Free Republic

Alternate headline: Pottery Barn rules apply to walkouts. In an 8-1 decision in which only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson fully dissented, the Supreme Court ruled today that unions have to reimburse employers for damages caused by striking workers. The National Labor Relations Act does not confer immunity to unions or workers — the latest ruling from a court that has stiffened the boundaries for labor activities in the last few years:The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that federal labor law did not protect a union from potential liability for damage that arose during a strike, and that a state court...

All three evening news broadcasts Thursday ignored the United States Supreme Court ruling against the Biden administration's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and sharply limited its powers to regulate wetlands. It was a big win for property rights in the United States and a stinging defeat for the unelected bureaucrats at the EPA. Since that was the case, it's unsurprising that the "big three" evening news broadcasts of ABC's World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News would ignore the story. Instead, news about a recent shark attack (ABC & CBS), and another segment on recently deceased singer Tina...

The Supreme Court on Thursday established a more stringent test to determine whether the Clean Water Act applies to a wetland. The ruling was a setback for the Environmental Protection Agency and a victory for an Idaho couple, Michael and Chantell Sackett, who have been battling with the federal government for over 15 years in their efforts to build a house on an empty lot near a large lake.

The country is witnessing the second high-profile lynching effort of Justice Clarence Thomas. Even while the media ignores the millions from foreign nationals passing through shell companies to the Biden family, it has pushed invented scandals for Thomas while demanding his resignation to make way for a radical leftist Biden court appointee. While no one expects anything but lies and smears from the media, few are aware of how the smear campaign against Justice Thomas was organized and who is funding it. Before it was splashed all over the media, the Clarence Thomas smears were mostly generated by ProPublica with...

EXCLUSIVE — An advocacy nonprofit group behind a campaign demanding Supreme Court "transparency" reforms on financial disclosures is in panic mode over accidentally leaking its own funders to the Washington Examiner. Fix the Court, a charity that spun off in 2021 after being a project of the New Venture Fund, a nonprofit group managed by the liberal dark money behemoth and for-profit company Arabella Advisors, is part of a seemingly coordinated campaign calling for Supreme Court justices to disclose more about their finances. Now, the organization is in disarray after unwittingly providing the Washington Examiner with unredacted copies of its...

The Supreme Court declined to immediately block Illinois’s assault weapons and high-capacity magazine bans, leaving them in place, for now. A gun rights group and gun shop owner asked the justices to pause the law’s enforcement by intervening in the case ahead of an appeals court’s final ruling. The lawsuit also challenges an ordinance in Naperville, Ill., that bans the sale of assault rifles.

Overruling Chevron won't gut the administrative state or even severely constrain it. But it could help strengthen the rule of law. Supreme Court decided to hear Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimando, a case that raises the prospect that the Court might overrule Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which requires federal judges to defer to administrative agencies' interpretations of federal laws, so long as Congress has not addressed the issue in question, and the agency's view is "reasonable." Some legal commentators are, depending on their ideology, excited or appalled by the prospect that Chevron might be overruled. Advocates of reversal...

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor reportedly accepted nearly $2 million from Penguin Random House in a book deal, and then went on to sit in judgment of a copyright case involving that same company the following year. According to a report in the Daily Wire, she received $1.9 million from the publishing house in 2012. In 2013, she helped decide whether the court should take up a legal dispute between the company and a classmate of Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, who said his book proposal was stolen and used to make the movie “The Social Network.” The conservative outlet reported that...

There’s one certainty in politics. If a Democrat is accusing a Republican of doing something, it is the Democrat who is inevitably actually doing it.That dynamic played out again Wednesday after a major revelation about Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor called into question all the recent left-wing attacks on Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.For the last few weeks, a coordinated assault on the court’s conservatives has taken place, with numerous press outlets releasing reports supposedly detailing corruption. In reality, essentially everything charged amounted to nothing legally or ethically. In the case of Thomas, he was not required to report...

New training documents from the U.S. Marshals Service show law enforcement agents were discouraged from arresting leftist protestors outside of the homes of Supreme Court Justices last year. The raucous protestors, who showed up in the aftermath of the Dobbs leak -- which revealed Roe v. Wade would be overturned -- repeatedly broke the law. -snip In a letter to U.S. Marshals Service Director Ronald Davis, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan is revealing the details. "In in May 2022, some Supreme Court justices faced relentless protests at their homes, seemingly intended to influence the Court’s decision. Although federal law...

