Supreme Court Watch

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Re: Supreme Court Watch

#226

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Re: Supreme Court Watch

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Re: Supreme Court Watch

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Some are calling this the Tweet of the Year

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Re: Supreme Court Watch

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Re: Supreme Court Watch

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It wasn't just Clarence Thomas.

ProPublica asked about Alito’s travel. He replied in the Wall Street Journal.
Questioned about an undisclosed fishing trip hosted by a GOP billionaire, the Supreme Court justice instead shared his rebuttal in a rival media outlet — before the investigative journalists could publish their scoop
By Paul Farhi and Robert Barnes
Updated June 21, 2023 at 2:04 p.m. EDT|Published June 21, 2023 at 1:25 a.m. EDT

Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. took issue with questions raised by the investigative journalism outlet ProPublica about his travel with a politically active billionaire, and on Tuesday evening, he outlined his defense in an op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal.

Yet Alito was responding to a news story that ProPublica hadn’t yet published.

Alito’s Journal column, bluntly headlined “ProPublica Misleads Its Readers,” was an unusual public venture by a Supreme Court justice into the highly opinionated realm of a newspaper editorial page. And it drew criticism late Tuesday for effectively leaking elements of ProPublica’s still-in-progress journalism — with the assistance of the Journal’s editorial page editors.

An editor’s note at the top of Alito’s column said ProPublica reporters Justin Elliott and Josh Kaplan had sent questions to Alito last week and asked for a response by Tuesday at noon. The editor’s note doesn’t mention that ProPublica hadn’t yet published its story — nor does it mention that Alito did not provide his answers directly to ProPublica.

A spokesperson for the Journal, whose editorial page operates independently from its newsroom, did not respond to The Washington Post’s request for comment late Tuesday.

ProPublica published its story on Alito just before midnight on Tuesday, about five hours after the Journal published Alito’s column.


The article details the conservative justice’s relationship with billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Singer, including their trip to an Alaskan fishing resort in 2008. According to the story, Singer — whose hedge fund subsequently came before the court 10 times in cases involving business disputes — flew Alito to the resort on his private jet, a trip ProPublica reported would have cost Alito more than $100,000 one way if he had chartered the jet on his own.

Alito, who wrote the landmark Dobbs decision that struck down federal abortion rights last year, didn’t list the trip on his financial disclosure forms, an omission that some ethics experts say could violate federal law.

The article noted the role of conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo in organizing the Alaska trip, including recruiting Singer to fly Alito to the lodge. The longtime head of the Federalist Society, Leo helped Alito win confirmation to the Supreme Court. Singer and the lodge’s owner were major donors to the Federalist Society.


The story carried the bylines of Kaplan, Elliott and a third ProPublica reporter, Alex Mierjeski — the same team that reported a blockbuster story in April detailing years of luxury trips taken by Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, Ginni, and paid for by billionaire Harlan Crow, who also paid for Thomas’s grandnephew’s private school tuition.

Those disclosures and others — The Post reported last month that Leo arranged for Ginni Thomas to be paid tens of thousands of dollars for consulting work just over a decade ago, specifying that her name be left off billing paperwork — have led some Democrats in Congress to call for Clarence Thomas to resign and others to call for stricter ethics standards specific to the Supreme Court.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has resisted congressional efforts on that front, but he recently acknowledged the controversy.

“I want to assure people that I’m committed to making certain that we as a court adhere to the highest standards of conduct. We are continuing to look at things we can do to give practical effect to that commitment,” Roberts said when accepting an award last month from the American Law Institute.


But the justices for years have been considering an ethics plan, without being able to come to agreement.

In his Journal column, Alito accurately anticipated the thrust of ProPublica’s not-yet-published article. He denied he had a conflict in accepting Singer’s “hospitality” or was obligated to disclose the 2008 trip. “Neither charge is valid,” the justice wrote preemptively.

He asserted that Singer was merely an acquaintance, with whom he spoke only fleetingly during the fishing trip, and said he was not aware of Singer’s connection to any subsequent court matter.

Alito said he accepted the offer of a seat on Singer’s private plane because it would otherwise have been unoccupied. A commercial flight, he wrote, would have imposed costs on taxpayers, who would have had to pay for the deputy U.S. marshals who provide security to Supreme Court justices to fly with him.


He also disputed ProPublica’s apparent characterization of the fishing resort, calling it “misleading.”

“I stayed three nights in a modest one-room unit at the King Salmon Lodge, a comfortable but rustic facility” with “home style meals,” he wrote, adding, “I cannot recall if (we were) served wine, but if there was, it was certainly not wine that costs $1,000.”

