06/26/2015 archive

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

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New York Times Editorial Board: The Supreme Court Keeps the Fair Housing Law Effective

Housing discrimination doesn’t have to be intentional to be illegal. That is the point of the Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday interpreting the Fair Housing Act of 1968 in accord with clear congressional intent, and preserving a well-established and critical tool in the long-running battle to ensure a more integrated society.

By a vote of 5-4, Justice Anthony Kennedy, joined by the four more liberal justices, ruled that the law allows plaintiffs to challenge government or private policies that have a discriminatory effect, without having to show evidence of intentional discrimination.

Explicit, legally sanctioned racial segregation in housing may be over, Justice Kennedy wrote, but “its vestiges remain today, intertwined with the country’s economic and social life.” From discriminatory lending practices to zoning laws that favor higher-income home buyers, persistent patterns work to hurt minorities and other vulnerable groups the law was written to protect.

Scott Lemieux: John Roberts saved Obamacare again – and used Antonin Scalia’s words to do it

For all the time and money that fanatical opponents of providing health care to the uninsured poor and middle class have poured into their legal struggle against President Barack Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement, the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”),they’ve now failed twice to achieve their ultimate objective. Thursday, in a 6-3 vote, the US supreme court refused the opponents’ invitation to willfully misread the law to take health care away from millions of people.

Showing a legal craftsmanship that has too often been absent from his major opinions, Chief Justice John Roberts calmly obliterated the latest challenge to the ACA, providing a model of how to properly read a statute. (Hint: if your method of statutory interpretation shows that Spain was invaded by the “Moops”, you’re doing it wrong.)

Roberts’ opinion simply stated what should have been obvious: Congress anticipated that at least some states would not establish their own health insurance exchanges, authorized the federal government to establish exchanges on their behalf, and did not intend for this federal backstop to fail. “Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets” concluded the chief justice, “not to destroy them.”

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

This Day in History

President John F. Kennedy rallies West Berlin during the Cold War; The U.N. Charter signed; Scientists complete first rough map of the human genetic code; Charlie Chaplin’s ‘The Gold Rush’ premieres.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

I used to think that anyone doing anything weird was weird. I suddenly realized that anyone doing anything weird wasn’t weird at all and it was the people saying they were weird that were weird.

Paul McCartney

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

Click on images to enlarge.

June 26 is the 177th day of the year (178th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 188 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1959, St. Lawrence Seaway opened.

In a ceremony presided over by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Queen Elizabeth II, the St. Lawrence Seaway is officially opened, creating a navigational channel from the Atlantic Ocean to all the Great Lakes. The seaway, made up of a system of canals, locks, and dredged waterways, extends a distance of nearly 2,500 miles, from the Atlantic Ocean through the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Duluth, Minnesota, on Lake Superior.

History

The Saint Lawrence Seaway was preceded by a number of other canals. In 1871, locks on the Saint Lawrence allowed transit of vessels 186 ft (57 m) long, 44 ft 6 in (13.56 m) wide, and 9 ft (2.7 m) deep. The Welland Canal at that time allowed transit of vessels 142 ft (43 m) long, 26 ft (7.9 m) wide, and 10 ft (3.0 m) deep, but was generally too small to allow passage of larger ocean-going ships.

The first proposals for a binational comprehensive deep waterway along the St. Lawrence came in the 1890s. In the following decades the idea of a power project became inseparable from the seaway – in fact, the various governments involved believed that the deeper water created by the hydro project were necessary to make the seaway channels feasible. American proposals for development up to and including the First World War met with little interest from the Canadian federal government. But the two national government submitted St. Lawrence plans, and the Wooten-Bowden Report and the International Joint Commission both recommended the project in the early 1920s. Although the Liberal Mackenzkie King was reluctant to proceed, in part of because of opposition to the project in Quebec, in 1932 the two countries inked a treaty. This failed to receive the assent of Congress. Subsequent attempts to forge an agreement in the 1930s came to naught as the Ontario government of Mitchell Hepburn, along with Quebec, got in the way. By 1941, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister King made an executive agreement to build the joint hydro and navigation works, but this too failed to receive the assent of Congress. Proposals for the seaway were met with resistance from railway and port lobbyists in the United States.

