about the significant decisions issued just in the past week and in the weeks prior to that by our United States Supreme Court.
All of that, all of that is on our ambitious
but achievable agenda this morning and also tomorrow.
And let me begin by that with that important programming note.
And that is that our show today is live as it always is on Saturday mornings.
We encourage our listeners, those who are interested in participating in our discussion to call in and being a part of that discussion.
That phone number is 855-752-4842.
In addition to our live broadcast this morning, in addition to what we're going to be talking about today, which are the most recent decisions of our United States Supreme Court, we are also going to be offering through the auspices of civic media a second broadcast, a second broadcast, new content, new material, tomorrow afternoon, Sunday between two and four o'clock.
Frequent listeners to this program recognize that our Saturday morning broadcast is often if not routinely presented again on a Sunday afternoon between two o'clock and four o'clock this weekend because of the importance of the major decisions being issued by our Supreme Court and the significance here as our commission always is to provide you with
friendly and informative and engaging and hopefully insightful perspective on what's going on in the areas of law and government and the aspiration for justice in America.
This weekend alone, we're going to be presenting two separate editions of Amicus, a lot of you.
Again, the one that you are listening to right now, you can participate with us live as we come to you from the studios of Civic Media in Racine.
And then a second broadcast, a second broadcast
broadcast tomorrow afternoon, Sunday afternoon from 2 o'clock to 4 o'clock.
What is the agenda for our two broadcasts this weekend?
Separate new content in each of those.
It is principally, if not exclusively, the focus on the United States Supreme Court in the past several months.
ever since the term of the United States Supreme Court began, the Supreme Court has taken up approximately 66 different cases and indeed it has issued 66 different opinions.
We are not going to be able to cover all of them.
We have talked about many of them in previous broadcasts on this very show.
What we're going to be doing this morning is talking about those most recent cases, those most recent opinions that were issued by our Supreme
court just this past week, including just yesterday on Friday.
And then tomorrow, we're going to follow up on more of commentary about those cases and remind you of some of the other major cases, many, but not all of which we have also discussed in previous broadcasts, to give you what, to give you a sense of the overall legacy of this term, the 2024, 2025 term,
of the United States Supreme Court once again this morning talking about frankly some blockbuster decisions coming out of our Supreme Court just in recent hours and recent days and then tomorrow following up on other cases in the docket also recently decided but going back and reminding you and recalling what we have talked about with respect to some other opinions also the product of deliberation by our United States Supreme Court over the period
of the past several months.
It is a lot, as we often say on this broadcast, but it is consumable, it is important, it is significant, and I thank you on behalf of my producer Max and all of us here at Civic Media for committing to this discussion, this engagement of these hugely important issues because they are indeed just that, and we'll get to that.
The reasons why we're
broadcasting about this, devoting two special programs of amicus to this, is because it's not just news, it's not just the things in the headlines.
These quite literally affect and animate and dramatize in many ways the ways that the rule of law is administered and pursued in our nation, in our state, and even in our local
communities all of that hugely important here on amicus a law review before we get to that it is important to note as a prologue to our discussion about the supreme court that in addition to these major cases these major opinions issued by the high court just in the past several days and weeks
Other issues related to justice do continue once again to animate the headlines across our nation.
Let me talk with you about two of those events, two of those set of circumstances that, from my perspective, animate once again the reasons why we get together.
They help us to understand how government works, often doesn't work, the internal operations of our justice department, the internal operations of our judiciary.
The internal operations of our White House, the executive branch, the judicial branch, less so, which is of course also another concern, the legislative branch in all of this, but there were two major events also of just this past week that necessarily require and mandate some discussion, even as antecedents, as prologue to our expansive discussion this morning and again tomorrow afternoon,
of these major decisions coming out of the Supreme Court.
One of them, one of them has to do with internal issues related to the Department of Justice.
We speak a lot about that here on Amicus, a law review.
We recall in particular this case still pending out there involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
And as significant as that case is and continues to be, he is now, as you know, the subject of a two-count indictment returned in the Middle District of Tennessee, alleging his illegal transportation of aliens, of people improperly here in our nation.
And while that is a hugely important thing, and for all of us who are committed to justice in America, the reality is that there's something else that happened in connection with that case that is internal to the department, but also very external to all of us who are concerned about the judicial department and also the department of justice.
And that is this.
You may recall well that there was an attorney early on as the Abraigo Garcia case was being handled by a
and a district court judge named Paula Zinnis.
She's in Maryland.
And that attorney candidly and straightforwardly said to the judge in connection with his status at that time, still in El Salvador, that the government had made what he called an administrative error that he should not have been arrested and deported and sent to El Salvador.
That representation, that accurate, truthful representation by that attorney got him in trouble.
And in the wake of that admission in open court, an honest, genuine statement about his status, that is the status of Abrego Garcia, the deputy attorney general, his name is Todd Blanche, administratively placed that attorney on leave and ultimately fired him.
And in the wake of all of that,
In the wake of his termination, the attorney's termination from the Department of Justice, he filed what is called a complaint, and that's what animates the important news of Justice past week.
He filed a complaint not in federal court, not in state court, not in any court, but before a group called the Office of the Inspector General, they're internal to the Department of Justice, and they look at waste, they look at fraud, they look at abuse, other conduct of the Department of Justice that warrants internal examination.
They make reports, they do not have the authority to prosecute, they do not have the authority to take things into courts themselves, but they do issue reports, their findings are important.
And so what happened is that this attorney, terminated in the wake of his accurate representation of Paul Zinnis, filed a complaint against the very agency with which he worked for a long period of time.
It is significant as a footnote that this particular attorney also had spent much of his career, a long career,
distinguished career representing not only the Department of Justice, but advocating in support of many of the executive orders, the positions of this president.
And so he was terminated as a result of his representation in front of Paula Zinnis about the status of a Bregel Garcia.
And along the way in that document, a multi-page document supported by emails and documents and writings and representations about conversations that he and others had, he made critical allegations about his superiors inside the Department of Justice.
In particular, he said,
that a fellow named Emile Beauvais, Emile Beauvais, who early on and to this day is the principal associate deputy attorney general of the United States Department of Justice, had met with everyone involved in these deportation proceedings on March 14th, right before the first planes had taken groups of deportees to El Salvador, including Abrego Garcia.
And during the course of that meeting, according to the complaint of this attorney,
Emile Beauvais, serving in this high capacity role at the Department of Justice, had told those attorneys that they should be prepared to, yes, lie, lie to federal district court judges, misrepresent what the facts were, refuse to tell them what the facts were all about, and indeed, in language that I will not repeat on the air, he said that you need to tell the judges implicitly, if not explicitly, FU.
And according to the complaint, that direction, that instruction by Emile Beauvais was met with horror, was met with disbelief by people in that meeting.
We know that what happened in the wake of that is that indeed in front of Paula Zinnis, in front of people like James Bosberg, the chief judge in Washington DC, in front of other judges of the federal courts, the lawyers for the Department of Justice have done just that.
They have failed to provide the information needed.
