U.S. Supreme Court: Post-Ginsburg Edition

Have at it.

I nominate AOC

i nominate tom cotton, a good guy with a gun

get in here, goons

Can Trump nominate himself?

and continuing the SCOTUS term limit discussion, reposting the explainer
https://fixthecourt.com/2019/11/myth-facts-scotus-term-limits/

https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/09/ted-cruz-supreme-court-donald-trump/

No idea if these proposed changes are ideal or if they could ever plausibly come to pass, but I like that they are being put out there. It's a good step to start getting people used to the idea of major changes to the court.

Bryant Johnson, Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s personal trainer, does push-ups as Justice Ginsburg lies in state in the U.S. Capitol.

Full video: https://t.co/vri1sJcUV6 pic.twitter.com/C11uVFeQlQ

— CSPAN (@cspan) September 25, 2020

He isn’t stupid so wtf is he thinking https://t.co/uyEcGDZRIy

— Doug Henwood (@DougHenwood) September 25, 2020

I'm very sorry but if the pushup video is real it's extremely funny

CNN reporting that it's Barrett:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/25/politics/donald-trump-amy-coney-barrett-supreme-court/index.html

South Bend is really knocking it out of the park this year.

Whoever Trump was going to pick was going to be a horror story, so I expect soon to be reading about the many horrors of Ms. Barrett, which no doubt will be many and hair-raising. Lindsey Graham will love her.

democrats will have grave concerns and strongly worded appeals to decency

democratic fundraising will go through the roof, blood will boil, the election will be won (eventually) by democrats. and at the end, it'll be a 6-3 conservative court for the forseeable future, and possible a 5-4 majority for another 20-30 years, unless the golden boy or gorsuch unexpectedly croak, which would be a tragedy

those are impressive lifespans you're projecting for thomas and alito imo

They get magic life drugs injected in their butts

haha, well it also builds in known unknowns, like republicans preserving a seat in a future GOP presidency. let's role play it

2020 (the present. you are in hell)
barrett is confirmed before election. fuck you liberals
6-3 conservative majority

roberts is 65
thomas is 72
alito is 70
gorsuch is 53
the golden boy is 55
barrett is 48

breyer is 82
sotomayor is 66
kagan is 60

2021 (biden is elected. you are in tartarus)
biden wins. breyer tags out for a younger replacement. i will create SC justice names using this thread Fighting Baseball for Super Famicom: A League of Fake Americans POLL
6-3 conservative majority

roberts is 66
thomas is 73
alito is 71
gorsuch is 54
the golden boy is 56
barrett is 49

sotomayor is 67
kagan is 61
willie dustice is 50

EVENT
2024 election. The democrat has a 70% chance of victory (same as clinton v trump), due to me running this simulation. RNG: no joke, i rolled a random number from 1 to 10, with 1-7 being democratic victory and 8-10 being republican, and i rolled an 8. REPUBLICANS WIN

2025 (tom cotton is the president of the united states. you have killed 2 people now and haven't talked in weeks.)
tom cotton casts Executive Righteousness on thomas, 77 years old, who is replaced by Sleve McDichael
6-3 conservative majority

roberts is 70
alito is 75
the golden boy is 60
barrett is 53
sleve mcdichael is 50

sotomayor is 71
kagan is 65
gorsuch is 58
willie dustice is 54

EVENT
World War III, totally started by tom cotton. 2028 election. The democrat has a 80% chance of victory, due to me running this simulation. RNG: 3, democratic victory

2029 (first influencers on mars)
AOC is the president of the united states of america, fuck yeah. sotomayor, the second oldest justice at 75, taps out. bobsun dugnutt is the new junior united states supreme court justice.
6-3 conservative majority

roberts is 74
alito is 79
gorsuch is 62
the golden boy is 64
barrett is 57
sleve mcdichael is 54

kagan is 69
willie dustice is 58
bobsun dognutt is 50

EVENT
in 2031, the golden boy brett kavanaugh, just 66 years old, FUCKING DIES OUT OF NOWHERE and it's REALLY EMBARRASSING FOR HIM

2031 (VR sex surpasses videogames in revenue generation)
brett kavanaugh fucking dies out of nowhere, best thing that's happened in a generation. president AOC appoints a justice so left-leaning that she's impeached by sergeant ivanka trump, leader of the paramilitary republican subcommittee known as Gold Team. Onson Sweemey, the first justice with a normal name in 11 years, takes the golden boy's spot and shifts the balance toward a near-balance.

