The US Justice System was recently handicapped by banning Federal appeals court rulings from being applied nationwide. As a result, the compromised and corrupt Supreme Court is the one and only court in the entire nation that’s allowed to make a nationwide ruling.
mechoman444@lemmy.world 2 days ago
This is a misleading characterization of what actually happened.
The Supreme Court did not ban federal appeals courts from issuing rulings that apply throughout their circuits, nor did it declare that only the Supreme Court can make decisions with broad legal effect.
What the Court addressed was the use of nationwide (universal) injunctions, where a single district judge blocks a federal policy across the entire country before the case has fully worked its way through the courts. Those are not the same thing as appellate court precedents.
The practical effect is that different circuits may reach different conclusions until the Supreme Court resolves the conflict. That’s how the federal judicial system has traditionally functioned. Appeals court decisions are still binding within their own circuits and continue to shape the law.
If you want to argue that limiting nationwide injunctions is a bad policy, that’s a legitimate position. But saying the decision “banned federal appeals court rulings from being applied nationwide” or made the Supreme Court “the only court allowed to make nationwide rulings” is inaccurate. It conflates two different legal concepts to support a broader political narrative.
someone@lemmy.today 1 day ago
This grossly mischaracterizes things.
The defining feature of the US Court system is how slow it is. We are talking about federal policies that are corrupt, racist, and unconstitutional.
The legal concepts are effectively the same because without nationwide injunctions, there is no mechanism to stop corrupt policy.
The Supreme Court declines to hear most cases, they cherry pick what they want to review, and occasionally when there is a large clear conflict between circuits then it means the Supreme Court may decide to hear the case in a year while harm is ongoing.
You’re saying appeals courts are still binding on their own circuits, but we are talking about federal nationwide policy and executive branch that just ignores rulings unless there is enforcement.
The correct way for this to have proceeded previously was for a federal appellate court to rule it’s unconstitutional to randomly harass people on the street because it violates the 4th Amendment without probable cause, rule it’s an ongoing pattern and they keep ignoring the law and so a simple legal instruction is insufficient, and the instruct the federal marshals to seize ice infrastructure, their computers and phones in DC, and destroy them, and then to stay the order while it gets an emergency appeal, forcing the Supreme Court to rule on this.
But the Supreme Court doesn’t even have to rule on these issues now. The federal courts are powerless to do anything and the Supreme Court declines to hear it. Also, the Supreme Court held racism was a valid reason for detaining people, so ICE agents are fully allowed to randomly harass, detain, threaten and subdue people who are not white or not black, because that’s what these racist MAGA hicks want: they want a reduction in brown people, and they know they can’t easily harass and kill black people anymore, so they are just going after brown people instead.
Let’s just call it what it is: racist white people don’t like so many Latinos and other brown skinned people, they have noticed that white people are a smaller portion of the USA and white people are having fewer children, so they have enacted racist policies and elected a corrupt Supreme Court and selected a racist government in power to find ways to change this.
To pretend that the federal courts still have some sort of power in this situation is intellectually dishonest and mischaracterizes what is going on. In theory, decisions are binding on lower courts still. But what does it matter? Does a court matter if no one listens to it and then its power is taken away?
The racist MAGA hicks made a calculation that they could come into power, enact laws that would have previously been deemed illegal, pack the courts with conservatives, and start a campaign to reduce the brown population of the USA and also that liberals and brown people would not take up arms and try to physically stop them. And that calculation was right. Liberals are notoriously anti-gun, anti-gun ownership, and for extreme gun regulations; they are also the party of civility. So… MAGA was right.
What happens when things change and liberals come into power? Will there be hearings? A tribunal? The Supreme Court has sanctioned all of this under racist, intellectually dishonest language and so on what grounds can people be punished for evil? There are no grounds unless there’s a Constitutional amendment. It won’t happen. Even today, eminent domain is being used to seize land for data centers while black people never got their 40 acres or their mule. The horrible truth is MAGA got away with it and will get away with it. Liberals do not have the audacity and courage, nor the voting numbers, to do anything of substance.
mechoman444@lemmy.world 1 day ago
What you’re saying isn’t necessarily wrong. You’re just piling a bunch of unrelated issues on top of what I said, gerrymandering, racism, politics, public policy, what the law should be, and so on.
None of that was the question. Those are separate discussions.
What I object to are blanket statements wrapped in propaganda. The original claim was grossly inaccurate. Federal appeals courts still make binding decisions within their own circuits. That’s how the federal judiciary has always functioned.
As I said, whether the Supreme Court made the right decision in the first place is an entirely different debate.
Honestly, I don’t understand what any of the points you raised have to do with what I was actually saying. My comment was narrowly focused on correcting a factual claim.
This is exactly what frustrates me about social media. People make wildly inaccurate statements based on ignorance, and they get repeated as if they’re true. That’s why I commented, to clarify the issue.
Some of what you said contains a kernel of truth, but it’s mixed with a lot of ideological framing that only muddies the discussion. It doesn’t address my point, and it makes an already complicated topic even more confusing.
anomnom@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
We have the numbers (of humans), but not the voting power, because they gerrymandered and under represented it away from us.
chiliedogg@lemmy.world 1 day ago
But all SCOTUS has to do is simply decline to hear a case in order to prevent nationwide injunctions on clearly-illegal activities.
mechoman444@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
No, reread my comment.