Alito said he didn’t disclose the flight in his annual disclosure form because the rules at the time were vague: “I followed what I understood to be standard practice.”

His defense was similar to that offered by Thomas when ProPublica first reported on his luxury trip.

“Early in my tenure at the Court,” Thomas said in a statement, “I sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary, and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable.”

Federal law mandates that top officials from the three branches of government, including the Supreme Court, file annual forms detailing their finances, outside income and spouses’ sources of income, with each branch determining its own reporting standards.

Judges are prohibited from accepting gifts from anyone with business before the court. Until recently, however, the judicial branch had not clearly defined an exemption for gifts considered “personal hospitality.”

Earlier in the spring, a committee of the Judicial Conference, the courts’ policymaking body, revised those rules to be more specific, stating explicitly that judges must report travel by private jet. Gifts such as an overnight stay at a personal vacation home owned by a friend remain exempt from reporting requirements. But the revised rules require disclosure when judges are treated to stays at commercial properties, such as hotels, ski resorts or other private retreats owned by a company, rather than an individual.

The revised rules apply to the justices’ 2022 disclosure forms, which were made public this month. Thomas and Alito requested filing extensions, so their forms are not yet available.

Leaders at the Society of Professional Journalists criticized the Alito op-ed — the justice for writing it, and the Journal for publishing it.

Chris Roberts, the group’s ethics committee’s vice chair, said Alito appeared to be trying to undermine the story instead of engaging with the reporter. “It’s pretty rinky-dink for a Supreme Court justice to use journalism ethics against journalists,” he said.

And the committee’s chair, Fred Brown, called the Journal’s decision to publish the column before ProPublica had published its story “an affront to professional courtesy and professional standards.”

“The WSJ editorial board could have avoided a lot of justifiable criticism — and possible confusion by readers who had not yet had an opportunity to see the ProPublica piece — if they had just waited,” he said.

The Journal’s editorial page has veered sharply to the right in recent years and often expresses support of the more-conservative members of the Supreme Court. In April, it blasted “left-leaning” ProPublica’s reporting on Thomas, arguing that the justice did not violate any disclosure rules at the time and that he faced no conflict of interest in his dealings with Crow.

And in April, after the justices reported on their unsuccessful effort to identify the leaker of a draft of the 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that affirmed the constitutional right to abortion, Alito gave a rare interview to a Journal editorial page editor and a private lawyer active in conservative causes.

The justice, who wrote the Dobbs opinion, told the pair that he had a “pretty good idea” who leaked the document but that neither he nor the court can prove it. In the interview, Alito said the theory that the draft was leaked by someone on the right, in hopes of locking in the five votes necessary to overturn Roe, “is infuriating to me.”

“Look, this made us targets of assassination,” Alito told his interviewers. “Would I do that to myself? Would the five of us have done that to ourselves? It’s quite implausible.”

Elliott, the lead ProPublica reporter on the Alito story, told The Post early Wednesday that he and his colleagues had been informed Tuesday by the Supreme Court’s chief spokeswoman that Alito would not comment for their story.

“It was surprising to see the op-ed publish several hours after that,” he said, “but we’re happy to get substantive engagement with our questions in any forum.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/20 ... hing-trip/
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Re: Supreme Court Watch

#231

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A "modest" room at the Georges V hotel in Paris is still a room in the Georges V hotel in Paris.
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Re: Supreme Court Watch

#232

Post by ponchi101 »

You have to impose term limits on these justices.
And some form of supervisory body.
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Re: Supreme Court Watch

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Key document may be fake in LGBTQ+ rights case before US supreme court
Christian website designer says she received email request from same-sex couple but ‘author’ says he did not send it – and is not gay
Sam Levine in New York
Thu 29 Jun 2023 23.21 BST

The veracity of a key document in a major LGBTQ+ rights case before the US supreme court has come under question, raising the possibility that important evidence cited in it might be wrong or even falsified.

The supreme court is expected to issue a ruling on Friday in 303 Creative LLC v Elenis, which deals with a challenge to a Colorado law prohibiting public-serving businesses from discriminating against gay people as well as any statements announcing such a policy.

The suit centers on Lorie Smith, a website designer who does not want to provide her services for gay weddings because of her religious objections.

In 2016, she says, a gay man named Stewart requested her services for help with his upcoming wedding. “We are getting married early next year and would love some design work done for our invites, placenames etc. We might also stretch to a website,” reads a message he apparently sent her through a message on her website.

In court filings, her lawyers produced a copy of the inquiry.

But Stewart, who requested his last name be withheld for privacy, said in an interview with the Guardian that he never sent the message, even though it correctly lists his email address and telephone number. He has also been happily married to a woman for the last 15 years, he said. The news was first reported by the New Republic.