5-4 conservative majority

roberts is 76
alito is 81
gorsuch is 64
barrett is 59
sleve mcdichael is 56

kagan is 71
willie dustice is 60
bobsun dognutt is 52
onson sweemey is 50

EVENT
2032 Election. there's no more random numbers, it's just me making it up. the democrats win again. AOC is on the wheaties box.

then, near the end of her second term, the unspeakable happens. Samuel Alito, at the age of 85, just fucking dies out of nowhere.
2035
some observers expect the krang-like brain of mitch mcconnell to somehow delay a democratic confirmation in his spot, but AOC casts total victory and again appoints an extremely-left greatest of time justice named Todd Bonzalez.
5-4 liberal majority

roberts is 80
gorsuch is 68
barrett is 63
sleve mcdichael is 60

kagan is 75
willie dustice is 64
bobsun dognutt is 56
onson sweemey is 54
todd bonzalez is 50

EVENT
2036 Election. it's been 8 years of supreme relaxation and greatness. even gum is genuinely _better_. everything's great. something has to change, so somehow it's time for PRESIDENT CHARLIE KIRK

2037
under PRESIDENT CHARLIE KIRK, roberts immediately resigns. the new chief justice of the united states is SCOTT DOURQUE, 50 years old, catholic conservative
5-4 liberal majority

chief justice scott dourque, 50
gorsuch is 70
barrett is 65
sleve mcdichael is 62

kagan is 77
willie dustice is 66
bobsun dognutt is 58
onson sweemey is 56
todd bonzalez is 52

I actually think that’s not a terrible way of gaming things out. The arc of the moral universe is long. We fight the fights that we have today, and we train our young folks. Good post KM.

DOGNUTT

https://res.cloudinary.com/teepublic/image/private/s--QTcxwhPT--/t_Preview/b_rgb:ffffff,c_limit,f_jpg,h_630,q_90,w_630/v1495739359/production/designs/1624926_1.jpg

in 2031, the golden boy brett kavanaugh, just 66 years old, FUCKING DIES OUT OF NOWHERE and it's REALLY EMBARRASSING FOR HIM

whoa how did he die?!

Shot by one of Dick Cheney's grandkids

Karl, that was perfect (ly horrifying).

Shot by one of Dick Cheney's grandkids

― LaRusso Auto (Neanderthal), Friday, September 25, 2020 6:49 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

At a UB40 reunion concert

in 2031, the golden boy brett kavanaugh, just 66 years old, FUCKING DIES OUT OF NOWHERE and it's REALLY EMBARRASSING FOR HIM

whoa how did he die?!

he dies of doing a kegstand in the kitchen of amy klobuchar's wake

karl this is some excellent scenario running and first rate use of the Fighting Baseball thread and i applaud it

i have a rejoinder percolating but it may take a while to get around to crunching the hard numbers so i just wanted to say that for now

_in 2031, the golden boy brett kavanaugh, just 66 years old, FUCKING DIES OUT OF NOWHERE and it's REALLY EMBARRASSING FOR HIM_

whoa how did he die?!

xp thanks doctor c! your questioning of that was really valid, and i don't think my answer is any sort of proof of anything. i got lazy and didn't project it out to 2045 (my original goal), but even though i ended with a slim 5-4 liberal majority by 2037, i don't think it takes much to keep it at a 5-4 conservative majority either. then again, maybe the republicans will truly never win again (lol) and it will be 6-3 liberal by 2040, who knows

So we get 40 some years of this...from an article Barrett co-wrote as quoted by SCOTUS blog

