JUSTICES MAKE IT HARDER TO STRIP CITIZENSHIP | SCOTUS To Rule On Travel Ban…Any Time Now | Happy Pride Y’all!
June 22, 2017
WILL YOU BE MY AMERICAN BOY
|The Supreme Court just made it a bit harder to revoke a person’s citizenship, ruling unanimously this morning in favor of an ethnic Serb from Bosnia who lied about her husband’s military service on her paperwork. The ruling limits the government’s ability to strip citizenship from immigrants for lying during the naturalization process. Writing for the court, JUSTICE ELENA KAGAN notes, “If whatever illegal conduct occurring within the naturalization process was a causal dead-end — if, so to speak, the ripples from that act could not have reached the decision to award citizenship — then the act cannot support a charge that the applicant obtained naturalization illegally.” If you remember, it was Kagan who was most troubled by the implications of punishing a lie, famously saying during the arguments of this case, “I am a little horrified to know that every time I lie about my weight it has those kinds of consequences.”
TRUMP'S HAIL MARY
|After running out of options for implementing both his first and now second travel bans, DONALD TRUMP’S ban is now before the United States Supreme Court. The administration made its final plea yesterday, filing papers and completing the briefing on the government’s emergency application asking the justices to block lower court injunctions in favor of challengers to the ban. The Supreme Court could now act at any time.
HERE'S LOOKIN AT YOU, KID
|David Savage with the Los Angeles Times notes that in yesterday’s filing with the Supreme Court, the Trump administration did little to hide that their appeal was written with only one person in mind: JUSTICE ANTHONY KENNEDY. In the appeal, acting Solicitor General JEFFREY WALL quoted the justice, using words from an opinion he issued only a couple days ago: “National security policy is the prerogative of the Congress and the President.”
WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU'RE EXPECTING
|Bloomberg’s Greg Stohr explains for us what we can expect when the Supreme Court takes action on the president’s travel ban. Most notably, he points out that the SCOTUS term is scheduled to end sometime next week, and “the justices will almost certainly act on the travel ban before dispersing for the summer.”
ED BOARD OVERTURE
|The Editors over at Bloomberg opined on the Supreme Court’s decision to take up partisan gerrymandering next term writing, “American democracy is designed to withstand some amount of political imbalance. The incumbent president, after all, received almost 3 million fewer votes than his opponent. In the U.S. Senate, the voices of Californians are drastically discounted compared with those of Montanans. Such inequities are built into the federal system and the Electoral College. Their firm foundation makes them no less unfair, however. Because unfairness undermines democratic ideals and the faith necessary to realize them, it should be mitigated when possible.”
CLARENCE THOMAS TO THE RESCUE?
|“This week the conservative wing of the Supreme Court nearly completed a four-decade journey to close courthouse doors to plaintiffs seeking compensation from federal officials for violations of their constitutional rights…But even as the court diminished the public’s ability to hold federal officials accountable for their misdeeds, this term’s unlikely liberal icon, JUSTICE CLARENCE THOMAS, signaled he is interested in reforming a doctrine that has become the bane of civil rights advocates: qualified immunity.” That’s Perry Grossman writing for Slate on Justice Thomas, his quoting of Chicago law professor WILL BAUDE, and his growing interest in holding the courthouse doors open to more civil rights plaintiffs.
IN HONOR OF PRIDE
|James C. McKinley Jr. reports for The New York Times on the confirmation of the first openly gay judge to the New York Court of Appeals. McKinley writes, “The choice of PAUL G. FEINMAN, an associate justice of the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court in Manhattan, to fill the seat left open by the death of Judge Sheila Abdus-Salaam in April was a watershed for gay New Yorkers. It was made doubly sweet because the governor announced the move during NYC Pride week, calling Justice Feinman ‘an extraordinary human being.’”
SCOTUS VIEWS
Derogatory Trademarks Aren't About Free Speech. They're About Discrimination.
The Washington Post“The federal government, though, should not be required to register these trademarks. The government should not be required to participate in discrimination. This is where we are following the Supreme Court decision. This is the mischief that will come.”
Do We Really Want the Supreme Court to Decide How Partisan is Too Partisan?
The Washington Post“Some things may be just as dangerous to democracy as a redistricting process constantly embroiled in partisan politics. One of them would be a Supreme Court constantly embroiled in partisan politics.”
OTHER NEWS
How This Supreme Court Case Will Affect the Next Election
TIME“How the court decides will go a long way to determining whether you choose your representatives — or the other way around — and whether you’ll be able to hold them accountable when they put party agendas over your interests.”
The Supreme Court Tinkers at the Edges of the Machinery of Death
The Atlantic“The U.S. Supreme Court’s latest term, which ended this week as the justices began their summer recess, saw death-penalty opponents achieve some notable victories even as the Court moved further away from abolishing capital punishment.”
Donald Trump is in the Perfect Position to Dramatically Remake the Courts
HuffPost“Trump is unbelievably well-positioned to fill up federal courts with lifetime judges. He inherited a whopping 108 court vacancies when he became president ― double the number of vacancies President Barack Obama inherited when he took office.”