Supreme Court finishes strong..

[tvc184]

In wrapping up this session the Supreme Court finished strong.

In the last couple of days we have:

Trump v. Casa - The Supreme Court said that federal district judges have been greatly overstepping their authority in issuing universal injunctions. As an example from what I googled, G W Bush had 12 universal injunctions in 8 years. Obama had 20 in 8 years. Trump has had 40 in less than 5 months. Of those, 35 were issued in only 5 districts. So out of almost 100 federal district courts, 5 have been used as a hatchet job. Anything that Trump does, take it to one of those federal courts and end it. Had Obama had this happen so the same pace as Trump, he would have had 900 universal injunctions, not 20.

Mahmoud v. Taylor - In Montgomery County, Maryland, the school board decided that several LGBTQ books would be used from Pre-K through 5th grade. The district however had an opt out option if the teacher used the books for class assignments. Not so shockingly, the school district was stunned at the volume of opt out requests. So they changed the policy to no opt outs allowed for any reason. The Supreme Court struck down the ban on an opt out choice as it violated the First Amendment right to freedom of religion. Apparently some people have forgotten or haven’t understood that freedom of religion at school doesn’t mean only that religion can’t be pushed at public schools but it also can’t be denied. Seriously, who thinks that reading books on sexuality starting at 4 years old is a good thing… much less forced. 

Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton - Yep, a Texas case. Texas passed a law where accessing online adult content sites required age verification. The FSC claimed that it violated the free speech of adults to require age verification. The Texas law did not ban anything but only required age verification. The FSC claimed that showing your age violated the Constitution. The Supreme Court said that the state governments already restrict such material from over the county sales and a person can be asked to verify age by producing an ID. The same is true for tobacco and alcohol sales as examples. So why should digital media have less of a standard? The Supreme Court said that it didn’t and having as age requirement for online material that minors might access is no different than face to face, over the counter transactions.

Overall it seems like a great couple of days from SCOTUS.