For Obama, Supreme Court health-care, immigration rulings to close a tough term

another smack down week coming for our Constitutional law professor President.




For Obama, Supreme Court health-care, immigration rulings to close a tough term

By Robert Barnes, Updated: Sunday, June 24, 6:39 PM

The Supreme Court this week will conclude its term by handing down much-anticipated rulings on health care and immigration, President Obama’s remaining priorities before the justices. It is a finale that cannot come quickly enough for the administration, which has had a long year at the high court.

In a string of cases — as obscure as the federal government’s relationships with Indian tribes and as significant as enforcement of the Clean Water Act — the court rejected the administration’s legal arguments with lopsided votes and sometimes biting commentary.
The administration’s win-loss record will sting a lot less, of course, if the court upholds the constitutionality of Obama’s signature domestic achievement, the Affordable Care Act. Thatdecision on health care, which will define the term, could come as early as Monday and almost certainly will be announced by Thursday.

The court also will decide the fate of Arizona’s tough law on illegal immigrants, which the Obama administration challenged in court before it could take effect. The government’s argument that the law conflicts with the federal authority to decide immigration policy got asour reception from the justices, but the government hopes for at least a split decision on other aspects of the measure.

The administration’s ungainly portfolio at the Supreme Court this term has drawn attention from all points on the ideological spectrum.
Ilya Shapiro, a constitutional scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute, said the government is to blame for “outlandish claims of federal power” that the court was correct to reject.

Adam Winkler, a liberal law professor at UCLA, recently wrote that the court headed by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has been “unusually hostile to the Obama administration.”
His conclusion: “This is the year of the Supreme Court’s Obama smack down.”

It might also have something to do with the (bad) luck of the draw. It is the job of Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. to defend the actions of Congress and the executive. In some of the government’s high-profile losses in Verrilli’s inaugural term, the administration was defending decisions made long before Obama took office.

But whatever the reasons, the losses so far cannot be blamed on the conflict between an increasingly conservative court and a progressive administration. For instance, the authors of the Indian cases that went against the government last week were Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, Obama’s choices for the court.

At least so far, 5-to-4 decisions that have divided the court along ideological lines have split fairly evenly between wins for liberals and for conservatives. And there has been a string of high-profile losses in which the government has failed to win the vote of a single justice — liberal or conservative.
The court was unanimous in rejecting the government’s arguments that federal discrimination laws protect employees of religious organizations who perform some duties central to the group’s faith.
The justices in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC for the first time recognized a “ministerial exception” to workplace discrimination laws. They dismissed the government’s view that the fired employee’s claim should be viewed as if she worked for a labor union or social club protected by the First Amendment’s guarantee of free association.

“We cannot accept the remarkable view that the Religion Clauses have nothing to say about a religious organization’s freedom to select its own ministers,” Roberts wrote.

In United States v. Jones, the government argued that it did not need a warrant to attach a Global Positioning System device to a suspected drug dealer’s car and monitor his movements for a month. The court again disagreed unanimously, although the justices split on whether Antoine Jones’s constitutional rights were violated when the device was put on his car or whether the government’s surveillance compromised his privacy rights.

And in Sackett v. EPA, the court rejected the argument that property owners accused of violating the Clean Water Act do not have the right to quickly challenge those allegations in court.

It is a case in which the administration was defending a decades-old EPA enforcement technique upheld by lower courts. It was not indicative of any activism by the Obama environmental regime; Mike and Chantell Sackett’s plan to build an Idaho lake house was stopped when George W. Bush was president.

While the Supreme Court passed up an earlier chance to consider the same issues in an appeal from General Electric, it took the case of the Sacketts.
“I wonder if the case had been involving a large corporation if the result would have been 9-0,” Paul D. Clement, a former solicitor general in the Bush administration, told reporters at a Chamber of Commerce briefing last week.

Others have questioned the aggressiveness of Verrilli’s office and the administration. As in the Sackett case, the government’s support of the fired teacher in the Hosanna-Tabor case began during the Bush administration.

Still, Shapiro said, the government “made a much broader argument at the Supreme Court” than it had been making in the lower courts.
This week’s decisions in the Arizona immigration case and on the health-care law will determine whether such cases are remembered as footnotes or harbingers.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...a-tough-term/2012/06/24/gJQAhWWH0V_print.html

We are fucked.

Sent from my GT-P3113 using Tapatalk 2

How did that Az. immigration decision go for you there war hero?

What a terrible week for Obama....

Nope...not a terrible week for Obama...just the country and individual liberty... which kinda tells the whole story.

I wonder if Zimmie sees the added irony in his avatar.

In other news, John Roberts is NOW a liberal. His new show on MSNBC starts next week.

You big dummy

Yes, all the people that never want to get any health care coverage will be very disappointed. Im sure that's a massive percentage of the population. You are going to give up your health insurance, right?

Rev...today is going to be a lot of fun

All the people that want to get a doctors appt will be severely disappointed with the time it will soon take. Where are all the new doctors coming from to meet the new demand ? And lets not forget that many doctors are just going to retire or move on because they see where this is going. You lost freedom today...as did every American. That is why its a good day for Obama... what you lost, he gained in power as did the federal government. Hope and Change !

Why would I do that ? I pay for it. Eventually, my employer will probably drop coverage along with many others.... which will drive up costs even more. More hope and change !

But all that is needed is 51 votes in the Senate to repeal it... (and a non marxist President, of course)

Hi tough guy, threaten to beat anyone up yet ??? It seems you are the internet toughguy champ.... good job !!

Yes, my threats work. I was on Supreme Court Fan Network and ChiefJRoberts123 was talking shit and I put him in his place. You can blame me. Ironically, they have their own NCMike is a pussy thread.

I guess they idolize me there, just like all you leftbots here do.

Your threats work around here so well....everyone is skerred of you.....

So your problem with it is that people will now have health care coverage that couldnt get it before, making it less convenient for you.

And you may be able to get rid of the mandate, but not the provision that health insurance companies cant deny coverage to somebody based on a pre-existing condition or drop people once they get sick.

Yes, they are in awe of an unemployed loser who thinks he knows everything....we are ALL in awe of you.

Y'all forget that obama ran on the promis of health care reform and was elected as president based on that promis???

I swear it's mind booogggglinnngg how the GOP acts if obamacare was some kind of ambush.

You seem to be pleased with this ruling. Can you please tell me why? Can you tell me what you think you will be getting?

Fuck off dummy.

You can fuck off too. This has been explained to you dummies for over 3 years now.

A guarantee that even if I get cancer like my mom I will not be denied insurance and that my fellow Americans will not have that worry either. I like having health insurance, so a requirement that I have it doesn't bother me, especially since with that requirement I am getting a guarantee that I can't be dropped if I get sick or denied for being sick.

You seem upset with this ruling...Can you please tell me why? Can you tell me why you haven't gotten rid of your insurance in protest?

B.S. He ran on the promise of fixing the ECONOMY. That will get worse sooner rather than later after today's SCOTUS ruling.