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Hobby Lobby is a radical departure from religious exercise jurisprudence

June 30, 2014 by AZ BlueMeanie

The five conservative activist Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court today ruled that the legal fiction of a corporation, albeit a closely held corporation, possesses religious liberty rights (free exercise), and therefore may “freeload” off of taxpayers by refusing to pay the corporation’s cost of providing for contraceptive coverage offered in its employer provided health care plan, because the board of directors of this closely held corporation hold a deeply personal religious objection to contraceptives.

The Founding Fathers clearly understood and intended that the rights and liberties afforded by the Bill of Rights were individual rights and liberties of citizens. The Founders were wary of the power of corporations, hence the term “corporation” appears nowhere in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. Corporations were of limited duration, and chartered by the states.

What the conservative activist Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court did today is a radical departure from long-standing free exercise jurisprudence. They engaged in legislating from the bench their own language into the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to give the act a meaning never intended by Congress (see Ginsburg dissent).

This is yet another in a line of decisions by the Roberts Court transforming this country into a corporatocracy ruled by an über-rich wealthy elite plutocracy. Individual rights and liberties are secondary to the rights and liberties of our corporate overlords.

SCOTUS strikes down an abortion clinic ‘buffer zone’

June 26, 2014 by AZ BlueMeanie

Chief Justice John Roberts is terrible at writing court opinions. His attention to detail and to judicial precedent is lax, and his legal reasoning is deeply flawed. I believe this is because he has an ideological agenda and is outcome oriented. He is not the “umpire who calls balls and strikes” that he promised to be at his Senate confirmation hearing.

In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court in Hill v. Colorado upheld by a six-to-three vote a Colorado law that forbade approaching within eight feet of another person within one hundred feet of abortion facility. This is the Court’s abortion clinic “buffer zone” precedent.

The state of Massachusetts’ abortion clinic “buffer zone” law was at issue in McCullen v. Coakley. “It is notable that outside of a brief mention in describing the background of the case (noting that Massachusetts had originally enacted a narrower buffer-zone provision modeled on the statute upheld in Hill), the majority opinion makes no mention of Hill at all.” What is left of Hill v. Colorado? (in contrast with Justice Scalia’s dissent, joined by Justices Kennedy and Thomas, which overtly calls for Hill to be overruled). Kevin Russell at SCOTUSblog.com writes:

Did the Chief Justice effectively overrule Hill or its result as a practical matter, without saying so?

Big victories for marriage equality today

June 25, 2014 by AZ BlueMeanie

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit has upheld the December 2013 U.S. District Court for Utah ruling in Kitchen v. Herbert striking down that state’s same-sex marriage ban as unconstitutional, in a 2-1 decision written by Judge Carlos Lucero. The Salt Lake Tribune reports, 10th Circuit Court upholds same-sex marriage:

A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled that states outlawing same-sex marriage are in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

By upholding a Utah judge’s decision, a three-member panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver became the first appeals court in the nation to rule on the issue, setting a historic precedent that voter-approved bans on same-sex marriage violate the Fourteenth Amendment rights of same-sex couples to equal protection and due process.

But the court immediately stayed the implementation of its decision, pending an anticipated appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Utah attorney general’s office said Wednesday it will initiate that appeal.

Demagogue Cruz misleads on unaccompanied child refugee crisis

June 24, 2014 by AZ BlueMeanie

The reincarnation of Joe McCarthy, demagogue Sen. Ted “Calgary” Cruz of Texas (yes he recently renounced his Canadian citizenship, but a
Canuck is forever), spewed this bit of demagogic bile on Monday. Ted Cruz blames illegal immigration surge on hopes of “amnesty”:

A Texas lawmaker is blaming the actions of President Barack Obama for the recent surge of illegal immigration in the Rio Grande Valley.

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott held a joint press conference at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio on Monday morning.

* * *

During the press conference, Cruz blamed an executive order signed by President Barack Obama back in June 2012 for creating the current surge of illegal immigration.

President Obama signed an executive order creating the “deferred action” program giving legal to thousands of people who were brought to the United States illegally as children.

SCOTUS upholds EPA regulation of greenhouse gases

June 23, 2014 by AZ BlueMeanie

While the science deniers of the modern-day GOP assault the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a regulatory agency which was created with the support of your father’s GOP to clean up the environment, the U.S. Supreme Court today upheld the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases in what are collectively known as the “greenhouse gas” cases brought by industry groups, and the state of Texas (see note below).

The New York Times reports, In Victory for Obama, Court Backs Rules on Power Plants:

The Supreme Court on Monday handed President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency a victory in its efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources like power plants, even as it criticized what it called the agency’s overreaching.

“E.P.A. is getting almost everything it wanted in this case,” Justice Antonin Scalia said in summarizing the decision from the bench. “It sought to regulate sources it said were responsible for 86 percent of all the greenhouse gases emitted from stationary sources nationwide. Under our holdings, E.P.A. will be able to regulate sources responsible for 83 percent of those emissions.”