Latest news with #Gorsuch
USA Today
11-07-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
How some Supreme Court decisions divided the court's conservative supermajority
The conservatives splintered in more than a dozen cases in which some joined with the three liberals to form a majority. WASHINGTON − Though the Supreme Court's conservative supermajority continues to push the law in a rightward direction, the six justices appointed by Republican presidents are not always rowing in sync. In the term that ended in June, the conservatives splintered in more than a dozen cases in which at least two joined with all three liberals to form a majority − including in cases important to the conservative legal movement. It happened when the court upheld the Biden administration's regulation of untraceable 'ghost guns' and turned aside conservative challenges to Obamacare and to an internet subsidy program in cases targeting the power of federal agencies. And it happened in multiple cases involving death row inmates and other criminal defendants. 'I've said this before and I'll say it again: I think liberals should be thankful to President Trump for appointing more moderate conservatives,' said Josh Blackman, a law professor at South Texas College of Law in Houston and close observer of the high court. 'It could be much worse for them.' Divisions over federal agency decisions Leah Litman, a law professor at University of Michigan Law School and a court critic, said she's more focused on the conservative majority's decisions that she believes have major negative consequences. Litman, author of 'Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes,' said it's harder to gauge the significance of the cases in which the conservatives splintered. More: Trump wasn't the only Supreme Court winner this year. Here's the scorecard. In the challenge to a federal subsidy program for phone and internet service, for example, the court passed up a chance to further curtail the power of federal agencies. Three conservatives − Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – joined with the three liberals in ruling that Congress had not improperly given its taxing authority to the Federal Communications Commission. But in a concurring opinion, Kavanaugh left the door open to reviving a legal theory, mostly dormant since 1935, that prohibits Congress from delegating legislative power to the executive branch. 'It feels like the justices are treading water because they haven't yet figured out exactly what they want to do,' Litman said. More: How Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is standing out from her liberal colleagues Blackman, however, said he's surprised the conservatives split over issues about federal agency authority, which was a big area of concern when Trump, during his first term, was selecting his nominees: justices Neil Gorsuch, Barrett and Kavanaugh. 'Gorsuch is saying, `I thought we had a plan here,'' Blackman said. ''I thought we were going to do something here.'' Gorsuch and the ghost guns When Gorsuch was in the minority, he was often joined by justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, the court's most conservative justices. But not always. In fact, Gorsuch wrote the 7-2 decision upholding the Biden administration's regulation of untraceable 'ghost guns' that Thomas and Alito opposed. That was one of the court's many decisions overturning rulings from the Louisiana-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a court that is often more conservative than the high court. The high court's libertarian Conservative legal commentator Sarah Isgur said Gorsuch is one of the court's most interesting judges because of his libertarian streak. 'He's part of the most conservative wing, but where he breaks, he breaks against the government,' Isgur said at a recent public forum on the court's term. Gorsuch was not afraid to stand on his own, including with his solo dissent in a dispute between a taxpayer and the Internal Revenue Service. Gorsuch said the court's 8-1 decision endorsed the IRS' effort to 'never having to answer a taxpayer's complaint that it has made a mistake.' Criminal cases divided the conservatives In addition to some of the decisions involving federal agencies, conservatives were not all on the same page on cases involving criminal defendants and others fighting for civil rights. The most high-profile case involved death row inmate Richard Glossip, who said he did not get a fair trial in a 1997 murder-for-hire case. More: Supreme Court orders new trial for Oklahoma death row inmate in closely watched case In a rare move for a prosecutor, Oklahoma's attorney general concluded trial attorneys hid evidence that might have led to Glossip's acquittal. Roberts and Kavanaugh joined with the three liberals in ordering a new trial for Glossip. 'Let's just fix this' Daniel Epps, a professor at Washington University School of Law, said the decision looked more like one from the past in which the justices sped over procedural and substantive roadblocks to get at the result that seemed right. But the case does not signal a radical change in the court's approach to criminal cases, Epps said at a forum at Texas A&M University School of Law. Instead, he said, it suggests there are at least a couple of conservative justices willing to say, 'OK, let's just fix this' in cases that get significant attention because someone seems to have gotten a raw deal. 'I think that would've happened more often 10 years ago," he said, "but maybe it's still going to happen occasionally." A `big win' for prisoner's rights In fact, on the same day the American Civil Liberties Union lost its challenge to Tennessee's ban on gender affirming care for minors, civil rights advocates celebrated the court's decision in a different case. Roberts and Gorsuch joined the liberals in siding with a state prisoner in Michigan trying to sue a prison official for sexual abuse, retaliation and destruction of property. Unemployment benefits: Supreme Court says these workers can sue over delays Cecillia Wang, national legal director for the ACLU, called the decision a 'big win for prisoners' rights.' And she said it's similar to another 5-4 decision, one favoring Alabamans trying to sue the state over extreme delays in filing for unemployment benefits. In both cases, the majority found those trying to enforce their rights had been placed in unwinnable Catch−22 situations. In a term when the conservative majority 'really flexed its muscle to devastate civil rights plaintiffs in the marquee cases,' Wang said, a majority still 'sided with civil rights plaintiffs, with criminal defendants, in lower-profile cases that were enormously consequential for people's ability to vindicate their civil rights in the courts.'
