SCOTUS Watch Thread
- Thread starter Hood Critic
- Start date
What you want to bet they don’t give him immunity? It’s clear they stalling as long as possible so a trial don’t happenIt does matter if SCOTUS says Trump has immunity then the case is dead
I bet the send it back to lower courts to hash out
Lower court? The appeals court already had it iron clad he had no immunity so which lower court you taking about?
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Manhattan man indicted for allegedly shooting at subway bystander and striking another
District Attorney Alvin Bragg said the man fired a gun on a train after a “Good Samaritan” tried to intervene in a fight between him and his girlfriend.
gothamist.com
smh result of that bs ass gun club nra lawsuit
this is becoming all too common
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Indiana Republican pushes Speaker Johnson to support Bannon Supreme Court appeal
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4739088-jim-banks-steve-bannon-appeal/
US Supreme Court won't curb Biden administration social media contacts
By Andrew ChungJune 26, 202412:21 PM EDTUpdated an hour ago
People line up to get into the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, U.S., June 26, 2024. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab
- White House welcomes ruling, written by Justice Barrett
- The challengers lacked legal standing to sue, court says
WASHINGTON, June 26 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Wednesday to impose limits on the way President Joe Biden's administration may communicate with social media platforms, rejecting a challenge made on free speech grounds to how officials encouraged the removal of posts deemed misinformation, including about elections and COVID.
The justices, in a 6-3 ruling, overturned a lower court's 2023 decision that various federal officials likely violated the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment, which protects against governmental abridgment of free speech, in a case brought by the states of Missouri and Louisiana as well as five individuals.
The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had issued an injunction constraining such contacts by the administration.
But conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who authored the Supreme Court's ruling, wrote that the two Republican-led states and the other plaintiffs lacked the required legal standing to sue the administration in federal court.
The plaintiffs in 2022 sued officials and agencies across the federal government, including in the White House, FBI, surgeon general's office, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Barret wrote that the plaintiffs could not show a "concrete link" between the conduct by the officials and any harm that the plaintiffs suffered. They "emphasize that hearing unfettered speech on social media is critical to their work," Barrett wrote. "But they do not point to any specific instance of content moderation that caused them identifiable harm."
Conservative Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissented from the decision.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre welcomed the ruling, saying it helps Biden's administration "continue our important work with technology companies to protect the safety and security of the American people, after years of extreme and unfounded Republican attacks on public officials who engaged in critical work to keep Americans safe."
The plaintiffs had argued that the administration violated the rights of social media users whose posts were removed by platforms including Facebook (META.O), opens new tab, YouTube (GOOGL.O), opens new tab, and Twitter, now called X.
At issue was whether the administration crossed the line from mere communication and persuasion to strong arming or coercing platforms - sometimes called "jawboning" - to unlawfully censor disfavored speech, as lower courts found.
Biden's administration argued that officials sought to mitigate the hazards of online misinformation, including false information about vaccines during the pandemic that they said was causing preventable deaths, by alerting social media companies to content that violated their own policies.
"This administration engages with social media and other technology companies on critical topics, including terrorism threats, foreign malign influence campaigns, online harassment of women and children, and mental health of children and adolescents," Jean-Pierre added.
Many researchers, as well as liberals and Democrats, have warned of the dangers of social media platforms amplifying misinformation and disinformation about public health, vaccines and election fraud.
Echoing concerns raised by Republicans and various voices on the right, the plaintiffs argued that platforms, with their content-moderation practices, suppressed conservative-leaning speech. That was, the plaintiffs said, government coercion - a form of state action barred by the First Amendment.
'OPEN SEASON'
John Vecchione, a lawyer with the New Civil Liberties Alliance conservative legal group representing some of the plaintiffs, criticized the court's ruling."The majority of the Supreme Court has declared open season on Americans' free speech rights on the internet," Vecchione said.
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said, "A majority of the Supreme Court gives a free pass to the federal government to threaten tech platforms into censorship and suppression of speech that is indisputably protected by the First Amendment."
In a dissenting opinion, Alito said the court's majority "permits the successful campaign of coercion in this case to stand as an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear and think."
