My gut feeling is that, for reasons I laid out in Trump Declares War on the Administrative State, Dellinger's case is much closer to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau case that resulted in the protection given that agency's director being tossed than it is to the safe harbor of Humphrey's Executor. Dellinger is not in charge of a "quasi-legislative" or "quasi-judiicial" organization; he wields quintessentially executive power, and to insulate him from the chief executive of the land is unconstitutional. In his dissent, Gorsuch basically said there was no legal way to reinstate Dellinger. But as Jonathan Turley said, a majority of the Supreme Court would rather this case go away than rule on the facts it offers.

The Obergefell ruling rode rough-shod over religions and dozens of state constitutions on the bases of a moral — not legal — opinion.

Though they lost, they got a solid dissent to work with and went to the Supreme Court.

Their arguments are that the president has absolute authority to remove officials at will and that every time the Supreme Court has heard a case similar to Dellinger's, they have agreed. //

Whatever the agency, for the President to discharge his constitutional duty to supervise those who exercise executive power on his behalf, the President can “remove the head of an agency with a single top officer” at will. Collins 594 U.S. at 256. On that basis, President Biden in 2021 fired the single head of the Social Security Administration without cause. //

!This Court should not allow lower courts to seize executive power by dictating to the President how long he must continue employing an agency head against his will. “Where a lower court allegedly impinges on the President’s core Article II powers, immediate appellate review should be generally available.”. //

As a general matter, the Constitution “scrupulously avoids concen-trating power in the hands of any single individual” save for the President, who is“the most democratic and politically accountable official in Government.” Id. at 223-224. Single agency heads thus must be accountable to the President through at-will removal. There are only four single agency heads upon whom Congress has sought to confer tenure protection: the Directors of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), the Commissioner of Social Security, and the Special Counsel here. The former three are undisputedly subject to at-will removal under Article II. This Court’s precedents foreclose any special exception for the Special Counsel.

Under the Constitution, “the President is invested with certain important political powers, in the exercise of which he is to use his own discretion.” For his decisions, “he is accountable only to his country in his political character, and to his own conscience.” His choices cannot be questioned in court because “the subjects are political. They respect the nation, not individual rights, and being entrusted to the executive, the decision of the executive is conclusive.”

Who penned these outrageous words? Democrats and many pundits might answer Vice President J.D. Vance. Over the weekend, Vance provoked an onslaught of criticism for suggesting that federal district judges “aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”

But the usual suspects would be wrong. The right answer is John Marshall, the greatest chief justice in Supreme Court history. And he did not squirrel this view away in a private journal. Instead, Marshall publicly explained that courts could not review presidential decisions on “political” subjects “entrusted to the executive” in a Supreme Court opinion.

He announced this principle not just in any case, but in Marbury v. Madison, the greatest opinion in Supreme Court history. The very same Marbury that concluded that federal judges should reject unconstitutional statutes, also recognized that courts could not intrude into the president’s exercise of his constitutional — dare we say “legitimate” — powers. Marshall’s opinion has given rise to the “political question doctrine,” which prohibits courts from reviewing decisions vested in the Constitution in the other branches, such as making war, prosecuting cases, and conducting impeachments. //

During the Vietnam War, Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman sued to stop the bombing of Cambodia (which President Richard Nixon had ordered). Holtzman obtained an injunction from a district court. The court of appeals promptly stayed the district court order. Holtzman petitioned Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who oversaw that court of appeals, to vacate the stay. Marshall properly refused, writing “the proper response to an arguably illegal action [by Nixon] is not lawlessness by judges charged with interpreting and enforcing the laws.”. //

The question whether the president can fire heads of “independent” agencies such as multi-member commissions is still debated, but the clear trend of recent Supreme Court decisions indicates that the president can remove these officers if they refuse to carry out presidential orders. No doubt Trump’s recent removal of members of the National Labor Relations Board are intended to set up a case to settle this question at the Supreme Court. Our prediction is that Trump will win that dispute — decisively.

A decades-old U.S. government ban on federally licensed firearms dealers selling handguns to adults under the age of 21 is unconstitutional, a U.S. appeals court held on Thursday, citing recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings expanding gun rights.

