Trump Court Upholds Constitution Again (2x)

Yesterday in the affirmative action cases the Trump SCOTUS did its best to set up some constitutional guidelines in a complicated factual matter that goes to the heart of the political dysfunction of modern America. Today’s two cases are major defeats for the Built Back Better crowd that surrounds Zhou, but the facts behind these cases are far more straightforward.

The first case strikes at the heart of the Left’s efforts to regulate speech and to enforce societal uniformity by suppressing dissent from Woke orthodoxy:

Jonathan Turley

@JonathanTurley

We have the first decision. It is 303 Creative and it is written by Gorsuch.

9:01 AM · Jun 30, 2023

It is a victory for free speech. Three dissenting justices. https://supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-476_c185.pdf

"The First Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands. Colorado cannot deny that promise consistent with the First Amendment."

Sotomayor: "That is wrong. Profoundly wrong. As I will explain, the law in question targets conduct, not speech, for regulation, and the act of discrimination has never constituted protected expression under the First Amendment. Our Constitution contains no right to refuse service to a disfavored group. I dissent."

Keep in mind that the 10th Circuit declared “Eliminating … ideas is CADA’s very purpose.” Gorsuch just said that the First Amendment has a different purpose.

“Eliminating Ideas is [the] Very Purpose”: The Court Accepts Major Free Speech Case Over Same-Sex...

Below is my column in the Hill on the acceptance of a major new case by the Supreme Court on the issue of free speech and anti-discrimination laws. The nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson … and the Ukraine war took attention from this addition to the docket. However, this case has the makings of a major course change for the Court.

Here is the column:

Those words from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals about Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act may be some of the most honest but chilling words ever uttered in a federal opinion. The court ruled that a state could not only compel an artist to speak but could prevent that artist from speaking, too.

The idea being eliminated in this instance is the view of artist Lorie Smith that marriage is “an institution between one man and one woman.” For Smith, it’s an idea grounded in faith, while for her critics, it is grounded in discrimination. …

Last year, I described the court’s current session as a “train whistle docket” of major cases that are likely to produce significant changes in areas like abortion, gun rights, and race criteria in college admissions. That whistle seems to get louder by the day. Indeed, this docket is a virtual listing of unfinished business for a court majority that may finally have coalesced around clear standards in areas long left murky by a divided court.

No doubt the framers of our Constitution never imagined the depth of societal and cultural division America would descend to, and so saw no need to resolve every conceivable cultural conflict within the four corners of the document itself. Nevertheless, the one dimensional thinking of the three female Lefties should be chilling to all normal Americans. Clearly, the Trump court understands this and is, as Turley says, making up for lost time—and launching preemptive strikes for the future.

The second major case today once again clips the Leftist wings and their dreams of a glidepath to the Great Reset via Executive Order. Beyond the contract issue involved in the Student Loan scam on We The People, this decision seems to me—in conjunction with the earlier decisions regarding administrative agencies—to be a clear sign that the SCOTUS will be riding herd on abuses of presidential powers. I refer to the Student Loan program as a “scam” because of the way it has distorted our entire system of higher education and empowered an army of Leftist administrators, while at the same time seeking to create a new Dem constituency by further bankrupting the country.

Jonathan Turley

@JonathanTurley

...On the student loan case, we will all be watching the threshold standing issue. The Court last week issued a tough standing decision in a major victory for the Biden Administration. However, there are distinguishing factors in that case. Indeed, the justices seemed motivated to point out the uniqueness of the case in ruling against the challengers.

8:53 AM · Jun 30, 2023

It is a huge defeat for the Biden Administration. Chief Justice Roberts wrote for a 6-3 Court in ruling that the HEROES Act did not give authority to implement the loan forgiveness. It is the view shared by some of us on that act.

College-Loan Forgiveness Plan Reveals Biden’s Constitutional Cynicism

Below is my column in the Hill on the latest controversy over President Joe Biden’s unilateral use of executive power. Despite an impressive list of court losses, Biden is now asserting such …

Pelosi is used by the majority as an effective witness against the Biden Administration, quoting her at length:

"“People think that the President of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness. He does not. He can postpone. He can delay. But he does not have that power. That has to be an act of Congress.” Press Conference, Office of the Speaker of the House (July 28, 2021)."

This is yet another case of overreach for President Biden as was his use of the CDC for the eviction moratorium.

I recommend—for a leisurely, reflective read—Turley’s new article, taking apart Zhou’s claim that this is not a “normal” SCOTUS. In a very real sense, Turley recognizes that our country is no longer a “normal” country in a cultural sense. It is a country that had, in the Constitution, the means for coming to grips with remaining (after the Founding) historical problems, but which has been cynically torn apart by Leftist ideologues. Turley knows who’s behind it, and what they seek. He quotes Roberts to good effect:

It was the capstone opinion for Chief Justice John Roberts who in 2017 declared: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”  In 2006, Roberts added: “It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.”

Here’s Turley’s conclusion:

Biden’s “Normal”: The President’s Constitutional Takes are Becoming More Unhinged from History

…

It is also ironic to hear the President bewailing the reversal of precedent since the greatest advance in racial equality was the reversal of Plessy v. Ferguson and the doctrine of “separate but equal.” That was the governing precedent from 1894 to 1954, but few denounced the Supreme Court for reversing the precedent in Brown v. Board of Education. It was a decision to eliminate different treatment on the basis for race.

This Court did indeed overturn long-standing cases but these have long been areas characterized by closely and fiercely divided 5-4 and plurality decisions.

The President also asserted that “the vast majority of the American people don’t agree with a lot of the decisions this court is making.” The majority clearly opposed the Dobbs ruling, but that is not the case on the affirmative action ruling. Polls have consistently shown (including this week) that the majority of the public does not support the use of race in college admissions. Indeed, even in the most liberal states like California, voters have repeatedly rejected affirmative action in admissions.

We should have a robust and passionate debate over these issues. Yet, a president should be seeking to facilitate that dialogue rather than distorting and weaponizing our shared history. It is a continuation of his prior declarations that members of Congress opposing his election reforms to block state laws are voting with “Jefferson Davis” and the Confederacy. Despite the laws in states like Georgia being upheld as constitutional, Biden declared them a return to the “Jim Crow” South based on distorted accounts of those laws. The claim was again historically and legally ridiculous even if one opposed these state laws.

We should not allow the President’s constitutional and historical distortions to become, to use his description of the Court, “normal.” We have fought hard to address the scourge of slavery and racism in our country. That struggle is continuing but we cannot address those problems in the future by distorting our past.

Regaining a cultural and political unity—once lost at the hands of a cynical revolutionary coterie—is a tough slog. The SCOTUS appears to be doing its best. Imperfectly at times, but with a vision of federalism and originalism giving it focus. The task, unfortunately, remains largely in the hands of the political class, who have been corrupted by Big Money and by the Deep State. To see Mike Pence trying to pull in money for his candidacy by flying to Ukraine and proclaiming that there’s “no place in the Republican Party” for those who are opposed to the war on Russia. Pence cynically refers to Ukraine, but he knows better than most what this war is actually about. It’s up to We The People to call the Deep State to account. We can never be a normal country again until the Swamp’s level is significantly lowered.