The Supreme Court of the United States Thread

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#10,201
Sandman 423 said:
Still an American citizen though. We have rights and due process. How do you know he wasn’t misinformed like Bush with WMD’s?

I’m not saying President Obama should be prosecuted for it, but once you open the door too prosecute them it could get messy.
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Of course Trump is the exception. He should be prosecuted for anything the Democrats think he is guilty of.

Oh... wait a minute... he IS!
 
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#10,202
#10,202
SpaceCoastVol said:
Of course Trump is the exception. He should be prosecuted for anything the Democrats think he is guilty of.

Oh... wait a minute... he IS!
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Republicans are often slow to start the game, but they can be just as nasty in the end. Somewhere in the the south there is a MTG style AG licking their chops for this next election.
 
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#10,203
lawgator1 said:
No credible legal scholar has supported the argument. Every credible legal expert has rolled their eyes at the notion that a President cannot be criminally prosecuted for criminal conduct. So, the justices that vote that there is no such immunity are in accord with the thinking of everyone who isn't a Trumpian wackadoodle.

There would be no way to reconcile such a holding with prior decisions.
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It doesn't matter what some expert THINKS. what matters is what is argued in court. at least if the judges are without bias.

who knows maybe its like the AD not being ready to prosecute a case against those Russian hackers and they got let go because of how inept the AD was. maybe its some procedural bs.

your entire argument is based on a biased, preconceived viewpoint. doesn't matter if the viewpoint is right or not, if you/a judge are biased one way or the other before the case you are not ruling fairly if you bring in those expert opinions if neither side of the argument also brings it in.
 
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Sandman 423 said:
Republicans are often slow to start the game, but they can be just as nasty in the end. Somewhere in the the south there is a MTG style AG licking their chops for this next election.
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It won't be Trump driving that bus however. He proved that after he beat the most qualified woman ever
 
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#10,206
Seth Dillon
@SethDillon

The majority didn't endorse the government's actions or rule on whether they were constitutional. They just argued that the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring a case. It's a bad ruling, though, and could definitely lead to more coercion because the bar is now set unreasonably high for anyone to bring a case against the government.




 
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First, it is a bedrock prin- ciple that a federal court cannot redress “injury that results from the independent action of some third party not before the court.” Simon v. Eastern Ky. Welfare Rights Organization, 426 U. S. 26, 41–42.
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She calls this “traceability.” Whether the injury is traceable to the actions of [the government].

The Court first considers whether the plaintiffs have demon- strated traceability for their past injuries. Because the plaintiffs are seeking only forward-looking relief, the past injuries are relevant only for their predictive value. The primary weakness in the record of past restrictions is the lack of specific causation findings with respect to any discrete instance of content moderation. And while the record reflects that the Government defendants played a role in at least some of theplatforms’ moderation choices, the evidence indicates that the plat- forms had independent incentives to moderate content and often exer- cised their own judgment. The Fifth Circuit, by attributing every plat- form decision at least in part to the defendants, glossed over complexities in the evidence.
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The plaintiffs fail, by and large, to link their past social-media restrictions and the defendants’ communications with the platforms.
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Plaintiff Jill Hines, a healthcare activist, faced COVID–19-related restrictions on Facebook. Though she makes the best showing of all the plaintiffs, most of the lines she draws are tenuous. Plus, Facebook started targeting her con- tent before almost all of its communications with the White House and the CDC, thus weakening the inference that her subsequent re- strictions are likely traceable to Government-coerced enforcement of Facebook’s policies. Even assuming Hines can eke out a showing of traceability, the past is relevant only insofar as it predicts the future.
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Seems like a rejection of the right wing media narrative of this case as essentially equivalent to the NY/NRA case from a few days ago (which is now seemingly being conveniently forgotten…)

Second, because the plaintiffs request forward-looking relief, they must face “a real and immediate threat of repeated injury.” O’Shea v. Littleton, 414 U. S. 488, 496.
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She goes on to say that most plaintiffs can’t establish this because they failed to show that the government actions were responsible for their being banned in the first place.

Then she says Hines fails because the communication stopped before she brought suit but the platforms have kept enforcing their policies.
Without evidence of continued pressure from the defendants, the platforms remain free to enforce, or not to enforce, their policies—even those tainted by initial governmental coercion. And the available evidence indicates that the platforms have continued to enforce their policies against COVID–19 misinformation even as the Federal Government has wound down its own pandemic response measures.
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Seems that if the case had been what it was billed to be on the right, the plaintiffs likely would have had standing.

But it wasn’t that. And anybody who wasn’t a right wing twit/troof/troll told you it wasn’t, two years ago.

 
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#10,209
#10,209
If the issue here is that "it's the wrong litigants" then why did the high court even take on the case? Seems like a waste of time and resources for all concerned
 
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Sea Ray said:
If the issue here is that "it's the wrong litigants" then why did the high court even take on the case? Seems like a waste of time and resources for all concerned
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This is not all that uncommon. Courts of appeals often accept cases and end up writing a discussion of why they could not. And that has value over the long haul because whatever their ruling on standing or jurisdiction matters to future cases, as well.
 
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lawgator1 said:
This is not all that uncommon. Courts of appeals often accept cases and end up writing a discussion of why they could not. And that has value over the long haul because whatever their ruling on standing or jurisdiction matters to future cases, as well.
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I get it but so few cases are accepted by the SC. I'd think they would make an effort to weed these out
 
#10,212
#10,212
Sea Ray said:
I get it but so few cases are accepted by the SC. I'd think they would make an effort to weed these out
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I did not listen to oral argument or read the briefs but I imagine this standing issue was part and parcel of that.

