I wrote today about two U.S. Supreme Court cases, which the court chose out of 8,000 petitions, 99% of which the court tosses (it decides about 70 cases out of over 8,000 filed each year).
One of the cases chosen by the U.S. Supreme Court was decided in favor of debt collectors.
There, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it has no power to amend an Act of Congress.
The other case was against the Trump administration where the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review jurisdictional threshold issues and instead amended (without authority) another Act of Congress, after its justices received multiple benefits over the years from one of Trump's opponents, the State of Hawaii University School of Law, and after Justice Ginsburg has actually made a trip while one of the related cases was being decided by the lower appellate courts and had "meetings with faculty" of that state law school (part of the party in litigation in front of her), while the "faculty" included 3 law clerks of the judge of the federal appellate court deciding the case.
The U.S. Supreme Court has also ruled in June on LGBT rights of same-sex couples, continuing the line of cases started by its decision in 2015 in Obergefell v Hodges, just one precedent so far on the issue of gay rights.
The issue in Pavan v Smith decided on June 26, 2017 was that a male spouse is considered by default a parent and is included on the child's birth certificate, whether the child is or is not the male spouse's biological child, but a female same-sex spouse is not so included on the birth certificate of the child by default.
Now, the U.S. Supreme Court has announced that, out of the 8,000 petitions filed, it has chosen yet another gay-rights case, verifying whether a cake-shop owner had a right to refuse to decorate a cake for a same-sex wedding.
Yet, the same U.S. Supreme Court, while paying lip service to prohibiting the government to regulate speech based on its content, stubbornly refuses to take up any whistleblower cases against the government - and thus refuses to uphold a long string of its own precedents.
There are PLENTY of U.S. Supreme Court precedents indicating that the government cannot regulate speech based on its content - yet, this year, the U.S. Supreme Court chose to apply this principle not to whistleblower/retaliation cases, but to cases of credit card companies charging extra fees, and, lately, the right to trademark derogatory names.
It comes to the point that many people in the whistleblower community who have suffered retaliation from the government for criticism of misconduct of government officials expressed (even though discreetly) in their communications that, unless you are gay or transgender, nowadays it is impossible to get a review from the U.S. Supreme Court.
And such a resentment is understandable.
Nobody - nobody - should be given a free right to choose whose constitutional rights are to be enforced, and whose to be ignored.
Yet, that is exactly what the U.S. Supreme Court is doing, based on the 1925 Judiciary Act.
Choosing cases favoring debt collectors, credit card companies, "Wonder Doodles", birth certificates for gay rights, have much less impact on society than establishing, once and for all, access to justice for all by prohibiting the government to yank occupational licenses of attorneys who criticize judges IN MOTIONS TO RECUSE - yet, that is happening left and right, such attorneys are left without jobs, without money, without opportunities of employment, while the public is left without independent representation, because attorneys that remain license are intimidated that the same will happen to them if they do their job properly.
And, of course, ruling in favor of attorneys - or other whistleblowers against the government - will require honest, integrity, courage, and neutrality, while the U.S. Supreme Court, very apparently, lacks all of the above.
People, including same sex couples, will continue to get into situations where judicial bias and corruption will require to file a motion to recuse.
Yet, people will continue to run into reluctance of attorneys to do that because judges are both regulators of their livelihoods and decision-makers in court cases, which creates an untenable situation where attorneys cannot dare do their jobs and ensure for their clients their constitutional right to impartial judicial review, for fear of losing their own livelihoods.
That is a countrywide human rights problem, which the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to address.
Instead, it addresses issues whether it is constitutional when an artist is being punished for refusing to create a piece of art on a certain topic - a clear case of politically-correct compulsion of artistic expression.
It may be a violation of the artists' 1st Amendment rights. And, it is an obviously frivolous lawsuit.
An artist may refuse to create a work of art for you for any reason, including lack of inspiration, which cannot be commanded.
Think about it. Will you sue an artist for lack of inspiration regarding you?
With the current amount of political unrest in our society, it will be for everyone's benefit to abolish the 1925 Judiciary Act and make ALL petitions for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court mandatory, so that people would not feel resentment that a gay couple - yet again - is given review while a whistleblower against the government - yet again - is denied review of glaring violations of constitutional rights.
Moreover, the U.S. Supreme Court, whose judges are sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution, should not be given a free reign as to which constitutional violation to address and which to ignore.
Not to mention that if the Court wants any kind of respect for upholding its own precedents, it should actually do that in all cases.
Not only for those who can afford to pay (taxpayer money) for the judges' vacations, for those represented by the judges' former law clerks, or for those whose cases will get the most publicity for the judges, and thus more opportunities for judges' paid speeches and readership for their books.
Let us make the U.S. Supreme Court actually work.
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