Depressingly accurate.
It fell to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to remind Kavanaugh that the fact that the law changes based on who wins an election is not a nefarious woke plot to confuse people who like beer but âa function of democracy.â
The high court indicated it will hear an appeal holding the city of Grants Pass, Ore., canât fine or prosecute people for camping on public property when there are no alternative shelters available.
Grants Pass officials enacted five ordinances against camping on public property. Those ordinances include anti-sleeping, anti-camping and park-exclusion rules that levy fines of several hundred dollars for each violation and enable the city to bar violators from all city properties upon repeat offenses.
A Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel [had] ruled in favor of plaintiffs contend[ing] the cityâs ordinances amount to cruel and unusual punishment.
Nice!
I think their analysis is spot-on, but does this rebuke from a State court actually carry any legal weight beyond âwe think the Supreme Court decision was bad and they should feel bad?â
I mean, it does inPennsylvania. I assume youâre asking about how it affects federal law and other states?
It depends on what kind of weight you mean and when
A public rebuke like this is a BIG DEAL. It will both piss off Alito and hopefully make the other justices who voted for this bullshit rethink that entire framework of historical legal analysis being applied to any future cases. When the state level Supremes tell you that you are full of shit, thatâs a big deal.
Sometimes courts cite to legal decisions in other jurisdictions. Itâs used as a support mechanism. Having this out there means other states can now use it to bolster their own decisions. I havenât read the opinion yet myself but it sounds well done in the research and execution.
This is the beginning of establishing the legal analysis itâs going to take to overturn Dobbs. A project it at least a decade or two.
OK so I guess the short answer is âThe Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, while obligated to act in accordance with the Dobbs decision, finds the reasoning in that decision fundamentally flawed and will therefore not look to it as precedent in their own decisionsâ? That makes sense.
Not quite. The majority opinion was based solely and entirely upon Pennsylvania law. However, the arguments put in there are giving Dobbs the side eye. It doesnât appear, and again, I havenât read the entire thing myself, the majority opinion actually quotes or directly attacks Dobbs. But it does make a point of discussing many of the ways that Dobbs was justified and knocking each one of them down.
But the decision based entirely on the state constitution. When something is declared unconstitutional under the countryâs constitution, It will remain unconstitutional even if a state constitution has something directly opposed. But Dobbs doesnât make anything unconstitutional, It says that it is constitutional to deny abortion rights. Which leaves states the ability to decide under their own constitution and laws.
It also looks like the majority opinion set the stage, undoubtedly on purpose, for the concurring opinion that directly attacks Dobbs. Concurring opinions are often used by courts as a way to put certain legal arguments or opinions out there that may not have a direct relationship to the case. So the concurring opinion could discuss exactly how wrong Dobbs is, even though Dobbs itself has no impact on the state constitution. I hope that helps clear things up
Edits because of speech to text with additional cat purring messing it up
(Discourse, why exactly is there a GIF of Ron De Santis in the âsmileâ collection?)