The ruling by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals marked the first time a federal appeals court has held that the prohibition violated the right to keep and bear arms enshrined in the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment. //

U.S. Circuit Judge Edith Jones, writing for Thursday's three-judge panel, said that decision was wrong, as the statutes were "unconstitutional in light of our Nation's historic tradition of firearm regulation."

The U.S. Department of Justice during Democratic former President Joe Biden's tenure had defended the ban. But Jones said it put forth "scant" evidence to show that the gun rights of adults ages 18 to 20 were similarly restricted during the nation's founding era in the 1700s. //

This case, in addition to being a win for the Second Amendment, could well remove one of these restrictions on people who are legally adults and should be expected to be treated as such. And if a person who is 18, 19, or 20 years old is not deemed responsible enough to buy a gun or a beer, why do we let them vote?

President Trump followed up his rampage through the National Labor Relations Board (Trump Goes Pearl Harbor on the National Labor Relations Board, Fires Chairman and General Counsel) by firing two Equal Employment Opportunity Commissioners and its general counsel. The newly reduced EEOC can no longer bring enforcement actions or initiate rulemaking as it doesn't have a quorum. //

Under Joe Biden, the EEOC bullied companies into submitting to DEI and replacing Equality with Equity.

Much like the defenestrated acting chairman at the NLRB, the two fired Democrats were not happy about the cruel turn of fate. //

Unlike the NLRB commissioner, whose firing seems questionable because the law says NLRB commissioners can only be fired for cause, the EEOC's enabling legislation does not require that.

The EEOC now only has two members and cannot act until President Trump nominates replacements. This is mostly a good thing.

I think there is something else going on with these firings. It seems like the Trump White House may be teeing up a challenge to a Supreme Court case.

In 2020, the CFPB was challenged for its blatantly unconstitutional structure. Under the law, it was managed by a single director who could only be removed "for cause." The Supreme Court agreed that allowing a single individual to control an agency outside the reach of the president to remove them was unconstitutional.

I believe the target of Trump's removal of three commissioners, one who can only be removed for cause and two without similar protections, is to convince the Supreme Court to overturn Humphrey's Executor vs. United States. This 1935 decision held that the president could only remove the commissioner of independent agencies for reasons established by Congress. The Selia decision established that did not apply to single commissioners; Trump wants to take a run at it to see if he can get that precedent overturned the way Chevron was reversed last summer; //

We'll see how this turns out, but even if Trump is wrong, the NLRB and EEOC will not be lumbering about the countryside and disturbing the livestock until the Supreme Court speaks. //

OrneryCoot
3 hours ago
There is something inherently wrong with the idea that the leader of the executive branch of government cannot fire persons under his authority, tasked with implementing his policy, in the executive branch. That is all kinds of "only in Washington" dumb. Trump is right to blast through that and try to tee up a SCOTUS decision. In the meantime, I will breathe a sigh of relief that these people are removed from their positions of power. Democrat appointed workers in the administrative state are open sores that need to be cut out.

What is also significant about each of the cases listed above is that the convictions in each case were affirmed by the federal Appeals Court — just like Joseph Fischer’s conviction was affirmed — before the convictions were reversed by the Supreme Court, and those reversals were unanimous in almost every case.

This unbroken line of decisions by the Supreme Court should have been warning enough to Biden DOJ prosecutors who decided to charge hundreds of January 6 protesters with a felony using a novel legal theory under a new statute.

Some involved in making that decision may now pay a price for having done with their jobs – and rightly so. //

Louis Rukeyser's Ghost
8 hours ago
So the previous Supreme Court rulings should have told the corrupt, political prosecutors not to do something corrupt and political? LOL. //

DaveM Louis Rukeyser's Ghost
8 hours ago edited
Don't let the Courts off the hook here. Every one of these decisions were binding on both the Appeals and Circuit Courts . And yet but one of them actually followed the precedents. //

Indylawyer DaveM
8 hours ago
Yeah, the lawyers probably looked at this case and noticed that they had a pretty good chance of winning until they got to the Supreme Court. And since that Court only takes a tiny percentage of the cases presented to it, they figured they had good odds. If the GOP had nominated someone who wanted to just put the whole J6 affair behind us, it probably would have worked. Plus it usually takes a few years for cases to get there, so they were likely successful in using this statute to force more jail time than most of the defendants would have served without it.

Following Mark Zuckerberg’s putative mea culpa for having made Meta complicit in the largest censorship regime in American history, and his vow to restore free expression on his platforms, the CEO made perhaps his most consequential statement of all in an interview with Joe Rogan.