USA Today
27-06-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
Jackson's dissent isn't heroic. It exposes big problem with Supreme Court.
The spat between Gorsuch and Jackson reveals a deep divide in how they look at the role of the Supreme Court – one that's not necessarily a good thing for America. As the Supreme Court term reaches its end, the decisions tend to become more divisive. It's a phenomenon that many court watchers suspect is a sort of burying the often unpopular lead, but the reality is that the court's nonunanimous decisions take more time to draft while the majority opinion sorts out its take and the dissent levies its rebuttals. Naturally, the more divisive cases tend to mean that tensions reveal themselves more, and the justices are more likely to take shots at each other in their majority opinions and dissents. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and Justice Neil Gorsuch took some fierce swings at each other in Stanley v. City of Sanford concerning a retired firefighter who wants to sue her former employer. Cast in much of the media coverage as a "declaration of independence" or being "done playing nice," Jackson's jabs cast her as a hero. But the spat between her and Gorsuch reveals a deep divide in how they look at the role of the Supreme Court – one that's not necessarily a good thing for America. Opinion: Do you think the Supreme Court is partisan? Well you're wrong. Justice Jackson criticizes 'pure textualism' The heated debate between Jackson and Gorsuch stemmed from a rather technical case concerning whether a retired firefighter could, under the Americans with Disabilities Act, sue her former employer for terminating her health insurance. Gorsuch's majority opinion went out of its way to address the dissent from Jackson: "Finding 'pure textualism' insufficiently pliable to secure the result they seek, they invoke the statute's 'primary purpose' and 'legislative history.' " In layman's terms, Gorsuch accused the court's most junior justice, Jackson, of ignoring the text of the statute to manufacture a decision that aligned with her desired outcome of the case – a serious charge to be levied between members of the court. 'It is imperative that we interpret statutes consistent with all relevant indicia of what Congress wanted, as best we can ascertain its intent,' Jackson wrote in her dissent. 'By 'finding' answers in ambiguous text, and not bothering to consider whether those answers align with other sources of statutory meaning, pure textualists can easily disguise their own preferences as 'textual' inevitabilities.' Jackson's response more or less turns Gorsuch's charge back on him (much like a younger sibling saying 'nuh uh'). She accused the majority of disguising their policy preferences through a strict reading of the text, ignoring outside context that does not fit their narrative. Jackson dedicated a rather long footnote to levy her criticisms of Gorsuch. Still, her complaints couldn't even muster Justice Sonia Sotomayor's approval, who signed on to large chunks of Jackson's dissent but excluded herself from the contentious footnote. The text is made all the more ridiculous considering Justice Elena Kagan, one of Jackson's frequent liberal allies, sided with the six conservatives in this case. Jackson's problem should be with Congress, not the court What Jackson fails to understand is that if the Supreme Court does interpret the text of a statute to be more narrow than Congress intended, the lawmakers can follow up and clarify what they meant with new legislation. Opinion: Supreme Court takes on birthright citizenship – but that's not the real case Judges should not be expected to do the legwork of deciphering what Congress meant at every turn. Due to the significant ambiguity there is in deciphering the intent of the entire legislative branch, doing so is inevitably going to result in accusations of legislating from the bench. Judges should stick to the text of statutes whenever possible, and if their determination of what the text means is out of step with what Congress intended, then Congress can pass legislation correcting the original language of a statute. Legislation is not frozen in time. Congress has the ability to clarify the meanings of old statutes that are somehow ambiguous. Often, they simply lack the will. However, this doesn't mean that the judicial branch needs to take on more of its responsibilities. We've already seen the failures of that line of thinking with regard to universal injunctions blocking executive action. Jackson's gripes with her colleagues are misplaced; they should be levied against Congress for its production of ambiguous statutes and refusal to clarify their meaning. Congress' laziness, or maybe apathy toward meaningful legislation, cannot be solved through judges usurping the lawmaking abilities. Doing so will only exacerbate the problem, with Congress refusing to step in as the judicial branch corrects its mistakes. In this case, Gorsuch got it right, and an ideologically diverse coalition of justices agreed with him. Jackson is the one out of step. Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science.