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) scolded Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts at a hearing Tuesday for what he called the court’s “oblivious” response to the “obvious” ethical conflicts facing its members. He chastised the high court for not adopting the same judicial code of conduct binding every other federal court and warned it had undermined public confidence in the court. “The highest court in the land shouldn’t have the lowest ethical standards. That reality is driving a crisis in public confidence in the Supreme Court. The status quo must change,” the majority whip said in his opening...

The United States Supreme Court unanimously rejected ethics complaints about Justice Clarence Thomas by Democrats. Sen Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent a letter on April 20 requesting Chief Justice John Roberts appear for a hearing about potential conflicts of interest within the top court. The letter was signed by all 11 Democrats on the Judiciary Committee. The letter follows a ProPublica article about Justice Clarence Thomas reportedly receiving gifts from a billionaire conservative donor and friend. Justice Thomas has denied any wrongdoing. Democrats have also targeted Justice Neil Gorsuch for alleged ethical lapses. Durbin claimed...

Fresh off a new injection of $45 billion to ramp up its enforcement efforts, the IRS is calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to allow its agents to secretly obtain financial records, without ever notifying the account holders. Although the case, which will be argued in March, centers around an arcane statutory dispute, it will have massive implications for the Fourth Amendment rights of taxpayers nationwide. Now a broad coalition from all across the political spectrum, including the ACLU, the Cato Institute, the Center for Taxpayer Rights, the Institute for Justice, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is urging the...

Justice Samuel Alito has a “pretty good idea” who leaked the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health organization draft, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday. Alito revealed in an interview with the WSJ that he believes he knows who is responsible for the Dobbs decision leak that sparked months of protests outside conservative justices’ homes and an attempt to assassinate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, though he said that is “different from the level of proof that is needed to name somebody.” The motive, he said, was to prevent the draft from becoming the decision: “And that’s how it was used for those...

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito says he has a "pretty good idea" on who leaked a draft version of a ruling that would overturn Roe v. Wade. Alito made the comments in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published Friday, stating that while he knows who likely leaked the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization draft decision, it's not enough for the court to name someone. The draft decision, published by Politico on May 2, 2022, eventually overturned Roe v. Wade.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts told Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D) on Tuesday that he will not testify before the committee. What is the background? After ProPublica raised new allegations of impropriety against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Durbin wrote Roberts requesting he come to a committee hearing on Supreme Court ethics reform. The letter claimed there is a "crisis of public confidence" in the judiciary and warned the "status quo is no longer tenable." "The time has come for a new public conversation on ways to restore confidence in the Court’s ethical standards," Durbin wrote. How...

The Petitions of the Week column highlights a selection of cert petitions recently filed in the Supreme Court. A list of all petitions we’re watching is available here.This week, we highlight cert petitions that ask the court to consider, among other things, whether to revive two federal gun restrictions struck down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.Both cases arise under the federal firearm statute, 18 U.S.C. § 922. Enacted by Congress in 1994, Section 922(g)(8) criminalizes gun ownership by anyone subject to a domestic-violence restraining order. Another provision enacted in 1986, Section 922(o)(1), bars the possession...

Former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer spoke out last week to support Justice Clarence Thomas. At an event for the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals, Breyer defended Thomas as a "man of integrity," casting doubt on allegations that Thomas is guilty of ethical — and even legal — transgressions. "As far as I’m concerned, I sat next to him on the bench for 28 years. I like him. He’s a friend of mine. I’ve never seen him do anything underhanded or say anything underhanded," Breyer said, according to Bloomberg Law. "My personal point of view is he’s a man...

Those claiming they are subject to unconstitutional agency proceedings need not suffer through agency proceedings before bringing their claims to federal court. Yesterday a unanimous Supreme Court held that those subject to federal agency adjudicaiton can challenge the constitutionality of such adjudication in federal court before such adjudication concludes. What some had billed as an attack on the viability of the adminstrative state was not viewed that way by the justices, who all agreed the agencies' attempts to insulate themselves from federal judicial review lacked legal basis. Justice Elena Kagan wrote the opinion for the Court in Axon v. Federal...

Following the leak of classified documents exposing the Biden Administration's corrupt lies, the administration and the media are determined to convict the whistleblower. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced on Thursday that the FBI had arrested 21-year-old Air National Guardsmen Jack Teixeira in connection with their investigation into the leak of classified military documents reported last week. The fact that they already have a suspect in custody for this embarrassing leak is quite telling. They are still “baffled” about who was behind the politically convenient Supreme Court leak regarding the Dobbs decision so many months ago. But the difference between this...