And in a sense, be grateful. If it were otherwise, the indirect injury theories could lead to all sorts of cases being filed by people without actual skin in the game, including left wing nuts, too.
 
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#10,214
#10,214
RockyTop85 said:
She calls this “traceability.” Whether the injury is traceable to the actions of [the government].







Seems like a rejection of the right wing media narrative of this case as essentially equivalent to the NY/NRA case from a few days ago (which is now seemingly being conveniently forgotten…)



She goes on to say that most plaintiffs can’t establish this because they failed to show that the government actions were responsible for their being banned in the first place.

Then she says Hines fails because the communication stopped before she brought suit but the platforms have kept enforcing their policies.


Seems that if the case had been what it was billed to be on the right, the plaintiffs likely would have had standing.

But it wasn’t that. And anybody who wasn’t a right wing twit/troof/troll told you it wasn’t, two years ago.

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You were right.
 
#10,215
#10,215
lawgator1 said:
I did not listen to oral argument or read the briefs but I imagine this standing issue was part and parcel of that.

And in a sense, be grateful. If it were otherwise, the indirect injury theories could lead to all sorts of cases being filed by people without actual skin in the game, including left wing nuts, too.
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Wait...... I thought that this was a MAGA court. Is this not the same court that the left was shredding just last week?
 
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#10,216
#10,216
85SugarVol said:
You were right.
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That wasn’t a shot at you, FWIW.

By the time I read your post the other day, the facts weren’t fresh. No reason to think they would be for you.

But two years ago it was a fairly big discussion and the facts were discussed in more detail.
 
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#10,217
#10,217
RockyTop85 said:
That wasn’t a shot at you, FWIW.

By the time I read your post the other day, the facts weren’t fresh. No reason to think they would be for you.

But two years ago it was a fairly big discussion and the facts were discussed in more detail.
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Did the prior discussion from a couple years back mostly involve plaintiffs standing?

I certainly wasn’t considering that on the heels of the other recent case.
 
#10,218
#10,218
85SugarVol said:
Did the prior discussion from a couple years back mostly involve plaintiffs standing?

I certainly wasn’t considering that on the heels of the other recent case.
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One side of the argument was essentially pointing out the same flaws identified by Barrett in this standing analysis.

The point that was made then was that the government asking a third party to enforce the third party’s own existing rules and flagging things for enforcement is not necessarily coercion because the third party has autonomy and agency and is ultimately the one who presses the button. The debate was protracted. It sparked up over some comments Psaki made when she was the WH Spox and continued through the articles written by that reporter that Musk dumped the emails to.

Maybe reading beyond the syllabus would produce a different understanding of the opinion, but from what was written there it seems like that’s exactly the analysis that she used. “The plaintiffs haven’t shown that they were injured by the government’s actions.”
 
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#10,219
#10,219
Maybe a dumb question but since the party needs "injured" does that mean affected by the government pushing SM to remove misinformation? And if so then could Trump have a case regarding the laptop lies, polls say it would have made a difference in the election?
 
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whodeycin85 said:
Maybe a dumb question but since the party needs "injured" does that mean affected by the government pushing SM to remove misinformation? And if so then could Trump have a case regarding the laptop lies, polls say it would have made a difference in the election?
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It would still depend on whether he could show that the government action was responsible for the injury.

These plaintiffs had an “injury.” They fell short on showing that the injury was traceable to the government’s actions or that the government caused the injury.

There was a third party that was directly responsible for removing their content. The same hurdle would exist for the laptop story.
 
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#10,223
#10,223
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#10,224
#10,224
I just reviewed the Supreme Court Decision and the Supreme Court did NOT give Federal Government the right to dictate policy to social media. They didn't rule in that matter. The ruling was based on lack of standing because there was no evidence that the plaintiffs were restricted by social media. Not sure why people are making it out to be more than it is.


Granted, the Dissent cites Hines as an example of an injured party but they don't explain how injured (i.e. give examples). If that is true, I may change my opinion on it.
 
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#10,225
#10,225
RockyTop85 said:
One side of the argument was essentially pointing out the same flaws identified by Barrett in this standing analysis.

The point that was made then was that the government asking a third party to enforce the third party’s own existing rules and flagging things for enforcement is not necessarily coercion because the third party has autonomy and agency and is ultimately the one who presses the button. The debate was protracted. It sparked up over some comments Psaki made when she was the WH Spox and continued through the articles written by that reporter that Musk dumped the emails to.

Maybe reading beyond the syllabus would produce a different understanding of the opinion, but from what was written there it seems like that’s exactly the analysis that she used. “The plaintiffs haven’t shown that they were injured by the government’s actions.”
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It might be semantics, I’m not sure, but The Hill makes it sound like they didn’t rule on whether the White House attempted to coerce social media into restricting speech - they simply said plaintiffs had no legal standing.

The 6-3 decision does not address the First Amendment issues at the center of the cases and instead denies the challenge filed by two Republican attorneys general and private parties by finding they didn’t have legal standing to bring it.
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If the Court says they have no standing, then so be it. Seems prudent to ensure that burden is met.

Also seems unfortunate that the Court was unable to define any guardrails around this kind of activity from the State.

Would think there’s a fair chance we see more activity like this in the future. Could very well come from the other side next.

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thehill.com
 
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