The article also noted that, when the late Justice William Brennan was asked about potential conflict between his Catholic faith and his duties as a justice, he responded that he would be governed by “the oath I took to support the Constitution and laws of the United States”; Barrett and Garvey observed that they did not “defend this position as the proper response for a Catholic judge to take with respect to abortion or the death penalty.”

https://www.scotusblog.com/2018/07/potential-nominee-profile-amy-coney-barrett/

Can't wait for her book, "Jesus is the Speaker of MY House"

@ Karl - okay! you've already gotten there, but yeah basically my rejoinder would be that you didn't actually end up showing "a 6-3 conservative court for the forseeable future, and possible a 5-4 majority for another 20-30 years." but the scenario was worth it anyway. a quibble: you don't game out the Senate, which i respect because that would be even more absurd fanfic work, but it's worth allowing at least dice-roll possibilities that the Dems control the Senate during your Republican admins, AND that they stand firm against prematurely ghoulish ideologues like Sleve McDichael, whose pasty-faced appearance and hot-mic comments during the nominations process turn the public against him. i would not put money on that chance myself, but it's at least possible.

also though, a fair bit hinges on that first d10 roll and some choices about the EVENTS - suppose Biden rolls a 6 in 2024, and is re-elected to a foggy but popular second term, his "Reagan in the late 80s" zone, AND ALSO that during that term, Thomas has a health scare and decides to retire. i don't know that the odds are so heavily stacked against something like that.

obviously in that event, Biden's replacement pick would be the mushy, not-all-that liberal Rey McSriff (48), a former bank-industry lobbyist, seen as a move back in the direction of racial and gender diversity on the court who will at least be a reliable liberal vote in civil-rights and abortion cases.

so in january 2029, we've got:

roberts is 74
alito is 79
gorsuch is 62
the golden boy is 64
barrett is 57

kagan is 69
willie dustice is 58
bobsun dognutt is 50
rey mcsriff is 50

eight years of the biden administration have left many festering wounds unaddressed, but thankfully the republican "gold team" have been mostly braying in the margins without control of either congress or the executive to formally empower them. on the other hand, in the absence of the Cotton presidency, World War III has not happened, but let's say AOC wins in 2028 anyway. why not?!

thus, following B.K.'s horrible death in 2031, AOC's super left-wing appointee is able to remain in office. you didn't name them but it's pretty obvious you had Shown Furcotte in mind. maybe kagan is worried enough about the next election, and spooked by what is by then a Sunday-morning-show conventional wisdom about "the Tragedy of Ginsburg," that she retires too. by this point AOC is not fucking around at all and appoints millennial twitter SJW Raul Chamgerlain, 44. if AOC goes on to win a second term and also grabs the Alito seat, then in 2035 we have:

roberts is 80
gorsuch is 68
barrett is 63

raul chamgerlain is 49
willie dustice is 64
bobsun dognutt is 56
rey mcscriff is 56
shown furcotte is 53
todd bonzalez is 50

... and our biggest problem is that sometimes McSriff aligns with the conservatives to dissent in 5-4 corporate-law decisions, and we see a lot of online left grousing about how Biden wasted a pick on her.

now yes, i admit........... this depends on the democrats winning four straight national elections. IMPOSSIBLE you say? or merely... improbable???! depends how much faith you put in changing demographics etc. but if none of the Dem-appointed justices die in office, they can also afford to lose one of those elections! because it might be that the Republicans can only replace Thomas or Alito with McDichael or Dorque, giving them an edge in age but not a leg up in the balance of the court.

todd bonzalez makes history as the first male latino justice

is there a relevant quote linking Barrett's sect to The Handmaid's Tale?

there must be. ominous lord, truth is stranger than fiction

xp

doc casino, first of all, obviously i had Shown Furcotte in mind. but secondly, the rest of your scenario seems plausible!

