Well, I hope Alito does in office, sooner rather than later.
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I thought they didnât involve themselves in politics. Just calling balls and strikes!
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⌠if a Democratic Senate ever confirms a Republican SCOTUS nominee again, they will be ratifying McConnellâs double standard 
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thank god that heâs so ineffective. itâd be nice if his temper tantrum led him to quit.
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For those who skip the NYT:
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This is kind of SCOTUS anti-shenanigans, but with a nugget of shenanigan inside.
The first paragraph is: âThe U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected a bid by the state of Missouri to halt Donald Trumpâs upcoming sentencing for his conviction in New York on felony charges involving hush money paid to a porn star and left a related gag order until after the Nov. 5 presidential election.â
Two of the members said that they would have taken up the case. No points for guessing which two Injustices those were.
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itâs hard to blame thomas. i mean who could remember all those trips? and anyway, itâs not like he can be corrupted even more than he already is. /s
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As someone who just graduated law schoolâŚyeah, itâs frustrating. A lot of what I learned has already changed. You expect some things to change, but I donât know if the average person understands just how much the law has been changed by this Supreme Court in the last two years. Loper Bright alone negated at least half of my Admin Law class, and I just took that a year and a half ago. And a half dozen or so decisions have changed a lot of what I learned in Con Law. We havenât seen this much fundamental change in law since at least the Warren Court, and maybe we havenât seen this much significant change out of one Court ever. And theyâre not done. If the conservatives get their way, more changes are coming. Shit, if Thomas gets his way, substantive due process will go away completely. And if Gorsuch gets his way, they arenât done crippling administrative agencies. This is another reason this election is so important. This is really our last chance to fix this. People think this Court wants to help Trump get in as a dictator, but I think what they actually want to do is cripple the power of the federal government completely, including both the legislative and executive branches, and turn this country into a libertarian dream of corporate oligarchy, with themselves as the liaison between business and government.
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This. One of the things that struck me about Loper Bright, and in the near term is way down the list of horrible things this Court has done, is to even further the power of large corporations in comparison to small. Sure, thereâs the effect on the SEC and anti-trust regulations, but there is also this: if you have the resources, you can use LB to get out of any regulation currently. Whereas if you are a small company, you donât have the resources and actually still have to follow the regulations.
In my industry, that means that big medical device companies and big pharma can just go ahead and market devices and drugs that are essentially untested, and just bypass the FDA. Meanwhile, smaller companies that donât have the resources to fight still have to follow regulations.
Now apply the same principle to pollution, transportation, etc.
If LB ends up the law of the land for several years, I would avoid any drugs or devices that are made by big corporationsâŚ
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Relief is on its way:
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Everything is connected.
You called it, and here it is.
Yes this is bad.
[with apologies for the lengthy blockquote, it certainly feels like what the future will bring us, at least until sanity can be restored at SCOTUS et al.]
The US air force is refusing to comply with an order to clean drinking water it polluted in Tucson, Arizona, claiming federal regulators lack authority after the conservative-dominated US supreme court overturned the âChevron doctrineâ. Air force bases contaminated the water with toxic PFAS âforever chemicalsâ and other dangerous compounds.
Though former US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials and legal experts who reviewed the air forceâs claim say the Chevron doctrine ruling probably would not apply to the order, the militaryâs claim that it would represents an early indication of how polluters will wield the controversial court decision to evade responsibility.
It appears the air force is essentially attempting to expand the scope of the courtâs ruling to thwart regulatory orders not covered by the decision, said Deborah Ann Sivas, director of the Stanford University Environmental Law Clinic.
âItâs very odd,â she added. âIt feels almost like an intimidation tactic, but it will be interesting to see if others take this approach and it bleeds over.â
The supreme court in late June overturned the 40-year-old Chevron doctrine, one of its most important precedents. The decision sharply cut regulatorsâ power by giving judges the final say in interpreting ambiguous areas of the law during rule-making. Judges previously gave deference to regulatory agency experts on such questions.
The ruling is expected to have a profound impact on the EPAâs ability to protect the public from pollution, and the Tucson dispute highlights the high stakes in such scenarios â clean drinking water and the health of hundreds of thousands of people hangs in the balance.
Several air force bases are largely responsible for trichloroethylene (TCE) â volatile organic compounds â and PFAS contaminating drinking water sources in Tucson. A 10-sq-mile (26 sq km) area around the facilities and Tucson international airport were in the 1980s designated as a Superfund site, an action reserved for the nationâs most polluted areas.
The EPA in late May issued an emergency order under the Safe Drinking Water Act requiring the air force to develop a plan within 60 days to address PFAS contamination in the drinking water.
Filtration systems put in place in 2014 for TCE and other chemicals are currently removing PFAS, but the systems were not designed to remove PFAS, and the added burden is straining the system.
Officials previously shut down a well in 2021 when contaminated water nearly broke through the system, the EPA wrote. Such a breach could leave the Arizona city without safe water.
âŚ
[emphases added]
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As CiC, can Biden tell them to do the cleanup?
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One would think so. Holy shit, what an absolutely fucked reading of the Loper Bright case. Can the EPA even sue the Air Force? Damn, I donât even know the answer to that.
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That would be a question for people on this bbs more familiar with The Law; or, âThe Extremely Recently Updated Law(s)â ⌠or What Passes for the New U.S. Body of Law: 2024 SCOTUS EditionÂŽ.
Even if there were some magic wand executive order or whatever requiring the responsible party to clean up their own damn messes, part of the horror lies in what is being done to people affected by unsafe drinking water and no other alternatives.
We already saw what happened in Flint, Michigan. It took decades for them to get any semblance of justice, during which time, lead poisoned people young and old and in between. Damage done. No undoing it.
Justice deferred = justice denied.
Arizona is a mixed bag, politically. I sure hope the people who vote red see why having 
in power has real fucking consequences and a direct bearing on their health.
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See thatâs not what the Loper Bright case even says. It just says when thereâs ambiguity in a law, and a subsequent lawsuit involving that law or an agency rule derived from it, the agencyâs interpretation of the law doesnât get special deference from the court. The court has to review the law themselves âde novoâ (from the beginning) and decide what the law means. It absolutely does not mean that agencies donât have any authority to issue orders. That could end up being the effect, if the courts consistently rule against the agencies in disputes, but weâre not there yet. And itâs unconscionable to me that the Air Force, which is a part of the government, would attempt to do this to another government agency. I would hope Biden is on the phone right now raising holy hell with the Air Force Chief of Staff.
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My guess is that the USAF (and lord knows who else) is keen to push its luck.
They already see that SCOTUS is basically on their side, and they might as well try before the next administration potentially changes their odds. Itâs forum-shopping and a supremely (heh) solid example of bad faith.
Hellz yeah.
And he doesnât even have to worry about âopticsâ or how it will affect his re-election campaign narrative.
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