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AIRC Update: Petition for Review set for SCOTUS Conference

August 6, 2014 by AZ BlueMeanie

One of the three cases filed by Arizona Tea-Publicans against the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission (AIRC), Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission (Docket No. 13-1314) has been distributed for the conference of U.S. Supreme Court Justices on September 29.

The Court can and should deny the petition for review by the Arizona State Legislature, upholding the District Court for Arizona opinion which was correctly decided under binding court precedents.

The Court could also relist the petition for review at a later date, something which occurs with regularity.

Howard Fischer today in Arizona redistricting fight goes to Supreme Court, suggests the Court could “summarily overturn” the District Court with an order after its conference. Not likely. This typically would involve an order of remand with instructions from the Court to the District Court for further proceedings. There is not going to be a simple order ruling in favor of the Arizona Legislature.

The Court could grant hearing the petition for review, which I would consider a red flag that the conservative activist justices are once again planning to reverse the Court’s long-standing precedents in their continuing assault upon voting rights.

49th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act

August 6, 2014August 6, 2014 by AZ BlueMeanie

Forty-nine years ago today, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), taking an enormous step toward protecting the right to vote for all Americans. But last year, the “Felonious Five” conservative activist justices of the U.S. Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder cut out the heart of the VRA, Section 5, on the specious grounds that discrimination against voters by states no longer occurs in a post-racial America. One has to wonder what freakin’ planet these elitists live on.

If you want to see the VRA restored and Shelby County overturned, you are going to have to elect a Democratic House and Senate to do it. Your father’s Republican Party which helped to pass the VRA and always supported its re-authorization in years past, has been replaced by a radicalized extremist GOP.

Tea-Publicans have taken the opinion of the “Felonious Five” in Shelby County v. holder as a license to discriminate against “those people,” i.e., voters who tend to vote for Democrats. In fact, the very same day that Shelby County was announced, several former states of the Confederacy covered by Section 5 of the VRA immediately sought to infringe the rights of their citizens to vote.

ACA subsidies and statutory semantics headed to SCOTUS

August 5, 2014 by AZ BlueMeanie

The D.C. Circuit of Court of Appeals opinion in Halbig v. Burwell Here (.pdf) is utter nonsense.

The government filed a petition for an en banc hearing before the entire D.C. Circuit to reconsider the July 22 ruling. Read the petition Here (.pdf). The D.C. Circuit on Friday called for a response from the challengers to the tax subsidies, with the filing on the question of en banc review due within fifteen days, and limited to fifteen pages. The order is Here (.pdf).

Abbe Gluck, professor of law at Yale Law School, explains just how disingenuous and ridiculous the opinion in Halbig is, and why the D.C. Circuit Court should overturn this clearly erroneous decision by a three judge panel of the Court in a 2-1 decision (by conservative activist judges). The CBO score and the Made-Up Narrative of the ObamaCare Subsidies Case:

Two years ago, I posted on this blog that the CBO scoring of Obamacare was central, in the public eye, and intensely scrutinized by all involved with the statute. CBO never assumed in scoring the bill that subsidies would be unavailable on federal exchanges.

The GOP War on Voting – dual election systems

August 4, 2014 by AZ BlueMeanie

Election rules in the states of Kansas and Arizona are set to disenfranchise thousands of American citizens in coming weeks from casting ballots in state primaries, even though the federal government allows them to vote in congressional races. The Wall Street Journal reports Kansas, Arizona Require Proof of Citizenship for Voting:

The [dual election] system is the result of a growing battle between federal officials and a handful of states over the necessity of verifying that a newly registered voter is a U.S. citizen.

Kansas and Arizona say the federal registration process doesn’t rigorously check citizenship. They have established their own verification systems and are barring people who register using the federal system from voting this month for such offices as governor and local posts.

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Several states are closely watching a pending federal court case that has produced the unusual balloting in Kansas and Arizona. Georgia and Alabama are looking to implement proof-of-citizenship laws that have already passed, while lawmakers in states such as South Carolina and Oklahoma have considered adding such rules.

NOTE: The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments on Monday, August 25, after the Kansas primary election, and the day before the Arizona primary election.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s politically motivated decision on voter ID

August 3, 2014August 3, 2014 by AZ BlueMeanie

The Wisconsin Supreme Court is composed of seven justices who are elected in state-wide “non-partisan” elections. (Riiight). Each justice is elected for a ten-year term, and only one justice may be elected in any year.

You will recall that the 2011 Wisconsin Supreme Court election between incumbent David Prosser, Jr. and challenger Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg gained significant nationwide publicity, and was widely seen as a referendum on Governor Scott Walker’s proposed budget reforms in Wisconsin, and a part of the 2011 Wisconsin union protests. Wisconsin Supreme Court election, 2011 – Wikipedia.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court in the NAACP case, and the LWV case, on a 4-3 vote (and 5-2 vote in the second case), rejected two challenges to the state’s voter ID law on Thursday.