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This has been a busy week for the US Supreme Court, with a total of six published decisions on hot-button culture war issues including abortion (a boringly unanimous Article III standing decision, already discussed in its own thread below), gun control, immigration, labor relations, and even a Trump-bashing trademark registration case. Even the sixth case, about boring-old bankruptcy fees, produced an unusual 6-3 split: Jackson wrote the majority opinion, joined by Roberts, Alito, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Kavanaugh. Gorsuch authored an impassioned dissent, joined by Thomas and Barrett.
The trademark case, Vidal v. Elster, is more interesting than it looks at first glance. The question is whether a provision of the Lanham Act (the federal statute governing intellectual property issues), which forbids registration of trademarks featuring the name of a person without that person's consent, is constitutional. All nine justices agree that it is. And yet, instead of a simple unanimous opinion, we get:
"THOMAS, J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court, except as to Part III. ALITO and GORSUCH, JJ., joined that opinion in full; ROBERTS, C. J., and KAVANAUGH, J., joined all but Part III; and BARRETT, J., joined Parts I, II–A, and II–B. KAVANAUGH, J., filed an opinion concurring in part, in which ROBERTS, C. J., joined. BARRETT, J., filed an opinion concurring in part, in which KAGAN, J., joined, in which SOTOMAYOR, J., joined as to Parts I, II, and III–B, and in which JACKSON, J., joined as to Parts I and II. SOTOMAYOR, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which KAGAN and JACKSON, JJ., joined."
The gun control case, Garland v. Cargill, divides predictably 6-3 along right/left lines. Thomas, writing for the majority, holds that "bump stocks" are not machineguns within the meaning of the National Firearms Act, abrogating a (Trump-era) ATF ruling that sought to ban such devices.
The immigration case, Campos-Chaves v. Garland, is the closest of all, with Alito writing for the 5-4 majority and Gorsuch joining the three liberals in a dissent authored by newcomer Jackson.
The labor case, Starbucks Corp. v. McKinney, was almost unanimous, except for Justice Jackson's solo partial-dissent-but-concurrence-in-the-judgment. It seems to me (I have not attempted to quantify this impression) that Justice Jackson is much more likely than the other liberals to author a solo opinion.
I have only skimmed a few of these cases, so I don't feel equipped to dive deep into the merits of each case, but I always enjoy the Motte's Supreme Court culture-war takes. For my own contribution, I just want to articulate my view of the Justices' voting patterns: I feel like the Court's conservatives disagree with each other a lot more often than the liberals do. It's very common to see conservatives on both sides of an issue, while the liberals overwhelmingly tend to vote as a block. This week is just an example of the general pattern, I think. Many right-leaning court watchers see that as a bad thing, as if the Court's conservatives are wishy-washy and ideologically unreliable. I tend to see it differently; to me, it suggests the conservatives are more even-handed and unbiased, while the liberals are more interested in conformity and towing the party line--undesirable traits in a judge. As I said, though, I haven't attempted to test my hypothesis by quantifying who voted which way, when. Someone has surely done that, and I'd be interested to see their results.
Vidal's breakdown is... less interesting than it seems from the top line.
This part of a longer and larger conversation on an originalists-versus-formalists-versus-progressives-trying-to-figure-out-a-principle thing, but I don't expect it to take a very memorable part of that.
Garland v. Cargill is... disappointing.
Especially from the left branch. I was kinda hoping for a Caniglia, here: not only was the bump stock ban a Trump act, it just touched on so many matters that should appall the progressive side of the branch, and they still (and it's a pretty nakedly partisan Sotomayor opinion that can't even get the facts right). It's not a Second Amendment case, and it wasn't a Chevron case, just bare statutory interpretation. Can the feds rewrite a law decades later with serious criminal penalties as punishment without involving an actual bill? Does the rule of lenity mean anything, if it doesn't apply where even regulating officials were apparently 'confused' by the text of the law?
I guess on the upside, I don't think even Sotomayor would condone a President unilaterally declaring thousands or tens of thousands of people into federal felons with nothing more than an APA notice, outside of a matter where she doesn't like it. But, uh, that's... not actually a compliment.
Alito signed off on federal laws banning machine guns -- no, he doesn't openly say he thinks it's constitutional, but it's very clearly why he wrote it. Which a) not a huge surprise, guess it's good to have the writing on the wall, and b) invites lower courts handling state assault weapons bans or other more arguable cases to read expansively.
Thomas' opinion is technically interesting (embedded images!) so yay.
But the biggest downside is just the procedural stance the whole thing got to SCOTUS in, and how little any member of SCOTUS seems to recognize that or try to cordon it off from repetition. As far as I can tell, no circuit court actually applied a preliminary injunction, most lower courts found for the government in increasingly-messy text, SCOTUS punted here on Aposhian v. Garland (2022), Gun Owners of Am., Inc. v. Garland (2022), Guedes v. ATF (2020), and even Hardin (I think?) end up in a bizarre indefinite stay. The Trump bump stock ban went into action 03/26/2019.
It's 2024.
