Posted on 04/02/2025 6:50:35 AM PDT by CFW
The Supreme Court will be issuing Opinions today beginning at 10:00 a.m.
Scotusblog will be live blogging the opinions Here and we will be following along.
Here is a list of the cases for the October 2024 term.
(Excerpt) Read more at scotusblog.com ...
SCOTUS ping!
Will the King of the Court plus Amy the Loser blow their opinions for the conservatives again. Probably. Both total losers and just proves that conservative or near conservative republican presidents make damned bad decisions on choices of justices.
The Chief and Barrett have both been disappointing in their opinions thus far.
If you want to see the pending Trump administration cases on the Emergency Docket, you can look at this link:
https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/emergency/emergency-docket-2024-25/
...and Barrett is the 1st author of the day in the medical maryjane case.
We have the first Opinion,
It is the Medical Marijuana v. Horn case (the final one pending from the October sitting. It is by Justice Barrett.
Thomas dissents; Kavanaugh also dissents, joined by Roberts and Alito.
The question before the court is whether the RICO act, which creates a cause of action for “any person injured in his business or property,” by implicitly denying a remedy for personal injuries, also denies a remedy for business and property loss that derives from a personal injury. The Court holds today that it does NOT.
Opinion is https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-365_6k47.pdf
This was a lawsuit filed by a truck driver who lost his job when he failed a drug test. He had taken a wellness product that was marketed as being free of THC, which is the active ingredient in marijuana.
He sued the companies that make the product under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which allows someone who is “injured in his business or property” by racketeering activity to recover triple damages.
The companies contended that RICO did not apply because Horn’s injuries were personal instead.
All depends on what Robert’s masters tell him to do.
“When all is said and done,” Barrett writes, “Medical Marijuana is left fighting the most natural interpretation of the text—that ‘injured’ means ‘harmed’—with no plausible alternative in hand. That is a battle it cannot win.”
Barrett notes that RICO’s “direct-relationship requirement” is a constraint on civil RICO claims. In particular, she notes, because of the “number of steps in Horn’s theory and the multiple actors involved, this requirement may present an insurmountable obstacle in his case. Indeed, even Horn concedes that he faces ‘a heavy burden on remand.’”
She [Barrett] also acknowledges that “civil RICO has evolved into something quite different from the original conception of its enactors.” But that is a problem for Congress, not the courts, she concludes.
Justice Thomas indicates that he would have dismissed the petition as improvidently granted.
It appears we will get at least one more Opinion today.
I don’t really have a problem with this decision. I’d have to see the reasoning of the dissents.
Thomas’ reasoning was pretty much that this wasn’t a cut-and-dried clean case in which to make this call.
We have the second and final opinion, from Justice Alito in FDA v. Wages and White Lion.
Food and Drug Administration v. Wages and White Lion Investments, LLC, No. 23-1038 [Arg: 12.2.2024]
Issue(s): Whether the court of appeals erred in setting aside the Food and Drug Administration’s orders denying respondents’ applications for authorization to market new e-cigarette products as arbitrary and capricious.
It is unanimous. Justice Sotomayor has a concurring opinion.
The case is a challenge to the Food and Drug Administration’s denials of two companies’ applications to sell flavored liquids for use in e-cigarettes. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled for the companies, holding that the FDA had improperly pulled what it characterized as a “regulatory switcheroo” because it gave the companies instructions that they followed but then ignored those instructions and denied authorization while imposing new requirements.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-1038_2d93.pdf
The court today vacates the Fifth Circuit’s decision and sends it back for another look under the legal standard that it outlines here.
That’s all for today.
Following the opinion announcements, the court will hear oral arguments in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic.
I believe the FDA case is one in which the FDA made all these rules and regulations for vape companies and then after the companies complied with the regulations, the FDA suddenly changed the regulations and gave the vape companies little to no time to comply. The FDA then denied the company’s permits to operate by disallowing their products since the companies hadn’t complied with the new regulations.
The above is just what I recall from reading about the issue months ago, so that may not be the exact premise of the case.
2 boring cases today. We are all waiting for the Trump vs District Judges rulings.
In related news, Biden holdover Brian King has been fired from the FDA. He was the Chief Tobacco Regulator who tried to eliminate the vaping industry to help Big Tobacco corner the market on nicotine.
Dozens of other employees in the tobacco center were also fired at the direction of RFK Jr.
Thank you!
Thanks for these informative Supreme Court threads!
They are really liberals who once in a very Blue Moon vote with Thomas and the good guys.
Happy to start them so FReepers can keep up with what the highest court is doing. I assume we will have another opinion day next week, although one has not yet been scheduled.
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