SCOTUS news and opinions

[JollyRoger]

Hopefully they will at least revoke his Yale law degree as he claims it never did him any good.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Definitely made a pretty penny with how big his platform was, but yeah, he's screwed. SCOTUS would be insane to touch this case with a ten-foot pole.

Alex Jones is hosed.

Supreme Court rejects Alex Jones' appeal of $1.4 billion defamation judgment in Sandy Hook shooting

A lawyer representing families of Newtown, Connecticut, school shooting victims says the Supreme Court was right to reject conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ appeal of the $1.4 billion defamation judgment against him for calling the massacre a hoax.

apnews.com

He is going to have to sell a lot of supplements to pay off his debt!

 

[Birdjaguar]

Onion gets his company!!

 

[SemiLazyGamer]

Alex Jones asks US Supreme Court to block billion-dollar defamation ruling against him​

Right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has asked the US Supreme Court to put on pause the nearly $1.5bn (£1.1bn) defamation judgment against him that is forcing the sale of his Infowars media company.

Jones was ordered to make the payout in 2022 for claiming the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School was a hoax.

He has asked the high court to prevent Infowars from being sold to the satirical news site The Onion in order to fund judgment against him, arguing that it will cause irreparable harm to him and his audience of 30 million.

The sale to The Onion, backed by the families of victims of the Newtown, Connecticut, shooting, was rejected last year after a bankruptcy auction.

Jones is asking the justices to put the judgment on hold while deciding on an appeal he has filed. The court is expected to consider his application on Friday in private.

Attorneys for Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems, characterized him as a media defendant in their court filing on Thursday.

They argued that Jones, who founded the platform in 1999, should enjoy the same free speech protections under the First Amendment of the Constitution that journalists have, according to court documents filed on Wednesday.

They also said the record-breaking payout and the shuttering of his platform would have a "chilling effect" on similar media figures.

"Jones believes this Court will unanimously recognize that a failure to reverse this case will mean all journalists will realize that they could be found liable for huge defamation awards, especially in ideologically divergent geographic regions," they wrote.

That, in turn, could keep journalists "from publishing for fear of being hauled into court there facing a 'trial by sanction' in which the First Amendment is superfluous and debilitating damages can be awarded", they added.

After a Connecticut court ruled against him in the defamation case, Jones filed for bankruptcy protection in Texas and Infowars was put up for auction so that he could pay the families of victims of the Sandy Hook mass shooting, who had brought the suit.

Last year, The Onion made a bid to buy the Infowars website but the sale was rejected by a US bankruptcy judge in December. However, the judge also rejected Jones' claims that the bankruptcy auction was plagued by "collusion."

In his Wednesday application, Jones told the highest court in the country that he will experience "irreparable injury" if Infowars is sold to its "ideological nemesis" and intentionally "destroyed".

Twenty children and six adults were killed in 2012 when a gunman rampaged through the primary school in Newtown, Connecticut, firing a semi-automatic rifle before killing himself.

Jones, who positions himself as "a steadfast proponent of questioning mainstream narratives from the government and mainstream news media", claimed for years that the massacre was a "staged" government plot to take guns from Americans and that "no-one died".

He called the parents of victims "crisis actors" and argued that some of them never actually existed.

In a separate defamation trial in Texas, Jones later acknowledged the attack was "100% real".
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy856qxzq01o

SCOTUS rejects Alex Jones's appeal.

Other rejections:

The justices declined to hear an appeal from a group of Colorado parents seeking to sue their public school district over a policy that allegedly allows children to pursue gender transitions, and be supported by school staff, without any parental notification.

In a statement, Justice Samuel Alito concurred with the decision, saying the case was an imperfect "vehicle" for examining the core legal question; but he urged the court to look for other opportunities to take up the "troubling -- and tragic -- allegations in the case."

In another case, the court rejected an appeal from a group of unnamed minors and their families who had sued the app Grindr for marketing to children, recommending them to nearby adults for sex and allegedly facilitating trafficking.

Plus, it declined to take up a closely-watched California case challenging Food and Drug Administration regulations governing the use of stem cells to promote healing through new forms of treatment as well as a conservative group's challenge to Department of Homeland Security's authority to issue temporary work permits to immigrants who entered the country unlawfully without express consent from Congress.

Supreme Court rejects Alex Jones' appeal of $1.4 billion Sandy Hook judgment

The Supreme Court rejected an appeal from Alex Jones, who has been ordered to pay $1.4 billion in damages to the families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting.

abcnews.go.com

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

In the hearing today in Louisiana v. Callais, the 6 conservative justices seemed primed to finally end the rest of the VRA and officially legalize racial discrimination in drawing House district maps. This would be something like a 19 seat swing in favor of Republicans in next year’s midterms, and essentially guarantee permanent GOP control of the house for the time being.

Alito + Thomas are def in, Kavanaugh + Roberts have written and voiced historically opinions that agree. Barret has too - although it wouldn’t shock me if the conservative justices bargain for a 5-4 ruling in which she joins the liberals to try to temper some anger.

 

[JollyRoger]

Wouldn't it be a 4-4 tie once Thomas finds out his vote has been packed with Alito's?

 

[Broken_Erika]

US Supreme Court lets Trump administration require gender at birth be listed on passports​

The US Supreme Court will allow the Trump administration to require all new passports to display an individual's biological sex at birth, for now.

The conservative-majority court on Thursday froze an order from a lower court in Massachusetts that had stopped the US government from changing its policy while the legal process plays out.

"Displaying passport holders' sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth," the court said.

On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order recognising only two sexes, leading the US to issue passports with just male or female designations, based on a person's sex recorded at birth.

The Biden administration allowed people to self-select their gender on passports and add a third gender option - X - to the government document, which is issued by the State Department.

The win for the Trump administration - the latest on the high court's emergency docket - means that individuals can no longer show their chosen identity on new or renewed passports in the near future.

The order said that the government is "merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment".

The Supreme Court also said the administration "is likely to succeed on the merits", indicating the justices are inclined to issue a final ruling upholding the requirement when the case reaches them.

The three liberal justices dissented.

The plaintiffs in the case are arguing that the limitations in the gender field amounts to harassment and can lead to violence against transgender individuals.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2em442nyrwo

 

[danjuno]

Shouldn't passports show current information anyway?