Yes, no small number of people had boating accidents, often without owning a boat, and will be doing some impressive magnet fishing for aluminum. But this was a blatantly unlawful regulation, and in almost all of the United States, acting in accordance with that would leave you at serious risk of a long prison sentence for over five years. There's reason all the plaintiffs here were people who'd surrendered their stocks, and they're not alone. You'd be a moron (or hate your dog) not to! The ATF will have destroyed (or 'destroyed' into someone's private collection) any and all it received, no takebacks or cash-on-receipt; manufacturers have been driven out of business or moved into different fields; inertia gained ground.
Even prospective owners should consider, seriously, that all of those takings clause concerns and Second Amendment matters mean, at best, they'll be joining the landlocked boat club, and more likely that they'll be hung out to dry. They're inviting those threats in the future, and likely the near future.
Which is funny for bump stocks, but it's not like this has stuck to bump stocks. There's a fair argument that SCOTUS doesn't, but Aposhian, GOA v Garland, and Guedes all strike here. Guedes even had Gorsuch writing out bad some lower court opinions were. In 2020, he could punt in the hope that other courts would give considered judgement -- "provided, of course, that they are not afflicted with the same problems." Today, we know exactly how that turned out, and what cost it took to receive other courts making the same fuckery with Chevron.
Campos-Chaves v. Garland is... very Gorsuch.
The nexus for this case is that various government groups have been sending Notices to Appear with a Date of TBD, then sending the actual date later. The statute requires illegal immigrants to have a Notice to Appear with a specific date included (along with other information that seems to have actually been included) or a notice updating them after a change in proceedings.
This isn't as arbitrary a difference as it sounds at first glance -- illegal immigrants are more likely than citizens to miss individual papers, or be delayed receiving them, or have trouble with legal paperwork. And Campos-Chaves didn't appear before an immigration judge in 2005; if he was properly ordered removed at the time, he's still subject to removal; otherwise, he's eligible for discretionary relief from deportation (that he will almost certainly receive) under the 'continuous presence' rule.
((Though this does make Jackson's displeasure that the federal government did not behave better after SCOTUS gave notice in 2018 and 2021 rather uncompelling. His co-respondents aren't much better, here; Signh's NTA was issued in 2016 and repeatedly rescheduled, once due to Sighn's non-appearance, and Mendez-Colín was 2001 and he showed up to several immigration court appearances until it was clear he wasn't going to win (and was removed, probably 2005ish?).))
The law is written poorly, and I can see the potential for abuse: the strictest literal version would allow the state to send just a date and time, and not any of the other info, which has significant due process concerns. (As a pragmatic matter, it's not entirely clear why the government isn't just issuing the full I-862s with a rescheduling checkbox. Maybe privacy?)
But it doesn't seem like anyone has claimed the government has, or even wants to; both these cases and previous ones Jackson highlights seem more trying to get illegal immigrants out of custody quickly, even where the final hearing date isn't available. And from a pragmatic perspective, it's very far from clear that it would be better for ICE to issue I-862s with a knowingly false date, only to give a 'real' one later: it wouldn't change the stop-clock stuff, and obviously increase confusion. There are even some marginal cases where the government's arguments would lead to longer time being run before the 'stop-clock', compared to that counterfactual, though I doubt any would matter.
Jackson's position seems to be based on the argument that the update notices are always invalid without fully complete initial NTAs, and that they can't be said to have been issued at all. And at first glance that's not a crazy pragmatic matter. But it's a textual nightmare; it means the statute about update notices qualifying never applies.
Starbucks
Jackson's dissental is mostly trying to argue in favor of vastly increased deference to the NLRB -- while she says concurring in judgment, it's very hard to see her version of Winters as going against the NLRB, here. Probably under the assumption that, like a lot of Breyer's later work, it'll get cited as by lower courts as often as the opinion itself.
It's not a crazy argument -- Congress does often limit judicial review of some agency decisions, and it might even be reasonable in the NLRB's context -- though it is hilarious in contrast with her anti-Munsingwear takes. Not necessarily wrong, though.
It's not that it wouldn't apply, it would just be that it would only apply if the time/place had to be changed (from another time/place), right?
Maybe? I'm not sure how: the dissent's take is pretty explicitly that an update notice requires a complete I-862, and Niz-Chavez is pretty explicit that the stop-time rule only applies when a complete I-862 is delivered. And I'd be pretty willing to bet that a complete I-862 without a proper update notice for the real hearing's date wouldn't be any more appealing to Sotomayor (correctly, imo, and maybe even to the majority here). That sounds a lot more like an "and" than an "or", and even that would turn the statute into a necessary authority for an immigration court to reschedule (or serve multiple) hearings, which is pretty far from typical interpretation.
It would be an "or"—whichever, (1) or (2), applies to the relevant hearing.
Mendez-Colín appeared for (multiple) previous hearings and was issued an order of removal after failing to appear at a hearing with an updated notice, and the dissent (and unpublished 9th Circuit opinion) didn't distinguish his case, so that doesn't work.
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