obviously gaming it out like that is a goof, but i did actually learn a few things. or maybe not. i feel like just laying out their ages, combined with the fact that they have lifetime appointments, explains 99% of the game:

christmas near-future:

roberts is 65
thomas is 72
alito is 70
gorsuch is 53
the golden boy is 55
barrett is 48

breyer is 82
sotomayor is 66
kagan is 60

that there is a stacked deck, combined with republican weakness (in terms of what we might expect, possibly overoptimistically, from their presidential chances for the next few decades after elevating a white supremacist fascist to the presidency and then ripping the country to shreds in an attempt to keep him there). even with a couple 2-term democratic administrations in a row, through 2036, there is still a decent chance that at least 5 or even all 6 of the conservative majority stays right where they are, their ass-molds worn deep

in unrelated news, just before i fell asleep face down on the couch last night, i ran across a disturbing headline about increasing the maximum human lifespans beyond its current soft limit of 125. apparently the consensus is that it will soon (10 years?) be possible to extend human lifespans using genetic modifiers, physical devices, and secret codes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_extension jfc

agreed, it's a useful exercise to grasp exactly how much the age advantage of the GWB and DJT appointees presses on into the future. but also, focusing too much on that just takes us into a zone of gloom, so unless it's directly useful for motivating present-day action and the long-term fight, i think it's also useful to bear in mind all the ways that the scenario could suddenly break down. nobody saw Scalia's death coming, for example, even though he was 79. that ended up working out horribly for the cause of justice and freedom, but it could have gone differently. so long as our rights are subject to these bizarre matters of fate and circumstance, we may as well remind ourselves that there are ways the probabilistic parts could break our way.

and the stacked deck there does look better the moment Biden can replace Breyer, which i think we all do need to be praying for (or whatever equivalent practice).

and... all these scenarios also presume a successful barrett confirmation. tbh, i'm pretty doom-and-gloom about that, seems like there's no reason to think it won't happen. but it's still probably not good for my head to already accept her as a solid number until 2049 or w/e. like if i'm driving myself crazy with all the bad things that have already happened, and the ones that could probably happen, and the ones that are near-certainties, that's a lot to do to my head, if i'm not also considering the good equivalents of all of those things.

there's also some non-zero chance that, in the event that a Democrat wins the presidential race four times in a row and this permanent 5-4 Court keeps shutting down every exciting thing the people are turning out to vote for, then a mandate for court-packing develops much much more quickly than we might expect right now.

so long as our rights are subject to these bizarre matters of fate and circumstance, we may as well remind ourselves that there are ways the probabilistic parts could break our way.

otm

i know that's not a convincing or comforting thought for everyone, but to me that really is what gives me hope

NEW: Senate Democrats say they will press President Trump’s SCOTUS nominee to commit to recuse herself if the justices hear a case that could impact the outcome of the fall elections, @mkraju reports.

— Ana Cabrera (@AnaCabrera) September 25, 2020

That seems a little dumb

I mean it makes sense but they'd still have a 5-3 advantage anyway

"Will you commit to not doing the exact thing you were hired for" is a dumb question

and... all these scenarios also presume a successful barrett confirmation. tbh, i'm pretty doom-and-gloom about that, seems like there's no reason to think it won't happen

i will continue to return to my dumb "we simulate the future and then experience it in real time, somehow diminished, as something that was already familiar" theory, until someone or something convinces me that it's not accurate. in that line of thinking, you can already see the barrett confirmation and how it happens. i already saw a headline, last night, talking about how barrett was confirmed in October. i looked at the calendar and it was september 25th, then re-read the headline and it still said that she was confirmed in October, past tense. i can't remember where i saw it, and i had a socially distanced hangout with a friend last night and got way too drunk. but still, it was there all the same.

that was just a drunken horror, but i woke up today and it's still there. the republicans have the votes. 2 have been allowed to deviate (murkowski and collins), which just so happens to allow exactly enough remaining republicans to unilaterally install barrett. what a coincidence. this outcome has already been focus-grouped on a national scale - it turns out that most republicans think it's a great idea, most democrats think it's a bad idea, and the majority of "independents" think it's a bad idea. it sounds like most ideas these days. so they'll do it, because they can.

we're currently simulating the outraged response, right now. at least, i am. and then, when it happens, it won't be the first time.