In the post-1945 years, proposals to introduce tolls still could not induce the U.S. Congress to approve the project. Growing impatient, and with Ontario desperate for hydro-electricity, Canada began to consider “going it alone.” This seized the imagination of Canadians, engendering a groundswell of St. Lawrence nationalism. Fueled by this support, the Canadian Louis St. Laurent government decided over the course of 1951 and 1952 to construct the waterway alone, combined with a hydro project (which would prove to be the joint responsibility of Ontario and New York – as a power dam would change the water levels, it required bilateral cooperation). However, the Truman and Eisenhower administrations considered it a national security threat for Canada to alone control the deep waterway, and used various means – such as delaying and stalling the Federal Power Commission license for the power aspect – until Congress in early 1954 approved an American seaway role via the Wiley act. Canada, out of concern for the ramifications of the bilateral relationship, reluctantly acquiesced.

In the United States, Dr. N.R. Danelian (who was the Director of the 13 volume St. Lawrence Seaway Survey in the U.S. Department of Navigation (1932-1963)), worked with the U.S. Secretary of State on Canadian-United States issues regarding the Seaway and worked for over 15 years on passage of the Seaway Act. He later became President of the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Association to further the interests of the Seaway development to benefit the American Heartland.

The seaway opened in 1959 and cost $638 million in Canadian dollars, $336.2 million of which was paid by the U.S. government.[1] Queen Elizabeth II and President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally opened the Seaway with a short cruise aboard Royal Yacht Britannia after addressing the crowds in St. Lambert, Quebec.

The seaway’s opening is often credited with making the Erie Canal obsolete, thus setting off the severe economic decline of several cities in Upstate New York.

Cray

Tonightly Robin Thede will be on to reveal a new White House strategy.  Our panel will be Horatio Sanz, Reza Aslan, and Mike Yard.

Continuity

Jessica Williams

Next week’s guests-

• Monday 6/29: Taylor Schilling
• Tuesday 6/30: Jon Hamm
• Wednesday 7/1: Kirsten Gillibrand
• Thursday 7/2: Sarah Vowell

Richard Lewis is on to talk about his new book, Reflections From Hell: Richard Lewis’ Guide on How Not to Live.

The real news below.

It’s been a busy court calendar for the Supremes this year. They had to add extra days for the release of their rulings. One of the biggies came today when the court rejected the lawsuit that would have ended the health care subsidies of the Affordable Care Act.

The stakes of the case, King v. Burwell, were enormous. Had the plaintiffs prevailed, millions of people who depend upon the Affordable Care Act for insurance would have lost financial assistance from the federal government. Without that money, most of them would have had to give up coverage altogether. And the loss of so many customers would have forced insurers to raise premiums, seriously disrupting state insurance markets.

But two of the court’s conservatives, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy, joined the court’s four liberals in rejecting the lawsuit in a 6-3 decision. Roberts delivered the opinion (pdf) for the majority. And the decision was a concise, stinging rebuke of the plaintiffs, who contended that Congress intended to write a law that would leave so many people without coverage, and cause such disarray.

“Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not destroy them,” Roberts wrote.

In the other ruling released today, in a 5 – 4 decision the justices backed a broad interpretation of the 1968 Fair Housing Act a crucial tool in the fight against housing discrimination.

The question in the case was whether plaintiffs suing under the housing law must prove intentional discrimination or merely that the challenged practice had produced a “disparate impact.” Drawing on decisions concerning other kinds of discrimination, Justice Kennedy said the housing law allowed suits relying on both kinds of evidence.

The first kind of proof can be hard to come by, as agencies and businesses seldom announce that they are engaging in purposeful discrimination. “Disparate impact,” on the other hand, can be proved using statistics.

Justice Kennedy wrote that the history of the law and of the civil rights movement supported the broader interpretation.

On Monday they handed down four rulings

Supreme Court rules on patents, property

By Jaelynn Grisso, Scripts Howard Foundation Wire

Patent holders cannot be paid after the patent expires

The Supreme Court ruled that patent holders cannot keep getting paid for their inventions after the patent expires, upholding a previous Supreme Court decision.

Marvel agreed to pay Stephen Kimble royalties for a Spider-Man glove that shot out fake spider webs. He held a patent on the glove, but the contract did not specify how long payments would last. When the patent on the toy expired after the typical 20 years, Marvel stopped paying Kimble. The district court and the 9th U.S. Court of Appeals sided with Marvel based on the Supreme Court case Brulotte v. Thys, which also ruled patent holders were not entitled to royalties after the patent expired.

The court reaffirmed these decisions in a 6-3 vote, determining Kimble’s reasons for overturning Brulotte were not substantial enough. [..]

