It's great that people just aren't giving up on this. Find an action near you and raise your voice, because until we get money out of politics, we don't have a chance at good government:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – As the second anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s damaging Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling looms, thousands of people across the country will stage demonstrations, rallies, protests and other actions to magnify the urgent need to overturn the decision and ensure democracy is for people – not corporations. The actions highlight growing disgust with the court’s ruling and an increasing awareness of the corrupting influence corporations have over politics.

Activists working with Public Citizen are involved in more than 150 actions across the country, from Minnesota to Texas and California to North Carolina. Many will be “Occupying the Corporations” by demonstrating in front of a multinational corporation in their town, such as Bank of America or Chevron, to call out large corporations for usurping their democracy. In addition, Public Citizen will be holding rallies in California, Maryland, Massachusetts and Vermont with state lawmakers and allied organizations to highlight the push for resolutions in those state legislatures to overturn Citizens United. The Supreme Court’s ruling, issued on Jan. 21, 2010, said that corporations can spend unlimited sums to influence elections.

The effect on that year’s midterm congressional elections was immediate, and we are once again seeing massive amounts of corporate money being funneled into the presidential primaries. “Citizens United subverts the essence of democracy, which means rule by the people,” said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. “Overturning the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision with a constitutional amendment is the first step in fixing our broken political system and opening the door to address the great challenges facing the country, from putting people back to work to averting catastrophic climate change.”

Public Citizen is working with more than 60 organizations committed to overturning the Supreme Court’s decision via a constitutional amendment. Under the United For the People banner, the organizations, representing millions of activists around the country, are working to harness the grassroots power of the vast majority of Americans who believe there is too much money in politics. As the second anniversary of Citizens United approaches, this expanding network of organizations is coordinating a series of actions from grassroots gatherings to rallies at courthouses and corporate headquarters across the nation.

A complete list of organizations and actions is available at www.United4ThePeople.org. Information about Public Citizen’s amendment campaign is available at www.DemocracyIsForPeople.org.

Via Christian Science Monitor, it's good news that SCOTUS seemingly isn't all that eager to strike down all handgun regulation - and a bit of a shock, considering these are the same conservatives who ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller:

The US Supreme Court declined Monday to take up a potentially important gun rights case examining whether a federal regulation banning loaded firearms from vehicles in a government park violated the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

Lawyers for a Virginia man had asked the justices to examine a question left largely unresolved in the high court’s two prior landmark rulings identifying the scope and substance of Second Amendment protections. The question is: Does the Second Amendment guarantee a right to bear arms in public for personal protection?

The court dismissed the case in a one-line order without comment. The action leaves lower court rulings intact and postpones the prospect of high court clarification on a key gun rights issue.

In 2008, the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment establishes a fundamental right of law-abiding individuals to keep a handgun in their home for self-protection. In 2010, the high court extended that ruling to apply Second Amendment guarantees beyond federal enclaves like Washington, D.C., to all state and local jurisdictions.

The dismissed appeal, Masciandaro v. US (10-11212), had asked the court to examine whether Americans have a right to carry loaded weapons in public places for self defense.

How the justices answered that question would have established guideposts for future gun regulations at the local, state, and national levels of government.

In the 2008 decision, District of Columbia v. Heller, the court said that gun rights are not unlimited. The court said there is no right to “carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”

Gun rights advocates say that statement confirms a right to carry at least some weapons, in some manner, for some purpose.

The high court also said that “laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places” would not necessarily violate the Constitution. Gun rights advocates counter that the statement, again, suggests that a right to carry firearms must therefore exist in non-sensitive places.

This post is written as part of the Media Matters Gun Facts fellowship. The purpose of the fellowship is to further Media Matters’ mission to comprehensively monitor, analyze, and correct conservative misinformation in the U.S. media. Some of the worst misinformation occurs around the issue of guns, gun violence, and extremism, the fellowship program is designed to fight this misinformation with facts.

The United States Supreme Court will hear arguments on some challenges to the Affordable Care Act in March, 2012, setting up the possibility of a ruling before the 2012 general election.

Via SCOTUSBlog:

The Court will hold two hours of argument on the constitutionality of the requirement that virtually every American obtain health insurance by 2014, 90 minutes on whether some or all of the overall law must fail if the mandate is struck down, one hour on whether the Anti-Injunction Act bars some or all of the challenges to the insurance mandate, and one hour on the constitutionality of the expansion of the Medicaid program for the poor and disabled. The Court chose those issues from appeals by the federal government, by 26 states, and by a business trade group. It opted not to review the challenges to new health care coverage requirements for public and private employers. It left untouched petitions by a conservative advocacy group, the Thomas More Law Center, and three of its members, and by Liberty University and two of its employees.