There, after describing the pressure campaign the Biden administration waged against his company to suppress disfavored speech, primarily regarding Covid-19, Zuckerberg told Rogan: “I don’t think that the pushing for social media companies to censor stuff was legal.”

The Meta CEO’s silence as this very issue was being litigated all the way up to the Supreme Court was as deafening then as it is maddening now. But in making this assertion, he has inadvertently highlighted one of the Roberts Court’s gravest derelictions of duty — one that emphasizes the necessity of vigorous executive and legislative actions in defense of our rights, actions like those promised by the Trump administration and some in Congress.

The dereliction of duty came in the Supreme Court’s punting of the case of Murthy v. Missouri, previously known as Missouri v. Biden.

Plaintiffs in the case obtained and marshaled voluminous evidence demonstrating that senior Biden White House officials and federal agencies coerced, cajoled, and colluded directly and indirectly with social media companies to purge disfavored news and views en masse on matters ranging from the Hunter Biden laptop story to election integrity and Covid-19. The defendants did so on ostensible grounds of combatting dangerous “mis-, dis-, and mal-information.” In deputizing non-governmental actors as its speech police, the plaintiffs argued, the feds engaged in a conspiracy to violate the First Amendment by proxy.

The case, alongside congressional investigations and reportage including the “Twitter Files,” helped expose the size, scope, and nature of the censorship-industrial complex. //

The defendants appealed. But Judge Doughty’s counterparts on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals largely upheld his ruling.

So the feds took their argument to the Supreme Court. There, shockingly, as I observed while attending oral arguments, far too many of the justices showed they held a perversely narrow view of the First Amendment, and they gave substantial deference to the feds that had so imperiled it. Some also seemed remarkably ignorant of the expansive factual record supporting the plaintiffs’ claims.

Last summer, the high court dismissed the plaintiffs’ concerns and Americans’ free speech rights on a technicality. In a 6-3 ruling, the Supremes held that the plaintiffs lacked standing to seek injunctive relief, refusing to rule on the merits of the case.

Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the dissenting opinion, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, rebuked the court for straining to create “new” and “heightened” standards to find that the plaintiffs lacked standing and warned that the court’s refusal to rule on the merits of the case could result in dire consequences.

“[W]e are obligated to tackle the free speech issue that the case presents,” Alito asserted. “The Court, however, shirks that duty and thus 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.”

The dissent concluded that what transpired in Murthy “was blatantly unconstitutional, and the country may come to regret the Court’s failure to say so.”

By not ruling that the censorship-industrial complex’s acts were unconstitutional — by avoiding the question entirely — the Supremes signaled that it was open season on free speech in America. //

The courts simply cannot be seen as a reliable backstop for protecting our First Amendment rights against the censorship-industrial complex.

What’s more, if Republicans allow the fed-led censorship regime to persist, there will be no deterrent to Democrat efforts to create analogous regimes going forward, targeting rights beyond those enshrined in the First Amendment.

Zuckerberg’s admission of a pressure campaign lays bare the truth: the government colluded with Big Tech to violate Americans’ First Amendment right and the Supreme Court squandered an opportunity to right a wrong.

At the end of each year—only hours before a new year begins—Roberts releases his “Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary.” Think of it as a written “State of the Judiciary” address. In this latest report, he focused on “four areas of illegitimate activity that … threaten the independence of judges on which the rule of law depends.”

What are those threats? According to Roberts, they’re “(1) violence, (2) intimidation, (3) disinformation, and (4) threats to defy lawfully entered judgments.”

The Democrats’ entire assault on the court, and especially on Justices Thomas and Alito, has ended in utter defeat. //

The Democrats falsely accused Justices Thomas and Alito of violating ethics laws by not disclosing vacations with friends and not recusing from cases because of their spouses’ activities. They are wrong on both counts.

Justices Thomas and Alito complied with the laws, regulations, advice, and Judicial Conference rulings regarding reporting trips with friends. They were not required to report these trips under the personal hospitality exemption outlined in the law, no matter what the leaders of this witch hunt, Democrat Sens. Dick Durbin and Sheldon Whitehouse, claim or wish.