They have lied to the judges about the status of what is going on.
And indeed that direction by Emile Bovet animates and makes us understand now what has been going on for a long time.
It reveals an awful lot about what the Department of Justice is all about these days.
I would offer to you as someone who worked for 30 years inside the Department of Justice.
that that kind of instruction is completely unheard of.
Regardless of the administration, the notion that a high-level individual would instruct lawyers of the Department of Justice to go into court and misrepresent and stonewall
and do it in a way that Plenley is not intended to promote the interests of justice, is not just shocking.
It's not just contrary to the policies of the Department of Justice.
It is completely contrary to the oath of office that attorneys take, the oath of office that they take as lawyers, and to the administration of justice in America.
This is a reason for all Americans to be horrified.
Now, Emile Beauvais,
the following day, the following day, appears in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee not overtly to defend himself, although he does, and he denies in some substance that he represented things in this way.
But when questioned by a senator from California, his name is Adam Schiff, it is significant that Emil Vaubay specifically declines and cannot say that he did not say to this group,
that they got to be prepared to tell judges F.U.
And the exchange between the senator and Emile Beauvais speaks volumes about what did and did not happen.
In fact, it confirms exactly the specific very much supported allegations made by this attorney in that
report that complaint to the Office of the Inspector General.
That is one of the significant things that happened this past week.
When we come back, I'm going to tell you about another one that is also an antecedent and a prologue to our review, our analysis this morning, today of Supreme Court cases.
Stay with us for all of that and more.
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My name is Jim Santel.
I am your host this hour, next hour, and then also for two more hours of new content, additional commentary about the Supreme Court.
That's happening tomorrow, Sunday afternoon between two and four o'clock, not simply a repeat of this morning's broadcast, an extension of it, a continuation of what we're about to undertake in just a few moments.
That is some analysis and review of these major Supreme Court cases.
issued by our High Court in recent days and weeks.
All of that, all of that proceeded by what I regard as two other very significant events in the rule of law that happened just this past week, one of them having to do with these revelations by an attorney of the Department of Justice, that a high-ranking supervisor inside the Department of Justice, his name, Emile Beauvais, had all but instructed the...
litigating attorneys, the criminal prosecuting attorneys, the civil attorneys who are responsible for administering law in the Department of Justice, that they can indeed.
They've got the permission of the highest authorities inside the Department of Justice to lie and to deceive.
And specifically when it comes to these civil cases involving deportees around the nation, including those being sent to El Salvador and other places, Emile Beauvais,
Associate Deputy Attorney General has given authorization to department attorneys to misrepresent.
to the courts, not give them what they're asking for and telling them basically that they have got no business, no power to do what it is they plainly have the power to do.
That is a stunning thing to say.
And it does in fact, and does in fact help us to understand what is going on generally in Washington when it comes to the interplay of the Department of Justice and the Supreme Court and the White House as well.
There is a second event, not unrelated to that first one that also took place in Washington, DC this past weekend.
that is related once again to deportations.
You may recall that we have talked at great length about the work, the orders of another district court judge.
His name is Brian Murphy and he is in Massachusetts and he is the one who has handled this so-called South Sudan deportation matter involving eight different individuals subject to deportation, violent criminals who should in fact be deported.
Brian Murphy repeatedly and in a significant order of a number of weeks have done.
months ago telling the government that not only can it deport, but while it does that, it also has to afford those deportees due process in terms of where they go.
where they end up.
And according to the law passed by the Congress, which the judge enforces, he tells the Department of Justice attorneys appearing in front of him that they need to ensure that those deportees, although they're violent, although they should be deported, that they have some involvement in the places where they are ultimately deported to.
They're not the decision makers, but they need to be told where they're going and they need an opportunity to object if they do so.
That's what he required to do.
When the...
Judge imposed that obligation upon the Department of Justice again in the context of things that the department can do.
The department ultimately appealed that to an appeals court which affirmed the lower court judgment ultimately to the Supreme Court and on Monday of this past week in another one of these emergency applications hugely problematic for the rule of law in America.
The United States Supreme Court by its majority opinion simply indicated without any
any explanation for what it was doing simply overturned.
overturned what Judge Murphy had said and granted the stay, the request of the Department of Justice to overturn, to stay and basically to overturn the ruling of the lower court judge without any explanation.
And that prompted, that prompted Justice Sonia Sotomayor joined by Elena Kagan and Justice Jackson to dissent.
And along the way, along the way, what they said was, among other things, this language, she said,
that is Justice Jackson and matters of life and death.
It is best to proceed with caution.
In this case, the government took the opposite approach and wrongfully deported one plaintiff to Guatemala, even though an immigration judge found he was likely to face torture there.
Then in clear violation of a court order, it deported six more to South Sudan, a nation the State Department considers too unsafe for all, but it's most critical personnel and attentive district court.
That's Judge Murphy.
intervene to prevent this from happening.
And the dissent, which is the only explanation, it is not the rule of law from this case, goes on for another 16 pages.
What happens in the wake of that unvarnished, undescribed opinion, that ruling from the Supreme Court, the majority saying, we are
in our view overturning what Judge Murphy has done is Judge Murphy takes a look at it and says nothing about the Supreme Court order prevents me from going ahead and enforcing the orders that I have previously entered.
Why?
Because in major portion the Supreme Court opinion
If it is that at all, it really isn't.
It is one paragraph without description, says nothing about the requirement for due process afforded these people in South Sudan.
Apparently they're now in Djibouti, which is another East African nation waiting for some disposition there.
And what happens in the wake of that, of course, once the lower court judge says, hey, nothing about what the Supreme Court has done prevents me from enforcing my own order.
that the Department of Justice drew your Solicitor General goes back to the Supreme Court.
All of this happening within hours on Monday and Tuesday of this week and says to the Supreme Court, we are asking you now to enforce what you have said previously on Monday hours ago.
And that sort of back and forth, that lack of clarity on something of this importance, which is due process in America, is the other great takeaway about the rule of law this past week, that also once again animates our discussion about Supreme Court cases, because what it says is this practice of the Supreme Court issuing many, many opinions, 19, 19 alone, since January 20th of 2025, this practice of an
emergency docket that produces not substance, not explanation, not description, not transparency.
What that does is it gives no direction to the lower courts.
And in this case, Judge Murphy looks at it, says absent direction, that continues.
All of that, all of that is a lead up to our Supreme Court analysis.
And that Supreme Court review and that reporting begins right after this break.
Stay with us here on Amicus, a law review.
you
This is Amicus Law Review.
We are in this broadcast and also another special broadcast tomorrow afternoon that Sunday between 2 and 4 o'clock addressing the principal agenda items of these two broadcasts and that is the United States Supreme Court.
As we just discussed, a lot of that relates to how human beings, lawyers, judges, the staff of all of them are major
units inside the Department of Justice, inside the judiciary, inside the White House, how they behave, how they conduct themselves, and that's the reason why these accounts of the conduct of lawyers in federal courts, as revealed by this report to the Office of the Inspector General Justice last week, and this other account, not unrelated about the small battle taking place right now inside the judiciary, about the understandings coming from the Supreme Court, Brian Murphy interpreting
a non-order, a non-descriptive order from the Supreme Court in a way that makes sense, and underscoring once again this paramount problem that we have today in America.
