Posted on 06/27/2019 6:59:04 AM PDT by SMGFan
You beat me by 24 seconds.
Listening to the stupid commentary on Fox about the decision. The 10th Amendment provides the states with all the authority they need. SCOTUS should stay out of state politics. The state legislature is the place to make these decisions. Let the people decide.
Who decides what is “free and fair”? The people or SCOTUS?
The one guy, who Gallagher disagreed with, was right. States do have rights, as long as their exercising of them is not in violation of the Constitution.
Here’s the opinion in Department of Commerce v. New York. Amy will have our analysis:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/18pdf/18-966_bq7c.pdf
I saw the runners.... running down the stairs
We have the census case.
The decision is affirmed in part, reversed in part, and sent back to the district court.
The majority upholds the district court’s remand to the agency for further explanation of its decision
Sounds like bad news.
The partial concurrence from Justice Thomas agrees with the majority that the decision is not necessarily arbitrary and capricious, and then disagrees with the majority about remanding on the view that the justification the Secretary offered for the question was pretextual. Justice Breyer’s partial concurrence is the opposite: It agrees about the pretext, but would also find the justifications that were offered arbitrary and capricious.
From the majority opinion: “we cannot ignore the disconnect between the decision made and the explanation given.... If judicial review is to be more than an empty ritual, it must demand something better than the explanation offered for the action taken in this case. In these unusual circumstances, the District Court was warranted in remanding to the agency, and we affirm that disposition.”
More for the end of the majority opinion: “We do not hold that the agency decision here was substantively invalid. But agencies must pursue their goals reasonably. Reasoned decisionmaking under the Administrative Procedure Act calls for an explanation for agency action. What was provided here was more of a distraction.”
The Court says that the secretary’s decision to reinstate the citizenship question was reasonable and reasonably explained, “particularly in light of the long history of the citizenship question on the census,” but on the other hand it says that it shares “the District Court’s conviction that the decision to reinstate a citizenship question cannot be adequately explained in terms of DOJ’s request for improved citizenship data to better enforce the” Voting Rights Act. “In these unusual circumstances,” the court says, “the District Court was warranted in remanding to the agency, and we affirm that disposition.”
Census case decision....bottom line in non-legaleeze?
Justice Alito, in a separate opinion, sounds the alarm that the decision today gives courts too much leeway to inquire into the subjective motivations of agency officials who make controversial decisions.
Although the Court sends the case back to the agency, it largely rejects the substantive objections New York raised regarding the agency’s power to include a citizenship question. So the remand may prove to be a temporary, and limited, victory.
Bottom line: no census question in 2020.
Justice Alito expresses the view that courts have no business “stick[ing] its nose into the question whether it is good polity to include a citizenship question on the census or whether the reasons given by Secretary Ross for that decision were is only reasons or his real reasons.”
This is really an administrative-law holding. The Court is saying that the Commerce Department could do this if it gave a better/truer explanation of why it was doing it.
Nor will they be. The politicians in the Democrat controlled States such as New York would lose too much tax money. Can’t have that. Slowly but surely the noose tightens.
So, what is next?
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