As SCOTUSblog notes later in the post, five and a half hours for oral arguments is unprecedented. Arguments on Citizens United were four hours long. It's clear the court realizes the importance of the questions before it, though not all questions are being considered.

Overall, it appears that the court has chosen to consider the Affordable Care Act in the context of the interstate commerce clause and states' rights, which frames not only the arguments over health care, but sharp differences between conservatives and liberals about the role of government in individuals' lives as well as individual states.

SCOTUSBlog:

Beyond the Court, there is a hot political debate going on across the country now on federal vs. state power, and the Court’s coming decision is likely to become an issue in that debate — especially since the final ruling is expected to emerge from the Court in June, in the midst of this year’s presidential and congressional election campaign.

From a political standpoint, it would appear that a ruling striking down the individual mandate would certainly energize a movement to move to a single payer model for everyone or at the very least, a public option, given that insurers would be bound to not exclude or charge exhorbitant rates for individuals with pre-existing conditions. If there is no individual mandate, it's likely that insurance would become unaffordable for everyone because of the adverse selection issues. If they uphold it, 2012 becomes even higher-stakes poker for conservatives, who will try to retake the House, Senate and White House to repeal the entire law.

As Ezra Klein notes in the video, it is possible they could simply say no one has standing to bring a case until the law is actually effective, too. If they were to do that, it would set up a situation where the provisions of the law become more popular as they become effective, which would make it more difficult for conservatives to repeal or limit it.

I will update this with more analysis as it's available.

The Obama administration has decided to put the full court press on a Supreme Court review of the Affordable Care Act. Via the New York Times:

The Justice Department said the justices should hear its appeal of a decision by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, that struck down the centerpiece of the law by a 2-to-1 vote.

“The department has consistently and successfully defended this law in several courts of appeals, and only the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled it unconstitutional,” the Justice Department said in a statement. “We believe the question is appropriate for review by the Supreme Court.

“Throughout history, there have been similar challenges to other landmark legislation, such as the Social Security Act, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, and all of those challenges failed,” the statement continued. “We believe the challenges to the Affordable Care Act — like the one in the 11th Circuit — will also ultimately fail and that the Supreme Court will uphold the law.”

In addition, the administration has asked the court not to review the Sixth Circuit court ruling (known as the Thomas More case for the conservative think tank that filed it), but instead to rule on the government petition first.

SCOTUSblog has more:

Whatever the Solicitor General now says about the Thomas More case and its potential for review (a question likely to be answered in the forthcoming reply), the filing of a petition on behalf of the U.S. government — and its filing so soon after the Eleventh Circuit had ruled — was a clear indication that the government wants and expects a ruling during the Court’s current Term on the new health care law. In fact, in a conference call with news reporters Wednesday afternoon, a senior Justice Department official said: “It is important to get a decision with finality and certainty sooner rather than later.” The official added that government agencies, the health insurance industry, and people across the Nation need to know how to put their affairs in order under the provisions of the Act.

The administration is pointedly requesting that the Supreme Court rule on the individual mandate, since the 11th Circuit decision overturns it. The Sixth Circuit case ruled opposite; that is, that the mandate is constitutional. By pushing the 11th Circuit decision overturning the mandate, the government seems to be confident that they'll prevail, and in so doing, will affirm the 6th Circuit case.

UPDATE: Denied by SCOTUS.

UPDATE: Officer MacPhail's mother told CNN that SCOTUS says she will have a decision by 8:30 pm.

Lawyers for Troy Davis report that a seven-day reprieve was granted while the Supreme Court examines the petition for a stay of execution. He can, however, still be executed during that time if the Georgia authorities so choose:

ATLANTA — Troy Davis, the condemned inmate who convinced hundreds of thousands of people but not the justice system of his innocence, filed an eleventh-hour plea Wednesday asking the United States Supreme Court to stop Georgia authorities from executing him for the murder of an off-duty police officer, The Associated Press reported.

His execution had been set to begin at 7 p.m., but as the hour arrived, Georgia prison officials were still waiting for the high court's decision.

The appeal to the Supreme Court was one of several last-ditch efforts by Mr. Davis on Wednesday. Earlier in the day, an official of the N.A.A.C.P. said that the vote by the Georgia parole board to deny clemency to Mr. Davis was so close that he hoped there might still be a chance to save him from execution.

Edward O. DuBose, president of the Georgia chapter, said the organization had “very reliable information from the board members directly that the board was split 3 to 2 on whether to grant clemency.”

“The fact that that kind of division was in the room is even more of a sign that there is a strong possibility to save Troy’s life,” he said.

The N.A.A.C.P said it had been in contact with the Department of Justice on Wednesday, in the hope that the federal government would intervene on the basis of civil rights violations, meaning irregularities in the original investigation and at the trial.

