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Shock and Law

Student Visa cases:

Hoque v. Trump decision on bail.

Based on the foregoing, and on all the files, records, and proceedings in this case,
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that:
1. Petitioner Mohammed H.’s claim seeking release on bail pending adjudication is GRANTED. Petitioner’s other claims remain under review.
2. Petitioner shall be released from custody immediately, subject to the conditions previously imposed by the Immigration Judge, including the $7,500 bond.
3. Release shall be to the custody of counsel or another responsible adult whose identity and contact information have been submitted to the Court and approved within 2 days of this Order.
4. Within 48 hours of this Order, Respondents shall notify the Court of the date and time of Petitioner’s release.

Ozturk v. Hyde decision on bail.

The Court reaffirmed its ruling made at the bail hearing earlier on 5/9/25. In light of the Court’s finding of no risk of flight and no danger to the community, Petitioner is to be released from ICE custody immediately on her own recognizance, without any form of Body-Worn GPS or other ICE monitoring at this time. Petitioner is not subject to any travel restrictions.
 
Political prisoners. For shame.
 
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DOGE access to SSA records.

I'm thoroughly disgusted by this action. This is a Supreme Court that is completely unconnected to legality, constitutionality or the rule of law. Their decision is completely unjustified. Literally. They provide no analysis.

The dissent, however, is worthy of a close read.

The decision.
 
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Freedom of Information action regarding DOGE.

The Supreme Court simultaneously allowed DOGE to keep its activities secret. Again, no analysis.

DOGE v. CREW.
 

California lawsuit over National Guard deployment​

____


COMPLAINT FOR DECLARATORY AND INJUNCTIVE RELIEF
INTRODUCTION
1. The Governor of the State of California and the State of California bring this action to
protect the State against the illegal actions of the President, Secretary of Defense, and Department
of Defense to deploy members of the California National Guard, without lawful authority, and in
violation of the Constitution.
2. One of the cornerstones of our Nation and our democracy is that our people are
governed by civil, not military, rule. The Founders enshrined these principles in our
Constitution— that a government should be accountable to its people, guided by the rule of law,
and one of civil authority, not military rule.
3. President Trump has repeatedly invoked emergency powers to exceed the bounds of
lawful executive authority. On Saturday, June 7, he used a protest that local authorities had under
control to make another unprecedented power grab, this time at the cost of the sovereignty of the
State of California and in disregard of the authority and role of the Governor as commander-in-
chief of the State’s National Guard.
4. The vehicle the President has sought to invoke for this unprecedented usurpation of
state authority and resources is a statute, 10 U.S.C. § 12406, that has been invoked on its own
only once before and for highly unusual circumstances not presented here. Invoking this statute,
the President issued a Memorandum on June 7, 2025 (Trump Memo), “call[ing] into Federal
service members and units of the National Guard.” Secretary of Defense Hegseth, in turn, issued
a Memorandum (DOD Order) that same day to the Adjutant General of California, ordering 2,000
California National Guard members into federal service. And on June 9, 2025, Secretary Hegseth
issued another Memorandum (June 9 DOD Order) ordering an additional 2,000 California
National Guard members into federal service.
5. These orders were issued despite the text of section 12406, which, among other
things, requires that when the President calls members of a State National Guard into federal
service pursuant to that statute, those orders “shall be issued through the governors of the States.”
10 U.S.C. § 12406. Instead, Secretary Hegseth unlawfully bypassed the Governor of California,
issuing an order that by statute must go through him.
-----
It appears that the Governor has legitimate constitutional and statutory grounds for this suit.

10 USC §12406. National Guard in Federal service: call​

Whenever—

(1) the United States, or any of the Commonwealths or possessions, is invaded or is in danger of invasion by a foreign nation;

(2) there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States; or

(3) the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States;

the President may call into Federal service members and units of the National Guard of any State in such numbers as he considers necessary to repel the invasion, suppress the rebellion, or execute those laws. Orders for these purposes shall be issued through the governors of the States or, in the case of the District of Columbia, through the commanding general of the National Guard of the District of Columbia.
 
Trump called some Americans "left wing radicals that hate our country." Funny, how I didn't see a single one of those people yesterday on Flag Day, The only real threat to our country is Trump.
 
This article contains a good summary of this term's Supreme Court Docket. Most of Trump's "victories" have been 6-3 unsigned decisions on the "Shadow Docket ". Actual cases (merits) have not had nearly the same results. The worst, by far, is the last, which I'll address in a separate post.


"The Supreme Court term that ended on Friday included an extraordinary run of victories for President Trump, culminating in a 6-to-3 ruling largely eliminating the main tool that his opponents have used to thwart his aggressive agenda.

In that case and others, the justices used truncated procedures on their emergency docket to issue decisions that gave Mr. Trump some or all of what he had asked for in cases dealing with immigration, transgender troops and the independence of government agencies.

The emergency rulings in Mr. Trump’s favor were theoretically temporary and provisional. In practice, they allowed the president to pursue his policies indefinitely and sometimes irreversibly.

