AN OUTRAGEOUS ACTION BY SCOTUS – Are Constitutional Rights Important Enough To Matter To The Court?
In Vivek v. Murthy, previously titled Missouri v. Biden, et.al, now Supreme Court # 23-411, SCOTUS continues to abdicate its responsibility to our Republic by extending the stay of an injunction entered by both a federal District Court and a federal Court of Appeals until such time as SCOTUS can hear the case and issue an opinion.
As you recall, evidence was presented by social media users to the federal trial court, the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, sufficient to convince the court that their right to freedom of speech had been denied as a result of the actions of the government and their agents the social media platforms. I wrote in prior postings (July 15, September 14, September 19) that the court enjoined a number of federal agency officials from carrying out social media intrusions in election activities in the future.
The District Court, however, granted a stay of the injunction while the case was appealed to the Circuit court in that area. On appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that court upheld the findings and injunction against some of the named parties but struck it down as to others. That court then continued the stay while the government parties filed with SCOTUS to continue the stay and hear the case.
The main portion of the SCOTUS’s entry on the docket is as follows:
The application for stay presented to JUSTICE ALITO and by him referred to the Court is granted. The preliminary injunction issued on July 4, 2023, by the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, … as modified by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on October 3, 2023, … is stayed. The application for stay is also treated as a petition for a writ of certiorari, and the petition is granted on the questions presented in the application….. (my emphasis is in bold)
So SCOTUS is maintaining the stay even though two lower courts held there is enough evidence for the government, social media platforms and other named parties to be enjoined from interfering in election activities by canceling and otherwise affecting citizens who want to exercise their first amendment right to free speech.
SCOTUS will consider these questions in the appeal:
(1) Whether respondents [the parties bringing the suit] have Article III standing; (2) Whether the government’s challenged conduct transformed private social-media companies’ content-moderation decisions into state action and violated respondents’ First Amendment rights; and (3) Whether the terms and breadth of the preliminary injunction are proper. (material in brackets []added by me)
Justice Alito, with Justice Thomas and Justice Gorsuch joining, who did not want SCOTUS to maintain the stay while the case is being heard stated:
This case concerns what two lower courts found to be a“coordinated campaign” by high-level federal officials to suppress the expression of disfavored views on important public issues. Missouri v. Biden, ___ F. 4th ___, ___, 2023WL 6425697, *27 (CA5, Oct. 3, 2023). To prevent the continuation of this campaign, these officials were enjoined from either “coerc[ing]” social media companies to engage in such censorship or “active[ly] control[ling]” those companies’ decisions about the content posted on their platforms. Id., at *7, *15. Today, however, a majority of the Court, without undertaking a full review of the record and without any explanation, suspends the effect of that injunction until the Court completes its review of this case, an event that may not occur until late in the spring of next year. Government censorship of private speech is antithetical to our democratic form of government, and therefore today’s decision is highly disturbing.
This is an understatement if there ever was one.
Justice Alito, writing for the dissenting judges, continued:
At this time in the history of our country, what the Court has done, I fear, will be seen by some as giving the Government a green light to use heavy-handed tactics to skew the presentation of views on the medium that increasingly dominates the dissemination of news. That is most unfortunate.
UNFORTUNATE!? The language is not strong enough considering the circumstances.
The majority granting the hearing by SCOTUS now causes the stay to remain in effect until the Court can hear the case and issue its opinion which means the government and social media platforms can interfere with the rights of people to post what they desire even though that was ruled to be in violation of the first amendment rights of those parties. In other words, and I can’t state this strongly enough, some on the Court do not care about first amendment rights, specifically Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Even if the Court eventually rules in favor of the parties bringing the suit it will be too late because the election of 2024 will already have been affected by what the social media companies are allowed to do to cancel voices in opposition to what the government or others who want to control the election want us to hear. Why do we allow the Court to continue to rule us in this tyrannical manner?
Of course, you can’t do anything about it because the judges are not subject to election and cannot be removed, regardless of a gross violation of your rights to free speech, unless by impeachment. Perhaps we should understand the rightful limitations placed on SCOTUS by the Constitution which clearly says their decisions are not the law of the land. (See posting of April 13, 2023, “ARE SCOTIS DECISIONS SUPREME?”)
Read the complete opinion at https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23a243_7l48.pdf
Also, read about other tyrannical acts of the Court in my ebook that you can find on BN.com by entering in the search field either my name, Donald Brockett, or “The Tyrannical Rule Of The U.S. Supreme Court”.
Reach me at donsbooks@proton.me
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Donald C. Brockett is a former Washington state attorney, who served 6 terms as Spokane County Prosecuting Attorney and is now retired after a total of 52 years between public and private practice.
During his time in the prosecutor’s office, he tried numerous cases in the District and Superior courts of Spokane County. For many years, he handled all appeals in the Washington State Supreme Court and later in that court and the newly created Court of Appeals for Division III. He has argued cases in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the US Supreme Court.
Published with permission of dcbrockett@substack.com