Legal/scotus thread

The Masterpiece Cakeshop (gay wedding cake) decision is due out soon. I'm going to make a prediction. I predict the court will side with the bakery but will do so on due process grounds. Doing this will sidestep the thornier issues of whether a custom cake is speech and whether the bakers' free exercise rights were violated.

Honestly, I think most people should be hoping for this result. Whether you agree or disagree with what the bakers did, the process of enforcing that law is severely messed up. The Colorado Civil Rights Commission is an appointed body that does not require any of its members to be attorneys (in spite of the fact that the commission must interpret law and levy fines). At least four members must be from groups that have been or might be discriminated against. The proceedings are confidential and so the actions of the Commission are not subject to public scrutiny and have little oversight.

Think of it this way, imagine you're a business owner and you have a patron that gets upset and wants to make you pay. They file a complaint with this commission alleging you discriminated against them. Instead of going before a judge whose qualifications have been vetted by a judicial qualifications process, you go before a group of people with no legal training. In fact, the commission is likely biased towards finding discrimination. The proceedings are secret and you have no one overseeing what these people are doing.

Are you going to feel like you've received due process?

Hopefully the court recognizes that these secretive semi-courts run by unqualified people need addressed. Kennedy (the swing vote) seemed very interested in the due process issues giving me hope that this is the direction the court goes.
 
Interesting case was handed down yesterday. In the case, the plaintiffs were workers who had signed arbitration agreements containing class action waivers and agreeing to individual arbitrations as a condition of employment. However, they wanted to sue their employers in class action suits. The Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) gives great deference to arbitration agreements and allows them in employment disputes while the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) gives workers the right to engage in collective activities to advocate their position.

The employers were arguing that the arbitration agreements with the class action waivers prevented the employees from engaging in class action suits and these agreements were valid under the FAA. The workers argued that class action suits were included in the collective activities the NLRA protects. The workers argued that since the NLRA was passed later, it controlled.

The court sided with the employers.

You'll hear this case talked about as a being all about employee rights and how they are under attack. While there will no doubt be negative consequences to this decision (the majority admitted as such), the case was actually a case about statutory construction.

The court was being asked to interpret how the FAA and NLRA interacted. The worker's position was essentially one of what is known as implied repeal. Congress can of course explicitly repeal laws in passed in the past but it can also repeal laws by passing newer laws that are inconsistent with the older law. The workers argued the NLRA's allowance of collective activities was inconsistent with the FAA's guaranteeing enforcement of the individual arbitration agreements with the class action waivers and so it repealed that law by implication as it applies to workers suing in class action suits.

The problem with that position is that implied repeal is a very disfavored doctrine. The court's position has long been that in interpreting statutes, if there is a reasonable interpretation in which the statutes do not conflict and force can be given to both, that interpretation will be used. So the burden on the workers was to show that the only reasonable interpretation of the NLRA was that it guaranteed class action suits by workers in spite of arbitration agreements. That's a very, very hard thing to do.

So while I do not like the effect this decision is going to have, it is actually legally correct. I will always applaud the court adhering to the rules of statutory construction. Departing from it makes the court a super legislature.

It isn't the court's job to fix statutes to advance policy. That's the job of congress. So the problem here isn't that the court refused to side with workers, the problem is that congress can't be trusted to do its job.
 
https://www.courthousenews.com/campus-pot-ban-in-arizona-ruled-unconstitutional/



In yet another victory with a 7-0 vote in the Arizona Supreme Court it was ruled unconstitutional to criminalize pot possession for medical marijuana patients on college campuses. The colleges argument is they have a huge giant stick in their ass.... I mean they said they woupdnlobe federal funding of they did not enforce federal drug laws. The court called that bull**** out. The medical marijuana initiative was voted on by the public and it can't be amended without a 3/4ths majority of the legislature. In that initiative it states a few places it is illegal to use/possss like pre schools. Colleges aren't on the list and by specifically naming a bunch of locations it is infered that everywhere else is legal.
 
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/title-ix-is-too-easy-to-abuse/561650/




The lawyer for the girl suspended for drunken sexual assault is arguing that both parties should be investigated for sexual assault if both are drunk. This is why this case needed to happen. They can make whatever bull**** rules and laws they want but they have to apply them evenly to men and women. Female sexual assault on men is probably the most under reported crime there is. Not necessarily crimes I agree with or want punished if slapping a girl on the ass is sexual assault so is pinching a guys ass.
 


And no one will be held responsible if that kids dies or commits suicide or anything else bad happens to him. This is really sad ****. Notice how the cop says he is just doing his job bit offers nothing to attempt to help the situation by pleading with the public to change his job. Fact is he loves dragging 15 year olds from a loving home where he gets the medicine he needs to a group home where the very first day he had to be hospitalized. This kindnod cop relishes beating 95 year old cancer patients for smoking a joint. If this was ever my job. Just doing your job is not an excuse to commit violations of basic human rights. Not in any way different than incarcerating Jews in Nazi Germany. These cops would run over kids of the law allows them to.
 
striker42 said:
The Masterpiece Cakeshop (gay wedding cake) decision is due out soon. I'm going to make a prediction. I predict the court will side with the bakery but will do so on due process grounds. Doing this will sidestep the thornier issues of whether a custom cake is speech and whether the bakers' free exercise rights were violated.

