Blog Post
Arguably, President Trump’s most important accomplishment was the appointment of three mostly very solid Supreme Court judges, so-say the three big rulings that came down at the very end of June. While most readers here will have seen at least the headlines, some texture could come in handy to help educate the CNN watchers or New York Times readers with whom you might cross paths!
Stopping a Huge Giveaway at the Expense of Taxpayers Who Did Not Go to College or Who Paid-Off Their Loans
In Biden v Nebraska, the Court saved taxpayers from immediately losing $800 billion (that’s a B!) of money currently owed to the Treasury as educational debt. That would have been Legalized Looting to the tune of ~$15,000 for each tax-paying household! And, “immediately” because the far bigger loss would come over time as later Democrat administrations would no doubt do it again – pressure for future forgiveness from the special interest groups which compose the Democrat Party would have been irresistible.
More good news: in its reasoning, the Adult Majority relied upon and in so doing further clarified the so-called “major questions doctrine”, approximately, “when statues are not clear, the court will err on the side of limiting executive power, the more so the bigger the issue”. This is super-important as otherwise an administration could conceivably find an excuse to justify almost anything it wanted to do in poorly drafted laws or where the meaning of words has drifted or could be ‘stretched’ to suit a purpose.
Hopefully, the table is now set for the application of the same reasoning to other instances where executive authority has been (ab)used without clear authorization by Congress (e.g., DACA) and in the forthcoming revisit of the notorious Chevron ruling which enabled the alphabet soup of unaccountable administrative agencies which have unconstitutionally invented thousands of defacto laws, in the form of regulatory rulings.
Alas, don’t count all that $800 B quite yet! The people who tell President Biden what to do have already had him say that he’s going to be looking at other forgiveness teases to try to turn out young voters hoping for free money. So, expect a second round in this fight coming soon.
Soundbite-to-Share: “Voting to try to debt-shift to others was never ethical and now is also futile Student debtors have already been played for chumps by the Democrats once – the smarter ones won’t be fooled again come the next election.”
Stopping Forced Speech
In 303 Creative v Elenis, SCOTUS ruled that a business that otherwise provides a public accommodation can refuse to provide a product or service which implies an endorsement. This case concerned a wedding website designer where the owner did not wish to be required to do custom work to help to celebrate relationships which she believes are immoral. The ruling covers only products and services for which there is “creative content” and so there will likely be further litigation to see what protection against the various Blue State Orwellian “Human Rights Commissions” is really provided in practice.
Since Justice Sotomayor’s primary livelihood is collecting appearance fees in her persona as Progressive Hero (https://bit.ly/sotomayorbooks), what better advertising for her services than a hysterical rant in the form of a dissent? Justice Gorsuch takes her apart with little effort -- https://bit.ly/thewiselatina -- demonstrating both her apparent lack of awareness of the facts of the case and a should-be-embarrassed failure of reasoning.
Soundbite-to-Share: “The court stopped unelected government agencies from bullying small business owners into having to signal agreement with ideas that are contrary to their deeply held beliefs.”
Stopping Race Preferences in College Admissions
Imagine a golfer who is unshakeable in the belief that his always having the highest score is proof-positive of unmatchable talent and that anyone who says otherwise is at least a fool and probably a bigot… and maybe there’s some insight into the mind of Justice Brown-Jackson and the root of her signature smirk.
Students For Fair Admissions v North Carolina (and Harvard) was constructively a 6-0 decision given that Justice Brown-Jackson’s dissent didn’t even attempt to argue law, dwelling instead on her take on social injustices. It’s a mercy that Justice Scalia wasn’t alive to have suffered the expression “lived experiences” read from the bench. Many commentators have noted her basic error in claiming that a study which she cited shows that infant survival rates double when a black woman has a same-race pediatrician, a mathematical possibility, of course, only if at least half were otherwise dying. Innumeracy is bad enough; her having hired clerks similarly lacking – none of the four caught the obvious goof - arguably augurs for even worse to come.
Unsuprisingly, there’s no sign that she understands that her Courageous Dissent is serving as Exhibit A for the majority in the court of public opinion and is likely one reason why a most Americans support the ruling. Compare her play-acting the voice-of-conscience with the words of he who suffered crushing poverty and actual discrimination and made it uphill on the strength of real intellect and character. In his concurrence, Justice Thomas wrote,
“While I am painfully aware of the social and economic ravages which have befallen my race and all who suffer discrimination, I hold out enduring hope that this country will live up to its principles so clearly enunciated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States: that all men are created equal, are equal citizens, and must be treated equally before the law.”
In response to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent, Thomas points out: “[she] then builds from her faulty premise to call for action, arguing that courts should defer to ‘experts’ and allow institutions to discriminate on the basis of race. Make no mistake: Her dissent is not a vanguard of the innocent and helpless. It is instead a call to empower privileged elites, who will ‘tell us [what] is required to level the playing field’ among castes and classifications that they alone can divine…Then, after siloing us all into racial castes and pitting those castes against each other, the dissent somehow believes that we will be able—at some undefined point—to ‘march forward together’ into some utopian vision…Social movements that invoke these sorts of rallying cries, historically, have ended disastrously.”
Boom. While that’s “enough said”, here’s more because it’s worth reading: https://bit.ly/alltimegreatest
Soundbite-to-Share: “Not only is the ruling about a plain language reading of the Constitution, it makes everyone better off. The Karens who admit under-qualified students are only about their own virtue signaling, never mind that students unable to keep up will downshift their ambitions or drop-out altogether. And now everyone who earns a credential will be respected, not suspected of having been given a piece of paper to fill a quota.”
Editor's Note: Sean O’Leary is a guest contributor to the DCRP Blog. We’re hoping that you’ll regularly see his byline as we continue to ramp-up our work to “update and motivate” as we move closer to the 2024 election year. Sean has been Voting Red in Dallas County for 15 years and now lives in Precinct 3000 (Uptown). His background is in telecommunications for start-up to large companies. If you appreciate his posts, Sean tells us that it’s OK to buy him a drink at any upcoming DCRP Happy Hour – no need to wait until St. Patrick’s Day!
