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PaperclipPerfector  10hr ago (text post)   1444 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 29, 2026

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Supreme Court roundup thread? They dropped four opinions today that have some pretty wide ranging implications. Some more than others.

In Chatrie v. United States a 5-4 court (with Roberts and Barrett joining Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson) holds that geofence warrants constitute a "search" under the 4th amendment. This does not necessarily resolve the case in favor of Chatrie, though. The government did have a warrant in this case, although it's not clear whether the warrant was "reasonable." SCOTUS here is mostly pushing back on the holding by the Fourth Circuit panel that a search had not even occurred under the fourth amendment, due to the third party doctrine.

In Watson v. Republican National Committee a 5-4 court (with Roberts and Barrett joining Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson) the court holds that federal laws specifying an election day do not pre-empt state laws that permit counting ballots received after that day, so long as the ballots are sent by that day.

In Trump v. Slaughter a 6-3 court holds that the "for-cause" removal provision for FTC commissioners is unconstitutional, overruling Humphrey's Executor. This was pretty widely anticipated, since the Supreme Court has gradually been expanding the President's power to remove officials since Trump's re-election.

In Trump v. Cook a 5-4 court (Roberts and Kavanaugh joining Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson) holds that the President may not fire members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governor's at-will. The for-cause provision regarding firing members of the Feds BoG is constitutional and sets a "substantial threshold" for what constitutes cause.

Most online discussion I've seen has been focused on the latter two decisions and their apparent inconsistency. Apparently, Congress can only insulate executive branch employees from Presidential termination some of the time and those circumstances do not depend on the wording of the statute or anything else Congress has any control over. Roberts is the author of both opinions and he tries to square the circle by arguing that the United States has a long history of independent central banking but I don't think he's very convincing. The Federal Reserve itself is a mere 1 year older than the FTC (founded in 1913 vs 1914) so Roberts tries to reach back to the First and Second Bank of the United States and nevermind the fact there was an 80 year period where the United States had no central bank between the Second Bank of the United States and the Federal Reserve. Some of the syllabus even, in my view, departs from anything that could be called a legal argument to argue that this is good policy:

Although this extraordinary case arises on the Court’s interim docket, the Court has had the benefit of not only amici and oral argument but months of internal consultation and deliberation. The Court declines to sow doubt as to the status of one of the Nation’s (and the world’s) most important financial institutions, and would not so quickly unsettle this “special arrangement sanctioned by history.”

The court has also said tomorrow will be the last opinion day, in which we will presumably get the four remaining opinions (including birthright citizenship) so maybe I'll have to do another one tomorrow.

Chatrie joins a host of other weird post-Carpenter lower court cases (pole cameras, mosaic cases, Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle v. Baltimore) where connection between the 4th Amendment's text and a more general free-standing limit on police action gets messy. If the rest of 4th Amendment caselaw wasn't such a clusterfuck, this wouldn't be so rough, but instead simultaneously a) if you're guilty, you can get out of it by arguing the police searched someone else too aggressively, b) if you're innocent, you have no recourse but being found not-guilty, and c) a host of other actual search of you specifically still don't count because mumblemumble. And it's just a punt onto the merits: I fully expect the 5th to go "okay, it's a reasonable search", maybe even snark about how technically precedent doesn't require warranted searches to be reasonable, and then SCOTUS to deny cert on the eventual appeal.

Watson is one of those cases where the textualist and originalist arguments could genuinely go either way. In theory, Congress could answer the question, in practice it won't. And military ballots make the election day cutoff hard to abide by (even if the Clinton-era mess makes everyone hypocrites).

Cook is... ugh. It's an important enough case that, as much as I bitch about Kavanaugh's results-oriented position, I at least have sympathy for it here. But on top of the questionable legal grounding, it's a decision answering arguments not even at question before the court, while punting the actual matter in question into an unsolvable procedural gimmick so it'll go away and not come back.

And it's just a punt onto the merits: I fully expect the 5th to go "okay, it's a reasonable search", maybe even snark about how technically precedent doesn't require warranted searches to be reasonable, and then SCOTUS to deny cert on the eventual appeal.

Why wouldn't it be a reasonable search, given that the police in Chatrie had a warrant?

The only thing the Supreme Court seems to be saying here is that you can't completely punt the issue by declaring it a non-search (because reasons) rather than a reasonable one.

Why wouldn't it be a reasonable search, given that the police in Chatrie had a warrant?

"and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

The question is whether "everything in that area" is particular enough.

Watson is pretty terrible; it allows bad actors to keep adding backdated votes after election day until they get the result they want. Vastly increases the ease of such fraud.

That's not a good argument that a specific statute (from 1934, no less, before my dad was born) covers it.

I don't feel like this is viable, you basically need to enlist an entire post office as your accomplice when you get them to put a false date in their post-marking machine and run a bunch of ballots through it for you, and post offices have security cameras.

California doesn't even require a post-mark, just a hand-written date on the ballot envelope.

