Another win. Fifth Circuit in Case Involving the Biden Administration’s Attempt to Provide Drugs and Medical Treatment to Children Without Parental Consent.
For some strange reason the Biden Administration feels that 1st graders can make their own decision when it comes to drugs and castration. Courts said different.
Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued a unanimous opinion in Deanda v. Becerra,which rejected the Biden Administration’s efforts to prevent parents from consenting to, or even learning about, medical care provided to their minor children, specifically, birth-control pills and other related services.
Texas has a parental consent law but the Biden Administration felt that Title X clinics in Texas have falsely claimed for decades that the Title X statute “preempts” state parental involvement laws and exempts Title X clinics from Texas’s parental consent requirements.
It actually does just the opposite. The statue actually encourages parent participation. Nuff said.
Biden beaten again. Court rules leave dishwashers and washing machines alone. As most of you know, the Biden administration has led an assault on numerous products. Latest was dishwashers and washing machines.
In a ruling on Monday, U.S. Appeals Court Judge Andrew Oldham said that it was unclear whether the Department of Energy (DOE) had the statutory authority to regulate water use in such appliances, and that the new rules it had proposed might not lead to less water use.
Arresting criminals.
ICE/JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images
Visits: 21
In all of his craziness Last year ( February 2021 ) Biden declared that ICE agents could not arrest or deport most of the illegal aliens in the U.S. unless they are considered a threat to public safety, a threat to national security, or arrived sometime after November 2020.
Well the Supreme Court has agreed to hear oral arguments where states are seeking to block President Joe Biden’s so-called “sanctuary country” orders from being implemented.
In August 2021, Judge Drew Tipton of the Southern District of Texas issued a nationwide preliminary injunction, halting the implementation of the orders, after Texas and Louisiana sued the Biden administration. That injunction was put on hold by a three-judge panel in September 2021 but the full 17-judge Fifth Circuit vacated that decision.
Tuesday, SCOTUS will hear arguments from the Biden administration where they attest that the orders have only “incidental effects” on states in terms of needing more public resources to deal with a growing illegal alien population that is largely exempt from arrest and deportation.
“… a State may not sue the federal government based on such indirect, derivative effects,” the Biden administration is set to argue:
Federal policies routinely have incidental effects on States’ expenditures, revenues, and other activities. Yet such effects have never been viewed as judicially cognizable injuries. As the recent explosion in state suits vividly illustrates, respondents’ contrary view would allow any State to sue the federal government about virtually any policy—sharply undermining Article III’s requirements and the separation of powers principles they serve. [Emphasis added]
Meanwhile, the states will argue that the orders are unlawful for three reasons:
First, it is contrary to law because sections 1226(c) and 1231(a)(2) mandate detention, as this Court has repeatedly stated. DHS identifies no INA provision that prevents this Court from reaching that conclusion. Second, the Final Memorandum is arbitrary and capricious because it failed to consider important aspects of the problems criminal aliens create, including recidivism and States’ reliance interests. Third, the Final Memorandum is procedurally invalid because it was not adopted through notice-and-comment procedures, which are required where agency action substantively changes a regulatory regime. [Emphasis added]
Reprint. So why aren’t we hearing more about how Joe is taking a beating in the courts? Biden’s bad run. He’s doing worse in the courts than Trump. Ye Joe’s had one loss after another. Here’s a snapshot.
President Biden repeatedly framed his campaign and his administration as defending “the rule of law” after what he and others portrayed as the lawless reign of President Trump. The image of Biden as restoring the Justice Department back into the good graces of the law and the courts is reinforced regularly in the media.
What is not being as fully reported is that Biden actually has racked up a litany of notable court losses that may now exceed those of his predecessor in his first six months. Indeed, the Biden administration has been found to have violated the Constitution in a surprising array of cases in a surprisingly short period of time.
