The Supreme Court Is About To “Decide” Itself Right Out Of Relevance

Mark my words, depending on how it goes, if not the end of this court calendar, then almost certainly some time during the next fall docket, the Supreme Court is going to decide itself right out of relevance. And they’ll have nobody to blame but themselves.

As you probably already know, the Supreme Court is the only department of the United States government with absolutely no enforcement mechanism built in. Just think about that for a moment.

Congress has the Capitol Police. The DEA, ATF and DHS all have trained agents for investigative and enforcement work. So does the FBI. Even non law enforcement agencies like HHS, HUD, and the RPA have trained officers and inspectors whose words can be backed up by department regulations to enforce decisions and violations. Even the freakin’ Parks and Recreation Department have Forest Rangers to enforce park rules and ensure safety.

But there is no Supreme Court Police Force to enforce its rulings. And there’s a damn good reason for that. Lower courts are more lilely to deal with laws and crimes, and they have the ability to refer rulings back to lower courts through enforcement by law officers. Perfect example. Trump violates the terms of his parole by taking off for a round at Trump Turnberry in Scotland. The judge drags him into court on his return, vacates his parole bond, and off to the hoosegow goes His Lowness.

The Supreme Court doesn’t do that. Any laws it actually deals with are not in terms of enforcement, it is only about their constitutionality. If a law is ruled to be constitutional, then it will be enforced locally. But what is the Constitution but a document that can be interpreted different ways, affecting all of us. And the founding Fathers were damn well smart enough to not want to give the Supreme court an enforcement arm so they could set themselves up to rule by judiciary fiat. Which may well turn out to be our salvation in these dark times.

It exists on legitimacy and fairness. For more than 200 years Americans have accepted rulings that they didn’t agree with or approve of, si,ply because the law is blind, and the justices handing it down are honest men and women acting fairly and impartially. Not anymore. These days, according to polling, most people trust their bookies more than the supreme court, and feel they’ll get a fairer ruling on a dispute from their local bartender than the nine national nags in black muumuu’s. And without their legitimacy, the Supreme court has nothing to sell.

Which is insane when you think about how hard this Supreme court had to work to f*ck things up this bad. In poll after poll, the tw most despised professions in this country are lawyers and politicians. Genital warts are more popular. But you take a lawyer, almost certainly with political connections, throw a $40 black polyester robe over his head, and he immediately assumes the wisdom of Solomon. Whether it’s the robe, or the mystery and patina of intelligence and probity, people wubs dem some judges!

What is going to kill this current iteration of the Supreme court is something even more fundamental than the blatantly partisan way in which they’re decfiding these cases, it’s their total disregard for the most fundamental rule of their profession. The Rule of Standing.

In order to file a civil lawsuit in any court in this country, the first thing a plaintiff must be able to do is to prove that he has standing to file the suit. In other words, they have to prove that they or their businesses personally are being personally discriminated against or hurt by the current law or issue. But during the rule of Roberts, with an out of control far right judiciary handpicked by Leonard Leo, it has become business as usual for far right wingnuts to go judge shopping for far right judges who will get them to the Supreme court. And not just the blatantly hypocrisy of it, but the appalling frequency of standing free cases movinhg up the ladder is placing the court in an untenable position. Because they’re almost exclusively dealing with far right culture war social issues. And pretty soon the Supreme Court is not going to be able to cash all those rulings they wrote with their mouths.

A perfect example. Earlier today, the 11th Appellate Circuit Court found that the actions of a black run foundation was unconstitutionally handing out grants in violation of the 1856 Civil War reconstruction Lae. A little background. To my understanding the foundation is run by black women, and awards small $20,000 grants to already up and running black female owned companies to expand. statistically speaking, while black and brown women make up 21% of small business ownership, they obtain only 3% of available grants and awards to expand. This foundation does its small part to ease that crunch.

The suit was filed by a far right cover group that shopped the case to a friendly judge, claiming that the grants were unconstitutional since they didn’t offer them to qualified white women applicants. To my knowledge, there were no white women litigants listed on the lawsuit. You tell me, how a bunch of ofay mofo rich males wearing white shoes are being personally or professionally damaged by a bunch of black women giving other qualified black women a lousy $20,000?  But the case is likely headed for the Supreme Court.

Which already has its own ticking time bomb. Any day now we’re awaiting the release of the Mifepristone abortion pill ruling. This one was even worse. A bunch of far right west coast doctors who never actually prescribed Mifepristone for abortion purposes under religious beliefs nonetheless shopped a lawsuit to a one cow judge district in Texas wanting the Supreme court to outlaw its use on religious principles. Since none of them had ever been forced to prescribe it for an abortion, clearly the had no standing, since they had suffered no personal or professional consequences. But the Supreme Court is likely to overturn more than 30 years of safe use under normal care and conditions.

