Free Republic

Conservative lawmakers blasted Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts after he sided with the court's liberal justices in a 5-4 decision Friday that rejected a Nevada church’s request to block the state government from enforcing a cap on attendance at religious services. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) tweeted early Saturday morning that Roberts had "abandoned his oath." "What happened to that judge?" tweeted Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.). "Freedom of religion is our first freedom. Yet SCOTUS has ruled that casinos can host hundreds of gamblers, while churches cannot welcome their full congregations. Justice Roberts once again got it wrong, shamefully closing...

(Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday declined to lift a 50-person limit on religious services adopted by Nevada's Democratic governor in response to the coronavirus pandemic. By a 5-4 vote, the justices denied a request by Calvary Chapel Dayton Valley in rural Nevada for an interim order that would have allowed it to host services for about 90 congregants. Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative, voted with the court's four liberal members.

...That sound you hear is that of princes, politicians, and international party girls and playboys all shaking in their boots with the realization that a woman with everything to gain and nothing left to lose is in the custody of prosecutors who would love to hear her secrets. Maxwell spent decades as Epstein's girlfriend slash partner in crime. She stands accused of orchestrating the procurement of children to rape and traffic to their famous friends. A comprehensive case detailing what exactly Maxwell knows would probably require a book, not a news item, but it's worth evaluating just what she was...

Some of you have pointed out that when I joined the liberals to save Obamacare eight years ago by declaring that the penalty for not complying with the individual mandate was a tax, I not only disagreed with the people who wrote the law but switched sides at the last minute. It wounded me when some of you described this as "chickening out." I prefer to think of it as "alternative courage." As I said at the time, "It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices," even constitutionally dodgy ones. You vote...

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Monday that a state can’t even require abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a hospital. And the logic of the concurring opinion from Chief Justice John Roberts, who provided the fifth vote, suggests not even de minimis regulation of abortion will survive his Court’s scrutiny. Here’s the stunner: Four years ago a different Court majority overturned a similar Texas statute, with then Justice Anthony Kennedy joining the four liberals. Chief Justice Roberts dissented in that case. Yet on Monday the Chief joined the liberals, citing his duty to follow precedent. As the dissenters point...

Held: The application of the no-aid provision discriminated against reli-gious schools and the families whose children attend or hope to attendthem in violation of the Free Exercise Clause of the Federal Constitution. Pp. 6–22.

Washington (CNN)Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the liberal justices on the Supreme Court on Monday to block a controversial Louisiana abortion law that critics said would have closed nearly every clinic in the state. The 5-4 ruling is a win for supporters of abortion rights who argued that the law was not medically necessary and amounted to a veiled attempt to restrict abortion. The law barred doctors from performing the procedure unless they had admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. The majority opinion was penned by Justice Stephen Breyer, who wrote that the majority "consequently hold that the Louisiana...

The measure would have required abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at hospitals within 30 miles of a clinic. The Supreme Court ruled Monday that Louisiana's tough restriction on abortion violates the Constitution, a surprising victory for abortion rights advocates from an increasingly conservative court. The 5-4 decision in which Chief Justice John Roberts joined with the courts liberal justices struck down a law passed by Louisiana's legislature in 2014 that required any doctor offering abortion services to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles. Its enforcement had been blocked by a protracted legal battle. Two Louisiana doctors...

00:00 01:16 The Supreme Court ruled in favor of protecting abortion rights in the case June v. Russo Monday. The court's opinion, led by Justice Stephen Breyer, "found that conditions on admitting privileges common to hospitals throughout the State have made and will continue to make it impossible for abortion providers to obtain conforming privileges for reasons that have nothing to do with the State’s asserted interests in promoting women’s health and safety." The case, June Medical Services v. Russo, called into question the constitutionality of a Louisiana law that mandated abortion clinics have admitting privileges in hospitals within a...

5-4 vote. The split you expect.

In a 5-4 decision, the US Supreme Court ruled that President Trump cannot undo President Obama's executive order awarding privileges to individuals illegally brought into this country by their parents. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts explained that "while President Obama had no legal authority to issue the original DACA decree, it can't be undone without doing immeasurable harm to those who came to rely upon it. It is kind of like 'squatters' rights' where a person illegally takes possession of someone else's land, but evades detection and eviction for a period of time sufficient to earn a...