In her opinion, Barrett faulted the evidence provided by each of the plaintiffs and said lower courts had "glossed over complexities." Barrett found that Louisiana-based U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, who issued a preliminary injunction in July 2023, made factual findings that "unfortunately appear to be clearly erroneous."
Doughty had concluded that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claim that the government helped suppress "disfavored conservative speech" on mask-wearing, lockdowns and vaccines intended as public health measures during the pandemic, or that questioned the validity of the 2020 election in which Biden, a Democrat, defeated Donald Trump, a Republican.
The 5th Circuit subsequently narrowed that order, although the Supreme Court in October had put on hold the injunction.
The Justice Department argued that government officials, including presidents, long have used the bully pulpit to express views and to inform on matters of public concern. It also said that private entities that make decisions on that information are not state actors as long as they are not threatened with adverse consequences.
ADevilYouKhow
Rhyme Reason
Supreme Court tosses out claim Biden admin coerced social media companies to remove content — NBC News
The court overturned an injunction that would have limited contacts between government officials and social media companies on a wide range of issues.
apple.news
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Supreme Court Appears Poised to Allow, for Now, Emergency Abortions in Idaho
According to Bloomberg News, a document posted briefly to the court’s website suggested a majority of the justices would reinstate a lower-court ruling that paused the state’s near-total abortion ban.
Supreme Court wipes out anticorruption law that bars officials from taking gifts for past favors
The U.S. Supreme Court rules state and local officials may take gifts and payments for steering contracts to grateful patrons.
www.latimes.com
Supreme Court wipes out anti-corruption law that bars officials from taking gifts for past favors
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that state and local officials may take gifts and payments for steering contracts to grateful patrons.
(Associated Press)
By David G. SavageStaff Writer
June 26, 2024 Updated 12:42 PM PT
WASHINGTON —
The Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down part of a federal anti-corruption law that makes it a crime for state and local officials to take gifts valued at more than $5,000 from a donor who had previously been awarded lucrative contracts or other government benefits thanks to the efforts of the official.
By a 6-3 vote, the justices overturned the conviction of a former Indiana mayorwho asked for and took a $13,000 payment from the owners of a local truck dealership after he helped them win $1.1 million in city contracts for the purchase of garbage trucks.
In ruling for the former mayor, the justices drew a distinction between bribery, which requires proof of an illegal deal, and a gratuity that can be a gift or a reward for a past favor. They said the officials may be charged and prosecuted for bribery, but not for taking money for past favors if there was no proof of an illicit deal.
“The question in this case is whether [the federal law] also makes it a crime for state and local officials to accept gratuities — for example, gift cards, lunches, plaques, books, framed photos or the like — that may be given as a token of appreciation after the official act. The answer is no,” said Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, writing for the majority.
Despite his reference to token gifts such as lunches and framed photos, the federal law was triggered only by payments of more than $5,000.
But the court’s conservative majority said the law in question was a “bribery statute, not a gratuities law.” Kavanaugh said federal law “leaves it to state and local governments to regulate gratuities to state and local officials.”
Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
“Officials who use their public positions for private gain threaten the integrity of our most important institutions,” Jackson wrote in dissent.
She said the mayor’s “absurd and atextual reading of the statute is one only today’s court could love.”
The law as written “poses no genuine threat to common gift giving,” she said, but it “clearly covers the kind of corrupt (albeit perhaps non-quid pro quo) payment [the mayor] solicited after steering the city contracts to the dealership.”
The ruling could have a broad impact. About 20 million local and state officials are covered by the federal anti-corruption law, including officials at hospitals and universities that receive federal funds.
Justice Department lawyers told the court that for nearly 40 years, the anti-bribery law has been understood to prohibit payments to officials that “rewarded” them for having steered contracts to the donors. But there are few prosecutions that rely entirely on an after-the-fact payment, they said.
The Supreme Court justices have faced heavy criticism recently for accepting undisclosed gifts from wealthy patrons. Justice Clarence Thomas regularly took lavish vacations and private jet flights that were paid for by Texas billionaire Harlan Crow. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. took a fishing trip to Alaska in 2008 aboard a private plane owned by Paul Singer, a hedge fund billionaire.
The high court has long held that criminal laws restricting “illegal gratuities” to federal officials require proof that the gifts were given for a specific “official act,” not just because of the official’s position.