In fact, until he received a call this week from a reporter from the magazine, Stewart says had no idea he was somehow tied up in a case that had made it to the supreme court.

“I can confirm I did not contact 303 Creative about a website,” he said. “It’s fraudulent insomuch as someone is pretending to be me and looking to marry someone called Mike. That’s not me.

“What’s most concerning to me is that this is kind of like the one main piece of evidence that’s been part of this case for the last six-plus years and it’s false,” he added. “Nobody’s checked it. Anybody can pick up the phone, write an email, send a text, to verify whether that was correct information.”

Stewart said he had no idea how his name wound up in the request. He said he is a designer with a fairly sizable following online. The inquiry to Smith sent in 2016 lists his personal website, where he used to have his email and telephone number displayed, so it’s possible a stranger could have collected those to impersonate him.


The existence of an actual request to create service is significant in the case because it helps establish that Smith has suffered some kind of harm and has standing to bring the suit. Last year, lawyers for Colorado urged the justices not to take the case because Smith had not received a request to make a website for a gay couple.

Lawrence Pacheco, a spokesman for Colorado’s attorney general, Philip Weiser, declined to comment on the possibility that the query might be falsified. He pointed out that the attorney general’s office had raised questions about the query in its brief to the supreme court.

“The Company did not respond to that online form. Nor did the Company take any steps to verify that a genuine prospective customer submitted the form,” lawyers wrote.

The Alliance Defending Freedom, the well-funded conservative group that has targeted LGBTQ+ rights in recent years, did not return a request for comment.

The revelation of a falsified request may not matter much in a strictly legal sense, said Jenny Pizer, the chief legal officer at Lambda Legal, a group that protects LGBTQ+ rights. The court has signaled recently that potential liability is enough to support a legal challenge, she said.

“The bigger impact might well be on the public’s view of the claims by self-identified Christian business owners who claim they are victims of religious persecution when they are expected to follow the same non-discrimination laws that apply equally to all business owners,” she said. “This sort of revelation tends to reinforce to many people that the fundamentalist Christian victim narrative is without foundation.”

The inquiry from Stewart seems to have appeared at a suspicious point in the litigation, the New Republic noted.

The query was sent on 21 September 2016, a day after the Alliance Defending Freedom filed the lawsuit on Smith’s behalf. In the fall of 2016, Smith’s attorneys originally said that she did not need an actual request for services to challenge the law. But months later, in February of 2017, it referenced the request. Smith signed an affidavit saying she received the message.


US district judge Marcia Kreiger dismissed portions of the case in September 2017 and referenced the inquiry. “Assuming that it indicates a market for Plaintiffs’ services, it is not clear that Stewart and Mike are a same-sex couple (as such names can be used by members of both sexes) and it does not explicitly request website services, without which there can be no refusal by Plaintiffs,” she wrote.

ADF attacked that reasoning – pointing to the request from
Stewart and Mike – in a press release. The US court of appeals for the 10th circuit also did not rule in Smith’s favor before her case arrived at the supreme court.

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2023/ju ... SApp_Other
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Re: Supreme Court Watch

#234

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The bought and paid for SC majority has done what the people who own them want - to return the US to the country it was in the 1950's. It's depressing but not surprising at all.

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Re: Supreme Court Watch

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Re: Supreme Court Watch

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Re: Supreme Court Watch

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Magpieblog
@sarahc
An expert on the US Supreme Court tries to make sense of today's student loan decision.

' The Supreme Court’s decision in Nebraska is not rooted in law, and it barely even attempts to resemble a legal decision. The Court overrules both elected branches. It rewrites a federal law. And it roots its decision in a fake legal doctrine with no basis in any actual legal text. '

#SCOTUS #USSupremeCourt #MajorIssuesesmmDoctrine #BidenVNebraska #StudentLoans #LoanForgiveness

https://www.vox.com/scotus/2023/6/30/23779
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Re: Supreme Court Watch

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“Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.” Albert Einstein
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Re: Supreme Court Watch

#239

Post by ponchi101 »

Serious here.
My priors. OF COURSE I disagree that a person can tell you s/he will not bake a cake for you because of some religious belief. BUT: HOW do you force them? Do you impose a penalty? Suspend their license?
Switching examples. What if a person that is a member of the Church of Satan asks them to make a cake with the COS logo? Of course they would refuse but, if so, how can you force them?
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Re: Supreme Court Watch

#240

Post by ti-amie »

I think the issue is that the incident she cited was made up by RW lawyers. The defendant in this case has never designed a website but was "thinking about it" hence Ms Ifill's comments.

“Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.” Albert Einstein
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