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Jab or Job: Supreme Court Refuses to Block Vaccine Mandate for Health Workers

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The U.S. Supreme Court declined to block a vaccine mandate for health workers in the state of Maine on Tuesday, sending a potential green light to state mandates across the country.

Justice Stephen Breyer, who handles emergency requests from Maine for the court, was responsible for the denial, which he said came “without prejudice.” The challenge came from a group of Maine health workers who argued Democratic Maine Gov. Janet Mills’ vaccine mandate was illegal. With the SCOTUS denial, the mandate for employees at hospitals and nursing homes will take effect next week, according to The Hill.

Many states have become battlegrounds over enforcement of vaccine mandates in recent months, with courts in Florida, New York and elsewhere blocking various efforts to impose mandates.

During a Tuesday episode of NPR’s “All Things Considered”, Patty Wight, a reporter with Maine Public Radio, said ambulance crews across the state face staffing crises, as some paramedics and EMTs are quitting over the mandate. (Read more from “Jab or Job: Supreme Court Refuses to Block Vaccine Mandate for Health Workers” HERE)

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Biden’s Court-Packing Commission Blames Republicans for Polarization Over Judiciary

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President Joe Biden’s commission on expanding (or “packing”) the Supreme Court issued a set of draft documents Thursday that blamed Republicans for current polarization over the judiciary, due to their refusal to confirm Merrick Garland in 2016.

The “discussion materials,” released Thursday afternoon ahead of a day-long public hearing on Friday, include a potted history of congressional tinkering with the courts, and consider a variety of reforms, including term limits for the Court.

In a document on the “genesis of the reform debate,” the commission largely ignores Democrats’ efforts to politicize the confirmation process, from the battles over Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas, to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s decision to eliminate the filibuster rule for lower-level judicial nominees so that Democrats could push nominees through.

The commission also ignores how decades of liberal judicial activism on social issues undermined the courts’ legitimacy among many Americans, and it neglects President Barack Obama’s public rebukes of the Supreme Court on multiple occasions, including during his State of the Union address in 2010, when the justices were prevented from responding. (Read more from “Biden’s Court-Packing Commission Blames Republicans for Polarization Over Judiciary” HERE)

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Supreme Court Allows Texas Abortion Ban To Stand

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The U.S. Supreme Court, in a decision that was delayed long enough to allow a new Texas abortion ban to take effect, has decided to allow the state requirements to stand pending further court review that is expected to happen in coming months.

The 5-4 majority in the decision included the three justices appointed by President Trump, and left members of the minority complaining about the violation of the U.S. Constitution because of their own perception of a “federal constitutional right” to abortion.

That topic already is on the court’s docket for later this year when a major ruling is expected on another abortion ban, this one from Mississippi, that could be used to undermine, or even overturn, the original 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that created that “right” to abortion.

The justices had failed to act on Tuesday and the law took effect on Wednesday. The opinion actually came out overnight going into Thursday, and might have been delayed because of the insistence by the four dissenters to each write their own opinion on the dispute.

The court’s three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, voted against the state’s abortion limit, and were joined by John Roberts, originally described as a conservative on the bench but more and more voting with the liberal minority. (Read more from “Supreme Court Allows Texas Abortion Ban To Stand” HERE)

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Trump-Appointed Amy Coney Barrett Refuses to Block COVID Vaccine Mandate

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Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett on Thursday refused to block a plan by Indiana University to require students and employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

Barrett’s action came in response to an emergency request from eight students, and it marked the first time the high court has weighed in on a vaccine mandate. Some corporations, states and cities have adopted vaccine requirements for workers or even to dine indoors, and others are considering doing so.

The students said in court papers that they have “a constitutional right to bodily integrity, autonomy, and of medical treatment choice in the context of a vaccination mandate.” They wanted the high court to issue an order barring the university from enforcing the mandate. Seven of the students qualify for a religious exemption. (Read more from “Trump-Appointed Amy Coney Barrett Refuses to Block COVID Vaccine Mandate” HERE)

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It’s Official: Arrest Warrants Have Been Issued for Texas Democrats (VIDEO)

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The Texas Supreme Court ruled earlier this week law enforcement has the authority to arrest Democrat legislators who abandoned their posts last month and flew to Washington D.C. on a private jet. Two of them continued onto Portugal for vacation, citing non-refundable plane tickets. They fled the state in order to avoid a vote on election integrity legislation. . .

(Read more from “It’s Official: Arrest Warrants Have Been Issued for Texas Democrats (VIDEO)” HERE)

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SCOTUS Won’t Hear Case of Christian Florist Who Denied Services for Homosexual Wedding

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The Supreme Court decided Friday that it would not hear the case of a florist who refused to provide her services for a same-sex couple’s wedding. The decision not to hear the case leaves in place an earlier ruling that she violated state anti-discrimination laws.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch said they would have reviewed the ruling, but four justices are needed for the court to hear a case.