The Indiana mayor was charged and convicted of taking the $13,000 payment because of his role in helping his patrons win city contracts.
Congress in 1986 extended the federal bribery law to cover officials of state or local agencies that receive federal funds. The measure made it a crime to “corruptly solicit or demand ... or accept ... anything of value of $5,000 or more ... intending to be influenced or rewarded in connection with any business or transaction.”
Prosecutors said James Snyder was heavily in debt and behind in paying his taxes when he became mayor of Portage, Ind., in 2012. The city needed new garbage trucks, and the mayor took over the required public bidding. He spoke regularly with two brothers who owned a local truck dealership that also had financial problems, and he designed the bidding process so that only their two new trucks would meet all of its standards. He also arranged to have the city buy an older truck that was on their lot.
Two weeks after the contracts were final, the mayor went to see the two brothers and told them of his financial troubles. They agreed to write him a check for $13,000 for undefined consulting services.
An FBI investigation led to Snyder’s indictment, his conviction and a 21-month prison sentence.
The former mayor argued that an after-the-fact gift should not be a crime, but he lost before a federal judge and the U.S. appeals court in Chicago.
The high court agreed to hear his appeal in Snyder vs. U.S. because appeals courts in Boston and New Orleans had limited the law to bribery only and not gratuities that were paid later.
May 7, 2020
In recent years, the Supreme Court has repeatedly limited the scope of public corruption laws and often in unanimous rulings. The common theme is that the justices concluded the prosecutions went beyond the law.
Last year, the court was unanimous in overturning the corruption convictions of two New York men who were former aides or donors to then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat. The court noted that one of the defendants convicted of taking illicit payments did not work for the state during that time.
Four years ago, the justices were unanimous in overturning the convictions of two aides to then-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, who were charged with conspiring to shut down lanes to the George Washington Bridge into New York City. The court said they were wrongly convicted of fraud because they had not sought money or property, which is a key element of a fraud charge.
In 2016, the court overturned the corruption conviction of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican. While the governor took $175,000 in gifts from a business promoter, he took no official actions to benefit the donor, the court said.
mastermind
Rest In Power Kobe
It’s not corrupt if it’s legalSupreme Court wipes out anticorruption law that bars officials from taking gifts for past favors
The U.S. Supreme Court rules state and local officials may take gifts and payments for steering contracts to grateful patrons.
Supreme Court wipes out anti-corruption law that bars officials from taking gifts for past favors
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that state and local officials may take gifts and payments for steering contracts to grateful patrons.
(Associated Press)
By David G. SavageStaff Writer
June 26, 2024 Updated 12:42 PM PT
WASHINGTON —
The Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down part of a federal anti-corruption law that makes it a crime for state and local officials to take gifts valued at more than $5,000 from a donor who had previously been awarded lucrative contracts or other government benefits thanks to the efforts of the official.
By a 6-3 vote, the justices overturned the conviction of a former Indiana mayorwho asked for and took a $13,000 payment from the owners of a local truck dealership after he helped them win $1.1 million in city contracts for the purchase of garbage trucks.
In ruling for the former mayor, the justices drew a distinction between bribery, which requires proof of an illegal deal, and a gratuity that can be a gift or a reward for a past favor. They said the officials may be charged and prosecuted for bribery, but not for taking money for past favors if there was no proof of an illicit deal.
“The question in this case is whether [the federal law] also makes it a crime for state and local officials to accept gratuities — for example, gift cards, lunches, plaques, books, framed photos or the like — that may be given as a token of appreciation after the official act. The answer is no,” said Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, writing for the majority.
Despite his reference to token gifts such as lunches and framed photos, the federal law was triggered only by payments of more than $5,000.
But the court’s conservative majority said the law in question was a “bribery statute, not a gratuities law.” Kavanaugh said federal law “leaves it to state and local governments to regulate gratuities to state and local officials.”
Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
“Officials who use their public positions for private gain threaten the integrity of our most important institutions,” Jackson wrote in dissent.
She said the mayor’s “absurd and atextual reading of the statute is one only today’s court could love.”
The law as written “poses no genuine threat to common gift giving,” she said, but it “clearly covers the kind of corrupt (albeit perhaps non-quid pro quo) payment [the mayor] solicited after steering the city contracts to the dealership.”