---

^i think all of that is a very bad way to go about thinking about life, believe it or not. but that's what i see happening over and over, lately.

xpost they're not asking her to not be a justice, they're saying 'Hey, you were literally just nominated by one of the President candidates in this election 5 minutes before the election, maybe it's a conflict of interest for you ruling on a case challenging his results".

But this is the primary reason they are in such a rush. If she can't guarantee to hand over the election, it's pointless for Trump. Surely he already told her she needs to deliver that vote, or there would be a different pick.

lol of course it's not going to actually happen but would you rather the Democrats not try it first so that they can frame it as "Justice Coney Barrett refused to recuse, she and Trump win, while Americans lose!"

I mean, compared to other things they should be trying, this is VERY low on my list of importance and I wouldn't want it to take the place of promising to pack the fuck out of courts, but we're kinda fucked unless someone has a McCain surprise during the vote.

I'm sure it would astonish our immigrant population to discover that they aren't subject to the jurisdiction of the USA or the state where they reside.

Undocumented Sovereign Citizens

The Supreme Court just set aside a 2nd Circuit decision upholding New York's requirement that all school students, public and private, obtain certain vaccinations, without any religious exemptions. It orders the 2nd Circuit to reconsider the ruling in light of SCOTUS' LGBTQ school books decision.

Mark Joseph Stern Bluesky post re Supreme Court sticking up for rights of ‘religious’ anti-vaxers

The past decade of the assertion of "religious rights" by SCOTUS basically comes down to allowing unlimited selfishness and bigotry as long as you can put a plausible stamp of religion (preferably Christianity) on it. As if the primary purpose of the 1st Amendment's faith protections is to allow you to be an asshole.

And people have been increasingly asserting something they don’t like “violates their religious beliefs” no matter what the doctrine of their actual church is. For example, Catholics trying to say vaccines violate their religious beliefs, never mind that that Catholic Church doesn’t have any such prohibitions.

fuck these people and their stupid religions

Start a Church of Excellent Vaccines and, well, you know the rest…

Yeah there are almost no faiths or denominations that actually oppose vaccination. Good overview from the American Bar Association: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/resources/human-rights/archive/sincerely-held-or-suddenly-held-religious-exemptions-vaccination/

The research from Vanderbilt University found theological opposition to vaccination only within the Dutch Reformed Church, Christian Scientists, and a handful of faith-healing denominations (Faith Assembly, Faith Tabernacle, the Church of the First Born, and the Endtime Ministries). But even within these groups there is not universal opposition to being vaccinated.

But of course if a state tried to establish some kind of test of whether a claim to religious objection was sincere or rooted in any actual doctrine, I'm sure SCOTUS would find that unconstitutional too.

Philosophically I could much more easily see a case for refusing vaccines on the basis of bodily autonomy than "religious objection" — but that would require a conception of bodily autonomy that would also extend to rights to abortion and gender-affirming care, and obviously this SCOTUS doesn't want any part of that. If you allow a vaguely defined religious conviction to be an actual legal argument, you can also then apply it against abortion and trans people. The One Weird Trick of conservative Christian jurisprudence.

I could much more easily see a case for refusing vaccines on the basis of bodily autonomy than "religious objection"

for the most part, this is equally as stupid

I don't believe it myself, but it's a more coherent argument than "I have a vague notion that my religion as I define it has some kind of problem with this that I don't even need to spell out or cite in any way." The government forcing you take foreign substances into your or your children's bodies is an infringement on bodily autonomy even if you think (as I do) that it's a wise and necessary one.

yeah upon reflection i would replace“

whoops, yeah sorry a small earthquake just occurred here

my father is a doctor and one of his colleagues in his practice is a devout Catholic and wouldn't get vaxxed for COVID because, according to him, the research that led to the development of the vaccine used stem cells from embryos or something like that. Pretty insane imo but that could be the rationale for the religious exemption. it always comes back to abortion. it created years-long headaches, as they were reopening their office and coming back to work they had to find ways for this guy to contribute without being around the usually elderly and fragile patients

On to this morning’s Supreme Court case- Can Trump fire all leaders of Congressionally created independent agencies .