It's not new, it's not new this administration, but this increasingly
great concern that indeed our Supreme Court issuing opinions without descriptions of the reasons for their doing what they're doing.
All of that much on display and all of that, all of that prologue to our discussion about the United States Supreme Court opinions of just recent days.
Now what are those opinions?
There are a lot of them.
There are 66 all together from this past term.
We are not going to spend
all of our broadcast time today and tomorrow talking about all of that.
But we're going to hopefully focus on six, 10, 12, 14 of them, perhaps, depending upon your involvement, especially today in our conversation as we get underway.
What are those cases in particular?
You know what they are.
At the top of the list, of course, is this major national injunctions, so-called birthright citizenship case, a split court issuing a major opinion.
We'll talk about the significance
of it just yesterday, a case involving redistricting and a decision not to decide coming out of Louisiana, a case involving task forces that implicate an effect.
The Affordable Care Act, it is an opinion that affirms the capacity of task forces inside the ACA structure to authorize and mandate that health care in a preventive nature be mandated for insurance companies.
There's another major case involving free speech coming out of
the state of Texas and in particular the Attorney General there.
There's another case involving, yes, LGBT scurry books and academic settings involving school children, that coming out of Maryland.
And yet another case involving seemingly somewhat wonky, involving the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission and its initiatives in trying to bring broadband websites and broadband access, getting access to our
communities throughout the nation that are rural and that are impoverished all of that all of that coming up in some of the major decisions of just yesterday and this past week we are also going to spend some time perhaps not in the great detail as those other cases will be given but also reviewing some of the major cases the Supreme Court has also issued in the areas of transition care
involving transgender youth.
We talked about that fairly recently.
A reverse discrimination case in the employment setting.
The involvement of liability and the applicability of standards for gun makers in the international setting, we'll talk about those religious charter schools, that coming out of Oklahoma, an excessive force case involving the police, regulation of flavored vaping products, that also on the Supreme Court docket, a case decided unanimously just this past term.
We'll also talk about ghost guns, remember that?
We'll talk about TikTok and national security, and then we'll also talk
a little bit, a little bit about the things that the Supreme Court has said yes to and no to when it comes to its future term that is beginning in October of this year, the term 2025 to 2026.
That is a lot.
That is a lot.
We've got two full hours this morning and also two full hours tomorrow afternoon to talk through all of that in that connection.
We always invite your questions, your comments,
your inquiries and that number of course is 855-752-4842.
That applies especially in the remaining segments of this hour and next hour.
Call in, ask me questions, quiz me on things that may not be clear when we talk about these cases and be a part of our discussion here on Amicus, a lot of you, which begins...
right now.
Let us begin with this major headline-grabbing case involving birthright citizenship.
The case itself is Trump vs. Casa.
CASA decided on June 27th of 2025.
The reason that's at the top of our list, the reason it's on the headlines is that from my perspective, it is the bookend to this other major decision that the Supreme Court issued a year ago almost to the day, July 1 of 2024.
finding not only that a president is indeed above the law and is not subject to criminal prosecution, but indeed has got to be, as the Supreme Court said, very agile, able to make decisions quickly, be powerful, strong, muscular, cannot be feeble because a feeble presidency implicates a feeble government and gave the president
by virtue of the language authored by our Chief Justice, an awful lot of authority and principal direction.
that the Constitution of the United States of America does not, in fact, incorporate.
That was a huge decision a year ago, and sure enough, we have seen in the past five months the execution by this president of huge amounts of power.
And those powers have been tested, admittedly, in the federal courts almost 200 times in federal courts, challenging what he is doing.
But that conveyance, that commission of power to the president one year ago,
is now joined by a bookend opinion of just yesterday.
And that bookend opinion, again, Trump versus Casa, where does this case come from?
What do we know about it?
Would we know that the plaintiffs in this case were individuals and organizations and some states filed three separate lawsuits, three different cases in federal courts, among those 200 or so, to stop.
to enjoy the implementation and the enforcement of something the president did on his very first day of office.
It's the executive order 14160.
The executive order identifies some circumstances in which a person who's born in the United States is not in the language of the 14th amendment, subject to the jurisdiction thereof, that is of the government, and is therefore not recognized as an American citizen.
You know this well.
This has been all over the news.
The plaintiffs in this case
alleging at the district court level, at the appellate court level, that that executive order does indeed violate the 14th Amendment, the Citizenship Clause.
And they invoke, of course, not only the regular language of the 14th Amendment, which does, in fact, in its first line say, all persons born or naturalized in the United States, subject to jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.
We know as well that an 1898 case affirmed basically what that
Language in the 14th Amendment says it says if you are born here, you are United States citizen full stop on that sort of analysis plainly plainly not not the version the interpretation of the 14th Amendment that our current president adopts So what happens is that the lower courts in these three particular cases not only stop
the enforcement of that particular executive order.
But they do something in a way of what's called a universal injunction, a nationwide injunction.
That's why this case is so important.
An injunction barring executive officials from applying the executive order to anyone, anyone across the nation, not just the plaintiffs in this case.
Each of those cases, courts of appeals, affirm what the lower court has done.
And the government now goes, that is the Department of Justice goes to the Supreme Court,
Supreme Court and says this cannot be.
that the lower courts lack the power, the equitable authority, as it's described, to impose this universal relief that has been issued by these three district court judges.
And that's what gets us to the case.
That's what gets us to the oral argument of a number of weeks ago in which the Supreme Court seemed to somewhat divide it, and indeed they are, as we learned just yesterday when it comes to the disposition of who is right and who is wrong in this case.
And significantly, significantly the Supreme Court
in its case of just yesterday, issues and opinion.
And the opinion is joined in and supported by six members of the Supreme Court, some vigorous dissents by three members of the Supreme Court as well.
What specifically, what specifically does the Supreme Court do and not do?
Well, it is significant to note that because the government in appealing these cases did not expressly ask for a reversal of the lower court substantive decisions on whether or not the interpretation
of the 14th Amendment, that language is right or wrong.
Because of that, the Supreme Court goes out of its way repeatedly to say, we are not resolving.
whether or not the executive order violates the Citizenship Clause or the Nationality Act.
Instead, the issue, as they say, is whether under the Judiciary Act, if yes, 1789, one of the first things one of our first Congresses ever did, that federal courts have equitable authority to issue universal injunctions.
So in other words, the first thing we need to know coming out of this opinion is the issue of whether or not the President's interpretation of
the 14th amendment saying yes indeed if you there are circumstances namely if your mother is not in fact legally here or if she is here but not permanently here therefore you are not a resident you're not a citizen of the united states by virtue of the interpretation given by the white house that particular interpretation not resolved by the united states supreme court and indeed
That also gives some force in effect to what the Supreme Court does and does not do.