How hard would it really be to fake a postmark?

high-res photo of a bunch of stamps on mail

3d-model the stamp's shape

3d-print the stamp in a rubbery material with a resin printer, so no layer lines.

gently weather/age the stamp.

...would be one obvious and probably undetectable method. You could use this to match an existing stamp's "unique" flaws/weathering, or use it to create a plausible stamp that doesn't match known stamps, whichever is more useful.

Absolutely trivial, it's just an ink stamp.

Absolutely trivial, it's just an ink stamp.

I imagine it would not be too hard to find a cooperative postal worker who likes the idea of fighting Nazis.

Okay, let’s apply the new Slaughter test to the Federal Reserve. What executive power does the fed wield?

Roberts is the author of both opinions and he tries to square the circle by arguing that the United States has a long history of independent central banking but I don't think he's very convincing.

The US sure has a history with central banking, and it's one of resisting the foreign and centralizing influence of the bank. It's just as unconstitutional for congress to make unaccountable bankers as every other kind of unaccountable bureaucrat.

Being able to kill the fucking bank was a pillar of many presidential campaigns.

As always, Thomas has the right of things.

The federal courts also lack the authority to enter the relief that the Court upholds today. This Court has held that a plaintiff cannot obtain relief against anyone, let alone the sovereign, without a right of action, but now it rules that Cook may obtain such relief without identifying one. It has held that federal courts lack equitable authority to interfere with the removal of public officers, but it recognizes an exception to that rule for Cook. And, it has held that Congressand the Judiciary cannot encroach on the President’s exclusive and preclusive powers, which include his power to remove executive officers, but it prevents the President from exercising that power here. Although the Court expresses concern that the President removed a Board member for “the first time in the Federal Reserve’s 111-year history,” ante, at 1, it expresses no such concern that it today upholds an injunction against the President’s removal of an executive officer for the first time in the Constitution’s 237-year history.

He then goes on to eviscerate the idea that central banking is traditional in any way. Just go read Justice Thomas while he's alive.

I remember when Obama reinstated the Federal Reserve for another hundred years, which has always been ridiculous on its face. I don't know why I thought he might resist, but of course he didn't. End the fed, kill the bank, and stop debasing my money.

Roberts is the author of both opinions and he tries to square the circle by arguing that the United States has a long history of independent central banking but I don't think he's very convincing.

Okay, assuming this is just a fig leaf for a political decision, could someone please lay out for me the political reason why someone might rule differently in Slaughter and Cook? Because I am clueless about this.

I think basically Roberts didn't want to scare the hoes. Or rather, the bros. Giving the President that much control over the Fed would upset the financial markets and Roberts never wants to rock the boat that much.

One steel man aside is that there is a substantial history of an independent central bank in the Founding Era whereas for-cause-only removals for administrative agencies are a much more recent thing.

One can argue whether such history embodies a real rule of Constitutional interpretation, ie. that a document should not be interpreted to forbid what its contemporary supporters were doing, but it's not entirely wacky.

The Federal Reserve controls the country and the fed is in turn controlled by international financial interests. Therefore FTC gets sacrificed but Fed is untouchable.

Unless I'm missing something isn't the whole point that the one group is the metaphorical arms of the president and the other group is supposed to be objective separate body? I feel like everything falls neatly from there...

There is a general belief that Fed independence is a crucial linchpin undergirding American wealth and prosperity, regardless of how strong the legal argument is for it.

My preference would be for the Supreme Court to rip the band-aid and let Trump ruin our economy for a bit, and show people why we should get a proper Constitutional amendment protecting Fed independence, but that isn't going to happen.

IMO an amendment guaranteeing Fed Independence would be worse than the disease. The Fed can do Coups. They do have the technology to cause a Depression. You would essentially give the Fed the power to hold the rest of government hostage. That is not good. As it is now if Trump does something bad he can lose the next election.

They did not do it on purpose but they basically caused the Great Depression.

That would somehow require you to believe that the era before 1913 was somehow neither wealthy nor prosperous, or that the wealth and prosperity is no longer obtainable.

Obviously the US was wealthy and prosperous at the end of the 19th century. Incredibly wealthy and prosperous, in fact. What Fed independence is undergirding is exactly the kind of control over government that was repeatedly warned against by Jackson, among many.

The Fed is not a fourth branch of government, and Congress cannot make them so.

The main political explanation people argue is that fucking with the federal reserve hurts the markets and if there's one thing they care about more than expanding the Trump executive, it's their finances.

I don't know if this is the correct explanation, but it's the main one I've seen.

The connection between the first and second national banks and the federal reserve board is incoherent. "Expansion of executive power except if Trump might fuck rates and my retirement account" is unserious. Kavanaugh spells it out clearly enough.

I would not go down that road. I would not risk destabilizing the U. S. economy just so that we can further mull over an issue that, in various permutations, we have as been thinking about for many years. As the Court’s opinion explains and the Government agrees, the Federal Reserve occupies a unique role in the U. S. Government and maintains critical responsibility for the stability and success of the U. S. and world economies.

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