Category Archives: Courts

Demonstrating her Naked Bias

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Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is at it again. At a recent “judges’ conference” in Puerto Rico, she said this about “relentless attacks” on judges “designed to intimidate:”

The attacks are not random. They seem designed to intimidate those of us who serve in this critical capacity. The threats and harassment are attacks on our democracy, on our system of government. And they ultimately risk undermining our Constitution and the rule of law.

So far, so good. She’s decrying attacks by the likes of then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) on two Supreme Court Justices he specifically named. She’s decrying the smear campaign against then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Right?

No. She went on, speaking to judges, not those who threaten them:

I urge you to keep going, keep doing what is right for our country, and I do believe that history will vindicate your service[.]

There it is. Jackson has prejudged cases currently before activist (my term) district judges who’ve overstepped their roles and are looking to dictate foreign policy from their benches, presaging how she’ll rule when any of those cases come before the Supreme Court.

More than that

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President Donald Trump (R) fired Progressive-Democrat EEOC commissioner Jocelyn Samuels over her refusal to follow Trump’s instructions and EOs, among other things, rescinding the Biden administration’s EEOC rules requiring employers to pay for, or to pay insurance coverage for, employee hormone and surgical treatments to resemble the opposite sex, in violation of their [employers’] religious beliefs.

Naturally, Samuels is suing over the effrontery of firing her. Her lawyers are making this argument in court:

Because the Commissioners perform predominantly quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative functions, these restrictions on the president’s removal authority are constitutional[.]

On the contrary. Because Commissioners perform predominantly quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative functions from inside the Executive Branch, they’re violating bedrock Constitutional separation of powers requirements. Those requirements are articulated in so many words in our Constitution’s Article I, Section 1, which mandates legislative functions can occur only within the Legislative Branch, and again in so many words by our Constitution’s Article III, Section 1, which mandates that judicial functions can occur only within the Judicial Branch.

It really is that straightforward. Those broad authorities claimed by the EEOC are themselves wholly unconstitutional.

Backwards

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The headline and lede demonstrate the utter misunderstanding (to the point of cynically offered distortion?) of the press in the ongoing fight between the Left and the Trump administration’s efforts to streamline our bloated Federal government, bring its spending into line with necessarily lowered income tax rates, and revamp our failed immigration behaviors.

Trump Floods Supreme Court With Appeals to Push Through Agenda
A cascade of Trump administration cases is flooding the Supreme Court, putting the justices on the spot over the administration’s aggressive moves to eliminate federal programs, abolish independent agencies, and recast immigration law without congressional approval.

No. Without the Left weaponizing all of our courts with their lawsuits over every step the Trump administration takes, there would be nothing to appeal to the Supreme Court, emergency or otherwise. This Leftist obstructionism is borne solely of their disdain for, if not hatred of, all things Trump, Republican, or Conservative.

Nor is President Donald Trump (R) seeking to bypass Congress with any of his moves. He and his Cabinet Secretaries understand full well that his moves alone cannot be expected to last past the next election of a Progressive-Democrat President. He and his know full well that Congress needs to statutorily codify his moves in order for them to have any durability.

Trump also knows full well that continuing to wait through Congress’ stately political pace will mean nothing continues to get done in any of those milieus and that waiting through the court system’s drawn out judicial deliberation, suit, countersuit ad nauseum will mean not very much will get done.

The businessman simply is moving at the pace of business rather than at the dither pace of politics and judges. That’s to the good of our nation, no matter the gnashing of the Left and its Progressive-Democratic Party obstructors.

We Want our Maypo®

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HHS has terminated or canceled, as the case may be, some $12 billion in grants to the States for health-related programs, and a number of State Attorneys General, led by Arizona’s Kris Mayes (D) are suing to keep the dollars flowing.

Never mind that the grants were Wuhan Virus Situation-related, and that that pandemic is long since ended. HHS made that clear in the cancelation notice:

[T]he grants and cooperative agreements were issued for a limited purpose: to ameliorate the effects of the pandemic. Now that the pandemic is over, the grants and cooperative agreements are no longer necessary as their limited purpose has run out.

This is clear enough. Yet, the AGs perform their artificial hysteria. Here’s Mayes in particular:

By slashing these grants, the Trump administration has launched an all-out attack on Arizona’s public health system—harming the entire state, but hitting rural communities the hardest. These cuts target the very places that rely most on this critical funding

This is risible on its face. There is no attack, all-out or limited, on Arizona. The State’s governing personnel know full well that the pandemic has been expired for some years, and from that, they knew just as well that the Federal funding for that purpose would come to an end. Arizona, et al., have had plenty of time to (re)allocate State funds to those ends, to the extent each State thought those ends still necessary.

The States chose otherwise, and now they’re demanding their never-ending stream of Federal dollars to continue.

We want our Maypo®, indeed.

Federal and State Funding for Abortion

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There is a move afoot in Congress to remove from Medicare reimbursements for abortion, and there is a case before the Supreme Court that will impact States’ ability to remove funding for abortion from Medicaid reimbursements. The removal from Medicare, should it come to fruition, would be entirely consistent with the Court’s Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, which rescinded Roe v Wade and put the abortion question entirely in the States’ hands. Now many States are attempting to act on their newly restored authority—hence the case before the Supreme Court.

It’s true enough that it’s a fraught decision for the mother to bring an unwanted pregnancy to term, but my concern here is for the life of the baby. From this, I see two boundary cases that are especially difficult.

One is where the health of the mother is at risk if the pregnancy continues. In this case, the mother’s health must be weighed extremely carefully against the life of the baby. This weighing may need to occur—must occur?—in open court, with competent, well-trained lawyers speaking for the baby.

The other is a mother’s pregnancy as a result of incest or rape. Carrying the baby to term here is an especially terrible choice for the mother—the pregnant child incest or rape victim may be too physically young to carry her baby to term, in which case, see above. Even where the victim mother can safely do so, it remains an especially terrible choice to carry inside her body a constant reminder of the monster who did this to her. Carrying the baby to term isn’t a matter of the mother’s inconvenience for nine months as some extremists on the right claim—the emotional damage to the mother from that is real, extreme, and often irrepairable.

Conventional wisdom is to permit abortion in the these narrowly defined, and not so often occurring compared to “ordinary” unwanted pregnancies, cases of incest or rape. Conventional wisdom here is not a completely bad bit of wisdom, but I remain concerned: why should the baby have to pay with its life for the crime of another? The baby needs competent, well-trained lawyers speaking for him or her in these cases, also.

It’s also true enough that, while Republicans are attempting to do more to provide fiscal support for those mothers during their pregnancies, in the period surrounding birth, and in the early years after birth (here including adoption options), they need to do better at specifically identifying those needs and then providing for them—and to do so publicly. That shortfall, though, shouldn’t be allowed to impact whether the baby is allowed to live at all.