“Gorsuch’s opinion presents Kennedy as “engaging in a brief, quiet, personal religious observance.” Sotomayor, who wrote the dissent, writes that this characterization is wrong, and Gorsuch’s description essentially downplays any potential coercive impacts of the prayer:
“To the degree the Court portrays petitioner Joseph Kennedy’s prayers as private and quiet, it misconstrues the facts. The record reveals that Kennedy had a longstanding practice of conducting demonstrative prayers on the 50-yard line of the football field. Kennedy consistently invited others to join his prayers and for years led student athletes in prayer at the same time and location. The Court ignores this history”.
Sotomayor’s dissent includes actual embedded photographs of the prayers on the 50-yard line with the coach surrounded by players, showing that this isn’t some quiet personal observance. He sought out media coverage for his prayers. The school district noted that despite Kennedy’s insistence that he wasn’t inviting others to pray with him, he had, in fact, done so on many previous occasions. The school district’s messaging to Kennedy was consistent in that it held no objection to his religious beliefs or even to him praying while on duty as long as it didn’t interfere with his job or suggest that the school endorsed his religion. In short, it seemed as though the school district was genuinely concerned that Kennedy’s behavior would be seen as a violation of the Establishment Clause if they didn’t clearly communicate established limits on what Kennedy was allowed to do.
She notes that Kennedy ignored attempts by the school district to try to come to some accommodation and instead turned to the press and made a big spectacle out of the prayers. Parents told the school district that their children participated in the prayers “solely to avoid separating themselves from the rest of the team.”
Sotomayor sees a constitutional violation in this case, but it’s not Kennedy’s rights that were violated:
“Properly understood, this case is not about the limits on an individual’s ability to engage in private prayer at work. This case is about whether a school district is required to allow one of its employees to incorporate a public, communicative display of the employee’s personal religious beliefs into a school event, where that display is recognizable as part of a longstanding practice of the employee ministering religion to students as the public watched. A school district is not required to permit such conduct; in fact, the Establishment Clause prohibits it from doing so.”
“The U.S. Supreme Court ruled..in the West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency that it “is a major questions case.” As such, the Court ruled 6–3 that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) did not have clear authority from Congress to regulate the entire U.S. electric power production industry through exercising “unheralded power representing a transformative expansion of its regulatory authority in the vague language” in a rarely used section of the Clean Air Act. This decision will likely curtail future efforts by the Biden administration to significantly cut the emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel-burning power plants that contribute to man-made global warming.”
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“So what is the major questions doctrine? “The Supreme Court has declared that if an agency seeks to decide an issue of major national significance, its action must be supported by clear statutory authorization,” explained the Congressional Research Service in a recent analysis. Certainly, the huge costs imposed by new regulations that are not clearly authorized by Congress would seem to qualify as an issue of national significance. In fact, in his majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts notes, “EPA’s own modeling concluded that the rule would entail billions of dollars in compliance costs (to be paid in the form of higher energy prices), require the retirement of dozens of coal-fired plants, and eliminate tens of thousands of jobs across various sectors.””
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“In her dissent, Associate Justice Elena Kagan counters by pointing out the Obama administration’s EPA calculated that by 2030 the annual public health and climate benefits of proposed regulations under its Clean Power Plan would be between $34 to $54 billion while the costs would amount to $8.4 billion. While electricity would cost more, consumers would save $7 monthly on their electric bills due to increased energy efficiency. A 2016 study in the journal PLOS One similarly found that the health co-benefits outweighed the costs incurred from reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
Despite the fact that the benefits of costly and transformative regulations might outweigh their costs that still does not mean for the Court’s majority that their issuance is not a major question requiring clear direction from Congress before going forward.
“Capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity may be a sensible ‘solution to the crisis of the day,'” concludes Chief Justice Roberts. “But it is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority to adopt on its own such a regulatory scheme in [the Clean Air Act]. A decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body.””
“Mark Cuban’s online pharmacy was founded to sell prescription drugs at the lowest and most transparent prices possible. As Cuban recently told PBS News Weekend, when it comes to medication, “the reality is the only number that matters is cost. What can we as the retailer or the distributor, buy it for and how low can we sell it? So we decided to take the exact opposite approach that politicians have been taking.”
That approach involves selling generic drugs for a 15 percent markup, plus $3 for pharmacy labor and $5 shipping. The result is that Cuban’s company is able to sell generic drugs at significantly lower rates than typical retail prices. For example, a 30-day supply of Amlodipine, a common high blood pressure medication, costs only $3.60 at Cost Plus Drugs, while the typical retail price is $50.10.
Some drugs have even higher savings.”
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“Cuban’s company is restricted to unpatented generic drugs. While Cuban can sell these drugs at a massive discount, it is worth noting that research into new drugs, as well as the costs of clinical trials, is funded by the high profit margins derived from patents. While Cost Plus Drugs is a welcome innovation for drugs that are no longer patented, Cuban’s business model likely can’t fund drug innovation.”
