SCOTUS 2023-24 Term Reveals
a Corrupt Court
Majority
on Steroids
-------------
Washington
D.C. – (PAW) - 7/14/2024 - People For the American Way released its
annual Supreme Court end-of-term report on July 11, 2024, The Supreme
Court's 2023-24 term: A corrupt majority on steroids. The
report summarizes key Supreme Court rulings for 2023-24 and looks
ahead to cases the Court is slated to hear in 2024-25.
It comes at the end
of a cataclysmic term in which the Court, dominated by far-right
justices and awash in ethics scandals, further undermined
longstanding precedents, failed to protect critical reproductive
rights, and – most notably – handed former president Donald Trump
a potentially game-changing advantage in the 2024 presidential
election, with a ruling that sets back his federal criminal trial on
election subversion charges.
Read
the full report here.
“We’ve
said it before and we’ll say it again: this is a corrupt Court
majority on steroids,” said Svante Myrick, president of People For
the American Way. “Donald Trump’s hand-picked justices delivered
for him in a way that previously would have been unimaginable to most
of us. The Court’s ruling giving former presidents unprecedented
immunity from prosecution was exactly what Trump ordered and will
almost certainly keep him out of federal court, or prison, while he
runs for another term. And that ruling was just the icing on a
very unsavory cake cooked up this term by this ethically challenged
Court, which issued numerous other rulings endangering our rights and
freedoms. This is why we have to vote the courts this fall. There’s
no way we can allow Donald Trump back in office to pick more judges
and justices who will be only too willing to help him destroy our
democracy.”
Elliot Mincberg, senior fellow at People For the American Way and an
author of the report, stated: “This
Supreme Court has dug itself into a hole so deep, it’s hard to
imagine how it will ever regain our trust and confidence. Its rulings this term continue to endanger
the American people and our democracy. That’s bad enough, but then
there are the scandals around gifts and trips for conservative
justices, and Clarence Thomas’s refusal to recuse from cases
involving the election his wife tried to overturn. We need meaningful
Supreme Court reform. And we must defeat Donald Trump in November, or
this ongoing disaster for our legal system and our country will only
get worse.”
SUMMARY
OF HIGHLIGHTED CASES:
INSURRECTION-RELATED
CASES:
Trump v. United States. On the final day of the term, the Court’s
far-right majority issued a very troubling decision on the immunity
of former presidents, like Donald Trump, from criminal prosecution.
This virtually guarantees that Trump will not face a jury trial
before the election on his efforts to stir up an insurrection and
overturn the results of the 2020 election. The ruling creates
unprecedented immunity for former presidents while setting forth a
tiered system of presidential acts enjoying varying levels of
immunity. The Court’s opinion did not resolve whether Trump is
absolutely immune from all the charges in the DC federal indictment
against him, but instead sent the case back to the district court to
determine how to characterize Trump’s conduct. Justice Sonia
Sotomayor strongly dissented, writing that the ruling threatens to
transform the entire range of a president’s official conduct into a
“law-free zone.”
Trump v. Anderson: In this case, the Court ruled that Colorado could not
bar Donald Trump from its presidential ballot, despite a state
supreme court ruling that Trump had engaged in insurrection and
therefore could be barred under Section 3 of the Fourteenth
Amendment. Five of the Court’s far-right justices then went further
and wrote that the only way to bar an insurrectionist from federal
office is by Congressional statute. But Justices Sotomayor, Kagan,
and Jackson pointed out that it makes no sense to say that Section 3
is unenforceable until Congress passes a law saying how it would be
put into effect. The three sharply criticized the majority for its
“attempts to insulate all alleged insurrectionists from future
challenges to their holding federal office.”
