SCOTUS Good and Bad 2

Last week I reviewed several important Supreme Court decisions from earlier in the month which brought both good news and bad news. This week we’ll look at a few more.

Chief Justice joined the reasonable members of the court in the case of Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California. The 5-4 decision holds that the Department of Homeland Security’s move to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program was arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act. This means that immigrants who fall under DACA provisions are still protected against deportation. It doesn’t mean that the administration can’t try again but at least they have to follow procedure which may delay final action until the election and possibly until after the inauguration.

In a win for Americans of all political stripes the 6-3 decision in Barr v. American Assn. of Political Consultants, Inc. The court held that the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, known as the TCPA, generally prohibits robocalls to cell phones and home phones. What this means to you and me is that those annoying robocalls are indeed illegal under federal law and now we just have to get the Federal Communication Commission to take it seriously and start prosecuting people for it.

I think most Americans would also agree with the 9-0 decision in Chiafalo v. Washington in which the court held that a state may enforce an elector’s pledge to support their party’s nominee – and the state voters’ choice – for president in the Electoral College. This is in regard to what is commonly known as faithless electors or presidential electors that don’t vote as they committed to once the electoral college meets to actually vote on who will be president. Remember that while we use short hand and say we are voting for president, we’re actually voting for members of the electoral college who will cast the actual vote for president. In the 2016 election 4 electors voted for someone other than the candidate that the voters sent them to support. This decision says doing so is illegal for electors from states with laws prohibiting that.

Many are disappointed with the court in its 7-2 ruling in Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v. Pennsylvania,  which held that Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v. Pennsylvania – ACA exception to insurance coverage of contraception the Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and the Treasury had authority under the Affordable Care Act to promulgate rules exempting employers with religious or moral objections from providing contraceptive coverage to their employees. Justice Ginsberg’s dissent points out that accommodations like these have never before “allowed the religious beliefs of some to overwhelm the rights and interest of others who do not share those beliefs.”

While the last Supreme Court issue isn’t a ruling it’s a failure to protect voting rights. The State of Florida is doing its best to avoid following the will of the people who voted overwhelmingly to restore the right to vote to felons who served their sentences. The state decided that in order to register that all fines and court costs must be paid but the state admits that it is unable to determine how much each person owes, not to mention that the proposition that was voted on had no such requirement. I district court ruled in favor of voting rights activists and then the state appealed to a higher court which issued a stay leaving about a million potential voters unable to participate in a state election in August.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - July 22, 2020