Mark J Stern re the oral arguments:

I assume Amit Agarwal was chosen to defend independent agencies at the Supreme Court today because he's a former Alito and Kavanaugh clerk with a conservative pedigree. But he is doing a very poor job, and I think a progressive advocate with subject matter expertise would've been far more effective.

those stem cells he's probably referring to from 1 x 3 month old fetus probably saved 10+ million lives - good article on it: https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20201103-the-controversial-cells-that-saved-10-million-lives

That kind of selective objection is so insane. The Catholic Church also strongly opposes child labor, but you don't see American Catholics making a big deal out of refusing to wear any clothes or eat any food that might have come from child labor.

yup

Regarding other supreme court matter this morning--

You know things are bad at SCOTUS when the guy aruging for your side makes things worse than the guy arguing for the other side.

Ely Mystal of the Nation

NY Times-

The Supreme Court on Monday appeared poised to make it easier for President Trump to fire independent government officials despite laws meant to insulate them from political pressure in what would be a major expansion of presidential power.

Hearing a case dealing with Mr. Trump’s attempt to fire a member of the Federal Trade Commission, members of the court’s conservative majority seemed ready to overturn or strictly limit a landmark decision from 1935. That precedent said Congress could put limits on the president’s authority to remove some executive branch officials.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who is almost always in the majority in significant cases, said the F.T.C. that opinion shielded 90 years ago looked nothing like the modern commission, which he said exercises enormous executive power, an authority the Constitution reserves for the president. He referred to the 1935 precedent as a “dried husk.”

Even as they appeared receptive to the Trump administration’s maximalist position, several key justices seemed intent on making sure that the court’s eventual decision in this case did not threaten the independence of the Federal Reserve. The justices will hear a separate case dealing with Mr. Trump’s attempt to fire a Fed governor in January.

The court’s three liberal justices warned of the far-reaching consequences for the structure of the modern government if the majority sided with the Trump administration in the Federal Trade Commission matter.

A decision in the president’s favor, they said, would call into question the constitutionality of job protections extended to leaders of more than two dozen other agencies Congress has charged with protecting consumers, workers and the environment.

Justice Elena Kagan said such a ruling would “put massive, uncontrolled, unchecked power in the hands of the president.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor told the administration’s lawyer that “you’re asking us to destroy the structure of government” and to take away from Congress its ability to insulate independent agencies from political pressures.

In response, D. John Sauer, the solicitor general, said that “the sky will not fall” if the justices give the president this new power. “In fact, our entire government will move toward accountability to the people,” he said.

Since returning to the White House, Mr. Trump has fired government watchdogs, leaders of independent agencies and rank-and-file federal workers, drawing multiple legal challenges.

The Supreme Court has generally allowed the firings to take effect through temporary emergency orders. Monday’s case presents the first opportunity for the court to issue a conclusive ruling on the underlying legal questions of Mr. Trump’s firings.

Next month, the justices will separately consider whether the president has the power to fire Lisa Cook, a Federal Reserve Board governor. The justices have allowed Ms. Cook to remain in her post for now, signaling that the central bank may be uniquely insulated from presidential interference because of its history.

At issue on Monday was Mr. Trump’s firing in March of Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a Democratic member of the F.T.C. Mr. Trump said he was removing her because she did not align with his agenda, despite a law that says the president can remove commissioners only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.” Ms. Slaughter promptly sued.

Her lawyer, Amit Agarwal of Protect Democracy, told the justices on Monday that presidents of both parties had long accepted that F.T.C. commissioners could not be removed without good cause in part to ensure regulatory stability.

“Dozens of institutions that have been around for a long time, that have withstood the test of time, that embody a distillation of human wisdom and experience, all of those would go south” if the court abandoned past precedent, Mr. Agarwal said.