Fischer v. US. The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision narrowed the reach of one
of the criminal statutes used to prosecute Trump and some of the
January 6 insurrectionists. Joseph Fischer was one of the Trump
supporters who is accused of breaking into the Capitol on January 6,
2021. The Court ruled that Fischer could not be charged under a
particular statute that is violated when a person “impair[s] the
availability or integrity for use in an official proceeding of
records, documents, objects, or” other things. The ruling was
somewhat limited and should not interfere with the prosecution of the
vast majority of those individuals
VOTING
RIGHTS
Alexander v. South Carolina Conference of the NAACP. The Supreme Court issued a
harmful 6-3 ruling in this gerrymandering case, weakening Black
Americans’ ability to fully participate in our democracy. The
case arose when South Carolina Republicans drew a map that moved more
than 30,000 Black voters out of a congressional district, which made
it whiter and more likely to elect a Republican. The South Carolina
NAACP went to court, claiming the move was racially motivated, and
won. But on appeal the Supreme Court majority decided that the
redistricting was a permissible political gerrymander, rather than an
illegal racial gerrymander. The ruling makes it easier for
politicians to draw unfair voting maps that reduce the political
power of Black Americans.
REPRODUCTIVE
FREEDOM
Foodand Drug Administration (FDA) v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine.
Following the overturning of Roe v Wade, conservatives targeted the
availability of medication abortion. They created an organization
called the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine to manufacture a lawsuit
against the FDA, which had approved the abortion medication
mifepristone, and argued against all the evidence to the contrary
that mifepristone is dangerous. The Supreme Court dismissed the case,
ruling that the Alliance had no standing to sue. Mifepristone remains
available, but threats remain. The Court did not address the actual
substance of the lawsuit and effectively “kicked the can down the
road” to a time when the Far Right will inevitably sue again.
Moyle v. United States. Shortly after the Dobbs ruling overturning Roe v
Wade, controversies arose about a federal law that concerns abortion
care in emergencies. The 1986 federal Emergency Medical Treatment and
Labor Act (EMTALA) requires emergency rooms in hospitals that receive
Medicare funding to provide “necessary stabilizing treatment” to
patients who arrive with an “emergency medical condition.” Idaho
law severely restricts abortions, prohibiting them except when
necessary to save the life of the mother, regardless of dangers to
the mother’s health. The Biden Administration went to federal court
in Moyle and maintained that EMTALA supersedes Idaho’s law. The
Court dismissed the case, preserving emergency care access in Idaho
for now. But Justices Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch dissented, and the
Court will likely face the issue again.
GUN SAFETY
United States v. Rahimi. Under the federal Violence Against Women Act, it is
illegal for someone subject to a domestic violence restraining order
to possess a firearm or ammunition. Zackey Rahimi was subject to a
restraining order in 2019, after he assaulted and threatened his
girlfriend. In 2020 and 2021, he was involved in five different
shootings. When police searched his home, they found firearms. He was
convicted for possessing them, but claimed this violated his Second
Amendment rights. The Supreme Court upheld his conviction, but the
fact that such an extreme claim made it to the nation’s highest
court is significant. It shows how much damage Trump judges and
justices have done to our judicial system, following the Court’s
dangerous decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association
v. Bruen, severely weakening the ability of
states and cities to set reasonable restrictions on firearms.
Garland v. Cargill. In a 6-3 ruling made possible by the three Trump
justices, the Supreme Court invalidated a federal rule that
subjects semi-automatic rifles equipped with bump stocks to the same
restrictions and penalties as machine guns. The ruling ignores the
fact that bump stocks, such as the one used in the 2017 Las Vegas
shooting that killed and injured hundreds of people, cause weapons to
perform in exactly the same deadly manner as machine guns. In her
dissent, Justice Sotomayor noted that the majority’s “artificially
narrow definition” of machine gun “hamstrings the Government’s
efforts to keep machine guns from gunmen like the Las Vegas shooter.”
WORKERS’ RIGHTS
Starbucksv. McKinney. In this case, the Supreme Court majority ruled against
employees seeking to protect their rights to organize. The majority
set a standard for courts to follow that will make it harder for
workers in the future to get relief from unfair labor practices. The
case concerns a group of Starbucks employees who tried to unionize
one of its stores in Memphis. After news coverage of the effort,
Starbucks fired them. Congress long ago made it illegal to fire
people as retaliation for their effort to unionize. The union helping
the workers organize filed a complaint with the National Labor
Relations Board, and the NLRB made a preliminary finding that an
unfair labor practice had occurred and Starbucks shoulder-hire the
employees pending final resolution. But the Supreme Court ruled
against the employees, based on the majority’s interpretation of
the authority of the NLRB.