Crops, like raisins, are protected property

In Horne v. Department of Agriculture, the Supreme Court ruled that the government cannot make raisin growers forfeit a portion of their crops because they are protected property under the Fifth Amendment.

Marvin and Laura Horne refused to give the USDA a portion of their raisin crop, violating a law passed in 1937, which allows the government to require growers to reserve a portion of their crops for government management. The law said the government could take the crops for free to help control market prices. It would pay farmers only if it made profit on the produce.

The court’s ruling reversed the 9th Circuit’s decision on an 8-1 vote, with Sotomayor dissenting. The ruling upheld that personal property – such as cars, computers or raisins – is protected under the Fifth Amendment as is real property, such as houses. [..]

Excessive force needs to be determined objectively

The Supreme Court ruled that county jails need to set objective standards for use of force against prisoners who have not yet been convicted. The court reversed a ruling from the 7th Circuit Court and sent the case back for a rehearing.

Michael Kingsley sued officers in a Wisconsin county jail after they used force to remove him from his cell after he refused to comply with their instructions. Kingsley had not been convicted of a crime and was being held until his trial.

After a jury trial found in favor of the officers, Kingsley appealed. He claimed the instructions to the jury did not require that jurors consider whether the guards had intentionally violated Kingsley’s rights or had use force with complete disregard for his rights.

The 7th Circuit disagreed, saying that subjective standards about the officers’ intentions – whether or not they meant to violate or disregard his rights – should be used. The Supreme Court reversed this decision on a 5-4 vote, with Breyer, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan agreeing. Scalia, Roberts, Thomas and Alito dissented.

Officers cannot conduct a search without judicial review

In a case involving the city of Los Angeles and a group of hotel operators, the Supreme Court decided city ordinances allowing officers to search hotel records was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. The 5-4 vote upheld the decision of the 9th Circuit.

Los Angeles requires hotel operators to keep records about their guests, and the hotel operators can be charged with a criminal misdemeanor if the records are not maintained correctly. The district court sided with the city because it said hotel operators did not have an expectation of privacy for the records. But the 9th Circuit reversed this decision because the ordinance did not allow for a neutral party, such as a judge, to review the records for compliance before a search.

The city will now need to get a subpoena before getting hotel records if the hotel operator declines to give up the records voluntarily. The city wanted access to records because it said maintaining the records is a deterrent to criminal activity like prostitution and housing undocumented immigrants.

The court also previously released these rulings:

Race and Redistricting

In two Alabama cases, the court found that the State Legislature had relied too heavily on race in its 2012 state redistricting by maintaining high concentrations of black voters in some districts.

Religious Freedom in Prison

In Holt v. Hobbs, the court found that Arkansas corrections officials had violated the religious liberty rights of Muslim inmates by forbidding them to grow beards over security concerns.

Pregnancy Discrimination

In Young v. United Parcel Service, the court found that the lower courts had used the wrong standard to determine whether UPS had discriminated against one of its drivers, Peggy Young, who was pregnant.

Judicial Elections and Free Speech

In Williams-Yulee v. Florida Bar, the court ruled that states may prohibit judicial candidates from personally asking their supporters for money.

Employment Discrimination

The court decided in Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Abercrombie & Fitch Stores that Samantha Elauf was not required to make a specific request for a religious accommodation to wear a hijab when applying for a position at a children’s clothing store owned by the company.

Social Media and Free Speech

The court decided in Elonis v. United States that prosecutors did not do enough to prove Anthony Elonis’s intent when he published threatening rap lyrics on Facebook directed at his wife.

Separation of Powers in Foreign Affairs

The court decided in Zivotofsky v. Kerry that Congress was not entitled to order the State Department to “record the place of birth as Israel” in the passports of American children born in Jerusalem if their parents requested.

The Confederate Flag and Free Speech

The court decided in Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans that Texas had not discriminated against the view of the group that “the Confederate flag is a symbol of sacrifice, independence and Southern heritage” when refusing to allow its license plate bearing the Confederate flag.

Religious Signs and Free Speech

The court decided in Reed v. Town of Gilbert, Ariz., that a town ordinance that places different limits on political, ideological and directional signs violates the First Amendment.

There are four more rulings coming down the pike for tomorrow and Monday:

1. Obergefell v. Hodges (Same Sex marriage)

2. Glossip v. Gross (Lethal Injection)

3. Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission (Congressional Redistricting)

4. Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA et. al. ( EPA Emissions Regulations)

5. Johnson v. U.S. (Gun Laws and Criminals)

So far, the Supremes haven’t upset the apple cart too much