SCOTUS Tells House To Slow Its Roll On Trump Financial Records | The Loss Of John Lewis | Supreme Court Making It Harder For Americans To Vote
July 20, 2020
NEED FOR SPEED
|After the Supreme Court allowed the Manhattan DA’s office to fast-track its effort to obtain PRESIDENT TRUMP’S tax documents last week, SCOTUS today declined to allow the House to similarly move fast in their own campaign to acquire the president’s records. This outcome makes it even less likely that Congress will obtain any of Trump’s financial documents before the election. The Supreme Court denied the House in a one-sentence order, and JUSTICE SONIA SOTOMAYOR said she would have granted its request to speed things along.
NEED MORE GOOD TROUBLE
|“On the day before JOHN LEWIS died, the Supreme Court made clear that the life’s work of the Democratic congressman from Georgia remained unfinished.” Ruth Marcus with The Washington Post puts into context the death of the legendary congressman who died a day after the Supreme Court refused to restore voting rights to nearly one million felons in Florida who have already served their sentences. Marcus writes, “The solution, at least for the foreseeable future, is not in the courts but in the legislature. Last year, as one of the first acts of the new Democratic majority, the House passed a measure providing for automatic voter registration, restoring voting rights to felons, prohibiting voter purges and expanding early voting. And in December, with Lewis presiding, it passed a new version of the Voting Rights Act. As Mother Jones’s Ari Berman pointed out in the hours after Lewis’s death, both measures have been sitting in the Senate, blocked by Majority Leader MITCH MCCONNELL (R-Ky.), for 225 days and counting…For McConnell and fellow Republicans who have leaped to praise him after his death, there is an obvious, if unlikely, way to honor his memory.”
NEED THE RIGHT THE VOTE
|Adam Liptak with The New York Times also takes a look at the Supreme Court consistently making it harder for Americans to vote — a reality that should sober liberals who recently have been jumping for joy over perceived victories this term. Liptak notes, “The court’s voting-rights rulings were decided in haste, in reaction to emergency applications asking the justices to take quick action in pending appeals. The court did not hear arguments, and most of the orders it issued provided no reasoning. But the bottom line was uniform: The Supreme Court, which is dominated by five Republican appointees, sided with arguments pressed by Republicans to restrict voting rights in every case.”
NEED TO GET WITH THE PROGRAM
|Friday a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration must begin accepting new applications for the DACA, almost a month after SCOTUS blocked Trump’s effort to end the program. The administration hadn’t been accepting new applicants even after that ruling from the Supreme Court.
NEED SOME TRANSPARENCY
|We learned last week that JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG has a recurrence of cancer that she’s being treated for — a development that Josh Gerstein with POLITICO points out is “just the latest episode to prompt concern among courtwatchers that the justices are being too opaque about their health.”
SCOTUS VIEWS
The 14th Amendment Was Meant To Be A Protection Against State Violence
The Atlantic“The Supreme Court has simply refused to take the Fourteenth Amendment’s text and history seriously. It is a basic idea that we can better understand the meaning of the Constitution by looking at the context of its adoption and the abuses it aimed to eliminate. The Supreme Court does this regularly. But, in a vicious form of selective originalism, the court has ignored that ending police abuse, including police violence, lies at the core of the Fourteenth Amendment. As police officers continue to destroy innocent lives, the court has concentrated more and more power in the police.”
What Would Mitch McConnell Do If Ginsburg’s Seat Became Vacant? You Know Perfectly Well
Los Angeles Times“The bottom line is this: McConnell set the rules in 2016; he’s still in power four years later. He should live by the terms of his own supposed principles. If Ginsburg’s seat becomes vacant, he should not hold confirmation hearings on a Trump appointment. The mistreatment of Merrick Garland stands as an enormous wrong — to Garland, to Obama and to the country; it was theft, plain and simple. It exacerbated the erosion of bipartisan cooperation and civility. By sticking with his own precedent, though, McConnell could undo the damage and help put the country back on the road to functional government, rather than leaving a gaping injustice in place in perpetuity.”
The Supreme Court Is No Ally To Reproductive Rights
The Hill“For this and many other reasons, advocates and lawmakers should not be fooled by recent good news — we cannot leave it to the judiciary to protect reproductive health rights and justice. In addition to ensuring future judges and justices will not use their gavel to advance their personal politics, we need proactive legislative policies to advance health care access and equality for all.”
OTHER NEWS
What’s Next After The Supreme Court’s Birth Control Ruling?
The Washington Post“Last week, the Supreme Court in Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania upheld Trump administration rules that allow private employers with moral or religious objections to deny women contraceptive coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The court’s decision is the latest move in a protracted national debate over how to balance women’s health and access to contraception against demands of religious liberty. Based on our recent book, ‘Politics of the Pill: Gender, Framing and Policymaking in the Battle over Birth Control,’ here are three takeaways from the court’s decision.”
A Timely Case On Police Violence At The Supreme Court
The New York Times“Last month, the Supreme Court refused to hear eight cases on qualified immunity, a doctrine that makes it hard to sue police officers and other officials for misconduct and, as a result, has become a flash point in the nationwide uproar over police brutality. That move disappointed critics across the political spectrum who had hoped the court would play a role in helping resolve the broader debate. But Ms. Torres’s case, which presents an even more fundamental issue, was already on the Supreme Court’s docket. It had been scheduled to be argued in March, but the court postponed it in light of the coronavirus pandemic. It will now be heard in October.”