The ruling could have a broad impact. About 20 million local and state officials are covered by the federal anti-corruption law, including officials at hospitals and universities that receive federal funds.
Justice Department lawyers told the court that for nearly 40 years, the anti-bribery law has been understood to prohibit payments to officials that “rewarded” them for having steered contracts to the donors. But there are few prosecutions that rely entirely on an after-the-fact payment, they said.
The Supreme Court justices have faced heavy criticism recently for accepting undisclosed gifts from wealthy patrons. Justice Clarence Thomas regularly took lavish vacations and private jet flights that were paid for by Texas billionaire Harlan Crow. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. took a fishing trip to Alaska in 2008 aboard a private plane owned by Paul Singer, a hedge fund billionaire.
The high court has long held that criminal laws restricting “illegal gratuities” to federal officials require proof that the gifts were given for a specific “official act,” not just because of the official’s position.
The Indiana mayor was charged and convicted of taking the $13,000 payment because of his role in helping his patrons win city contracts.
Congress in 1986 extended the federal bribery law to cover officials of state or local agencies that receive federal funds. The measure made it a crime to “corruptly solicit or demand ... or accept ... anything of value of $5,000 or more ... intending to be influenced or rewarded in connection with any business or transaction.”
Prosecutors said James Snyder was heavily in debt and behind in paying his taxes when he became mayor of Portage, Ind., in 2012. The city needed new garbage trucks, and the mayor took over the required public bidding. He spoke regularly with two brothers who owned a local truck dealership that also had financial problems, and he designed the bidding process so that only their two new trucks would meet all of its standards. He also arranged to have the city buy an older truck that was on their lot.
Two weeks after the contracts were final, the mayor went to see the two brothers and told them of his financial troubles. They agreed to write him a check for $13,000 for undefined consulting services.
An FBI investigation led to Snyder’s indictment, his conviction and a 21-month prison sentence.
The former mayor argued that an after-the-fact gift should not be a crime, but he lost before a federal judge and the U.S. appeals court in Chicago.
The high court agreed to hear his appeal in Snyder vs. U.S. because appeals courts in Boston and New Orleans had limited the law to bribery only and not gratuities that were paid later.
May 7, 2020
In recent years, the Supreme Court has repeatedly limited the scope of public corruption laws and often in unanimous rulings. The common theme is that the justices concluded the prosecutions went beyond the law.
Last year, the court was unanimous in overturning the corruption convictions of two New York men who were former aides or donors to then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat. The court noted that one of the defendants convicted of taking illicit payments did not work for the state during that time.
Four years ago, the justices were unanimous in overturning the convictions of two aides to then-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, who were charged with conspiring to shut down lanes to the George Washington Bridge into New York City. The court said they were wrongly convicted of fraud because they had not sought money or property, which is a key element of a fraud charge.
In 2016, the court overturned the corruption conviction of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican. While the governor took $175,000 in gifts from a business promoter, he took no official actions to benefit the donor, the court said.
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Supreme Court rejects multibillion-dollar Purdue Pharma opioid settlement that shielded Sackler family
By John Fritze and Devan Cole, CNN5 minute read
Updated 1:29 PM EDT, Thu June 27, 2024
Washington CNN —
The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a controversial settlement that would have sent billions of dollars to treatment programs and victims of the nation’s opioid epidemic but also shielded the Sackler family from future lawsuits despite the fact that it made its fortune selling prescription opioids.
Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the opinion for a 5-4 majority.
“The Sacklers seek greater relief than a bankruptcy discharge normally affords, for they hope to extinguish even claims for wrongful death and fraud, and they seek to do so without putting anything close to all their assets on the table,” Gorsuch wrote. “Describe the relief the Sacklers seek how you will, nothing in the bankruptcy code contemplates (much less authorizes) it
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a fellow conservative, said in dissent that the court’s decision will have a “devastating” impact on thousands of victims of the opioid epidemic.
“As a result, opioid victims are now deprived of the substantial monetary recovery that they long fought for and finally secured after years of litigation,” he wrote in the dissent, which was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
Kavanaugh went on to implore Congress to amend US bankruptcy law to “fix the chaos that will now ensue” from the court’s ruling.
“The court’s decision will lead to too much harm for too many people for Congress to sit by idly without at least carefully studying the issue,” Kavanaugh wrote.