In 2018, the high court ordered Washington state courts to take a new look at the case involving florist Barronelle Stutzman and her Arlene’s Flowers business. That followed the justices’ decision in a different case involving a Colorado baker who declined to make a cake for a same-sex wedding. (Read more from “SCOTUS Won’t Hear Case of Christian Florist Who Denied Services for Homosexual Wedding” HERE)

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Supreme Court Upholds Arizona Voting Rules, Including Ballot Harvesting Ban

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The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld two Republican-supported Arizona voting laws they say are intended to ensure election integrity.

The decision, delivered by a 6-3 court split on partisan lines, found that neither law violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and that they were not enacted with racially discriminatory intent. Justice Samuel Alito wrote the court’s majority opinion. Justice Elena Kagan led the liberals in dissent.

The laws require two things. The first is that a ballot be thrown out if it was cast in a precinct other than the one matching the voter’s home address. The second is a ban on “ballot harvesting,” a practice in which third-party carriers collect absentee ballots and deliver them for counting.

Alito wrote in his opinion that because the laws gave voters an “equal opportunity” to vote, they were not discriminatory. He criticized the dissent for taking another tack, which focused on the fact that after the laws were enacted, they had a “disparate impact” on minorities, many of whom were voting in the wrong district or participating in ballot-harvesting.

Alito warned that Kagan and anyone opposing the laws were advancing a “radical” project, in which the only thing that a state takes into account when making voting laws is “the size of any disparity in a rule’s impact on members of protected groups.” And while that is an interest, Alito wrote, it is impossible to make laws that will not have some effect on how many people of any particular group vote. (Read more from “Supreme Court Upholds Arizona Voting Rules, Including Ballot Harvesting Ban” HERE)

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Supreme Court Punts on Including Women in the Draft

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The Supreme Court on Monday punted on a case that could have required women to be included in the Selective Service System – the military draft – citing Congress’ ongoing consideration of the issue.

The court denied a petition from the National Coalition for Men to hear the case on the system that currently requires all men from 18 to 25 to register for potential military service in a national crisis. The group said that the continued integration of women into the military and the reversal of the ban on women in combat removed the basis of the 1981 case that upheld the selection of only men for the draft.

The Selective Service System, opposing a change that would mandate women register for the draft, emphasized that the court previously “deferred to Congress’s judgment” on the Selective Service System. . .

In the precedent that upheld the men-only draft, Sotomayor wrote, “this Court upheld the Act’s gender-based registration requirement against an equal protection challenge, citing the fact that women were ‘excluded from combat’ roles and hence ‘would not be needed in the event of a draft.’”

“The role of women in the military has changed dramatically since then. Beginning in 1991, thousands of women have served with distinction in a wide range of combat roles, from operating military aircraft and naval vessels to participating in boots-on-the-ground infantry missions,” Sotomayor continued. “Women have passed the military’s demanding tests to become U. S. Army Rangers, Navy SEALs, and Green Berets… As of 2015, there are no longer any positions in the United States Armed Forces closed to women.” (Read more from “Supreme Court Punts on Including Women in the Draft” HERE)

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Second-Grader Has Bible Confiscated By School Officials

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It’s been some 30 years or more since the U.S. Supreme Court established some of the most significant precedents for students in schools, including one that the First Amendment does indeed apply to students in schools.

But still sometimes educators don’t understand, as happened with a recent case in Illinois where officials confiscated a Bible from a second-grader simply because she was reading it during recess, and would talk about it with friends.

The documentation of the situation comes in a report from Francis J. Manion at the American Center for Law and Justice, whose founder, Jay Sekulow, argued some of those precedent-establishing cases at the Supreme Court.

“A little girl had her Bible confiscated by school officials. How could this still be happening in America?” the report wondered, then explaining it’s because “local school officials still don’t seem to have gotten the message.”

“We recently heard from the parents of Gabrielle, a second grader in Illinois. It seems Gabrielle likes to bring her Bible to school and read it during recess. Sometimes she reads it aloud, and sometimes other kids listen in and talk with her about what she’s reading,” the report said. “Constitutional crisis? It shouldn’t be; but little Gabrielle had her Bible taken away by a teacher and was told, ‘You just can’t be doing that.'” (Read more from “Second-Grader Has Bible Confiscated By School Officials” HERE)

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Trump-Appointed SCOTUS Judges Side With Liberals in Computer Fraud Case

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Trump-appointed Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch sided with liberal Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan Thursday to endorse a narrow approach on how to apply a 1986 law against computer hacking.

The justices overturned the conviction of a police officer\, Nathan Van Buren, who was paid to run a license plate search in violation of the police department’s policy and, according to the federal government, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

But Barrett, writing for the majority, said the officer technically did not access information he wasn’t entitled to. Instead, he simply misused his access to information he was authorized to see. Therefore, the court said, the officer did not violate federal law.

“This provision covers those who obtain information from particular areas in the computer – such as files, folders or databases – to which their computer access does not extend,” Barrett wrote in the majority opinion. “It does not cover those who, like Van Buren, have improper motives for obtaining information that is otherwise available to them.” (Read more from “Trump-Appointed SCOTUS Judges Side With Liberals in Computer Fraud Case” HERE)

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