I was a little shocked to see the riot police surrounding the prison tonight, ready to move against anti-death penalty protesters. We really are seeing the increased militarization of the police.

In a predictable 5-4 decision [PDF], conservatives on the US Supreme Court struck down Arizona's public campaign finance law, claiming it would stifle private expenditures because of the trigger mechanism that would allow opponents to receive additional public funds. Here's the logic, which I've tried to understand but don't:

The burden imposed by the matching funds provision is evident and inherent in the choice that confronts privately financed candidates and independent expenditure groups. Indeed every court to have considered the question after Davis has concluded that a candidate or independent group might not spend money if the direct result of that spending is additional funding to political adversaries. Arizona is correct that the candidates do not complain that providing a lump sum payment equivalent to the maximum state financing that a candidate could obtain through matching funds would be impermissible. But it is not the amount of funding that the State provides that is constitutionally problematic. It is the manner in which that funding is provided--in direct response to the political speech of privately financed candidates and independent expenditure groups. [Emphasis added]

Elena Kagan's magnificent dissent, which she read aloud from the bench today, outlines the issues before the court. Describing two states' campaign finance structures, one that is corrupt and one seeking to end corruption, she describes the Arizona law this way:

So the voters enact a program that carefully adjusts the money given to would-be officeholders, through the use of a matching funds mechanism, in order to provide this assurance. The program does not discriminate against any candidate or point of view, and it does not restrict any person’s ability to speak. In fact, by providing resources to many candidates, the program creates more speech and thereby broadens public debate. And just as the voters had hoped, the program accomplishes its mission of restoring integrity to the political system. The second State rids itself of corruption.

And then goes on to express incredulity (and frustration) over the majority's decision:

A person familiar with our country’s core values—our devotion to democratic self-governance, as well as to “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open” debate, New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U. S. 254, 270 (1964)—might expect this Court to celebrate, or at least not to interfere with, the second State’s success. But today, the majority holds that the second State’s system—the system that produces honest government, working on behalf of all the people—clashes with our Constitution. The First Amendment, the majority insists, requires us all to rely on the measures employed in the first State, even when they have failed to break the stranglehold of special interests on elected officials.

And that was the mild part of her dissent, which was joined by Justices Sotomayor, Breyer, and Ginsburg. Reading through the entire opinion -- majority and dissent -- reads like a contentious family argument.

Toward the end of her dissent, Kagan wrote this:

Arizona, remember, offers to support any person running for state office. Petitioners here refused that assistance. So they are making a novel argument: that Arizona violated their First Amendment rights by disbursing funds to other speakers even though they could have received (but chose to spurn) the same financial assistance. Some people might call that chutzpah.

And this:

As against all this, the majority claims to have found three smoking guns that reveal the State’s true (and nefarious) intention to level the playing field. But the only smoke here is the majority’s, and it is the kind that goes with mirrors.

Justice Kagan was full of fire, and rightly so.

Continue reading »

The US Supreme Court released some decisions today about climate change and Wal-Mart. While the court ruled on whether certification was improper on the damages claim, there was still dissent among the justices as to whether the underlying issues were valid.

WalMart Employees

WalMart employees wanted the right to sue as a class for gender discrimination in the workplace. In a unanimous decision, the court ruled that the class, as currently defined, was too broad to proceed as a class action lawsuit.

NPR reported back in March:

Standing on the steps of the Supreme Court, Betty Dukes, the lead plaintiff, said Wal-Mart's appeal is an attempt to "keep us out of court so the facts will not be presented to the public at large or before a sitting jury."

Those facts, say the plaintiffs, show that when the case was filed 10 years ago, women held two-thirds of the lowest-level hourly jobs and only one-third of the management jobs; and that women were paid on average $1.16 less per hour than men in the same jobs, despite having more seniority and higher performance ratings.

Wal-Mart, however, hotly disputes those statistics, contending that there is no pay difference between men and women at 90 percent of its stores. And the company points to what it repeatedly calls its "strong policy" against discrimination.

Jezebel:

But Antonin Scalia's majority opinion lost four justices — former civil rights attorney Ruth Bader Ginsburg, plus Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Stephen Breyer — when he argued that there could be no class that was discriminated against because there was no written policy covering them all:

[...]

This is a novel trap: Because clearly individuals don't discriminate against a class of people — say, women who they think are less likely to be competent or committed — and nothing is on the books, systemic discrimination must not exist. Case closed!

Of course, Ginsburg and her Democratic-appointed colleagues saw it differently. In arguing that they would have sent the plaintiffs to a lower court and try the case under different rules, Ginsburg pointed out, "Women fill 70 percent of the hourly jobs in the retailer's stores but make up only 33 percent of management employees," and that "the plaintiffs' 'largely uncontested descriptive statistics' also show that women working in the company's stores 'are paid less than men in every region' and 'that the salary gap widens over time even for men and women hired into the same jobs at the same time." Those are a lot of individual decisions that have nothing to do with each other.