What the Supreme Court says in the end, and here's the banner headline, here is the big resolution coming out of this huge opinion, is just this.
These universal injunctions, not only with respect,
to the 14th Amendment and birthright citizenship, exceed the authority that the Congress has given to federal courts.
That's as simply as you can state it.
The court goes on to say that the court grants the government's application for a partial stay of the injunctions entered below.
Basically, we're going to put them on hold for a while.
They do go on to say that the president's orders, the president's executive orders, are going to be stayed for 30 days for one month from
yesterday basically meaning a lot of things and we'll talk about that are going to be happening already are happening in between yesterday and 30 days from yesterday the court basically says because of the significance of this we're putting basically all of this on hold for 30 days until until parties can digest it and make sense of what we're doing the issue raised by these applications that is whether Congress has granted federal courts authority to universally in
join the enforcement of an executive order warrants the court's review.
That's the kind of thing that the court says, of course, appropriately at the start of the opinion.
On multiple occasions and across administrations, another important point the Supreme Court makes, solicitors general have asked the court to consider the propriety of this expansive remedy.
And as the number of universal injunctions has increased over the years, so too has the importance of this issue.
Indeed, one of the secondary takeaways from this opinion is that there is something for everyone to love and something for everybody to hate in this opinion.
And indeed, it applies not just to Donald Trump.
It applies to Joe Biden.
It applies to Bill Clinton and to Ronald Reagan, to George Bush.
It applies to Barack Obama.
It applies, if you will, again, that's an historical reference, but basically, but it would apply to any president of those sorts, of any,
any political party going forward.
And the decision today, yesterday, that we live under today
From the Supreme Court that universal injunctions are no longer authorized applies going forward for all Presidents not just this one when we come back We'll talk more about what that means what this 30-day stay means what the Supreme Court has in fact decided its reasoning and then we're gonna hear about a spat a virulent spat between the majority written by Amy Coney Barrett and some of the dissenters all of that on amicus a la revista
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My name is Jim Santel.
We are spending
All of our time on this broadcast this Saturday morning but also tomorrow afternoon talking about these major cases recently issued by the United States Supreme Court in the course of its docket and right now focusing on what is perhaps the most significant case of this term not to minimize the significance of others but that is this case called Trump versus Casa.
We have, interestingly, a majority opinion.
It is about 26 pages long, authored by one of the more junior members of the Supreme Court.
Her name...
Her name is Amy Coney Barrett.
Interestingly, the Chief Justice assigns this major opinion to her, and she writes, she writes on behalf of a majority.
It is significant to note along the way that while six members of the Supreme Court, including her, support this result, three members, you know who they are, they're Sotomayor and Kagan and Jackson, file virulent dissents and we'll get to those in just a moment.
Along the way, along the way, of course, in the
26-page majority opinion.
Amy Coney Barrett authorizes the some things to happen along the way, even in the midst of the decision to prohibit lower courts from going ahead with universal injunctions.
She specifically on behalf of the majority says there's this other option out there.
They're called class actions.
That is not without its cumbersome aspects.
And indeed, even the wake of this class actions have already been filed in some of the districts around the country.
Class actions.
are not immediate.
They are not a substitute for universal injunctions.
It is required that if you file a lawsuit, you need to name the members of your putative class.
You need to identify the way in which they've got commonality.
There's got to be a whole lot of litigation about whether or not the class itself should be certified before you go ahead and actually litigate the case.
That's one option.
She also notes that the states may have some separate independent
obligations here with respect to the representation of their citizens through attorneys general to pursue things as well all of that all of that inside her explanation let's talk about what she says about about the government's petition and the reason why the Supreme Court does in fact grant the stay requested by the White House by the Department of Justice to stop
to stop the enforcement of the lower court ruling.
It shows this, the government is likely to succeed on the merits of its claim that the district court lacked authority to issue universal injunctions.
The issuance of a universal injunction, she says, can be justified only as an exercise of equitable authority, yet the Congress has granted federal courts no such power.
The Judiciary Act of 1789 endowed federal courts with
jurisdiction over all suits in equity, and still today, this statute is what authorizes the federal courts to issue equitable remedies.
The court has held that the statutory grant encompasses only those sorts of remedies, traditionally accorded by courts of equity at our country's inception.
Universal injunctions, Amy Coney Barrett says on behalf of the majority, are not sufficiently analogous to any relief.
And she's invoking history here in the court of equity in England at the time of the founding and goes on to talk about how equity offered a mechanism for the crown to secure justice where it would not be secured by the ordinary and preexisting processes of law.
In the end, she says that the history, the history supports this notion that
national, that universal injunctions cannot stand.
She says, while equity is flexible, the court's precedent emphasizes that its flexibility is confirmed within the broad boundaries of traditional equitable relief because the universal injunction lacks a historical pedigree.
doesn't find some basis in the past, it falls outside the bounds of a federal court's equitable authority under the Judiciary Act.
She then goes on to say, in great length, which we will get to,
the reasons why, what the dissenters, and yes, there are three of them, two of them writing very vociferous dissents in this case, why they're wrong.
And we'll get to that as we proceed here on our discussion of this major case.
Again, a bookend to what happened last year, why?
Because it basically takes away the capacity of federal judges to issue national injunctions.
And again, there are people on all sides of the political aisle, all sides
of the legal aisles, if you will.
who have reasonable views in both directions.
And it may well be, may well be that Amy Coenie Barrett has the better of the argument.
It may well be that some people will find that the dissenters have the better of the argument.
That's what Amicus, this broadcast is all about, to give you a sense of your capacity to winnow and sift through all of this and make a determination about whether or not you believe that indeed the decisions of the Supreme Court make sense or those of the dissenters.
Significant.
that Amy Coney Barrett once again
in her majority opinion.
A majority opinion, by the way, that is also supported by five other justices, even as many of them also write concurring opinions and other support for other reasons, also a part of this major opus.
Amy Coney Barrett, the one authorizing this, also says this final thing, and she says, all of this is going to be stayed for 30 days while all this can be winnowed and sifted through, and that along the way, along
the way plainly, plainly, in the future federal courts do not have this capacity, a change dramatically in the ways that many judges have applied their own authorities in administering the law.
It changes the ways in which our federal judiciary works and most significantly, as we'll get to in our second hour, it also gives, as the president has said, a giant, his word, a giant win.
Why?
Because this president and any president now has this capacity to issue an executive order that may indeed have nationwide impact federal district court judges can no longer check that balance that prohibit that with an equally broad nationwide prohibition on it can in fact be applied perhaps locally to the plaintiffs in the specific case maybe to the district court the district in which the judges are sitting but it is
There's also a further enforcement and an encouragement of a very strong presidency.
When we come back on Amicus, we'll talk more about that.
We'll hear from the dissenters and we'll hear about the fight between Amy Coney Barrett and those dissenters as Amicus Law Review
This is our weekly weekend review, our analysis of all things related to justice, the delivery of it, the administration of the rule of law and government here in these United States of America.
I thank you so much for joining me this weekend.
That also has a bifurcated
aspect to our broadcast.
