SCOTUS Won’t Let Congress Review Grand Jury Materials Ahead Of Election, Instead Takes Up Case For Review Next Term
July 2, 2020
TIMING IS EVERYTHING
|Today the Supreme Court dealt a massive blow to House Democrats and their efforts to access secret grand jury material from ROBERT MUELLER’S investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The justices decided to take up the case and decide next term whether Congress is authorized to see the material, which means the timeline could effectively kill the efforts to investigate the president and his response to Russia’s meddling.
ANGER MANAGEMENT
|“The White House is trying to capitalize on conservative anger at CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN G. ROBERTS JR. over his latest decisions by telling evangelical leaders and other activists that they need to turn out voters for PRESIDENT TRUMP so he can use a second term to continue nominating conservative judges to the nation’s highest court.” Robert Costa with The Washington Post reports on conservatives’ response to recent decisions from the chief justice and their frustrations with the Trump court failing to remake law protecting abortion access. Costa notes, “Roberts is not alone in facing conservatives’ wrath. JUSTICE NEIL M. GORSUCH, a Trump appointee, and Roberts joined the court’s liberals in the 6-to-3 ruling that a landmark federal civil rights law from the 1960s protects gay and transgender workers. Gorsuch’s move to chart his own course is particularly painful for some conservatives, given that he was vetted for Trump by a small network of conservative legal scholars, including leaders of the Federalist Society, who offered public assurances about him.”
NOT GOOD ENOUGH
|Richard Wolf with USA Today reports that although PRESIDENT TRUMP’S biggest achievement has been the conservative transformation of the judiciary, the courts still aren’t conservative enough for Trump’s liking and there’s one big reason why. “On Trump’s side of the ledger: Two hundred new federal judges. Fifty-three appeals court judges, just two short of PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA’S tally over eight years. Three appeals courts ‘flipped’ to having a majority of judges named by Republican presidents. Two impeccably conservative Supreme Court justices. On the other side: The chief justice of the United States, JOHN ROBERTS.”
JUST IMAGINE
|“Here’s a thought experiment. You’re JOHN ROBERTS, not only the chief justice of the United States but the head of the entire federal judicial branch. After 15 years on the job, you find yourself in an exquisitely tough spot.” That tough spot, as Linda Greenhouse with The New York Times writes, was how to deal with a rogue lower court’s decision to uphold an abortion law identical to one from Texas that SCOTUS already struck down, and how to deal with being one of the justices who didn’t think that law should have been struck down in the first place. Of course, we now know what Roberts decided was the best course of action and Greenhouse uses her column this week to unpack his separate opinion and compare it to the one written by JUSTICE STEPHEN BREYER.
NO MORE SEPARATION
|Mark Joseph Stern with Slate writes that CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS took a bulldozer to the wall separating church and state with this week’s decision that forces states to fund private religious schools. Stern explains the decision which says that once states provide funding for private education, schools can’t be disqualified from receiving that funding solely because they are religious. Stern notes that for JUSTICES THOMAS, ALITO, and GORSUCH, the outcome didn’t go far enough, as Thomas in particular argued that the separation of church and state should be done away with entirely.