On a court that often focuses first and foremost on the text of the law, Gorsuch noted that the bankruptcy law didn’t specifically give authority to courts to allow third parties like the Sacklers to avoid future liability. And while he acknowledged that the decision Thursday “may cause Purdue’s current reorganization plan to unravel,” Gorsuch wrote that outcome would considerably increase legal exposure for the Sacklers and may force the family to negotiate better terms.
“If past is prologue,” Gorsuch wrote, citing an argument from the Justice Department, “there may be a better deal on the horizon.”
The case dealt with the fate of a company and its leaders who produced and promoted a highly addictive drug, OxyContin, in the early days of an opioid crisis that has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans and shattered many more.
As the nation continues to grapple with the opioid epidemic, the Sackler family had agreed to pay $6 billion to families and states as part of an agreement to wind down Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin. In exchange, the Sackler family would be immunized from future civil liability claims.
Purdue marketed OxyContin as a safer and less addictive painkiller, encouraging doctors to prescribe the drug over longer periods of time and for more routine injuries. The drug’s success fueled the Sackler fortune, and the family became known for philanthropy.
But a series of lawsuits and news accounts alleged the family continued to promote OxyContin even after it learned of the drug’s addictive properties. Not only did many Americans become addicted, but some turned to heroin and other opioids when they could no longer fill their prescriptions.
From 1999 to 2021, nearly 645,000 people died from an opioid overdose, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Both sides of this policy debate may have their points,” Gorsuch wrote. “But, in the end, we are the wrong audience for them.”
Congress, he said, should resolve the issue of whether third parties can be shielded from future lawsuits.
“Our only proper task is to interpret and apply the law as we find it,” Gorsuch added, “and nothing in present law authorizes the Sackler discharge.”
Purdue Pharma: ‘Ruling is heart-crushing’
In a statement, Purdue said the ruling will require the company to renew efforts to “reach back out to the same creditors who have already proven they can unite to forge a settlement in the public interest, and renew our pursuit of a resolution that delivers billions of dollars of value for opioid abatement and allows the Company to emerge from bankruptcy as a public benefit company.”“Today’s ruling is heart-crushing because it invalidates a settlement supported by nearly all of our creditors – including states, local governments, personal injury victims, schools, and hospitals – that would have delivered billions of dollars for victim compensation, opioid crisis abatement, and overdose rescue and addiction treatment medicines,” Purdue said. “Critically, the ruling is limited to the narrow legal issue regarding the scope of the third-party releases conferred by the plan. The decision does nothing to deter us from the twin goals of using settlement dollars for opioid abatement and turning the company into an engine for good.”
In a separate statement, the families of the late Mortimer Sackler and the late Raymond Sackler also said they were disappointed by the decision.
“The Sackler families remain hopeful about reaching a resolution that provides substantial resources to help combat a complex public health crisis,” the statement read. “The unfortunate reality is that the alternative is costly and chaotic legal proceedings in courtrooms across the country. While we are confident that we would prevail in any future litigation given the profound misrepresentations about our families and the opioid crisis, we continue to believe that a swift negotiated agreement to provide billions of dollars for people and communities in need is the best way forward.”
Those supporting the bankruptcy argued the yearslong process had gone on long enough and was unlikely to yield additional money from the Sackler family. The vast majority of known current opioid victims and their families supported the agreement.
But the Justice Department said it was a raw deal for victims – particularly potential future victims. While such third-party “release” arrangements are not uncommon in bankruptcies, the department argued that nothing in the law explicitly authorizes a court to bar future lawsuits forever.
A federal appeals court in New York approved the deal last year but the Supreme Court paused the arrangement in August so it could review the case.
The bankruptcy plan was opposed by the US Trustee, a part of the Justice Department that serves as a watchdog over bankruptcy cases. Calling it an “abuse,” the office said that barring individual victims from pursuing their own lawsuits against the Sackler family “raises serious constitutional questions.”
Under the agreement, Purdue Pharma would cease to exist and a new company, Knoa Pharma, would be created in its place. Knoa would distribute opioid addiction treatments and overdose reversal medicines, while continuing to produce opioids.
CNN’s Samantha Delouya contributed to this report.
This story has been updated with additional details and reaction.