Not only are we presenting this morning's broadcast live, as we always do, but we're presenting a second, a second discreet new content segment of Amicus, a law review tomorrow afternoon, Sunday afternoon, between two and four, in which we are going to discuss more of the cases that have recently been decided by the Supreme Court, and also review, not with as great specificity, some of the other major cases
that have been issued by the Supreme Court that we have also talked about during the course of our broadcast in recent months.
This morning, we're spending necessarily, appropriately, a great deal of time talking about this huge, dramatically important case issued by the Supreme Court, Trump versus Casa, C-A-S-A, in which the majority, a six to three majority of the Supreme Court, find that these nationwide, these national injunctions, universal injunctions,
cannot stand that according to Amy Coney Barrett, the author of the majority opinion, there is no historical precedent for them.
And beyond that, beyond that, that as a pure matter of law, they cannot stand.
And therefore, lower district court judges no longer able to issue nationwide injunctions.
What they can do, what plainly is not stripped away from them, is the capacity to issue injunctions.
But almost certainly those will necessarily be as to what?
As to the particular,
before them in the specific case that they are assigned to administer.
That is the plaintiffs in the case caption whose names are identified locally and immediately for the judge.
And maybe, just maybe, those injunctive orders could extend to others beyond, beyond just the plaintiffs, maybe in the district courts themselves, but certainly not universally, certainly not beyond this jurisdiction of a federal district court sitting for
example in eastern Wisconsin or the district of Utah or in southern Florida or in southern California that is clear now as a matter of law that that can no longer happen and it does it does raise not only concerns about the ways in which federal judges can act in
execution of their responsibilities but it also raises some recollection about the oral argument in this case because at that time Amy Coney Barrett and others were searching for a way perhaps to articulate a rule that could have been designed by the Supreme Court that doesn't split the baby in half but nonetheless articulates a rule for those cases where that indeed do have national implications for example things like oh so say for example
religious liberty, or even under the Second Amendment, capacity, as we now know, since Antonin Scalia, to own firearms in America, things that have nationwide implications, as opposed to those things that may be more local and regional and more specific to cases.
And it sure seemed as if during the course of the oral argument, the Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett in particular,
inching toward the possibility of the Supreme Court, identifying a rule, some helpful instruction to the lower courts of the sort that I bemoaned earlier with respect to Judge Murphy and the failure of the Supreme Court to give him a specific direction.
Here, the possibility that the Supreme Court might have articulated a rule
admittedly probably imperfectly, but a rule that says in some areas, yes, in some areas, no, and courts still have to make those determinations.
They do those things all the time.
The Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett plainly did not do that.
That is not what the order says.
This is a blanket prohibition on national universal injunctions.
And so in the end, what she says is this.
Some say that the universal injunction gives the judiciary a powerful tool to check the executive branch.
And indeed, that is what the petitioners in this case had argued.
She goes on to say, however, that federal courts do not exercise general oversight of the executive branch.
They resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress has given them and authority they began according to Justice Barrett, the.
Congress has not afforded courts.
She says when a court concludes that the executive branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power.
to the government's applications to partially stay.
The preliminary injunctions are granted.
That is the injunctions of the lower courts.
Those are now put on hold.
This is basically a double negative, if you will, which means that the executive order after 30 days from now can in fact take effect.
And what it also effectively means as the dissenters note is that now there could be class actions and there may in fact have to be specific individual plaintiff cases brought in
many, if not all federal district courts around the country, there are 93 of them altogether, as you know, vindicating the specific interests, at least as to birthright citizenship, the interests of those plaintiffs.
And the patchwork possibilities of doing that across the country, where in fact you may get one state that does indeed acknowledge that the 14th Amendment gives you birthright citizenship, perhaps in another.
a different attorney general across border lines does not acknowledge that the possibility of a patchwork approach at least as to this kind of a thing that is birthright citizenship.
That's what the dissenters bemoan and it applies again beyond just birthright citizenship.
Expressly once again Amy Coney Barrett makes clear the court is not is not deciding.
deciding that case.
This is a process, a procedural win for the presidency, for the executive branch generally, which now can act as it wants and grant these large executive orders that need to be challenged, if at all, in individual courts before individual judges around the country, admittedly, maybe, with class actions.
That too, not an immediately accessible approach, but nonetheless, a very different way of going ahead and doing just this.
All of that, all of that prompts, of course, dissents.
And that includes Sonia Sotomayor.
She says, for example...
bemoaning the fact that the government, the Department of Justice has not, has not asked the Supreme Court to take on the specific issue that we sort of all thought would be before the court initially, which is whether or not the 14th Amendment does in fact mean what it says and says what it means.
Sonia Sotomayor says this, the government has not asked for complete stays of the injunction because to get such relief, basically to get relief and afford the president the support that he wants,
it would have to prove to establish Trump's order narrowing birthright citizenship for children born on US soil who don't have at least one parent with permanent legal status is likely
constitutional.
She's basically saying, we all know this is an unconstitutional thing.
And because the government knows, the White House knows it's probably not going to be successful in proving the constitutionality.
Instead, she says, so the government instead tries its hand at a different game, pointing to an attempt to tear down nationwide injunctions.
She goes on to say, the gamesmanship in this request is apparent and the government makes no attempt to
hide it, yet shamefully, this court plays along.
She's advocating, she says, why doesn't the Supreme Court simply say the Fourth Amendment grants you birthright citizenship, be done with it, and not involved in all of this process, and go to this national injunction issue?
It becomes more interesting.
And a spat develops between the author of the majority opinion, her name again, Amy Coney Barrett, and another dissenter, another dissenter, and her name is Katangi Brown Jackson.
Let me give you a sense of what Katanji Brown Jackson says in her very extensive dissent.
She says, it is important to recognize that the executive's bid to vanquish so-called universal injunctions is at bottom a request for this court's permission to engage in unlawful behavior.
That's what Kachange Brown Jackson writes in Descent.
When the government says, do not allow the lower courts to enjoin, to stop, executive action universally as a remedy for unconstitutional conduct, what it is actually saying is that the executive wants to continue doing something that, as a court has determined, violates the Constitution.
Please allow this," she says.
That, she says, is some solicitation.
Jackson goes on to suggest the Constitution was designed to split the powers of a monarch between three governing branches to protect the American people from overreach.
She said those core values are strangely absent from the majority ruling, with deep disillusionment.
Deep disillusionment, Kitanchi Brown Jackson says.
I dissent.
Now.
That prompts this spat between Amy Coney Barrett and Katanji Brown Jackson.
Let's talk about exactly what that's all about.
Amy Coney Barrett again, as does Katanji Brown Jackson, stuns the world, stuns the nation, stuns all of us watching this and reading this with the nature of the back and forth between them.
People who look at this routinely have talked about the extreme nature of the sparring between these two, and one of them, Amy Coney Barrett, names the other Katanji Brown Jackson by name.
She says this, Amy Coney Barrett, we will not dwell on Justice Jackson's argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself.
We observe only this.
Justice Jackson decries an imperial executive while embracing an imperial judiciary.
