Supreme Court No Monolith on Mega-Cases?

Unlike the liberal “wing” of the US Supreme Court, the conservative “wing” is far less in lock step with one another as evidenced by the Justices’ recent rulings. Translated: It will be a “bumpy ride” for both political parties & their supporters.

As the WSJ editorial board has noted: “Anyone who calls the Supreme Court’s conservatives an ideological monolith isn’t paying attention. Consider a pair of decisions and dissents the Justices handed down” a couple weeks ago. In one ruling, a 5-4 majority denied the Trump Administration’s request to vacate a trial court’s order requiring the USAID to immediately disburse $2 billion in grants” already promised by the Biden Administration. Notably, a “stunned” Justice Samuel Alito issued an angry dissent along with Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch & Brett Kavanaugh. They insisted the trial court overreached with its “universal injunction” & the long-standing doctrines of sovereign immunity & separation of powers would seem to bar exactly this sort of judicial involvement in an executive branch decision. Yet, the supposedly conservative Justices Amy Coney Barrett & Chief Justice John Roberts agreed with the always predictable “liberal amigas” that all that was needed was for the trial judge to “clarify” its ruling to the extent it may have gone a tad too far in demanding an immediate pay out, but seemingly glossed over the above-mentioned bed rock constitutional provisions.

Then again, in another recent 5-4 case decided by the Court’s five “conservatives,” the City of San Francisco was saved from the EPA’s steep pollution fines for “polluting the Pacific Ocean” via its water discharges. The majority reminded it had last year overturned the Chevron Precedent last year & courts should no longer automatically give federal agencies broad deference just because they say they are “experts” on a given topic under their jurisdiction. The bottom line? Concluded the editors, “The rulings reveal a Court that is far from predictable, despite its conservative tilt.”

Davd Soul