SCOTUS Rules Against NCAA & For Goldman In Two Major Decisions | Alito Leads In-Fighting Among Conservative Justices
June 21, 2021
SLAM DUNK
|The Supreme Court ruled unanimously this morning against the NCAA, finding it can no longer bar payments to college athletes in the name of amateurism. JUSTICE NEIL GORSUCH wrote for the court and noted that while the NCAA “seeks immunity from the normal operation of the antitrust laws” the high court must deny its request. Gorsuch added, “This suit involves admitted horizontal price fixing in a market where the defendants exercise monopoly control.”
BACK DOWN IT GOES
|SCOTUS today also ruled in favor of Goldman Sachs in its effort to avoid an investor class action accusing the big bank of hiding conflicts of interest when creating risky subprime securities before the 2008 financial crisis. Justices threw out a lower court decision from the 2nd Circuit which had allowed Goldman shareholders to sue as a group under a federal investor protection law. JUSTICE AMY CONEY BARRETT writing for the court said it wasn’t clear whether the New York-based appeals court properly considered the generic nature of Goldman’s alleged misrepresentations.”
LET'S BUST THIS THING WIDE OPEN
|“The key fault line in the Supreme Court that DONALD TRUMP built is not the ideological clash between right and left — it’s the increasingly acrimonious conflict within the court’s now-dominant conservative wing. Those rifts burst wide open on Thursday with two of the highest-profile decisions of the court’s current term. In both the big cases — involving Obamacare and a Catholic group refusing to vet same-sex couples as foster parents in Philadelphia — conservative justices unleashed sharp attacks that seemed aimed at their fellow GOP appointees for failing to grapple with the core issues the cases presented.” Josh Gerstein with POLITICO reports JUSTICE SAMUEL ALITO led the infighting among conservative Supreme Court justices in the two massive decisions that came down last week. Alito’s “caustic” opinions called out his colleagues “for issuing narrow rulings that seemed to him to be aimed at defusing political tensions rather than interpreting the law.”
HOW MANY AND HOW FAST
|Jess Bravin with The Wall Street Journal reviewed the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision last week that exempts a Catholic social service agency from Philadelphia’s nondiscrimination policies. He notes that with that decision SCOTUS sent a clear message “that secular interests will increasingly have to give way to some religious rights.” But Bravin notes, “The question now is how many—and how fast.”
SCOTUS VIEWS
Congress Must Act To Correct Flaws In The First Step Act
The Hill“A unanimous Supreme Court last week held that people convicted of certain low-level crack cocaine offenses are not eligible for resentencing under the First Step Act, a sentencing reform bill passed in 2018 with bipartisan support that was meant to provide retroactive relief to those serving sentences for crack-cocaine offenses. According to the court, the result turned on a legislative omission — one that Congress can and must correct immediately in the interest of justice.”
OTHER NEWS
Jury Discrimination Remedies Denied U.S. Supreme Court Look
Bloomberg Law“The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review how far trial judges can go to enforce the high court’s landmark prohibition against race discrimination in jury selection. An appeal denied review on Monday had asked the justices to condone a trial judge’s move to ensure that a potential juror not only isn’t kept off of the jury for discriminatory reasons, but makes it onto the deliberating jury.”
Ruth Bader Ginsburg Still Rules The World Of Political Kitsch, But Who's Next?
NBC News“Many up-and-coming politicos probably covet the unique spot Ginsburg holds in liberal hearts and chotskies. But according to the people who make and sell political books and bauble it’s unclear who will take her place — or if liberals even want to keep broadcasting their politics on their air fresheners and keychains after so many years of all-consuming political consumption.”