Ask Me Help Desk - SCOTUS left the best for last

Before the end of the month SCOTUS will decide about 2 dozen cases that will be very impactful.
There are some hot button cases involving"

Abortion ....can doctors perform "emergency" abortions .

Guns ....state laws that keep people who are subject to restraining orders for domestic violence from carrying guns.)

Censorship ... Texas and Florida laws restricting content on social media (likely to be declared unconstitutional)

The biggest cases left will decide the limits of Presidential power
SCOTUS is likely to end the so called "Chevron Doctrine" which gives deference to decisions made by the deep state Federal Agencies.

Trump's claims of immunity will be decided. I have no idea how they will rule .

stunning . or not . SCOTUS sided 6-3 with the censorship industrial complex .

'Murthy v. Missouri' the court decided 6-3 that they were cool with the Administration's coercive suppression of covid information on social media that went against Herr Doctor's directives .

Well they skirted the issue and decided the plaintiffs did not have standing or actually in one case not enough standing . There is no doubt that someone's 1st amendment rights were infringed . Just not the people who brought the suit.

The saddest part of the decision was that 3 conservative judges sided with the administration .Barrett wrote the majority and Kavanaugh and Roberts joined with the libs of the court.

Justice Alito wrote the dissent concurred by Thomas and Gorsuch .
He said the court decided the administration now has a template for coercive censorship ;they just have to do it with subtle sophistication.

Quote:

For months in 2021 and 2022, a coterie of officials at the highest levels of the Federal Government continuously harried and implicitly threatened Facebook with potentially crippling consequences if it did not comply with their wishes about the suppression of certain COVID–19-related speech. Not surprisingly, Facebook repeatedly yielded........

The Court, however, shirks that duty and thus permits the successful campaign of coercion in this case to stand as an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear, and think. That is regrettable. What the officials did in this case was more subtle than the ham-handed censorship found to be unconstitutional in Vullo, but it was no less coercive. And because of the perpetrators’ high positions, it was even more dangerous. It was blatantly unconstitutional, and the country may come to regret the Court’s failure to say so. Officials who read today’s decision together with Vullo will get the message. If a coercive campaign is carried out with enough sophistication, it may get by. That is not a message this Court should send.

23-411 Murthy v. Missouri (06/26/2024) (supremecourt.gov)

The government's claim that there was no implied threat if the platforms did not comply to their "moderation requests " is laughable . Apparently the measure is the degree of coercion .

I thought they would give their last rulings yesterday. I now believe they will wait for the Trump immunity decision until after the debate.

someone leaked a draft of SCOTUS decision on emergency abortions. .......“inadvertently and briefly uploaded”

23-726.html (bwbx.io)

Supreme Court acknowledges accidentally posting Idaho abortion case document that may preview narrow Biden admin win (yahoo.com)

yeah I believe that . All one has to do is recall how the Dobbs decision was leaked.
Supreme Court investigators fail to identify who leaked Dobbs opinion - SCOTUSb

In keeping with it's Dodd decision it appears that SCOTUS will punt and let the issue be decided at the state and local level

Supreme Court Poised to Allow Idaho Emergency Abortions: Exclusive - Bloomberg

There is one more case about censorship still on the docket . I don't think SCOTUS will decide it until next year ;they may never take the case. Right now discovery has been ordered delayed (and as you know with discovery ;when you lift up rocks ,you never know what type of critter is exposed )

'Berenson v Biden'

Alex Berenson is a reporter for the Slimes . He was reporting about covid vaccine and apparently the government and Pfizer did not like what he was reporting . So they went to Twitter (now X) to get him banned ;which they did .
He is back on Twitter thanks to Elon Musk's ownership of the site.

In this case there is a clear "standing" so that can't be a dodge of the issue.(I think)
Alex Berenson on X: "Fact check: true. And the details in the SC ruling actually HELP Berenson v Biden. Standing is particularized, and I have the particulars. https://t.co/QLRdiiJYTN" / X

Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford School of Medicine says that the government is being permitted to censor ideas unless plaintiffs can show they are harmed.

Quote:

The court ruled that the plaintiffs (Missouri and Louisiana, as well as me and other blacklisted individuals) lacked standing to sue. This means that the Administration can censor ideas & no person will have standing to enforce the 1st Amendment. Free speech in America, for the moment, is dead.

Jay Bhattacharya on X: "The court ruled that the plaintiffs (Missouri and Louisiana, as well as me and other blacklisted individuals) lacked standing to sue. This means that the Administration can censor ideas & no person will have standing to enforce the 1st Amendment. Free speech in America, for the" / X

SCOTUS reversed the Chevron deference today . Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council gave deference to agency experts to interpret the laws that agencies were tasked with enforcing. That made SCOTUS job easy .All they had to do was punt on the issue of constitutionality of an administrative enforcement action..

. Thank you Chief Justice Roberts .Two days in a role he brought the power of the 4th branch of government back in line. What he did was affirm that it is the role of the judiciary to do interpretation of laws not some nameless faceless bureaucrat. “Congress expects courts to handle technical statutory questions” – and courts also have the benefit of briefing from the parties and “friends of the court.”

Separation of power defended .