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Clarence Thomas Absent From First Day of New Supreme Court Term

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Justice Clarence Thomas was absent Monday from the first official day of the U.S. Supreme Court’s new term. Chief Justice John Roberts delivered a short statement saying Justice Thomas, 71, was absent due to an illness, according to Reuters.

The Chief Justice did not elaborate or say when Thomas is expected to return. Thomas is expected to still participate in deciding the three cases being argued before the Court today.

Justice Clarence Thomas, according to an analysis by political scientists, is the most-conservative of the nine justices currently on the bench. The Court’s newest justice, Brett Kavanaugh, comes in at a close second.

On Tuesday the Court will hear arguments in three landmark cases that could decide the future of the LGBTQ community’s rights to work, and just how much discrimination can legally be used against them.

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Sotomayor Compares Asylum Ruling to U.S. Turning Away Jewish Refugees in WWII

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Justice Sonia Sotomayor compared Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling that asylum seekers have not entered the U.S. at the border to one of the most shameful parts of U.S. history.

The Supreme Court issued four rulings on Thursday. One of them was in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, which challenged a 2016 U.S. Customs and Border Patrol policy where border patrol officers stood at the U.S. border and kept asylum seekers from entering the country. The immigration activist group Al Otro Lado challenged the rule, arguing it “withheld inspection and asylum processing from aliens who arrive at the border.”

The Court decided 6-3 along ideological lines that the policy was legal, with Justice Samuel Alito invoking “ordinary speech” to explain his reasoning.

READ MORE: ‘Alarm Bells’ as Trump Turns to Civil War White Supremacists in SCOTUS Case

“This case presents a straightforward question: whether an alien who seeks to enter the United States from Mexico ‘arrives in the United States’ when he or she is still in Mexico. In the decision below, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit answered ‘yes.’ That is wrong. In ordinary speech, no one would say that a person “arrives in” a place—for example, a house, a city, or a country—before the person enters that place. The context in which the phrase ‘arrives in the United States’ is used in the immigration statutes at issue here supports an ordinary-meaning reading. So does the presumption against extraterritoriality. We therefore reverse,” Alito wrote.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote his own concurrence, which defended President Donald Trump’s power in determining immigration policy, writing “Congress, for its part, has no enumerated power to require the President to bring certain aliens into the country. The Constitution grants Congress the power to ‘establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization.’ … But, the class members in this case are not naturalized or even on the path to naturalization.”

“So, any statute that forced the President to allow aliens to cross the border against his will would appear to exceed Congress’s enumerated powers, and a court could not enforce it against the President,” Thomas added.

Sotomayor wrote a blistering dissent which, according to journalist Steve Vladeck, was read from the bench. In her dissent, Sotomayor tells the story of the M.S. St. Louis, a ship that set sail from Europe in 1939 with over 900 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. The M.S. St. Louis sailed to Cuba and the United States. Both Cuba and the United States turned it away. In the United States’ case, it was due to strict immigration quotas and, as she writes, “the relevant quota was already filled for that year.”

The M.S. St. Louis sailed to Canada where it was again turned away, and went back to Europe.

“Tragically, over 500 of the refugees that had attempted to flee were trapped in Western Europe under German control, and over 250 of them died during the Holocaust. Most of them were ‘murdered in the killing centers of Auschwitz and Sobibór’ and ‘the rest died in internment camps, in hiding, or attempting to evade the Nazis,'” she wrote.

“Congress passed the Refugee Act in 1980 because it did not want this country to repeat the mistakes of its past. Yet if the refugees on the M. S. St. Louis were to walk up to a port of entry on our southern border today, the majority’s interpretation would allow immigration officers to refuse even to consider their asylum applications by physically blocking them from stepping foot onto U. S. soil,” Sotomayor added.

“The consequences of today’s decision are predictable. More people will die. More people will attempt to cross the border illegally, and some will make it while others will not. More dissenting people will be forced to walk along the U. S.-Mexico border in dangerous conditions, trying to find a port that will inspect them. More people will turn back and be subjected to violence because of something they cannot or should not have to change about themselves, such as their race, religion, nationality, or political opinion. Because this is neither what Congress said nor what its words permit, I respectfully dissent.”

Alito responded to Sotomayor’s dissent from the bench, Vladeck said—adding “That’s … unusual.” However, he declined to say what the substance of Alito’s response was. Audio for the ruling will be released this October, as is standard SCOTUS protocol.

 

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CORRUPTION

Sotomayor Slams SCOTUS Over Ruling ‘Declaring All Latinos Fair Game to Be Seized’ by ICE

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Justice Sonia Sotomayor had harsh words for the Supreme Court in her dissent in a ruling allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement to continue to arrest people based on profiling Latinos working low-wage jobs.

Monday morning, the Supreme Court of the United States issued an emergency decision in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo. The case concerns “Operation At Large,” which deployed ICE agents in the Los Angeles area to car washes, bus stops, farms and other locations believed to be frequented by Latino people who may or may not be undocumented immigrants. On July 11, the Central District Court of California ruled that ICE had to stop Operation At Large until appeals in the case could be heard.

The Court’s ruling contained no official explanation for the ruling, however Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a concurrence. In his concurrence, Kavanaugh said the law allowed ICE to “‘briefly detain’ an individual ‘for questioning’” if they have “a reasonable suspicion, based on specific articulable facts, that the person being questioned . . . is an alien illegally in the United States.”

READ MORE: Loyalty Litmus Test? Trump Allies Quietly Prep SCOTUS Short List

Operation At Large, he said, represented “reasonable suspicion” to detain someone on the following factors: “(i) presence at particular locations such as bus stops, car washes, day laborer pickup sites, agricultural sites, and the like; (ii) the type of work one does; (iii) speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent; and (iv) apparent race or ethnicity.”