Honestly, I think most people should be hoping for this result. Whether you agree or disagree with what the bakers did, the process of enforcing that law is severely messed up. The Colorado Civil Rights Commission is an appointed body that does not require any of its members to be attorneys (in spite of the fact that the commission must interpret law and levy fines). At least four members must be from groups that have been or might be discriminated against. The proceedings are confidential and so the actions of the Commission are not subject to public scrutiny and have little oversight.

Think of it this way, imagine you're a business owner and you have a patron that gets upset and wants to make you pay. They file a complaint with this commission alleging you discriminated against them. Instead of going before a judge whose qualifications have been vetted by a judicial qualifications process, you go before a group of people with no legal training. In fact, the commission is likely biased towards finding discrimination. The proceedings are secret and you have no one overseeing what these people are doing.

Are you going to feel like you've received due process?

Hopefully the court recognizes that these secretive semi-courts run by unqualified people need addressed. Kennedy (the swing vote) seemed very interested in the due process issues giving me hope that this is the direction the court goes.
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Well done on your prediction.
The court overturned the decision today based on Colorado's apparent animosity towards religion. This looks like a win for Masterpiece and a loss for those who believe they should be able to turn down a business transaction that conflicts with their religious beliefs.
 
Yes, nicely done. The Civil Rights Commission process seems janky as hell. Hard to find fault with the decision.
 
The court punted on the bigger questions such as trying to further define what "expression" is or whether religious liberty trumps anti-discrimination laws. That is not surprising in the least. The court will often try to sidestep thorny questions such as that.

One of the biggest things about this decision was that it was 7-2. Both Kagan and Breyer joined Kennedy's opinion along with all of the court's conservatives. Only Ginsburg and Sotomayor dissented. I briefly glanced over the decision as well as the dissent. I got the feeling from the dissent that Ginsburg felt there was a real injustice to the gay couple and really wanted to redress it and kind of ignored the fact that Colorado civil rights commission didn't give the baker a fair shake.

Ultimately this decision is fairly narrow. Like I said earlier, it doesn't answer the questions found in other cases dealing with expression and free exercise. What this decision does represent is a shot across the bow of these civil rights commissions that are applying their own personal political views in what is really a judicial tribunal. The court was very concerned with the fact that the Commission sided with bakers who refused to make cakes disparaging gay marriage. This was the court telling these bodies that they need to be even handed in their decisions. Something they are quite frequently not.
 
With cases like this, it's important to realize that the reasoning used here can and will be applied to other cases. So you have to think of other situations where this reasoning could be applied. I think it's something that Ginsburg failed to consider in her dissent.

Suppose that a Catholic couple go into a bakery and want to buy a custom wedding cake to celebrate their daughter's baptism. Now in this case, the baker is a staunch atheist who sincerely believes that parents should not force their religion on their children and so refuses to make a cake that celebrates doing that. The baker states it would be forcing him to create an expression supporting something he vehemently disagrees with.

The Catholic couple file a complaint with their state's civil rights commission. The commission has at times upheld christian bakers' right to refuse to bake cakes for satanic groups. During this hearing, several members of the commission admonish the baker saying that a hostility towards religion has caused the persecution of millions under communist regimes. The commission sides with the Catholic couple and levies a large fine on the atheist baker.

This fact pattern is not terribly far fetched. If the court held that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission's handling of the Masterpiece Cakeshop case was appropriate then other commissions would be free to apply similar hostility towards groups their members don't like.

Would it be so hard to envision a state where Jewish or Muslim business owners were treated unfairly by biased commission? Could a racist on a commission show racial favoritism and get away with it?

The court really had no choice in this case. The Colorado Civil Rights Commission was way out of bounds.
 
cajunrevenge said:
https://medium.com/@brandonpaul/the-miami-decision-and-the-title-ix-race-to-the-bottom-4b96efebbeb1



this college title IX policy has reached its natural conclusion. A male sued saying he was also unable to cobsent but the female was not disciplined. The only correct policy is to call the police and let them sort it out.
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Good - this nonsense needs to die on its own incompetence.

I was listening to a podcast the other day that was discussing the Matt Patricia situation... someone said that it was spring break and he was probably drinking, to which the female host (correctly) says "alcohol is not an excuse... alcohol doesn't make you rape someone"

Not 2 minutes later the same woman brings up another situation where she says a woman couldn't properly consent because she was intoxicated, and therefore that man was also guilty of sexual assault

As usual, they want it both ways.

I guess I'll start drinking and driving now since I can legally claim that I was to intoxicated to make the responsible decision
 
Anybody background on Trump’s pick Kavanaugh? Seems like the consensus that he’s conservative enough that the left will fight his nomination hard, but not so much that he’s going to galvanize conservatives.

Considering that the SC is ultimately going to be Trump’s legacy, this is a pretty big deal.
 
chop2chip said:
Anybody background on Trump’s pick Kavanaugh? Seems like the consensus that he’s conservative enough that the left will fight his nomination hard, but not so much that he’s going to galvanize conservatives.

Considering that the SC is ultimately going to be Trump’s legacy, this is a pretty big deal.
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On merits alone he's highly qualified.
 
But then again, we won't have to worry about rational arguments from the left bc sure this will be the 13th Armageddon

[TW]1016498336592027649[/TW]
 
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