Across the country, trial courts have been finding constitutional violations by the Biden administration in areas ranging from immigration to the environment to pandemic relief. The administration actually began with the same court record as the Trump administration, which lost an early challenge to its travel ban. (The Supreme Court later upheld the core elements of the travel ban and rejected the general claims raised against it.) Biden also lost a critical immigration fight when a federal court enjoined his 100-day moratorium on deportations. In a 105-page opinion, the court found that the administration omitted “any rational explanation grounded in the facts reviewed and the factors considered” and left only “an arbitrary and capricious choice” of the president in this early immigration order. Sound familiar? It should: That was the same argument used against Trump.
In Wisconsin, a federal court stopped Biden’s controversial $4 billion race-based federal relief program for farmers after finding that he was engaging in systemic racial discrimination. The court found that “the only consideration in determining whether a farmer or rancher’s loans should be completely forgiven is the person’s race or national origin.” As such, farmers were found to be “experiencing discrimination at the hands of their government.”
A court in Texas found that the Biden administration engaged in systemic discrimination to implement COVID-19 relief for American restaurants by giving preference to women, minorities and “socially and economically disadvantaged” people.
In Louisiana, a federal court enjoined the administration from carrying out its halting of gas and oil leases, finding that Biden’s unilateral action violated the separation of powers under the Constitution.
In Washington, D.C., a federal judge found that the Biden administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention exceeded its authority by imposing a federal eviction moratorium to help stop the spread of the coronavirus. The court rejected the administration’s sweeping claims of pandemic authority, a view taken by other (but not all) courts in a dispute that could go to the Supreme Court.
These rulings against the Biden administration came in the same areas covered extensively by the media during the Trump administration, including findings of constitutional violations and discriminatory practices. When early rulings were issued against Trump, legal and media experts declared that a war on the rule of law existed, if not the onset of tyranny. However, the media has given light coverage to Biden’s legal losses.
One of the most remarkable court losses was delivered at the hands of the Supreme Court in the case of Terry v. United States. It involved a criminal defendant in a crack case who argued for a sentence reduction under the First Step Act. The Trump administration argued against the defendant’s claim — but this was one of many positions that the Biden administration changed before the court. The Biden administration informed the court that it not only would refuse to defend the judgment below — and defend the federal statute — but was “confessing error” in the case.
The move by the Biden Administration was astonishing on a number of levels. Acting Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar informed the Supreme Court in March, on the actual due date for the government’s brief. Oral argument was scheduled for April; the court was forced to reschedule the oral argument for a special sitting in May, a completely avoidable conflict the administration created by waiting a ridiculous two months to inform the court. The Biden Justice Department simply suggested in a letter that the Supreme Court find someone else to defend a federal law. Moreover, the Biden administration was confessing error in a case where the government was likely to win. In other words, it was refusing to make an argument with which many if not most of the justices would agree.
Instead, the Biden administration advanced an argument that was so weak that the justices referred to its arguments as a meritless “sleight of hand” to evade the clear, obvious meaning of the statute. They ruled unanimously against the administration and the defendant. Eight justices signed on to the opinion of Justice Clarence Thomas entirely, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor concurred with his interpretation of the First Step Act. So, the Biden Justice Department confessed error and abandoned an argument that, ultimately, garnered a unanimous vote of the Supreme Court.
While continually claiming to be a champion of “the rule of law” in public, the Biden administration has been found to be a transgressor in these cases. These losses constitute an inauspicious start for any administration.
President Biden repeatedly framed his campaign and his administration as defending “the rule of law” after what he and others portrayed as the lawless reign of President Trump. The image of Biden as restoring the Justice Department back into the good graces of the law and the courts is reinforced regularly in the media.
What is not being as fully reported is that Biden actually has racked up a litany of notable court losses that may now exceed those of his predecessor in his first six months. Indeed, the Biden administration has been found to have violated the Constitution in a surprising array of cases in a surprisingly short period of time.
