Posted on 06/21/2024 6:30:15 AM PDT by CFW
The Supreme Court will release Opinions this morning at 10:00 a.m. Attorneys at scotusblog will be in the press room and live-blogging the Opinions as they are received.
There were four opinions released yesterday which leaves 19 cases remaining for this term. Yesterday's thread on those opinions is here:
For those keeping score, thus far Roberts has written 2 opinions; Thomas 7, Alito, 4, Kagan 5, Gorsuch 2, Kavanaugh 5, Sotomayor, 7, Barrett 3, and Jackson 4. (three cases were per curiam)
Cases of interest and great importance that remain undecided are the Trump immunity case (Trump v. U.S.), the Fischer case (relating to Jan 6 and Trump), and the two cases relating to the Chevron deference issues, Loper Bright and Relentless.
There is also a 2nd Amendment case, Rahimi, regarding possession of a firearm by persons subject to domestic-violence restraining orders.
And of course, there are the First Amendment case. First is NetChoice, LLC v. Paxton, then Moody v. NetChoice, LLC, and finally Missouri v. Murthy Issues: Whether respondents have Article III standing; (2) whether the government’s challenged conduct transformed private social media companies’ content-moderation decisions into state action and violated respondents’ First Amendment rights; and (3) whether the terms and breadth of the preliminary injunction are proper.
A list of the cases for this term can be found at October 23 term
Happy SCOTUS Opinion day. Say a prayer for the Justices.
(Excerpt) Read more at scotusblog.com ...
I find it interesting that Roberts and Gorsuch have only written 2 opinions each and Barrett only 3. Reading the tea leaves we can probably expect those three justices to have a lot of the remaining opinions. That is of concern to me because those are the three justices that can go squishy and find interesting paths to reach opinions that please no one. IMHO Barrett seems to have moved left since being appointed as if she wants to prove to the left that she is not really a conservative.
Of course, Alito has written only 4 so maybe we will also hear from him a lot but on the flip side Jackson also has only 4. The tea leaves are unreliable which is why most just toss them in the trash.
There has been gossip and media reporting (which may or may not mean anything) that Barrett and Thomas have been bumping heads on Constitutional originalism.
Remember, the Justices release opinions in reverse senority order. For an example if the first Opinion is from Gorsuch then we will not hear from the more junior justices (Kavanaugh, Barrett,& Jackson) today.
There is three boxes of opinions so that probably means four or 5 opinions for today.
The Court has already added an opinion day for next Wednesday. There will probably be one for Thursday or Friday as well. With 19 cases left (18 if you combine the two Chevron deference cases) they can get all the opinions completed easily in three days).
We have the first case, from Justice Jackson. It is Texas v. New Mexico and Colorado, an original case about water.
So this means we can hear from all the Justices today.
This was a case about the federal government’s objection to a consent decree that would resolve the water dispute between the states and codify a methodology to determine each state’s allocation of the waters of the Rio Grande.
The court upholds the U.S.’s objections and denies the states’ motion to enter the consent decree.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/141orig_d18f.pdf
Read this one a couple of times already, and I have no idea what’s going on with it :).
Fingers crossed for good news today!
That one went 5-4. Gorsuch dissents, joined by Thomas, Alito and Barrett.
Next up is Department of State v. Munoz, by Justice Barrett.
It is 6-3. Sotomayor dissents, joined by Kagan and Jackson.
This case is about whether the denial of a visa to the non-citizen spouse of a U.S. citizen violates a constitutionally protected right of the citizen and, if so, whether the government properly explained its decision to deny the visa.
The court holds that a citizen does not have a fundamental liberty interest in her noncitizen spouse being admitted to the country.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-334_e18f.pdf
You’d think that this second decision might stop the Administration’s new idea to grant non-citizen spouses the right to stay... but it probably won’t.
Barrett explains that Munoz’s argument is built “on the premise that the right to bring her noncitizen spouse to the United States is an unenumerated constitutional right. To establish this premise, she must show that the asserted right is deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” — but, Barrett writes, she cannot. “In fact, Congress’s longstanding regulation of spousal immigration—including through bars on admissibility— cuts the other way.”
This is an interesting decision given Biden’s EO granting amnesty to non-citizen spouses.
later
Interesting as I am doing a CR-1 visa for my Thai wife right now. I’m sure she will be approved.
...but you’re trying to do it the right way!
Yep - taking 13 months so far but her interview is on July 15.
The next case is Erlinger v. United States. It is by Justice Gorsuch.
It appears to be 6-3, with Kavanaugh dissenting, joined by Alito and in part by Jackson, who also has her own dissenting opinion.
Criminal Act, which imposes mandatory prison terms on some defendants who have committed three violent felonies or serious drug offenses on separate occasions, a judge should use a preponderance-of-the-evidence standard to decide whether the offenses were committed on separate occasions or instead a jury must make those decisions unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt.
The court holds that the Fifth and Sixth Amendments require a unanimous jury to make that determination beyond a reasonable doubt.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-370_i4dj.pdf
Good, Congress should then, by extension, ban chain migration.
So, working reverse seniority, we might get more decisions today?
One more is being released now.
There are moving fast today!
Smith v. Arizona, by Justice Kagan, is next.
It is more or less unanimous — four justices have or join opinions concurring in the judgment.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-899_97be.pdf
This is a case about the Confrontation Clause, which guarantees a criminal defendant the right to confront the witness against him.
Whether the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees a defendant the right to confront the witnesses against him, allows prosecutors to use expert testimony about evidence – here, a report prepared by a different crime lab analyst who no longer worked at the lab and did not testify at trial – that was not itself admitted into evidence, on the grounds that the testifying expert was simply offering his own opinion and that the defendant could have subpoenaed the original analyst.
The court holds today that when an expert conveys an absent analyst’s statements in support of the expert’s opinion, and the statements provide that support only if true, then the statements come into evidence for their truth.
Wonder if this could apply to the Trump fraud case? The outside real estate consultant thing?
Heresy is okay if it is via an expert? Well, that’s what it sounds like.
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