And here’s where the Supreme Court is about to choke on their own rulings. Remember, all the Supreme Court can do is to point their fingers, oook stern, and say Do this! or Don’t do this!, with0out a way to back it up if somebody actually stands up and says, Here, Hold my beer. And somebody is already standing up.

In blue pro choice states, to my count at least five, New York, New Jersey, Michigan, California and Washington state have wisely spent the last several months buying up and stockpiling a multi year supply of Mifepristone, so that their pharmacies will have a ready supply for doctors to continue to prescribe it in the face of a possible negative SCOTUS ruling.

Just what will the Supreme court actually do if these states pull a states rights claim, and ignore the order. Worse yet, what are other, nieghboring red states with severe abortion restrictions going to do when people from their states flood across the border to see a loacl doctor and get a prescription for Mifepristone to be filled and used locally or brought home? Set up Customs style border checkpoints at every point of egress and search purses and luggage? You can already get Viagra and weight contro9l drugs online from Canada with a video examination. What if Canadian online doctors start writing prescriptions to Canadian pharmacies for Mifepristone to be delivered by fedEx, or UPS to avoid the US postal service?

The Supreme Court is a paper tiger. All it takes is one, and there are already five standing tall and ready for a negative Mifepristone ruling to call them out. The smart thing to do in this case is to throw out the Mifepristone case on a lack od standing ruling and try to keep that genie in the bottle. But if they do that, then they admit to the world that they actually are receptive to, and respondent to public pressure and threats of non compliance. Is Mifepristone the hill Roberts wants his judicial legacy to die on? And what if it is?

Biden has clearly already had-it-up-to-here with Trump’s judicial train wreck. What’s to stop Biden from issuing an Executive Order to the head of the FDA making the SCOTUS ruling advisory only, since neither the lower ourts nor the Supreme court have any medical or pharmacological expertise to bring to the table? Does the Supreme Court hold him in Contempt of Court? OOOooohhh!

Now, let’s have some fun and extrapolate. You remember that black woman’s foundation that is giving $20,000 grants to black women entrepreneurs. Let’s say that they lose in the Supreme Court. What happens next?

If they’re smart, nothing happens next. They’re chartered in Florida, but could always move somewhere else. They’re a private foundation, taking private donations, and distributing them to qualified black female applicants. What is the Supreme Court going to do if that foundation just keeps rolling right along with business as usual? What is the Supreme Court going to do, demand that the state of Florida shut them down for unconstitutional actions? They have no sway in a state concerning state activities.

Once this starts, it never stops. And the funny thing is that the Supreme Court was too goddamned arrogant in their ruling in the Dobbs decision. They hung their hats on not overturning Roe as settled law by simply returning it to the states for adjudication. And in doing so, the stupid sh*ts basically ceded their authority by allowing the states to individually interpret a Supreme Court decision according to their own state legislation.

What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Let’s just look at the Florida woman’s foundation. They’re operating peacefully in Florida under all applicable Florida laws and regulations. Why should the state of Florida want to interfere in their operation on behalf of the Supreme Court when they don’t even have a dog in the fight?

It doesn’t really matter who does it. Sometime in the next year, depending on the quality of the decisions, somebody is going to openly defy a ruling of the Supreme Court. And when that happens, then the legitimacy and authority of the ‘supreme Court is shattered. Simply because they have no enforcement mechanism to back up their ruling. And after that it becomes a free-for-all until the Supreme court reconstitutes and finds a way to reestablish its legitimacy.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that the criminal justice system is broken. Today;s Hunter Biden verdict shows like a shining light that the day-to-day criminal just system works exactly as advertised, and that’s the most important thing. Because only a small number of actual cases filed every year ever get to the Supreme Court, and only a tiny number of those are criminal cases. The criminal court system will continue ticking right along dispensing justice, while the appellate and Supreme Courts get their sh*t back together.

I will leave you with this one last positive to prove my point. For more than 15 years the state of Wisconsin has been the most gerrymandered GOP state in the country. Democrats regularly outpoll the GOP at the polls in elections, and yet the GOP continues to retain a majority, and in some cases a super majority while being outpolled.

But this year, with a liberal majority on the state Supreme Court, the Democrats finally found the current maps unconstitutional, and redrew them, making Wisconsin a true swing state with a light lead Democratic, as befits voting patterns.. Which would normally lead to the obligatory GOP suit in federal court to contest the map as unconstitutional, leadiing the way to at least a year long court process, forcing the previous map to be in effect for the November election.

But the Democrats were smarter than that. This time they only redrew the state legislative district maps without touching the US congressional maps. This shut off any GOP attempt to take the state map to federal court. Meaning that the Democrats now have a legitimate shot at finally turning the state legislature Democratic, with no federal interference possible. It’s a learning curve, and Democratic voting rights lawyer is a savant. Democracy ain’t dead yet.

I thank you for the privilege of your time.

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