In the first 20 weeks of Mr. Trump’s second term, his administration filed 19 emergency applications asking the justices to pause lower court losses while lawsuits continued. That is the total number of such applications the Biden administration filed over four years, and far more than the eight applications filed over the 16 years of the George W. Bush and Barack Obama presidencies."
 
Birthright Citizenship cases:

The gist of this ruling is this: "Universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts. The Court grants the Govern-
ment’s applications for a partial stay of the injunctions entered below, but only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue."

In the consolidated cases of Trump, President of the United States, et al. v. Casa, Inc. et al.; and Trump, President of the United States, et al. v. New Jersey et al., the Supreme Court super-majority undid decades of Supreme Court precedent and effectively gave Trump unfettered authority to issue unconstitutional edicts that will be enforced piecemeal across the nation, and without a llegitimate rational justification. It is hard to describe just how radical a departure this is from common sense and the normal rule of law. Coupled with the presidential immunity decision last term, we have exited the realm of "rule of law" in this country. I wish I was being alarmist.

The Court has not reached the merits, however they have made it as difficult as possible to have a uniform application of law under the Constitution. Indeed, in this case, 22 States have one standard, and the other 28 are still user the Executive Order. We're through the looking glass. In sum (if possible), each individual plaintiff can only obtain relief for themselves and the District Courts will be burdened with thousands of individual applications asking exactly the same relief, while the government will be free to apply blatantly unconstitutional and illegal rules everywhere else.

I have limited internet, and the various opinions (there are six*) and syllabus are 119 pages. I'm still working through them, but I'm on vacation.

_________
*BARRETT, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS,
C. J., and THOMAS, ALITO, GORSUCH, and KAVANAUGH, JJ., joined.
THOMAS, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which GORSUCH, J., joined.
ALITO, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which THOMAS, J., joined. KA-
VANAUGH, J., filed a concurring opinion. SOTOMAYOR, J., filed a dissent-
ing opinion, in which KAGAN and JACKSON, JJ., joined. JACKSON, J., filed
a dissenting opinion.
 
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A confession: I get depressed every time I read a new Supreme Court decision. It's hard. Maybe this is nostalgia, but I remember enjoying the process and digging into the nuances and chain of events and cases that led to each decision. I did it for years. It was fun.

Now, there is no coherence. Results are so predictable, but not rational. And the sheer dishonesty is infuriating. Decades - even centuries - of black-letter precedent are ignored or discarded with nary a rational basis, just to achieve the desired result - even if it contradicts another decision the same term.

A very good friend commented yesterday "this is the worst Supreme Court in our history" and we both practiced appellate law. I can't disagree. The previous nadirs were 1870-98 and 1920s-40s, giving us precedents that took decades to recover from and left indelible scars. This Court inflicts mortal wounds every term. I'm not certain we can recover. It is that bad.

Partisans cheer results they favor, but are ignorant of the harm being done. Our "nation of laws" is being dismantled, and "we, the people" are becoming defenseless. The last great bastion of our democracy and protection of our heritage and liberties is deliberately being destroyed. That's going to be some legacy.
 
I share in your feeling of depression. It is so frustrating to have the lower courts rule according to legal precedent and then have it blow up once it reaches the Supreme Court.

Fortunately (or unfortunately), I have been too busy with my work in Special Education to keep up as much as I once did, but that is very much due to all the chaos that has been created by this administration. We are fighting to maintain funding for children who are blind or people who have other disabilities and it is a sad and demoralizing battle, I must say. It seems our country can't afford to pay $400 a year to educate students with visual impairments with Braille or Large Print textbooks, but we can afford to cut the taxes of multi-billionaires. I just try to keep in mind that we once had Dred Scott and Plessy vs Ferguson and that those decisions were ultimately overturned. How long it will take to overturn these more recent decisions is what concerns me. Can we really wait another 100 years to treat others with fairness and dignity regardless of their differences?
 
Sadly, those moribund decisions have been revived by this cabal in their zeal to dismantle the 14th Amendment in its entirety. It's truly a shock to see decisions that ignore the pain that those decisions caused and how untethered they were in common sense and the law, yet the rationales they relied on are the same now being used by the current majority. LGBTQ+ individuals are losing all protections under the law, since, apparently, they didn't exist in 1789 - or 1869. They are not considered humans, just like Dred Scott.

Then they turn around and give religious bigots license to foist their warped views on the rest of us, instead of following the literal dictate of the 1st Amendment.

We live in "interesting times."
 
Birthright Citizenship:

Federal judge issues new nationwide block against Trump’s order seeking to end birthright citizenship (CNN)​


“The preliminary injunction is just not a close call to the court,” Laplante said during a hearing. “The deprivation of US citizenship and an abrupt change of policy that was longstanding … that’s irreparable harm.”

US citizenship, the judge added, “is the greatest privilege that exists in the world.”
...
Laplante granted a request from immigration rights attorneys to certify a nationwide class that “will be comprised only of those deprived of citizenship” and issued a preliminary injunction indefinitely blocking Trump’s Day One order from being enforced against any baby born after February 20.
____
The Decision

This is the second case to use class status to issue such an order since the Supreme Court's ill-conceived universal injunction order.
 
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