Those are strong words and again taking on one of her colleagues by name.
Jackson again writes this concurring dissent that features what can only be described as a heavy fixation on the potential
practical ramifications of the six to three decision.
She goes on to say this is Katangi Brown Jackson is not difficult to predict how all of this ends.
Eventually Jackson says executive power will become completely uncontainable and our beloved constitutional republic will be no more.
Quite unlike a rule of kings governing system Jackson says in a rule of law regime nearly every act of government may be challenged by an appeal to law.
At the very least, I lament that the majority is so caught up in the minutiae of the government's self-serving, finger-pointing arguments that it misses the plot.
Now, beyond that, of course, Ken Chandy Brown Jackson says that the dismissal of this question of universal injunctions so readily
as established, according to the majority under the Judiciary Act of 1799, describing all that as legalese.
This is Katanji Brown Jackson criticizing the majority.
That obscures a far more basic question of enormous legal and practical significance.
May a federal court in the United States of America order the executive to follow the law.
And that, that language is what prompts Amy Coney Barrett in the majority opinion to fight back.
She says this Barrett's response to her opinion was almost
almost mocking, if you will.
She says, because analyzing the governing statute involves boring legalese, that's making fun, of course, of Katangi Brown Jackson, Jackson seeks to answer a far more basic question of enormous practical significance.
May a federal court of the United States of America under the executive follow the law.
This again is what Amy Coney Barrett has said in response.
In other words, Amy Coney Barrett says, it is unnecessary to consider
whether Congress has constrained the judiciary, what matters is how the judiciary may constrain the executive.
Justice Jackson, Amy Cooney Barrett says, would do well to heed her own admonition.
Everyone from the president on down is bound by the law, Barrett says.
That goes for judges too.
She goes on to talk more about the ways in which this sparring is premised upon language,
and content.
And when you come back, I'll tell you more about that.
And then we're also going to go on to other cases decided by the United States Supreme Court just in recent days and weeks, all of that here on our Saturday morning broadcast.
This is Amicus, allow review.
My name is Jim Santel.
We are in the midst of our extensive discussion about this major decision in American jurisprudence issued just yesterday, just Friday by the United States Supreme Court among the five cases that it decided that it issued on its final day, at least its final formal day of activity.
in this term, this case, Trump versus Casa, C.A.S.A.
finding that federal district court judges no longer arguably never had, since 1789, the capacity to issue national injunctions, these universal injunctions, justifying it.
principally upon an invocation of history and describing how the equitable relief otherwise granted by federal district court judges cannot stand along the way, along the way what can only be described as sparring by name between Justice Katanji Brown Jackson and Amy Coney Barrett.
That also animates this very long exposition by the court.
26 pages by Amy Coney Barrett on behalf of the majority that does not include some of the concurring
opinions from those who are also agreeing with her, but also 43 pages, 43 pages of dissent by Sonia Sotomayor and 21 pages by Katanji Brown Jackson, who bemoans the practical impact of this.
That is this notion that now, now we will have an executive
a current president and a future president who can issue executive orders and the methodology for attacking those is going to be cumbersome, going into specific federal courts, maybe articulating, putting together a class action if judges certify those and agree that that can proceed in that way.
She bemoans the fact that under these new circumstances, this new standard, that an executive will be able to do things that he or
one day she wants to do, virtually unchecked by a federal judiciary that would have otherwise the capacity to stop things on a nationwide basis.
Arguments in both directions, arguments for present and future terms, and reasons to analyze all of this.
Along the way, Amy Coney Barrett, again, takes Katangi Brown Jackson on.
She says, waving any attention to the limits on judicial power as a mind-numbing technical
She, that is, she's making reference there to Katangi Brown Jackson.
This is Amy Coney Barrett writing.
She offers a vision of the judicial role that would make even the most ardent defender of judicial supremacy blush.
Amy Coney Barrett goes on to say this, rhetoric aside, Justice Jackson's position is difficult to pin down.
She might be arguing that universal injunctions are appropriate, even required.
whenever the defendant is part of the executive branch.
Meanwhile, Justice Jackson opted not to conclude her opinion, as I noted before, with the phrase, I dissent or respectfully, but just signing off in support of her position.
A considerable amount of sparring, almost brutal between these two members of our Supreme Court, which we see plainly in other cases from time to time.
We note, of course, their opposition views that are routinely articulated by justices.
This is at a different level.
This is at a higher level.
And it is worth reading.
It is worth digesting.
and taking account of as we go forward in understanding all of this.
The president, as I indicated previously, has referred to this as a time when we should be proud of the United States Supreme Court, language we typically don't use, we maybe object to, we are supportive of, we find fault with, we find reasons to support and embrace what the Supreme Court has said.
But pride is one of those things that we normally don't ascribe to a court.
We recognize when they've done their jobs well,
We recognize also that we've got the capacity in America under the First Amendment to criticize what judges do, which we do routinely.
The issue that remains, even in the wake of this major change, is as I started my exposition of this.
basic proposition today, it is a bookend to what the Supreme Court did a year ago.
Almost a year ago, the Supreme Court vesting in the presidency a huge amount of power to act and not completely embracing everything that Katangi Brown Jackson says, but undeniably.
Her overall force, the point of her opinion is that this, this gives a president even greater powers to move on those powers given to the presidency a year ago.
And the reason why that happens is because the check of the federal judiciary.
to do something on a universal basis is no longer there.
And so, for example, as Sonia Sotomayor and Kataji Brown Jackson, yes, Elena Kagan also embrace these kinds of examples.
If, for example, a president were to say, I am going to find that under the First Amendment, certain religions can no longer be observed in our nation.
I'm going to prohibit the assembly.
and the worshiping of Christians, and Jews, and Muslims, and Buddhists, and Hindus, and Sikhs.
Is that something that an independent, sole federal district court judge could enjoin?
Or would that only be something that would apply to the specific?
religious adherence, the people of faith who appear in front of that particular judge in a district court.
I think all of us would say that that proposition articulated by a future president prohibiting the exercise of any religion is wildly unconstitutional and should get nationwide condemnation and therefore should not go into effect under this new ruling that kind of a hypothetical admittedly, it has not happened, but that kind of an order could
not be stopped universally by a district court judge.
Likewise, as Sonia Sotomayor says, if under the Second Amendment a future president says you can no longer use weapons, contrary to what Justice Antonin Scalia said in the Heller case many, many years ago, you no longer have a right, a personal right to own weapons.
That could be enforced or challenged in an individual federal district court.
by particular plaintiffs seeking to have their right under the Second Amendment enforced.
And presumably a judge can still do that, but could not impose a nationwide injunction finding that an executive order prohibiting the possession and use of firearms generally, that that kind of a broad order could not be stopped nationwide.
That's the kind of thing that we think about with respect to future presidents.
And so when we come back, we're not only going to talk more about the implications of this, but
Yes, indeed.
Other cases, other cases, Supreme Court has decided with equal flourish in recent days, all that here on Amicus, a law review.
This is amicus a lot of you.
