The U.S. Supreme Court Is Making America Unsafe for Americans and Everyone Else

The Republican Faction on the Roberts Court Is Changing the Rules, Again and Again, to Aid Trump

The six people chosen by Republican presidents to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court have ruled, yet again, to act in extraordinary ways to aid the Republican president they helped pave the way to occupy the White House. Three of them were, of course, named by Donald Trump, from a list hand-picked by Leonard Leo, a man determined to regress the law. And Trump has made it no secret that he has been counting on “his” three appointees and the other Republican appointees to rule his way.

This is the first full term where they have had the opportunity to prove that their loyalty is to him, not to the majesty of the law. And, they have absolutely done that.

In a series of 6-3 partisan rulings, these Republican operatives in judicial robes have put the desires of Trump above the interests of the American people. Without any trace of shame, they are overturning the rulings of lower courts, which have issued rulings grounded on long-standing legal precedents. With Chief Justice John Roberts helming the nation’s highest court, these judicial appointees are putting their thumbs on the scales of justice in aid of Trump’s repressive and destructive schemes that transgress the Constitution, statutes, and rules as these laws have long been interpreted by almost all other judges.

The faction dominating the Roberts Court is making America less safe and less free.

Here is a snapshot of one of the reckless and dangerous rulings the Roberts Court just issued.

The Roberts Court Lets King Trump Restart Efforts to Deport American Babies

First, in a case called Trump v. CASA, Trump’s 2020 election-eve appointee Amy Coney Barrett declared for the Court that the federal courts generally no longer have the power to issue nationwide injunctions, which are rulings that enjoin, or halt, a nationwide action by the federal government – even when the action halted is “blatantly unconstitutional,” in the view of the lower court. This aggressive ruling by the Roberts faction was decried by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who noted that the ruling “kneecaps the Judiciary’s authority to stop the Executive from enforcing even the most unconstitutional policies.”

And make no mistake, there is one specific policy on their minds here: the unprecedented Executive Order Trump issued on January 20th, asserting that Americans born in the United States can be deemed by his administration not to be citizens despite the plain language of the U.S. Constitution. Since the adoption of that language in the 14th Amendment in 1868, as affirmed by the Supreme Court in 1898, this provision in the Constitution has been interpreted to “affirm the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory….”

Barrett and her fellow Republican appointees did not issue a ruling on Trump’s claim that he has the power to unilaterally strip Americans born during his administration of their U.S. citizenship based on the foreign citizenship of their parents. However, the Court’s edict allows Trump’s order to proceed against any baby born in the US in the past four months and in the future unless their parents can get a court order applying to themselves to stop such an action (securing “complete relief” for themselves but not for others). The Roberts Court left open the door for the possibility of class actions – cases for a group of similarly situated plaintiffs – prompting requests for class certification to be filed immediately, which are now pending.

But, as we noted on a recent Tilted Scales, the message is “Roberts Court to Babies: Get a Lawyer.” Immediately after the ruling, the Trump Administration refused to commit in court to the judge presiding over the remanded CASA case that it would not begin deporting babies while the lower courts consider whether to certify a class action to protect these American infants’ rights.

Using “History” Selectively to Destroy Our Rights

The weapon to accomplish this destruction of liberty used by Barrett and her fellow partisans is the notion that our rights are limited to whatever was historically practiced in America more than 200 years ago. Despite the fact that, for decades, federal courts have issued nationwide class actions protecting civil rights, due process rights, and environmental rules, suddenly those numerous legal precedents are no longer valid because six justices hand-placed onto the Court to regress the law have decided to throw all that precedent in the trash in order to embrace a manufactured “doctrine” of so-called “originalism” to limit our rights and legal processes.

The cold, long-dead hands of a generation of slaveholders are enchaining us all through this neo-Confederate Roberts Court. Except when it isn’t.

That same Court obliterated the deeply rooted American principle that no president is above the law to give Trump unprecedented immunity from criminal prosecution, and to pave the way for his return to power. As I note in my forthcoming book, Without Precedent, at the hearing on his nomination to the Supreme Court, John Roberts pledged that no president is above the law, in order to get the job, only to betray that promise when it mattered most by protecting Donald Trump from criminal prosecution. Just a year ago, Roberts and his fellow Republican appointees gave Trump unprecedented immunity even though the Constitution commands presidents to faithfully execute the law and provides that presidents can be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors. Roberts and the MAGA justices ignore the language of the law and more than two centuries of consistent legal precedents and understanding when it suits them and their political agenda.

If that “history and tradition” gamesmanship sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the same ploy the judges Leonard Leo helped get confirmed to the Court used to reverse Roe v. Wade. It’s also the same ruse Leo’s buddy Clarence Thomas used to strike down a century of common-sense limits on concealed carry of handguns.

Make no mistake: the Roberts Court is gunning down our rights, remaking what the law commands to align it with what MAGA desires, regardless of precedents against it. And one of their first targets, following the end of their first full Trumpian term, is… literal babies.

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What I’m Reading

• The Originalism Trap: How Extremists Stole the Constitution and How We the People Can Take It Back by Madiba K. Dennie

  • This compelling book uncloaks the regressive anti-civil rights agenda behind the supposedly principled tool of “originalism” for interpreting the Constitution, and it also argues for the vital role of the courts in protecting our rights.

• Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America by Martha S. Jones

  • This thorough historical analysis traces the responses to the despicable Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) ruling by Chief Justice Roger Taney for the Supreme Court and how Black activists and their allies won birthright citizenship for enslaved Americans and anyone born in the United States.

• And, as usual, the U.S. Constitution, which commands the protection of the rights of babies born in these United States, our fellow Americans, whose futures are at risk because of the lawless dictates of Trump and the complicity of the Roberts Court.

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