Congress intentionally created such bipartisan commissions — made up of experts who could not be fired by the president without cause — to ensure that policy decisions would be made free from politics.

The F.T.C., created in 1914, protects consumers from deceptive practices and monopoly power. It is led by five commissioners who serve staggered seven-year terms; no more than three can be members of the same party.

The F.T.C. has been led by only Republicans since March, after Mr. Trump fired a second Democrat, Alvaro Bedoya. After initially challenging his firing, Mr. Bedoya resigned, citing financial pressures.

A district court judge said in July that Ms. Slaughter’s firing was illegal, and in early September, a divided court panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reinstated her.

That court said that a commissioner could not be fired without the required grounds of “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.” The panel pointed to the job protections upheld by the 1935 decision that also involved a fired F.T.C. commissioner.

In that decision, Humphrey’s Executor v. U.S., the Supreme Court unanimously upheld removal restrictions for government officials on multimember boards. The justices in that case said President Franklin D. Roosevelt could not remove a member of the F.T.C. merely because of political differences.

But in the last 15 years, the court has repeatedly narrowed that decision to give the president more control over executive officials.

“Since 1789, the Constitution has been understood to empower the president to keep these officers accountable — by removing them from office, if necessary,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote in 2010.

More recently, the court found that the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was unconstitutional because it did not allow the president to fire its single director without cause. The court allowed the job protections to remain for multimember bodies like the F.T.C.

But in its emergency orders issued this year, the conservative majority has let the president temporarily remove leaders of agencies led by such multimember boards, including the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

As a result, Mr. Sauer suggested in court filings that the precedent at issue was already a “dead letter” that should be overruled. Such tenure protections, he told the court in filings, unconstitutionally infringe on the president’s power to run the executive branch.

In response, Ms. Slaughter’s lawyers have told the court that getting rid of the precedent decades later would “profoundly destabilize institutions that are now inextricably intertwined with the fabric of American governance.”

When is the Supreme Court hearing arguments on if the President can declare himself King so we can just be done with it?

Thought that was Trump v. US

the court is apparently unwilling to hand Trump an emergency ruling to allow a National Guard deployment in Chicago

interesting note from kavanaugh

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:kq4hnkd2itp7i6ccrjlwuepc/bafkreics2cq7dsn64avxen5hnu7vny3zdo36wwvouaqba454p4udrhnr7u@jpeg

https://bsky.app/profile/mjsdc.bsky.social/post/3maol7ruwec2q

In that highlighted section it looks like Kavanaugh is maybe recognizing that his prior dismissive attitude about stops based on race and ethnicity have created mayhem, and he's trying to walk it back without ever admitting that he's the one who said it was OK.

Anyway, I'll take any limitation they put on Trump, and especially on his use of troops.

or he might just be mad that people hung his name on the stops

maybe he’ll get tougher on trump if we call him “the kavanaugh president”

what an a*hole.

hey suppose a mob gathered outside congress upset at the process related to lawful election. and suppose that the president encourages them to act as a mob. and suppose said mob wished to interrupt and prevent the necessary and lawful recognition of the results of an election. and suppose a president COULD give legal orders to help prevent disruption of congressional activity, but would not until the mob was actively disrupting the notation process and putting legislators in fear of their lives and safety. and suppose there was evidence to suggest this was the intention of the president to overturn the outcome of a fair and proper election.

it makes you think! do you like beer?

the golden boy stops

‪Mark Joseph Stern‬
✧@mj✧✧✧.b✧✧✧.soc✧✧✧‬
· 1d
Very funny to see Alito complain about the court skipping full briefing and oral arguments for a quick shadow docket decision when he has signed onto innumerable orders that pull the exact same tricks and rebuked colleagues who complain about it .

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/28/magazine/thomas-goldstein-supreme-court-gambling.html

feel like i knew most of this from prior reporting but this is an incredible detail

As the months have passed since he closed his law firm, Goldstein has moved ever further from the staid routines of a Washington lawyer. He told me that he escapes to New York on many weekends to join a new group of friends who share his interest in shibari, a form of Japanese rope bondage that can involve suspending people in the air. “I have spent the last year becoming, weirdly, very good at that,” he said, with the same pride he talks about the cases he argued in front of the Supreme Court. “Now I’m asked to do performances around the country.”