My name is Jim Santel.
I am your host the remaining segments of this hour and then also Tomorrow as well between two and four o'clock when it continue our extensive discussion our analysis are reporting on some of these major Supreme Court cases of Recent days, but also recalling some of the other decisions issued by our Supreme Court that also change our lives and our livelihoods here in the United States of America in all
All of this, as always, we appreciate the comments, questions, inquiries of our many listeners.
Appreciate your taking the time this morning, and I encourage you to come back again tomorrow afternoon for more of this, your schedules permitting.
Right now on the line, we have Mark from Prairie to Sack Mark.
Appreciate your participation in our discussion this morning.
apparently you know that the conservatives you know that made this decision you know so well it can just be you know that district courts can't make a universal certain people are supposed to this country are supposed to have rights no matter where you are in this country yeah the president has done something that uh... impacts every one of our rights the court should you know our only recourse is just to go to the courts any of the courts is like they said hodge podge across the country
If you have a child born, say, in Wisconsin, and Trump gets his way, and in Wisconsin, we recognize the birth of that child as being a citizen, then in another state, well, we're not going to recognize that child that happens to move to another state, say, well, we don't recognize that here in our state, so it just is...
abomination because you know as far as what our nation is supposed to be and the 14th Amendment how they avoided not recognized the 14th Amendment says all persons born or naturalized in the United States it doesn't say anything about their parents the status of their parents simply the fact that that child is born in the United States it's under under the government's you know under our jurisdiction I mean because
They're born here.
The only people that aren't in our jurisdiction are...
are diplomatic people in the diplomatic corps.
Right, there are a couple of exceptions out there, but right, ever since July 9th, 1868, Mark, you know this well, that's when we adopted the 14th Amendment.
And again, the Supreme Court in a very notorious case found exactly that, that it does mean what it says and says what it means.
That's what Sonya Sotomayor bemoans, that all of this could have been avoided simply by addressing the underlying issue.
And the mere fact that the government has not, has not asked the Supreme Court to
Well, the reality is the Supreme Court didn't have to take on the case at all.
Now, not only have we postponed maybe for some later day an ultimate decision on this, we know that our Attorney General has said at the same time that the President embraced this decision just yesterday and at the White House.
The Attorney General has looked forward to the time when the substance of that issue, the very thing that you're describing, Mark, will in fact get before the Supreme Court.
it may be someone unlikely, but it could come in this next term.
Why not resolve this right now, not only for the benefit of those people who are right now in jeopardy, but also the future as well.
Put this to rest and
permit us to go on to address other issues as well.
Mark, I always appreciate your comments, your observation, your question.
This morning on Amicus Allara View, and we encourage you and all of the listeners to come back again tomorrow as we talk about more of these cases decided by our United States Supreme Court.
Let us get to a couple more of those and as much as some of these are very complicated and involve a lot of issues that are in fact accessible.
You don't have to be a lawyer, you don't have to be a judge, you don't have to be somebody who's steeped in the law to understand them.
They're accessible and once again, although there is a lot of reading to do when it comes to this case, CASA.
involving birthright citizenship, but actually these nationwide injunctions.
Well, there's a lot of language you can pull out some very good and telling portions of the opinions to get a feel for the arguments in both directions and to get a feel as I'm advocating this morning for the dramatic shift in the way in which our federal courts now work as of yesterday and indeed the bookend
To the power given to our executive branch last year and once again this year at the end of the Supreme Court term
power now to issue executive orders, not just in the area of birthright citizenship, but in all kinds of other areas, including the hiring and firing of various federal employees, funding, for example, of various agencies, including those that provide overseas support, all sorts of things, even involving, for example, the Bureau of Prisons and how we handle transgender prisoners, all kinds of things out there that
used to be accessible and at least challengeable through the possibility of a nationwide injunction.
Now, now need to run into individual courts, wherever the venue of the case happens to be on behalf of and through the arguments of individuals appearing to vindicate their rights, whether it's birthright citizenship in one case or their entitlement to a position under the civil service laws in another.
All of those things now going to be litigated on an individual basis in various courts around the country.
Raising the specter, as Mark I think you have implicitly, if not explicitly said, raising the specter of a dramatic increase in the number of these petitions being filed around the country in all sorts of areas.
Indeed, we know even in the wake, minutes, hours after the Supreme Court's decision in Casa, we already have class actions being
We already filed.
We already have other cases on behalf of individual plaintiffs seeking recovery and seeking remedies, seeking judgment in particular.
courts around our country, 93 of them altogether.
We'll continue to monitor all of that, and as always, appreciate, mark your participation and the listening of all of our listeners this morning on Amicus.
Let's talk about some other cases also decided by the Supreme Court just yesterday.
Supreme Court on Friday, upholding, upholding a provision of the Affordable Care Act.
Yes, I know what you're thinking.
You're thinking, gosh, I thought we were done with these challenges to the Affordable Care Act.
Turns out that's not the case.
This particular challenge was to the task forces that make decisions under the Affordable Care Act when it was first crafted, first legislated by our Congress.
Task forces do assessments.
These are people who are medical people, they know what they're talking about, they're healthcare providers, and they make determinations about what?
About preventive care.
The things that we can do to keep ourselves healthy and safe in a medical setting.
These task forces, a task force in particular, reviews the propriety of requiring insurance companies to provide preventive care free.
at no cost under the Affordable Care Act.
Six to three decision written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh majority ruling that this federal task force these folks who again medical folks determining what preventive measures insurance companies must cover that they in fact are legitimate and that their institutional basis for doing that is secure no cost to the insured all of that is constitutional.
The decision, of course, plainly safeguards coverage for probably tens of millions of Americans who receive some free health care services, including things like preventive care in the areas of cancer and diabetes screenings, medications to reduce heart disease, strokes, there is some ointment for newborns,
to prevent infections, causing blindness, all kinds of things in the preventive area that Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, has provided for and now safeguarded by virtue of the authorization that continues with these task forces.
Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, as well as Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Katanji Brown Jackson, join in the majority opinion.
That's the group that
that says yes, that's the six in this particular case that support these task forces that keep this portion of the Affordable Care Act in place.
The remaining conservative justices, their names, you know, Clarence Thomas, Samolito, Neil Gorsuch, they all dissented.
It is significant to note.
A case of course, the latest in a lawsuit, a series of lawsuits that target the Affordable Care Act.
You recall that the healthcare law has survived many challenges in the past, three in particular before the Supreme Court, way back in 2012 and 2015 and 2021.
You recall well,
that Chief Justice John Roberts was the one who cast that decisive vote to save the law in 2012, basically finding that this was a tax and not another attempt simply to enlarge the federal bureaucracy.
That was a crucial milestone in upholding the law's core mandate.
Had he gone in the opposite direction, it may well have been way back then that
the Affordable Care Act would have fallen by virtue of the Supreme Court's ruling.
And again, it survives for more challenges.
The dispute that was resolved, again, just yesterday, centered on something called the U.S.
Preventive Services Task Force.
They're a panel of experts, once again, as I said, these people who know what they're doing.
