Oct.02

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

The Supreme Court Is Open for Business: Cases to Watch

The Supreme Court is back in town and conservatives can't wait for all the goodies they expect the Court will give them this term. There aren't any cases as big as Roe this term in the sense that they may determine who is elected president and which party will control Congress, but they are still pretty big. Here are three of the biggest ones:

• Federal regulations: For many decades, conservatives have wanted to repeal the New Deal. They never have liked the idea that Congress created many independent agencies and told them to regulate some area of the economy. In all there are between 200 and 400 agencies, depending on what you are counting exactly. Some of the better-known ones include ATF, CFPB, EEOC, EPA, FCC, FDA, FDIC, FED, FTC, NLRB, OSHA, and SEC. In nearly all cases, the agencies have the power to order companies to do something they don't want to do. For example, the CFPB can tell banks they can't mislead their customers. OSHA can tell companies that they have to take measures to protect the health of their workers, even if that costs them money. The list is nearly endless. Conservatives would like to wave a magic wand and make most of them go poof! and vanish.
  
  Tomorrow they will get a shot at it. A group of payday lenders, a group that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has targeted for deceptive practices for years, brought a suit stating that the funding mechanism for the CFPB is unconstitutional. If the Court finds for the payday lenders, then the bureau will lose all its funding and cease to exist. The CFPB is funded from the Federal Reserve. The director of the CFPB tells the Fed how much money it needs next year and then the Fed provides it. The plaintiffs are claiming that the Constitution allows only one funding mechanism: an annual appropriations bill passed by Congress. If the Court decides in favor of the plaintiffs, many federal agencies that are funded in some other way will basically cease to exist. This will be a huge blow to consumers and others who are protected by the agencies and a windfall for malevolent actors who don't want to be regulated. The CFPB will argue that Congress created the funding mechanism by law and Congress has the authority to create any funding mechanism it wants to. We all know how Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas will vote, and how the three liberals will vote, so it's going to come down to the other four justices.
  
  
• Second Amendment: Federal law bans people under a restraining order from owning a gun. Second Amendment fans want this law to be thrown out. The case this term involves a man, Zackey Rahimi, who assaulted his girlfriend and threatened to shoot her. A court granted her a restraining order against him, meaning that he could no longer lawfully own a gun. He kept two guns anyway. In unrelated cases, he was suspected of shooting people. Police got a warrant to search his house and found the two guns. He was then charged with violating the law prohibiting people under restraining orders from owning guns. He is claiming the Second Amendment doesn't mention any exceptions so the law is unconstitutional.
  
  He was convicted and on appeal the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that the law was constitutional. Then last summer, the Supreme Court struck down New York State's gun-control laws because they weren't old enough. Rahimi asked the Fifth Circuit to try again and this time they found the law against banning gun ownership to prevent domestic violence to be unconstitutional because laws dealing with domestic violence don't go back 200 years. Obviously the Supreme Court ruling is hugely ambiguous. How old does a law have to be? Is 150 years enough? 125? If 125 is enough, does that mean that a law passed 124 years ago is thus unconstitutional? With the New York decision, the Court opened a giant can of worms. This term it is going to start dealing with the consequences.
  
  
• Social media: Some parents in San Diego didn't like what one of the local school boards was doing. They accused the board of racism and financial impropriety. One of them posted 126 identical replies on Twitter within 10 minutes. The board members got tired of this and eventually blocked the parents. The parents sued. It is pretty clear that citizens have a constitutional right to petition the government for redress of grievances. That means government officials can't say: "Stop talking. I don't even want to hear what you have to say." The Ninth Circuit Court agreed that blocking the parents violated their constitutional rights.
  
  The question before the Supreme Court is when is an official's Facebook page or Twitter account part of his or her official business. After all, there are other ways aggrieved parents can communicate with a school board. They can send e-mail, write letters, or show up at school board meetings.
  
  There is also a related case in Michigan in which the city manager of Port Huron didn't have an official city page. But he did post items about city management to his personal page, along with photos of his family. A resident of the city didn't like the city's COVID restrictions and was not shy about announcing this. The city manager blocked him. The appeals court said the block was allowed. Now the Supreme Court gets to weigh in.
  

These are only three of the upcoming cases. A few other "interesting" ones are working their way through the courts and will certainly end up on the Supreme Court's docket before long. For example, may states ban parents from getting gender-affirming care for their children? This goes against the trend of giving parents more rights, rather than fewer. If the parents and child want to do this, does the state have a valid interest in saying they can't do it? There are many decisions parents make that have long-term effects on their children. For example, to home school them. Where do parents' rights end? A case involving a ban on mifepristone is also sure to be back before long. And surely the Supreme Court will get involved in some case soon involving the National Association of Pronoun Users. Will the Modern Language Association file an amicus brief? On which side? Harry Truman was wrong. The buck stops somewhere else. (V)