Trump Financial Records Case Fast-Tracked | RBG Has Cancer Again But Has No Plans To Leave SCOTUS
July 17, 2020
MORE RBG NEWS
|News broke today that after a week of news about her health, JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG is undergoing chemotherapy treatment to address a recurrence of cancer. The 87-year-old said in a statement that she’s “fully able” to continue with her work at SCOTUS and that her cancer treatment is unrelated to her hospitalization earlier this week for a possible infection. Based on today’s statement it seems her pancreatic cancer that was treated in 2009 has returned and is now in her liver.
THE COST OF VOTING IN FLORIDA
|SCOTUS said yesterday that Florida can enforce a law that bars ex-felons from voting if they still owe court fines and fees associated with their convictions. JUSTICES SOTOMAYOR, GINSBURG, and KAGAN dissented from this decision, and Sotomayor wrote, “This court’s order prevents thousands of otherwise eligible voters from participating in Florida’s primary election simply because they are poor.” The Florida law will now likely be in effect for the November election.
DON'T BLOCK THE VOTE BABY
|“The Supreme Court all but guaranteed that nearly 1 million Floridians will be unable to vote in the 2020 election because of unpaid court debts in a shattering order handed down on Thursday. Its decision will throw Florida’s voter registration into chaos, placing a huge number of would-be voters in legal limbo and even opening them up to prosecution for casting a ballot. The justices have effectively permitted Florida Republicans to impose a poll tax in November.” Mark Joseph Stern with Slate reacts to the Supreme Court decision on Florida’s voting law and notes that not only are the justice condoning voter suppression at this point, they’re actively facilitating it.
IN THE FAST LANE
|Today the Supreme Court cleared formally fast-tracked the fight over PRESIDENT TRUMP’S tax returns, allowing the remaining proceedings at the district court level to advance more swiftly. CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS granted the request from the Manhattan District Attorney. Justices haven’t yet acted on a similar request made by the House in a different case.
I-N-D-E-P-E-N-D-E-N-T DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS
|Richard Wolf with USA Today reports that DONALD TRUMP’S Supreme Court appointees — JUSTICES NEIL GORSUCH and BRETT KAVANAUGH — have both displayed independent streaks at different points this year, unnerving the conservatives who had cheered their nominations just a few years ago. Wolf: “Both Gorsuch, 52, and Kavanaugh, 55, have voted with the court’s conservative majority far more often than not. In this year’s major decisions on abortion, immigration, religious liberty and executive authority, they voted as expected – and as the Trump administration wanted. But their independent streaks were evident on the term’s last day, when they agreed with the court’s 7-2 judgments in two cases testing Trump’s challenges to subpoenas seeking his tax returns and financial records. The rulings let New York prosecutors and congressional investigators continue to pursue the documents.”
A TRIUMPHANT TERM
|“For once, the conventional wisdom was right: The Supreme Court term that ended last week was a triumph for CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS. But, as usual, the conventional wisdom skims the surface, focusing on the obvious: his steering of the court toward a center comfortably aligned with public opinion, and protecting it from an institutionally destructive alliance with a president who assumed the court would do his bidding. I’m among those who celebrate these outcomes, and I don’t in any way mean to diminish them. Rather, I want to suggest that the 2019-20 Supreme Court term looks even more consequential, for the country and the chief justice, when his triumph is seen in full, in its multiple dimensions.” That’s Linda Greenhouse with The New York Times taking a closer look at the chief justice’s contributions to SCOTUS — and the country’s trajectory — this term by taking a close look at the three religion cases that the court handed down this summer.