Boston Globe
26-06-2025
- Health
- Boston Globe
Supreme Court rules Planned Parenthood cannot sue over South Carolina defunding effort
But abortion was mentioned only in passing in the decision, and the patient in the case had sought access to contraception, not an abortion. Instead, the justices focused on whether the plaintiffs were entitled to sue to enforce part of the Medicaid law, which gives federal money to states to provide medical care for poor people. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Still, in shutting down such suits in federal court, the majority made it easier for states to deny funding to Planned Parenthood, particularly given the current administration's hostility to abortion rights. Advertisement Medicaid provides federal money to states, but it sets some conditions. One is that eligible participants may receive assistance from any provider qualified to perform the required services. At issue in the case was whether a patient could sue to enforce that provision and obtain Planned Parenthood services for medical treatment other than abortions. Abortions are banned in South Carolina after six weeks of pregnancy. Even then, federal law prohibits the use of Medicaid funding for abortion except in life-threatening circumstances or in cases of rape or incest. But Planned Parenthood clinics in Charleston and Columbia, S.C., provide services unrelated to abortion, including counseling, physical exams, contraception, and screenings for cancer and sexually transmitted infections. Advertisement Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, said private suits to enforce federal statutes are rarely permissible and require clear congressional authorization. 'After all, the decision whether to let private plaintiffs enforce a new statutory right poses delicate questions of public policy,' he wrote, adding that those questions should be resolved by 'the people's elected representatives, not unelected judges.' Gorsuch wrote that there are other ways to enforce the statute. The federal government can cut off Medicaid money, he wrote, and South Carolina has an administrative process in which medical providers can challenge their exclusion from the state's Medicaid program. In dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, said the law in question directly authorized the suit. She added that Gorsuch's proposed alternatives were unrealistic. 'In practice,' she wrote, the federal government 'rarely invokes its authority to withhold funding because doing so would inevitably harm the program's beneficiaries.' Jackson concluded her dissent by predicting that grave consequences would flow from the majority's approach. 'Today's decision is likely to result in tangible harm to real people,' she wrote. 'At a minimum, it will deprive Medicaid recipients in South Carolina of their only meaningful way of enforcing a right that Congress has expressly granted to them. And, more concretely, it will strip those South Carolinians — and countless other Medicaid recipients around the country — of a deeply personal freedom: the 'ability to decide who treats us at our most vulnerable.'' Advertisement John J. Bursch, a lawyer with the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian group that represented South Carolina, welcomed the ruling. 'The American people don't want their tax dollars propping up the abortion industry,' he said in a statement. 'The Supreme Court rightly restored the ability of states like South Carolina to steward limited public resources to best serve their citizens.' Paige Johnson, president of Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, which brought the suit, said in a statement: 'Today's decision is a grave injustice that strikes at the very bedrock of American freedom and promises to send South Carolina deeper into a health care crisis.' She added that the South Carolina law was an effort to 'weaponize anti-abortion sentiment to deprive communities with low incomes of basic health care.' A federal trial judge blocked the South Carolina directive, saying that it ran afoul of Medicaid's requirement that patients may choose any qualified provider. The litigation that followed was convoluted and circuitous, focusing largely on whether Medicaid's provision created a right that individuals could enforce by filing lawsuits. The Supreme Court has said that federal laws like Medicaid, which give money to states if they accept certain conditions, must 'unambiguously confer individual federal rights' to give affected individuals the right to sue. That is a hard test to meet, and the court has only rarely ruled that it has been satisfied, most recently in 2023 in Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County v. Talevski, a case concerning nursing homes. The statute at issue in that case repeatedly referred to 'rights' as such, while the Medicaid provision in the new case, Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, uses different language. Advertisement That law says that people seeking medical services 'may obtain such assistance from any institution' that is 'qualified to perform the service or services required.' Last year, a unanimous three-judge panel of the Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals, in Richmond, Va., ruled that the suit could proceed. 'This case is, and always has been, about whether Congress conferred an individually enforceable right for Medicaid beneficiaries to freely choose their health care provider,' Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote for the panel. 'Preserving access to Planned Parenthood and other providers means preserving an affordable choice and quality care for an untold number of mothers and infants in South Carolina.' He added that 'this decision is not about funding or providing abortions.' This article originally appeared in
