The Supreme Court vacancy, a minefield for Republicans

Because its spitting in the eye of the constitution you Republicans claim to defend so much is why!

You're splitting peas. The idea that the republican congress will not even consider the nomination of the president for SC justice is childish and not in keeping with the letter of the Constitution.

Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL), one of just two Senate Republicans who have indicated an openness to even having a confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, had a message for his GOP colleagues on Friday: give Garland a vote.

“We should go through the process the Constitution has already laid out. The president has already laid out a nominee who is from Chicagoland and for me, I’m open to see him, to talk to him, and ask him his views on the Constitution,” Kirk explained in a radio interview on WLS-AM’s Big John Howell Show.

Noting that his own constitutional views are “a lot like Justice Scalia, who he’d be replacing,” Kirk urged colleagues to “just man up and cast a vote. The tough thing about these senatorial jobs is you get ‘yes’ or ‘no’ votes. Your whole job is to either say ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ and explain why.”

Kirk expressed doubt that his GOP colleagues will actually allow hearings on Garland to take place, observing, “I think, given Mitch [McConnell’s]
view, I don’t see his view changing too much.”

It was unclear whether the “man up” advice also applies to his female Republican colleagues Sens. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Joni Ernst (R-IA), Deb Fischer (R-NE), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) has already called for hearings and for the Senate to follow “regular order.”

The justices split 4-4 in Friedrichs v. CTA, leaving a pro-union ruling in the lower courts intact.

The U.S. Supreme Court split 4-4 in Friedrichs v. CTA on Tuesday, thwarting a legal challenge that labor activists feared would deal a crippling blow to public-sector unions throughout the country.

“The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided Court,” the justices wrote in a brief, unsigned ruling.

The case was closely watched not only because of the implications for organized labor, but also how the court would rule following Justice Antonin Scalia’s death on February 13. Scalia was seen as likely to have ruled against the unions, and his death deprived the court’s conservatives of a tie-breaking fifth vote.

Tuesday’s deadlock means that the Ninth Circuit’s ruling in favor of the teachers’ union will stand. But it also signaled that Justice Anthony Kennedy, who almost certainly joined Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas on one side of the split, would be willing to overturn Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, the decision that became the basis for public-employee contracts. (The Court did not disclose how each justice voted in today’s decision.) That tosses the precedent’s ultimate fate to the next justice who serves on the Court.

5) How is the Supreme Court likely to rule? And how does Justice Scalia's death affect this?

There are dozens of hypothetical possible answers the Court could reach to any of the four questions above. But in terms of the case's practical outcome, there are essentially four options.


If "swing vote" Justice Anthony Kennedy (or Chief Justice Roberts) joins the liberal wing of the Court, the Obama administration will get an outright five-vote majority. The lower court rulings will be overturned, and DAPA and DACA+ will start accepting applications.


If the conservative wing of the Court gets a five-vote majority, with a liberal justice joining the conservative wing, the lower court ruling siding with the states will be upheld for good, and DAPA and DACA+ will be permanently dead. (This is unlikely, but it's certainly not impossible.)


If Kennedy joins the conservative side, but the Court's four liberal justices stick together, nobody will get a majority. Justice Scalia's absence will create a 4-4 tie. That would leave the existing injunction in place — forcing the Obama administration to keep DAPA on ice — but it would force the lower courts to go back and issue final rulings on the case, which they still haven't done.

Furthermore — and this is where things get really messy — the absence of a Supreme Court opinion could allow another circuit court to hear a case on DAPA and rule that it could go forward. How such a lawsuit would proceed is unclear; maybe some of the states that sided with the Obama administration could find standing. But it would create a situation in which DAPA was legal in some parts of the country and illegal in others.

It's entirely possible that the Supreme Court would go out of its way to avoid that level of chaos. That's why some analysts think the most likely outcome is this:

Chief Justice Roberts joins with the Court's liberals to throw out the case based on standing — siding with the federal government on the first question and ruling that Texas didn't have the right to bring the suit at all.

How else can you explain George W. Bush?

Pro-choice advocates just won the biggest Supreme Court abortion case in decades

Updated by Emily Crockett on June 27, 2016, 10:10 a.m. ET

In a huge victory for the pro-choice movement, the Supreme Court voted 5-3 Monday to strike down two major anti-abortion provisions that were part of an omnibus anti-abortion law Texas passed in 2013.

The court's ruling in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt also strikes a blow to a strategy by the pro-life movement to limit abortion access incrementally, through state laws.

To provide abortions at any stage of pregnancy, the provisions forced doctors to have "admitting privileges" with a nearby hospital (which are difficult to get for abortion providers specifically), and forced clinics to undergo often expensive renovations to become "ambulatory surgical centers," which haven't been demonstrated to make abortion safer (though abortion is already quite a safe medical procedure.)

While pro-life advocates said these laws made abortion safer for women, their most significant effect was forcing roughly half of the state's abortion clinics to close. The overwhelming consensus from doctors is that the laws had no medical benefit, and actually made abortion less safe because they forced quality clinics to close for no compelling medical reason.

The central constitutional question was: Did the policies put an "undue burden" on women when they are forced to drive hundreds of miles because their nearest clinic has closed due to regulatory hurdles?

The Court found that it did.

"Both the admitting-privileges and the surgical-center requirements place a substantial obstacle in the path of women seeking a previability abortion, constitute an undue burden on abortion access, and thus violate the Constitution," read the majority opinion.

Pro-life leaders had aimed for a 5-4 decision in their favor, which could have meant a sweeping, nationwide validation of anti-abortion laws like the ones in Texas. But with the death of Justice Antonin Scalia and the composition of the court, a 4-4 split was the most pro-life advocates could hope for.

Such a split, then, would have still spelled trouble for abortion providers in Texas. It would have probably meant that those 10 clinics would close for good. It also probably would have spelled trouble for Louisiana abortion providers, since Louisiana is also in the Fifth Circuit's jurisdiction and has passed similar laws (which are also currently blocked by the Supreme Court). And it would have meant inconsistent nationwide policy, where some states are allowed to pass laws like these and others aren't.

This ruling could prevent any states from passing admitting privilege or ambulatory surgical center laws, which are some of the most popular tools that anti-abortion lawmakers currently use to limit the procedure at the state level. It could even jeopardize other anti-abortion laws among the hundreds that states have passed in the past five years.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, in typical fashion, was the Court's swing vote. He's voted to uphold abortion rights in the past, more or less, but it's well known that he generally opposes abortion as a practice. In this case, however, he voted for abortion access.

BREAKING: Supreme Court Just Ruled to Protect Gun Ban for Domestic Abusers
Voisine v. United States.

INAE OHJUN. 27, 2016 10:28 AM

The US Supreme Court struck down abortion restrictions in Texas, ruled that domestic violence misdemeanor convictions are grounds to lose gun ownership rights, and raised the bar for prosecuting public officials on corruption charges.

The Court also ruled against two plaintiffs in Voisine v. United States, a case with implications for gun ownership rights. Stephen Voisine and William Armstrong had argued that a federal law that barred them from owning firearms because of misdemeanor domestic violence convictions violated their constitutional rights.

In a 6-2 ruling, the court upheld the opinion that domestic violence convictions can result in gun ownership restrictions, even if the misdemeanor is only the result of recklessness rather than intent.



Justices Roberts, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer and Alito were in the majority, with Thomas and Sotomayor dissenting.

All of those decisions are good,

We have got to get that position filled.