When the Judicial Conference, which was established by law to administer the ethics laws for the federal judiciary, changed its rules in March 2023 and excluded from the personal hospitality exemption trips on private planes and boats, Justice Thomas promptly reported such trips.

The Supreme Court, which dealt a major blow to the power of federal agencies in June, agreed on Friday to consider another: whether Congress violates the Constitution by delegating broad discretion to them.

The so-called nondelegation doctrine has been largely dormant since 1935, when the Supreme Court struck down New Deal laws for granting too much leeway to agencies with insufficient guidance. //

Judge Andrew S. Oldham of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit wrote in the majority ruling that deemed the program unconstitutional:

“The universal service contribution mechanism’s double-layered delegation is incompatible with our constitutional structure.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas broke his nearly seven-year silence during oral arguments last week, there was much speculation about what exactly he said. Just four cryptic words appeared in the court's unofficial transcript.
Now it can be told: It was nine words and apparently a joke.

The left’s latest attack stems from Gorsuch’s new book on the government going after regular Americans. //

Three years before he threatened him while standing on the steps of the Supreme Court, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the problem with Neil Gorsuch was that his decisions as a federal judge were awful for the average working American.

“When the chips are down, far too often he sides with the powerful few over everyday Americans just trying to get a fair shake,” the powerful Schumer said against Gorsuch’s nomination.

On the first day of those confirmation hearings, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said, “In case after case, you have dismissed or rejected efforts by workers and families to recognize their rights or defend their freedoms.”

Now, Gorsuch’s left-wing critics say his problem is actually the complete opposite. They say he cares too much about the little guy and not enough about the bureaucracy that goes after the little guy.

Yes, really.

The criticism stems from a book Gorsuch recently co-authored with Janie Nitze titled Over Ruled: The Human Toll Of Too Much Law. //

The campaign against Supreme Court justices who fail to bend to the will of the left will undoubtedly continue. This particular attack is about as substantive as the previous ones, which is to say not very.

The Supreme Court will not halt Special Counsel Jack Smith’s review of private messages between former President Donald Trump and Twitter, now known as X.

On Monday, the nine-justice panel issued handed down their decision without explanation, declining to consider Trump’s challenge against Smith’s secret warrant.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) first sought the records in January last year, demanding a complete trove of private information including Trump’s search history, direct messages, account settings, and activity under the “@realDonaldTrump” username. According to The Hill, the government obtained a nondisclosure order to bar X from revealing the existence of the warrant, even to the former president.

“The company challenged the order, arguing the records were potentially covered by executive privilege and not being able to tell Trump violated the First Amendment,” The Hill reported. “Court filings show X at one point was fined $350,000 for not timely turning over Trump’s data.”

Attempts to block Smith’s surveillance in the lower courts, however, failed. The Supreme Court ultimately refused to hear another challenge to the warrant in Smith’s criminal case, which is related to the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson questioned whether the court should even be involved in addressing the policy in the first place, saying she was concerned about the court “taking over what Congress may have intended for the agency to do in this situation.”

"I think it can't be assumed that the agency exceeds its authority whenever it interprets a statutory term differently than we would such that all we have to do as a part of this claim here today is just decide what we think a firearm is." //

Justice Brett Kavanaugh expressed concerns that the regulation would criminalize ghost gun sellers who might not be aware that they are violating a law, CNN reported.

“This is an agency regulation that broadens a criminal statute beyond what it had been before,” Kavanaugh asked. “What about the seller, for example, who is truly not aware — truly not aware — that they are violating the law and gets criminally charged?”

Prelogar said prosecutors would have to prove that the seller was willfully violating the law. Kavanaugh described Prelogar’s answer as “helpful.” //

Twist Gamma
12 minutes ago
Kavanaugh nailed it at the end.

I was on board with the government's argument up until Kavanaugh made it clear that this was not a law but an interpretation of a law. Interpretations on something like this should absolutely go in the favor of the citizen, so that citizens do not become criminals without realizing it.

If guns are regulated, there is no problem with regulating, in the same way, a kit that has all of the ingredients + instructions to build a gun. It's the same thing, assuming the kit is complete. Any restriction on guns that passes Constitutional muster could equally be applied to a complete gun kit.

However, deciding that they are equivalent is the job of Congress, not the courts. And ESPECIALLY not the job of the bureaucracy.