The Supreme Court on Wednesday significantly expanded the ability of candidates for political office to challenge rules governing an election, rolling back lower court decisions that had said a candidate needed to show concrete harm in order to bring a suit.

The 7-2 decision handed a victory to Republicans in Illinois who are contesting a state policy of counting timely cast but late-arriving mail ballots up to two weeks after Election Day.

Well, at least the law industry is going to be booming under this administration. Lol courts are going to be absolutely SWAMPED in election lawsuits forever.

Supreme Court heard arguments the other day in a case regarding state laws restricting trans people participation in sports

Yep, the court watchers seem to think that the right to play sports is not long for this country for trans students. Infuriating and unsurprising to say the least

Depending on how they right that ruling it could have broader implications for trans rights in general. But maybe a few of the conservatives won't want to go that far.

"write" obv, nothing right about it (except right wing)

question from a dum-dum: why are people who support things like trans rights still bringing cases like this to the supreme court right now? wouldn't it be better to ... not?

i guess these things were set in motion years ago

Well also this is how civil rights litigation works. You lose a lot, ideally eventually you win. The NAACP was in court constantly for the first 70 years of the 20th century.

i did see this on scotusblog:

The court spent relatively little time on Hecox’s request to dismiss the case as moot – that is, no longer a live controversy. Hecox had sought to end the case in the lower court, arguing that she hoped to graduate soon, that she did not intend to try to play sports in Idaho again, and that she disliked the negative public attention that she had received as a result of the case. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, perhaps as part of an effort to minimize the effect of the court’s ruling, showed interest in Hecox’s request, but overall, the question received relatively little attention.

Supreme Court hearing argument right now on legitimacy of Trump firing Fed board member Lisa Cook

‪Mark Joseph Stern‬
✧@mj✧✧✧.b✧✧✧.soc✧✧✧‬
· 2h
Roberts and Barrett are skeptical that the equities favor letting Trump fire Lisa Cook. Roberts is openly hostile toward the government's claim that courts cannot reinstate Cook at all.

On the flip side, Gorsuch seems skeptical of the idea that Cook deserves notice and a hearing before removal.

More from Slate's Stern-

Kavanaugh has been laying out his views on the Fed for years, since before he joined the Supreme Court. This is a bit of a passion project for him: Let the president purge every other agency, but shield the Fed's independence. He isn't changing his mind now, certainly not on these absurd facts.

We will have to wait and see if Stern is right

It's going to be interesting to see just how they square their earlier decision to allow Trump full latitude over every other agency that Congress designed to be politically independent, while exempting the Fed from the same blank check they wrote for Trump. Their reasoning is bound to be tortuous and based on making some kind of distinction without a difference, or they won't even try to hide behind reasoning and will exempt the Fed by decree. Fun times watching the conservatives have to wallow in their own shit.

Didn't the decision regarding other agencies specifically call out the Fed as an exception? It doesn't make sense, but it seems to be the line the conservative justices are happy to walk.

Their patrons are perfectly happy to sic Trump on the regulatory state, but they don't want him to get his hands on their money.

Exactly

Didn't the decision regarding other agencies specifically call out the Fed as an exception?

It was a very brief "shadow docket" ruling that did try to exempt the Fed, but supplied no constitutional reasoning why the other agencies were vulnerable and the Fed was protected. Trump went ahead and ignored the Fed exception by firing a board member he didn't like and he got challenged in court. That challenge is now being tested before the SCOTUS.

It's time for the conservative justices to put up or shut up on this question, but how they navigate the contradictions between the Fed and other agencies implied in their earlier ruling will be interesting to watch. I don't doubt they come up with a crack to slither through, while pretending they aren't being arbitrary and slippery.

I expect their decision will somehow sidestep the question as it applies beyond the Fed altogether.