He added that “apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion” but could be a “‘relevant factor,” and that if someone detained by ICE turned out to be a citizen, they would be “free to go after the brief encounter.”

Sotomayor disagreed that this is what was happening, citing what had happened to other citizens. Jason Gavidia worked at a Los Angeles tow yard that ICE stopped at. Agents repeatedly asked if he was a citizen. They then took his phone, pushed him against a metal fence, twisted his arm, and took away his identification, according to Sotomayor’s dissent.

“Other Operation At Large encounters have included even more force and even fewer questions. For example, agents pulled up in four unmarked cars to a bus stop in Pasadena; ‘the doors opened and men in masks with guns started running at’ three Latino men who were having their morning coffee, waiting to be picked up for work,” she wrote.

“In Glendale, nearly a dozen masked agents with guns ‘jumped out of . . . cars’ at a Home Depot, and began ‘chasing’ and ‘tackl[ing]’ Latino day laborers without ‘identify[ing] themselves as ICE or police, ask[ing] questions, or say[ing] anything else.’ In downtown Los Angeles, agents ‘jumped out of a van, rushed up to [a tamale vendor], surrounded him, and handled him violently,’ all ‘[w]ithout asking . . . any questions.'”

Sotomayor concluded that Operation At Large and the Court’s decision “all but declared that all Latinos, U. S. citizens or not, who work low wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time, taken away from work, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agents’ satisfaction.”

She also condemned the court for not issuing an explanation beyond the concurrence. She alleged that the Court had been eager to “circumvent the ordinary appellate process” when it comes to President Donald Trump and his administration.

“Some situations simply cry out for an explanation, such as when the Government’s conduct flagrantly violates the law,” Sotomayor wrote, adding that Operation At Large and the Court’s ruling clearly violates the Bill of Rights.

“The Fourth Amendment protects every individual’s constitutional right to be ‘free from arbitrary interference by law officers.’ After today, that may no longer be true for those who happen to look a certain way, speak a certain way, and appear to work a certain type of legitimate job that pays very little. Because this is unconscionably irreconcilable with our Nation’s constitutional guarantees, I dissent,” she wrote.

Image via Shutterstock

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Sotomayor Calls SCOTUS Ruling Upholding ‘Patently Unconstitutional’ Orders ‘Shameful’

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Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned that the Supreme Court’s Friday morning ruling that courts cannot tell the federal government not to enforce an executive order is a slippery slope.

The court ruled 6-3 along ideological lines in Trump’s favor in Trump v. CASA, Inc.. The case hinged on whether or not lower courts had the ability to issue injunctions stopping the federal government from following executive orders. In this case, the executive order in question would end birthright citizenship—a right enshrined in the 14th Amendment since 1868—for children born to undocumented immigrants in the United States.

The 14th Amendment lays out the rules granting citizenship. Section 1 begins “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

The Court ruled that lower courts cannot issue a “universal injunction” against an executive order. Rather, individuals must sue for relief under an injunction. The ruling gives an example of an individual pregnant person suing to ensure citizenship for their child. The Court says that if the executive order is stopped against that individual, their “complete relief” will not be “any more complete” if the order applies to everyone.

“When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too. The Government’s applications for partial stays of the preliminary injunctions are granted, but only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue,” the ruling read.

READ MORE: Over Two-Thirds of Voters In Favor of Birthright Citizenship as SCOTUS Set to Decide

In her dissent, Sotomayor called out the Trump administration for attempting to do an end-run around the Constitution and succeeding.

“It is now the President who attempts, in an Executive Order (Order or Citizenship Order), to repudiate birthright citizenship. Every court to evaluate the Order has deemed it patently unconstitutional and, for that reason, has enjoined the Federal Government from enforcing it,” she wrote.

“The Government does not ask for complete stays of the injunctions, as it ordinarily does before this Court. Why? The answer is obvious: To get such relief, the Government would have to show that the Order is likely constitutional, an impossible task in light of the Constitution’s text, history, this Court’s precedents, federal law, and Executive Branch practice. So the Government instead tries its hand at a different game. It asks this Court to hold that, no matter how illegal a law or policy, courts can never simply tell the Executive to stop enforcing it against anyone,” Sotomayor continued.

“The gamesmanship in this request is apparent and the Government makes no attempt to hide it. Yet, shamefully, this Court plays along.”

Sotomayor argues that the Trump v. CASA, Inc. ruling now opens the door for any rights in the Constitution to be stripped from Americans via executive order. She specifically says that the ruling could be used by a “different administration … to seize firearms from lawabiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship,” two frequent bugbears of the right.

“The majority holds that, absent cumbersome class-action litigation, courts cannot completely enjoin even such plainly unlawful policies unless doing so is necessary to afford the formal parties complete relief. That holding renders constitutional guarantees meaningful in name only for any individuals who are not parties to a lawsuit. Because I will not be complicit in so grave an attack on our system of law, I dissent,” Sotomayor wrote.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a concurring dissent, where she said she agreed with Sotomayor, but also called the ruling “an existential threat to the rule of law.”

“Focusing on inapt comparisons to impotent English tribunals, the majority ignores the Judiciary’s foundational duty to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States. The majority’s ruling thus not only diverges from first principles, it is also profoundly dangerous, since it gives the Executive the go-ahead to sometimes wield the kind of unchecked, arbitrary power the Founders crafted our Constitution to eradicate,” Jackson wrote. “With deep disillusionment, I dissent.”

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