Whether the restrictions themselves are Constitutional is a separate question, of course.

the Texas case will now return to the District Court for further proceedings, but for now, the Texas Human Life Protection Act remains in effect. //

Keith
2 hours ago
This frivolous appeal by Biden's admin is indicative of their contempt for legal rulings they don't like and the courts that issue them. They are tyrants just looking for the opportunity to rule us all.

SCOTUS was clear on making abortion a state, not federal issue. //

Largo Patriot
3 hours ago edited
States rights exist for a reason and do not prevail only when the federal government allows them to. That's the whole point of states rights. People in red states shouldn't have to live like the people in blue states and vice versa. Abortion advocates are hyperventilating that the federal government, at Trump's direction, will ban all abortions, but have no problem if the federal government, at a Democrat's direction, bans all restrictions on abortion, including restrictions that prevent born alive babies from being left to die. The best way to resolve this conflict is to allow state voters, not federal voters, to decide the regulation issue. We've been arguing about abortion for more than 50 years despite the fact it's been legal that entire time, but legal is never enough, safe and rare is a joke and "celebrate abortion" is the battle cry of pro-abortion advocates. Why don't they put as much time and effort into preventing unwanted pregnancies as they put into killing unwanted babies? It's cheaper, safer and no human life is lost.

In April 1991, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia gave the Alexander Meiklejohn Lecture at Brown University, in which he explored the idea of the U.S. Constitution.

“Unlike any other nation in the world, we consider ourselves bound together, not by genealogy or residence but by belief in certain principles; and the most important of those principles are set forth in the Constitution of the United States,” Justice Scalia said.

Referring to the Constitutional Convention held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1787, Justice Scalia added,

When else has a government been established, not by conquerors dividing up the spoils, or even by political parties parceling out the power, but by a four-month seminar consisting of many of the most erudite and politically experienced individuals in the nation?

The justice went on to remind his listeners why it’s critical each generation of Americans learn, know and love our Constitution.

“[The U.S. Supreme Court] cannot save the society from itself – because in the last analysis the Court is no more than the society itself,” Justice Scalia said, adding,

The Constitution will endure, in other words, only to the extent that it endures in your understanding and affection.

There are a few unshakable rules in political discourse - only a few, but there are some that never seem to be broken. One of these rules is that it is always the left, never the right, that calls for trashing the Constitution when they don't get their way. This is a fundamental law of the universe, which shall henceforth be known as "Clark's Law of Leftists Destroying the Village to Save It." //

The latest example? As our sister site Twitchy informs us, leftist lunatic Fran Lebowitz, on Bill Maher's HBO show, "Real Time," has called for President Biden to - get this - dissolve the Supreme Court. //

Brent Baker 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 @BrentHBaker
·
Bill Maher guest Fran Lebowitz declares SCOTUS is “so disgraceful it shouldn’t even be allowed to be called the Supreme Court, it’s an insult to Motown...It’s Trump’s harem.” President “Biden should dissolve the Supreme Court.” #StartTheClock

10:46 PM · Sep 27, 2024 //

As for Lebowitz, I'll offer her this challenge, the same one I offer to whiners who complain about the Second Amendment:

Fran, go ahead and propose a constitutional amendment to remove the Supreme Court. Pitch it to whoever your Congressional representative is. See how far you get. Because that's what you'll have to do, and I would remind you that even if you get Congress to go along - doubtful - you will have to gain the ratification of 38 of the 50 states. //

Smiling Alley Cat
8 hours ago
As she bashed the court the audience cheered her. Let that sink in as we need to identify our enemies.

A76-year-old Alaskan man is in custody after he allegedly threatened to assault, kidnap, lynch, torture, murder, and assassinate six of the nine Supreme Court justices. The names of the justices targeted, however, were withheld by the Department of Justice — likely because they confirm Democrats’ incendiary rhetoric against the conservative members of the court is working.

The DOJ announced on Thursday that Panos Anastasiou faces nine counts of making threats against a federal judge and 13 counts of making threats in interstate commerce after he sent more than 465 messages pledging harm against justices via “a public website the court maintained.” //

The document accusing the Alaskan of several felonies, however, shows Anastasiou’s threats were well timed not only with a Democrat-manufactured ethics scandal, but also decisions secured specifically by the court’s conservative majority. //

For years, high-profile Democrats such as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have pledged that the conservative-controlled court would “pay the price” for ruling against their party’s partisan agenda.