Yahoo
23-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Maine Dems launch website targeting Collins over abortion ahead of Dobbs anniversary
The Maine Democratic Party has launched a website targeting Republican Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) for votes she they say have caused a significant rollback in abortion rights. The release of the website, shared exclusively with The Hill, comes ahead of the third anniversary of the Supreme Court's 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned its longstanding precedent of Roe v. Wade. The ruling allowed states to make their own decisions on abortion access and has led to more than a dozen states moving to restrict access to the procedure. A video released along with the website blames Collins for her votes to confirm Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, who were part of the five-justice majority that overturned Roe. The video starts and ends with a recording of Collins announcing on the Senate floor that she would vote to confirm Kavanaugh. 'The overturning of Roe vs Wade falls squarely on Susan Collins' shoulders. Mainers recognize and remember how Collins' 'no regrets' decisive vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court — despite clear warnings of the threat he posed to Roe — led to bans on reproductive freedom nationwide, and it will cost her in 2026 when voters reject her,' said state Democratic Party spokesperson Tommy Garcia. Collins's vote on Kavanaugh in particular received significant attention as his nomination was ultimately approved in a 50-48 vote. In her message announcing her decision to vote for Kavanaugh, she expressed her belief that he wouldn't be likely to vote in favor of overturning Roe. After the court overturned Roe, Collins said the decision was 'inconsistent' with what Gorsuch and Kavanaugh said during their testimonies and in their meetings wither her. 'It's deja vu all over again—these are the same tired, rehashed attacks voters already rejected in 2020 when they re-elected Senator Collins by 9 points. Mainers didn't buy it then, and they won't buy it now,' said Collins campaign spokesperson Shawn Roderick in a statement. 'While these groups plan to spend the next eighteen months litigating the 2020 election and launching false attacks, Senator Collins continues to show up and work hard for the people of Maine. The contrast could not be more clear.' The website also notes Collins's vote against advancing the Women's Health Protection Act, which would have codified Roe into law, in 2022. The Maine Republican argued at the time that the legislation would have violated the rights of individuals and organizations who have religious objections to performing abortions and exceeded what Roe protected, striking down laws prohibiting sex-based abortions and requiring parental notification for minors seeking abortions. Collins instead pointed to the legislation she introduced, called the Reproductive Choice Act, which would restore the rights of Roe. The website also attacks Collins over votes she's taken in favor of federal judges who ultimately upheld abortion restrictions in certain states, including Stuart Kyle Duncan in Texas and Kenneth Lee from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Collins will be a top target for Democrats seeking to make gains in the Senate in 2026 after losing a few seats last year, falling to a 53-47 minority. The longtime senator, representing a state that voted for former Vice President Harris in 2024, has long been a target and was viewed as particularly vulnerable in 2020 but has repeatedly held on. She won her last election by more than 8 points. Still, this would be the first time Collins is seeking reelection following the court's overturning of Roe, giving Democrats hope that abortion rights can be a rallying point as it was in the 2022 midterms. A high-profile Democrat has yet to enter the race, but some in the state believe Gov. Janet Mills (D) may be the strongest choice if she decides to run. This story was updated at 12:50 p.m. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
20-06-2025
- Politics
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson blasts 'narrow-minded' judging on Supreme Court: ANALYSIS
