In an era of bad news, the US Supreme Court has brought us some good.
(Reese) In, Trump v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that the president and former presidents “may not be prosecuted for exercising core constitutional powers,” and are entitled, “to a presumptive immunity from prosecution for all official acts.” The justices ordered the lower courts to apply this decision to the Donald Trump case being led by Jack Smith.
In, City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, the enforcement of generally applicable laws regulating camping on public property does not constitute “cruel and unusual punishment” prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. The Supreme Court has ruled that the law which disallows people from sleeping on public streets can be enforced against the homeless population.
In, Fischer v. United States, the Supreme Court has ruled that the key charge used to prosecute and sentence hundreds of Americans for walking through the US Capitol building on January 6th, obstruction of an official proceeding, does not apply. Which likely means freedom for many American political prisoners.
In, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the Supreme Court overturned a 40 year old case called Chevron that granted radical levels of power to federal agencies. Spike Cohen @RealSpikeCohen explains this case and its importance.
“A family fishing company, Loper Bright Enterprises, was being driven out of business, because they couldn’t afford the seven hundred dollars per day they were being charged by the NMFS, the National Marine Fisheries Service, to monitor their company. The thing is, federal law doesn’t authorize the NMFS to charge businesses for this. They just decided to start doing it in 2013. Why did they think they could get away with just charging people without any legal authorization? Because in 1984, in the Chevron decision, the Supreme Court decided that regulatory agencies were the “experts” in their field, and the courts should just defer to their “interpretation” of the law. So for the past 40 years, federal agencies have been able to “interpret” laws to mean whatever they want, and the courts had to just go with it.
It was called Chevron Deference, and it put bureaucrats in charge of the country.
It’s how OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, was able to decide that everyone who worked for a large company had to get the jab, or be fired. No law gave them that authority, they just made it up. It’s how the ATF, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, was able to decide a piece of plastic was a “machine gun”. It’s how the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, the NRCS, is able to decide that a small puddle is a “protected wetland”. It’s how out-of-control agencies have been able to create rules out of thin air, and force you to comply, and the courts had to simply defer to them, because they were the “experts”. Imagine if your local police could just arrest you, for any reason, and no judge or jury was allowed to determine if you’d actually committed a crime or not. Just off to jail you go. That’s what Chevron Deference was. It was not only blatantly unconstitutional, it caused immeasurable harm to everyone. Thankfully, it’s now gone. We haven’t even begun to feel the effects of this decision in the courts. It will be used, for years to come, to roll back federal agencies, and we’ll all be better off for it. And that’s why politicians and corporate media are freaking out about it.”
~Spike Cohen
In an era of bad news, the US Supreme Court has brought us some good tools that we the people can wield to work on restoring America.
Happy Independence Day.