UNDERMINING
EFFECTIVE HEALTH, SAFETY, AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTIONS
Relentlessv. Department of Commerce and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo.
In two companion cases, the Court’s far-right majority took the
monumental step of overturning the Chevron doctrine which for 40
years had supported federal agency authority for protecting public
health and safety. Both of these cases involved challenges by fishing
companies to a rule issued by one such agency, the National Marine
Fisheries Service. The companies challenged the NMFS’s authority
to monitor them for overfishing. In ruling for the corporations, the
Court set the stage for a massive upending of thousands of existing
rules protecting health, safety and rights, while chilling future
efforts to regulate businesses on behalf of consumers and the public.
Kym Meyer, litigation director for the Southern Environmental Law
Center, called the majority’s ruling a “recipe for chaos.”
SEC v. Jarkesy. This case also threatens federal agency ability to
protect the public. As part of its
regular activity to enforce congressional laws, the Securities and
Exchange Commission brought a civil penalty proceeding against George
Jarkesy, Jr., for misleading investors and fraud in marketing hedge
funds. After a full trial before an administrative law judge, the SEC
found him guilty and ordered him to pay a civil penalty of $300,000
and to disgorge over $680,000 in illicit gains. Jarkesy challenged
the SEC’s authority and demanded a jury trial instead. The Court
agreed with him, throwing into doubt the ability of the SEC and other
agencies to enforce laws passed by Congress.
Corner Post v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. In the last
week of its Term, the Court issued yet another 6-3 ruling in which
the far-right majority harmed regulatory agencies by making it easier
to challenge regulations, even those that were promulgated long ago.
The majority held that a company or others can challenge a rule
within six years of when the rule began to injure the plaintiff, even
if this happened many years – 13 years in Corner Post –after the
agency’s action. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent for
herself and Justices Sotomayor and Kagan stated that the decision
could have “staggering” consequences, especially in light of the
right-wing majority’s decision overturning the Chevron
doctrine.
Ohio v. EPA. It has long been recognized that air can and does carry
pollution across state borders. As part of the Clean Air Act,
Congress required that states submit State Implementation Plans
(SIPs) to implement their obligations under the law that comply with
the law’s “Good Neighbor Provision.” After the EPA disapproved
a number of states’ SIPs, several states went to court to challenge
the action. In an opinion by Justice Neil Gorsuch, joined by Trump
justice Brett Kavanaugh and by Chief Justice Roberts along with
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, a 5-4 majority granted the
states’ request and stopped any EPA implementation of the Good
Neighbor Policy until the states’ lawsuit concludes, which is
likely to take years. As Earthjustice’s Senior Vice President Sam
Sankar stated, the Court has put “thousands of lives at risk.”
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) v. Community Financial Services Association of America. This case was a constitutional challenge to
the way the CFPB is funded. The CFPB had adopted a Payday Lending
Rule to protect people from unfair and abusive lending practices. Two
associations of companies regulated by the rule went to court to have
it overturned. A panel of Trump judges on the far-right Fifth Circuit
ruled that the way the agency was funded was
unconstitutional. Fortunately, the Supreme Court disagreed and
ruled for the CFPB. The case could have had the potential of calling
into question nearly everything the CFPB has done since its creation.
But the fact that the lawsuit got as far as it did shows the impact
of far-right lower court judges.
COUNTERING
DISINFORMATION
Murthy v. Missouri. This was a challenge to the Biden administration’s
efforts to inform social media companies when their sites are being
used for harmful disinformation, especially about COVID-19 vaccines
and the 2020 election. In a 6-3 opinion by Justice Barrett, the
Court ruled that none of the complaining parties had standing to sue
in federal court. Like the mifepristone lawsuit, this case should
never have made it this far. The fact that it did shows how
right-wing plaintiffs once again were able to find a way to get a
Trump district court judge to put ideology over the law and help
advance their cause.
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People
For the American Way is a national progressive advocacy organization
that inspires and mobilizes Americans to defend freedom, justice, and
democracy from those who threaten to take them away. For more than
four decades, we have been dedicated to making the promise of America
real for everyone and have worked toward a vision of a vibrant
America where basic rights and freedoms are upheld for all, not just
the wealthy and the powerful. Learn more: http://www.peoplefor.org