Across the country, trial courts have been finding constitutional violations by the Biden administration in areas ranging from immigration to the environment to pandemic relief. The administration actually began with the same court record as the Trump administration, which lost an early challenge to its travel ban. (The Supreme Court later upheld the core elements of the travel ban and rejected the general claims raised against it.) Biden also lost a critical immigration fight when a federal court enjoined his 100-day moratorium on deportations. In a 105-page opinion, the court found that the administration omitted “any rational explanation grounded in the facts reviewed and the factors considered” and left only “an arbitrary and capricious choice” of the president in this early immigration order. Sound familiar? It should: That was the same argument used against Trump.
In the early months of the Trump administration, I noted that “the White House gave the courts a target-rich environment in the first travel order, which was poorly drafted, poorly executed and poorly defended.” The same is true with the Biden administration; it has racked up losses for engaging in systemic racial and gender discrimination, exceeding its constitutional authority, and acting arbitrarily and capriciously in carrying out federal policy.
Of course, it still could prevail on appeal in some of these cases, as did Trump in his win on the travel ban before the Supreme Court. However, like the prior administration, the Biden administration has shown serious deficiencies in arguing these early cases in court.
President Biden has declared that “every country faces challenges to the rule of law, including my own.” His administration has, thus far, proven just how difficult that challenge can be.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. You can find his updates on Twitter @JonathanTurley.
Reprint. Now this is a Judge who speaks the truth. Now if you read the whole article, you’ll see that Judge Silberman is spot on. His disent should be discussed at every law school.
The case centers on a 2018 report from Global Witness Publishing that accused Liberian government officials Christiana Tah and Randolph McClain of accepting bribes from Exxon. Tah and McClain sued Global Witness alleging defamation and their claims were dismissed in Friday’s ruling.
However, in the course of his partial dissent, D.C. Circuit Court Judge Laurence Silberman went on an unprecedented written tirade against the press, in which he argued that the Supreme Court should revisit the landmark 1964 New York Times v. Sullivan ruling that granted the media broad First Amendment protections from being sued by public officials.
“[N]ew considerations have arisen over the last 50 years that make the New York Times decision (which I believe I have faithfully applied in my dissent) a threat to American Democracy,” he write. “It must go.”
“The increased power of the press is so dangerous today because we are very close to one-party control of these institutions,” said Silberman, who was nominated to the federal bench by Ronald Reagan and has been a senior judge on the D.C. Circuit Court since 2000.
“Although the bias against the Republican Party—not just controversial individuals—is rather shocking today, this is not new; it is a long-term, secular trend going back at least to the ’70s,” Silberman wrote. “Two of the three most influential papers (at least historically), The New York Times and The Washington Post, are virtually Democratic Party broadsheets. And the news section of The Wall Street Journal leans in the same direction. The orientation of these three papers is followed by The Associated Press and most large papers across the country (such as the Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, and Boston Globe). Nearly all television—network and cable—is a Democratic Party trumpet. Even the government-supported National Public Radio follows along.”
He accused Silicon Valley of filtering news “in ways favorable to the Democratic Party” and fueling censorship, citing the suppression of the New York Post’s bombshell reporting on Hunter Biden in the final weeks of the 2020 presidential election.
“It is well-accepted that viewpoint discrimination ‘raises the specter that the Government may effectively drive certain ideas or viewpoints from the marketplace,'” Silberman said. “But ideological homogeneity in the media—or in the channels of information distribution—risks repressing certain ideas from the public consciousness just as surely as if access were restricted by the government.”
Silberman also sounded the alarm about the “serious efforts to muzzle” outlets like Fox News that aren’t under “Democratic Party ideological control.”
“It should be borne in mind that the first step taken by any potential authoritarian or dictatorial regime is to gain control of communications, particularly the delivery of news. It is fair to conclude, therefore, that one-party control of the press and media is a threat to a viable democracy,” the judge continued. “It may even give rise to countervailing extremism.
“The First Amendment guarantees a free press to foster a vibrant trade in ideas. But a biased press can distort the marketplace. And when the media has proven its willingness—if not eagerness—to so distort, it is a profound mistake to stand by unjustified legal rules that serve only to enhance the press’ power.”
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