Continue reading »

In an odd turn of events, it looks like the federal judge who ruled that corporations could give directly to candidates might want to revoke his ruling. It appears that he was unaware of a Supreme Court ruling on the same issue:

James C. Cacheris of the Eastern District of Virginia indicated in an order issued Tuesday that he's considering whether his ruling ignored Supreme Court rulings in 2003 (FEC v. Beaumont) and 1997 (Agostini v. Felton) which upheld the ban on corporate donations.

Cacheris requested that both federal prosecutors and lawyers representing two businessmen whoallegedly reimbursed their employees' donations to Hilary Clinton file briefings on his decision by 5 p.m. Wednesday. He wants the briefings to be less than 10-pages in length and has scheduled a court hearing for Friday morning.

The judge based his 52-page ruling last week on the Supreme Court's more recent decision in theCitizens United case.

"For better or worse, Citizens United held that there is no distinction between an individual and a corporation with respect to political speech," Cacheris had written. "Thus, if an individual can make direct contributions within [campaign finance] limits, a corporation cannot be banned from doing the same thing."But his decision appears to have ignored a 2003 Supreme Court opinion, written by Justice David Souter, which held that "applying the prohibition to nonprofit advocacy corporations is consistent with the First Amendment."

Wrote Souter: "not only has the original ban on direct corporate contributions endured, but so have the original rationales for the law. In barring corporate earnings from conversion into political "war chests," the ban was and is intended to "preven[t] corruption or the appearance of corruption."

Oh, great. The wingnut five continues to rubberstamp anything they can to give corporations the edge they need to pound us completely into the ground. We have no right to anything, other than the right to shut up and take it. This decision is a big deal, further undercutting consumer protections:

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court gave corporations a major win Wednesday, ruling in a 5-4 decision that companies can block their disgruntled customers from joining together in a class-action lawsuit. The ruling arose from a California lawsuit involving cellphones, but it will have a nationwide impact.

In the past, consumers who bought a product or a service had been free to join a class-action lawsuit if they were dissatisfied or felt they had been cheated. By combining these small claims, they could bring a major lawsuit against a corporation.

But in Wednesday's decision, the high court said that under the Federal Arbitration Act companies can force these disgruntled customers to arbitrate their complaints individually, not as part of a group. Consumer-rights advocates said this rule would spell the end for small claims involving products or services.

In the case before the court, a Southern California couple complained about a $30 charge involving their purchase of cellphone service from AT&T Mobility. The California courts said they were entitled to join with others in bringing a class-action claim against the cellphone company.

But the Supreme Court reversed that decision Wednesday in AT&T Mobility vs. Concepcion. Justice Antonin Scalia said companies may require buyers to sign arbitration agreements, and those agreements may preclude class-action claims. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. formed the majority.

Scalia said companies like arbitration because it is efficient and less costly. "Arbitration is poorly suited to the higher stakes of class litigation," he said.

But the dissenters said a practical ban on class action would be unfair to cheated consumers. Justice Stephen G. Breyer said the California courts had insisted on permitting class-action claims, despite arbitration clauses that forbade them. Otherwise, he said, it would allow a company to "insulate" itself "from liability for its own frauds by deliberately cheating large numbers of consumers out of individually small sums of money."

Breyer added that a ban on class actions would prevent lawyers from representing clients for small claims. "What rational lawyer would have signed on to represent the Concepcions in litigation for the possibility of fees stemming from a $30.22 claim?" he wrote. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined his dissent.

The court itself divided along partisan lines. All five Republican appointes formed the majority, and four Democratic appointees dissented.

Yesterday the Supreme Court declined to fast track the Virginia challenge to the Affordable Care Act, which has Greta Van Susteren in a tizzy over those lazy Supreme Court justices who dare to take their three-month break while the health of America teeters in the balance.

Ken Cuccinelli was happy to oblige her, jumping right in with his assessment that states will spend "millions before taxpayers even see a band-aid or any health care", due to the cost of setting up exchanges in advance of implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

If their estimate is correct and June 2012 would be the earliest a Supreme Court decision would be made on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, that throws it right into the middle of the 2012 general election, which could really be a political neutron bomb. If the Supreme Court decision were a 5-4 ruling it unconstitutional, for example, it could play right into the hands of conservatives who will then begin touting their market-based reforms, a la Ken Cuccinelli at the end of this clip.

Maybe I'm just being cynical here, but I don't see the decision to delay it as particularly good news. It feels just as political as a decision to fast-track it would have been, delaying the outcome until we're right in the thick of the 2012 general election.