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“Cuban himself notes that Cost Plus Drugs isn’t the first company to try this approach, but it is the first to succeed”
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“Last week, a new study from the Annals of Internal Medicine estimated that if Medicare Part D plans had purchased generic drugs from Cuban’s company, Medicare could have saved $3.6 billion in 2020.”
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“Cuban has been vocal on Twitter about the study, asking President Joe Biden and other political leaders to “have your people call my people and let’s get this done.” However, as exciting as reducing Medicare’s budget sounds, progress on the issue seems unlikely. Legislative solutions to the high price of prescription drugs have often been slow-moving and stalled by partisan bickering.”
“The problem with the Bork/Alito view of Lochner is that it is wrong as a matter of constitutional text and history. Indeed, the drafting and ratification history of the 14th Amendment make clear that the amendment was originally understood to protect a broad range of unenumerated rights, including the right to economic liberty, sometimes called liberty of contract, which was the very right at issue in Lochner.
Consider the words of Rep. John Bingham, the Ohio Republican who chiefly authored the first section of the 14th Amendment, which reads: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” As Bingham told the House of Representatives, “the provisions of the Constitution guaranteeing rights, privileges, and immunities” include “the constitutional liberty…to work in an honest calling and contribute by your toil in some sort to the support of yourself, to the support of your fellow men, and to be secure in the enjoyment of the fruits of your toil.” In other words, the 14th Amendment was designed to protect, among other things, an unenumerated right to economic liberty.
Even those who opposed the 14th Amendment’s ratification said as much at the time. For example, Rep. Andrew Jackson Rogers (D–N.J.) complained to the House in 1866 that “all the rights we have under the laws of the country are embraced under the definition of privileges and immunities.” “The right to contract is a privilege,” he observed, adding, “I hold if that [the 14th Amendment] ever becomes a part of the fundamental law of the land, it will prevent any state from refusing to allow anything to anybody embraced under this term of privileges and immunities.”
To say the least, the fact that both advocates and opponents of the 14th Amendment agreed on its meaning at the time of ratification is strong originalist evidence in support of the Lochner Court’s reasoning and outcome. Contrary to the junk history peddled by Bork and Alito, Lochner is not a dirty word.”
“There’s a clear lesson emerging from the first cities that have legalized “missing middle” housing. The more rules you lift on the construction of these two-, three-, and four-unit homes, the more you’ll actually see built.
San Francisco politicians have absorbed this information and are now using it for evil. On Tuesday, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance theoretically legalizing fourplexes in the city’s lowest density neighborhoods, but only under conditions that will ensure almost none of this housing actually gets built.”
“Under the terms of the settlement, the Department of Education will forgive roughly $6 billion in loans for 200,000 attendees of dozens of technical schools and for-profit colleges. The settlement also requires the Department of Education to reimburse borrowers who already made payments or even paid off the entirety of their loans. It is not clear how many borrowers covered by the settlement will receive loan forgiveness for outstanding debt and how many will receive full reimbursement for debt they already repaid.”
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“Over the past two years, the Biden administration has approved debt forgiveness claims for thousands of former students at for-profit colleges. Earlier this month, the administration announced over $5.8 billion in loan forgiveness to former students of the now-defunct Corinthian Colleges.
However, the Department of Education’s role as the largest issuer of student loans in the country means that it continues to fund colleges and universities that fail to prepare students. Low standards for federal funding incentivize the creation of schools whose sole mission is to collect federal loan money. Even for-profit institutions that do serve the majority of their students still put taxpayers on the hook for attendees who can’t make the most of their education. Debt forgiveness for all borrowers, including nonprofit private colleges and public institutions, would have the same effect.”
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“There is clear evidence that “federal student aid fuels the ivory tower’s infamous price inflation, including roughly a doubling, in real terms, of sticker prices between the 1991–92 and 2021–22 school years,” wrote Neal McCluskey, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom. He continues: “It also makes logical sense: If you give loads of people easy money to pay for one thing, the price of that thing will rise as people demand more of it, and with greater bells and whistles.””
“The Oregon Health Authority (OHA) is a government agency that coordinates medical care and social well-being in the Beaver State. During the pandemic, OHA was responsible for coordinating Oregon’s vaccination drive and disseminating information about COVID-19—both vital tasks.
The agency’s office for equity and inclusion, however, prefers not to rush the business of government. In fact, the office’s program manager delayed a meeting with partner organizations on the stated grounds that “urgency is a white supremacy value.”
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Government employees who are unprepared for meetings should not cite white supremacy as their excuse.”
“The Declaration of Independence is probably best known for the panache of its opening and closing stanzas. Those bits about “the course of human events” and the pledging of “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor” suggest that the authors and signers understood the political and historical significance of the moment—and, after all, you can’t have a revolution without a little linguistic dancing.
But the bulk of the document—it’s just 1,330 words; take a moment to read it today—is dedicated not to grand statements about self-evident truths or sweeping philosophical claims.
Mostly, it’s a laundry list of complaints about how the government really sucks.”