They're inside the Department of Health and Human Services and they do in fact review all of these proposals.
They review preventive medical services including things like preventive screenings and medications to prevent serious diseases.
The task force devised again specifically for the purpose of determining what kinds of preventive medicines and health care need to be provided by insurance companies
under all of this.
The challenge to them was not so much their function, but was the process for selecting their members.
We've seen this in other places, for example, how it is that the particular entity was formulated by the Congress, how this was put together.
We saw this, for example, with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, how it was put together, whether it's got the authority to do the kinds of things it does.
These task forces members, 16 in number, their
Volunteers, they're all nationally recognized experts in primary care and prevention care, family medicine, geriatrics, obstetrics, all kinds of things.
They are appointed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services and they serve for your terms.
The question, of course, is whether these members are legally considered inferior or principal officers under the Constitution.
And yes, that's a very wonky thing, but it's important to understand how it is the Supreme Court and Justice Kavanaugh resolved this case.
Under the Constitution, principal officers have to be appointed by the President.
and confirmed by the Senate.
We've seen that argument before.
The Affordable Care Act says that the task force members and their recommendations are independent and to the extent practicable, not subject to political pressure.
We want that to be, right?
You don't want medical decisions being made by people who are animated by partisan views.
The challengers argue that this made them
principal officers, and therefore they have to be appointed by the president, confirmed by the Senate, and Justice Kavanaugh rejects that.
He says the structure of the board makes clear that its members are subject to political control and so count as inferior officers Therefore no problem with their doing the work that they're doing Secretary of Health and Human Services can review their recommendations and block them from going into effect that can happen of course and can also remove the board members before their terms are off up the authoring Justice says this he says task force members are super
supervised and directed by the secretary, who in turn answers to the president, preserving the chain of command in Article 2.
And he writes, as a result, appointment of task force members by the secretary of HHS is consistent with the appointment clause, no problem here at all.
Justice Thomas Desens, and he notes the task force was appointed by a subordinate official in the department, a system that was since changed to elevate that power to the secretary.
He adds the government had established a new statutory theory for why the current system is permissible on appeal.
That all coming out of the.
Supreme Court just yesterday, those task forces legitimate and the Affordable Care Act continues to be
This is amicus a lover of you.
My name is Jim Santel I am your host for this remaining segment of our Saturday morning broadcast Reminding you once again that we're back again for new content Another portion of our discussion of all of these Supreme Court cases that taking place from 2 o'clock to 4 o'clock tomorrow Sunday afternoon So mark your calendars your schedules permitting for that discussion as well in our final moments in this Saturday morning broadcast.
Let's talk about something
the Supreme Court did not do.
Talk about one of the cases it decided not to decide.
A surprise, as one of my colleagues and friends says, not on my bingo card to see that the Supreme Court decided not to resolve, at least not in this term, one of the major cases under the Voting Rights Act involving racial discrimination, arguably, political discrimination, arguably, and line drawing for districts in the state of Louisiana.
Supreme Court on Friday declining,
planning to weigh in, at least for now, on Louisiana's contested congressional voting map.
We've talked about this before.
Instead, ordering that new arguments be scheduled during this next term.
We don't know a whole lot about what this was about.
There was no explanation for why the justices did not make a decision at this time.
They had the oral argument previously.
It's all been brief, but plainly there was something more that they want to ask the litigants all about.
So this is going to be happening in the new term.
of the Supreme Court beginning in October.
We'll see when that's scheduled.
All but one paragraph in the six page order in this case was written by Justice Clarence Thomas.
He was the lone dissent.
Justice Thomas wrote that it was the court's duty to hear such congressional redistricting challenges
And the justices, his colleagues had an obligation in his words to resolve such challenges promptly.
This, of course, is the latest twist in what is described as a long battle that follows the 2020 census.
We saw that in Wisconsin, Louisiana, and in other states around the nation.
The case has been fairly closely monitored and watched just because it involves another application of the Voting Rights Act.
The Voting Rights Act, of course, is central
legislative achievement, civil rights area.
Supreme Court's majority has, in recent years, in a couple of major, major cases, severely curtailed its applicability in southern states, in particular, including Louisiana, where there's a history of local officials ignoring some of these civil and voting rights laws until courts intervened.
The application of the Voting Rights Act has been a routine mechanism to address.
Problems are at least identified, challenged problems when it comes to line drawing.
The state's latest map with the state legislature approved in January will now remain in place and that map
That map paved a way for a second black Democrat, her name is Cleo Fields, to join Representative Troy Carter, who is a New Orleans area Democrat in the state's congressional delegation.
So it stays in place by virtue of the fact that the Supreme Court has not yet determined whether or not this particular line drawing in Louisiana will be overturned or not.
And it is significant, of course, to note that one third of the state's population is black.
Observers had been counting on a decision in Louisiana to serve as kind of a bellwether, kind of an indication about what other states might do in determining how much the Constitution allows when it comes to considering race, race as a factor in dry districts under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
And so what happens here in particular is that
in this particular case, 2020 census showed the state's black population increased.
Prompting the legislature to redraw congressional districts, lawyers adopted a map with only one district in which black residents constituted majority out of the six altogether in Louisiana.
Black residents sued under the Voting Rights Act, prompting the legislature to try again.
This time, Louisiana lawmakers do in fact approve a second district with majority black voters, but in a bid to protect some of its most powerful representatives,
Some folks there, the Republican majority in the legislature, approve the creation of a district that snakes from one corner of the state to another and that links various cities and municipalities along the way.
A group of people identify as non-African Americans and known in the court filings as Calais plaintiffs filed their own suit then and they claim that the redrawn map amounted to racial gerrymandering.
By virtue of doing this, your respondents
specifically to race and their allegation is that that can happen under the Voting Rights Act, divided panel of federal judges sided with those plaintiffs and temporarily blocked the state from using the new map, eventually comes up to the Supreme Court.
And the decision of all this is put on hold temporarily reinstated the congressional map that included the second majority black district.
That's the one that was used in 2024.
Now will also be used going forward here because once again, the Supreme Court decides not, not to hear the case, at least not decide the case.
It will hear it again in its next term.
And for now, the voters in Louisiana.
are going to be understanding their districts to remain as they are until if ever as the Supreme Court takes this up and addresses this large issue related to race and the extent to which legislatures and legislators can indeed take race into account under the Voting Rights Act in drawing these kinds of lines also related to
partisan aspects that we know the courts do not get involved in and the question again of motives for drawing lines as they are.
So we put that on the docket of the incoming term of the Supreme Court beginning in October.
We're gonna come back to all of this tomorrow afternoon.
I invite you to rejoin us at two o'clock as we address many of these other cases, including class discussions of LGBT storybooks, age verification for porn sites, and even things related to providing broadband internet to communities throughout our nation.
Many other cases also decided by our Supreme Court in recent days as well.
We invite you to come back for that discussion tomorrow afternoon here on Amicus as we
continue to analyze the important work and the decisive work of our United States Supreme Court here on Amicus, a law
review.
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