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson unloaded on her Supreme Court colleagues Friday in a series of sharp dissents, castigating what she called a "pure textualism" approach to interpreting laws, which she said had become a pretext for securing their desired outcomes, and implying the conservative justices have strayed from their oath by showing favoritism to "moneyed interests." The attack on the court's conservative majority by the junior justice and member of the liberal wing is notably pointed and aggressive but stopped short of getting personal. It laid bare the stark divisions on the court and pent-up frustration in the minority over what Jackson described as inconsistent and unfair application of precedent by those in power. Jackson took particular aim at Justice Neil Gorsuch's majority opinion in a case brought by a retired Florida firefighter with Parkinson's disease who had tried to sue under the Americans with Disabilities Act after her former employer, the City of Sanford, canceled extended health insurance coverage for retirees who left the force before serving 25 years because of a disability. Gorsuch wrote that the landmark law only protects "qualified individuals" and that retirees don't count. The ADA defines the qualified class as those who "can perform the essential functions of the employment position that such individual holds or desires." "This court has long recognized that the textual limitations upon a law's scope must be understood as no less a part of its purpose than its substantive authorizations," Gorsuch concluded in his opinion in Stanley v. City of Sanford. It was joined by all the court's conservatives and liberal Justice Elena Kagan. Jackson fired back, accusing her colleagues of reaching a "stingy outcome" and willfully ignoring the "clear design of the ADA to render a ruling that plainly counteracts what Congress meant to -- and did -- accomplish" with the law. She said they had "run in a series of textualist circles" and that the majority "closes its eyes to context, enactment history and the legislature's goals." "I cannot abide that narrow-minded approach," she wrote. Gorsuch retorted that Jackson was simply complaining textualism didn't get her the outcome she wanted, prompting Jackson to take the rare step of using a lengthy footnote to accuse her colleague of the same. Saying the majority has a "unfortunate misunderstanding of the judicial role," Jackson said her colleagues' "refusal" to consider Congress' intent behind the ADA "turns the interpretative task into a potent weapon for advancing judicial policy preferences." "By 'finding' answers in ambiguous text," she wrote, "and not bothering to consider whether those answers align with other sources of statutory meaning, pure textualists can easily disguise their own preferences." Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who joined parts of Jackson's dissent, explicitly did not sign-on to the footnote. Justice Elena Kagan, a member of the liberal wing, joined the conservative majority in all three cases in which Jackson dissented, but she did not explain her views. In 2015, Kagan famously said, "we're all textualists now" of the court, but years later disavowed that approach over alleged abuse by conservative jurists. In two other cases decided Friday, Jackson accused her colleagues of distorting the law to benefit major American businesses and in so doing "erode the public trust." She dissented from Justice Amy Coney Barrett's majority opinion siding with major tobacco manufacturer, R.J. Reynolds Vapor Co., that gives retailers the ability to sue the Food and Drug Administration over the denial of new product applications for e-cigarettes. Barrett concluded that a federal law meant to regulate the manufacture and distribution of new tobacco products also allows retailers who would sell the products to seek judicial review of an adverse FDA decision. Jackson blasted the conclusion as "illogical" again taking her colleagues to task for not sufficiently considering Congress' intent or longstanding precedent. "Every available indictor reveals that Congress intended to permit manufacturers -- not retailers -- to challenge the denial," she wrote. Of the court's 7-2 decision by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, giving gasoline producers the right to sue California over limits on emission-producing cars, Jackson said her colleagues were favoring the fuel industry over "less powerful plaintiffs." "This case gives fodder to the unfortunate perception that moneyed interests enjoy an easier road to relief in this Court than ordinary citizens," she wrote. Jackson argued that the case should have been mooted, since the Trump administration withdrew EPA approval for California's emissions standards thereby eliminating any alleged harm to the auto and fuel industry. "Those of us who are privileged to work inside the Court must not lose sight of this institution's unique mission and responsibility: to rule without fear or favor," she wrote, admonishing her colleagues. The court is next scheduled to convene Thursday, June 26, to release another round of opinions in cases argued this term. Decisions are expected in a dispute over online age verification for adult websites, parental opt-out rights for kids in public schools exposed to LGBTQ themes, and, the scope of nationwide injunctions against President Donald Trump's second-term policies.