John Roberts is a politician — a politician who consistently makes laws, inconsistently applies the Constitution, and can't be voted out of office. Knock, knock. Who’s there? Unelected leftist politicians in robes with lifetime tenure. Turns out, the Supreme Court is a joke, and the punchline is Chief Justice John Roberts. Roberts has quite the track record of leftist judicial activism. It’s about time we call a spade a spade — or in this case, call a hack a hack. 1. Supported Unconstitutional Obamacare From the moment then-President Barack Obama signed into law the infamous Affordable Care Act, the mess...

The most likely explanation is that neither of the Court’s ideological factions was confident enough of Roberts’s support to risk granting certiorari.On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to review all ten of the Second Amendment cases it had pending on its docket. Though the cases presented different fact patterns and procedural postures, the Court simply refused to weigh in on any of them. There seems to be one likely reason: Chief Justice Roberts does not want the Court to take a stance on the Second Amendment. We know because it only takes four justices to agree to hear a case...

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said Thursday that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts should resign from his position and run for office if he “believes his political judgment is so exquisite” after siding with the court’s liberal wing on two key decisions this week. Roberts, who was criticized earlier this week by some conservatives for siding with the left-leaning justices in an LGBT rights case, wrote the opinion on Wednesday on why President Trump should not be allowed to end the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. “John Roberts again postures as a Solomon who will save our...

President Trump, in the wake of Thursday's defeat at the Supreme Court in his efforts to repeal the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, called for new justices as conservatives took aim at Chief Justice John Roberts for what they called a “pattern” of siding with the liberal wing in key decisions. “The recent Supreme Court decisions, not only on DACA, Sanctuary Cities, Census, and others, tell you only one thing, we need NEW JUSTICES of the Supreme Court. If the Radical Left Democrats assume power, your Second Amendment, Right to Life, Secure Borders, and m Religious Liberty,...

RUSH: Now, the Supreme Court decision on DACA. What this essentially means is that one president can create policy with an executive order, but another president can’t eliminate it. Now, that’s just absurd. Obama couldn’t get legislation passed. He couldn’t get Congress to pass anything he wanted on DACA, on these DREAMer kids, so he did it all with executive order. So, because he did, the Trump administration chose the executive order to eliminate the Obama policy via executive order. But the chief justice, John Roberts, said, “No, no, no, no, no! You can’t do it this way. You gotta...

Chief Justice Roberts, joined by the Supreme Court’s four liberals, restored the Obama administration’s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy, on the theory that the Trump administration failed to analyze or to explain two aspects of DACA repeal. DACA was a major policy issue contested in public campaigns. Only one Justice (Sotomayor) even questioned whether the Trump administration had the legal power to repeal DACA. The Court, moreover, assumed for the purposes of the decision that DACA itself was illegal, and eviscerated the Obama administration’s legal theories for enacting it. If elections for the presidency cannot undo major...

At least four times now Justice John Roberts has betrayed the conservatives. Further he has twisted the law and written decisions that were legal contortions inconsistent with his legal ability and history. What has been going on? What could have motivated him to betray his country and his legal integrity like that? It has been suggested that Roberts is secretly homosexual, and he did pro-bono work for gay activists back in 1996, but the stigma attached to that has effectively been removed by societal changes over the decades. He appears to be happily married in the normal sense. It has...

Multiple media sources have said the Roberts had trouble adopting their children. They had made multiple attempts to adopt without success. Married in their 40’s natural birth at that time was virtually impossible. "Lisa Tucker McElroy’s John G. Roberts Jr.: Chief Justice reveals that their adoption experience was “long and difficult.” In the summer of 2000, a birth mother chose the Roberts to adopt her baby. … Another adoption agency had called them. They called back, and the agency offered another baby. Jack and Josie were born just four months apart. The exact circumstances of Roberts’ adoption remain a private...

Today, Yoram Hozany, an Israeli philosopher, tweeted: I wonder: Has there ever been an ideological movement this incompetent? They only had one job to do: Distinguish conservative lawyers from liberal lawyers. They formulate lists of approved individuals and everyone murmurs that they’ve been vetted. Then all sorts of distinguished persons publicly pronounce in chorus that the candidate is brilliant and the nomination fine. What criteria are involved in all this? I understand his disgust. Democrats bat 1.000 when it comes to nominating reliable left-liberals to the Supreme Court. Republicans bat around .500 in nominating reliable conservatives. But it’s not as...