THE LIBERAL WING OF THE U.S. SUPREME COURT OPERATES MORE AS AN ADVOCATE FOR GOVERNMENT POWER THAN AS A PROTECTOR OF THE U.S. CONSTITUTION

On January 7, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court heard argument in the case Biden vs. Missouri. The formal issue before the High Court in that case as set forth on SCOTUSblog was “whether the Supreme Court should issue a stay of the injunction issued by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri blocking a federal rule that requires all health care workers at facilities that participate in Medicare and Medicaid programs to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 unless they are eligible for a medical or religious exemption.”

Missouri and other States filed a direct challenge to the autocratic Harris-Biden Administration’s demand that all Health care workers—22 million as of April 5, 2021, whose medical facilities participate in Government funded Medicare and Medicaid programs, according to the Government census report—accede to Government demands that health care workers obtain COVID-19 vaccinations.

The States contested this broad Government mandate against liberty and the rule of law. Missouri, in its Brief, stated at the outset, that the “Secretary of Health and Human Services’ sweeping and unprecedented vaccine mandate for healthcare workers threatens to create a crisis in healthcare facilities in rural America. The mandate would force millions of workers to choose between losing their jobs or complying with an unlawful federal mandate. But for the district court’s preliminary injunction, last year’s healthcare heroes would have become this year’s unemployed.” The Government for its part, argued that its mandate is a response to “an unprecedented pandemic that has killed 800,000 Americans.”

The Government retorted that “the Secretary of Health and Human Services exercised his express statutory authority to protect the health and safety of Medicare and Medicaid patients by requiring healthcare facilities that choose to participate in those programs to ensure that their staff are vaccinated (subject to medical and religious exemptions).”

Does the Government have this broad legal authority? Is the exercise of that authority consistent with the Constitution, or is it a direct infringement of it? 

Is the Administration truly concerned about the health of Americans or is it using the Pandemic merely as a convenient pretext to take control of the States and the people?

The unstated but underlying issue, in this case, is whether the Harris-Biden Administration is engaging in an unprecedented power grab to exert control over the States and the American people.

One expects this from an autocratic Government and an autocratic Congress, controlled by the Pelosi and Schumer stooges.

That leaves the American people with one Branch of Government to place constraints on unlawful moves of Congress and the Executive Branch. And that Third Branch of Government is the U.S. Supreme Court.

Unfortunately, the High Court consists of a few people, who don’t seem to concern themselves with defending the Nation and its people from the throes of autocracy and, hence, tyranny. One such person is Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor. For whatever reason, Justice Sotomayor asserted—didn’t ask the attorneys for the Government or for the State of Missouri—during oral argument, that 100,000 children have been hospitalized and are on ventilators.

As reported in the National Review, Sotomayor claimed that

“‘We have hospitals that are almost at full capacity with people severely ill on ventilators. We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition, and many on ventilators.’” This was a grossly inflated figure. In the same article, the National Review pointed out that,

“The current number of confirmed pediatric hospitalizations with Covid in the U.S. is 3,342, according to data from the Department of Health and Human Services released on Friday. The average number of children admitted to the hospital per day with Covid was 776 as of Tuesday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

Why did Justice Sotomayor make such a spurious claim during oral argument? She must have known that a straightforward declarative assertion could be and would be fact-checked as, in fact, it was. The legacy Press itself jumped on this falsehood. Fox News points out that even the Washington Post said the claim deserved “four Pinocchios” for the “absurdly high” figure.

We suspect that Justice Sotomayor knew that her remark was unsupported, and that she was not acting as a neutral Justice, attempting to elicit comment from the Advocate for the Government and the advocate for Missouri, but was herself operating as an Advocate for the Government.

This behavior on the part of a U.S. Supreme Court Justice is not only shameful, it is dangerous to the well-being of the Republic and the Constitution. A decision in this case will be forthcoming, but there are other High Court decisions expected  in the weeks and months ahead.

Any decision of the High Court involving an interpretation of the U.S. Constitution has major repercussions for the Nation. No decision is more important to the well-being of the Republic than those involving the Bill of Rights.

A decision in the Bruen case is expected in early Summer if not sooner. The Bruen case is the most important case on the Second Amendment since the Heller case of 2008 and the McDonald case of 2010.

Given the nature of the issue before the Court, constricted and restricted as the Roberts’ Court made it, the Bruen case is unlikely to have an impact beyond the jurisdiction of New York. Nonetheless, the American people can expect that Justices Breyer, Kagan, and Sotomayor will take the opportunity to draft opinions that hearken back to the Stevens and Breyer dissenting opinions in Heller, in a shameless attempt not only to denigrate Bruen, but to weaken Heller.

Likely the outcome of Bruen will be supportive of the Second Amendment, but it won’t be as far-reaching as it could have been in support of the Second Amendment—as far-reaching as the issue in Petitioner’s Brief sought: whether the right of the people to keep and bear arms extends beyond the domain of one’s home.

The three Liberal-wing Justices will likely reassert their false argument that the right codified in the Second Amendment is always subject to Government restraint and constraint and that, notwithstanding Heller and McDonald, the Government has the lawful authority to place stringent checks on the exercise of the right as it sees fit.

For Justices like Sonia Sotomayor and others, the American citizen’s ownership, possession, and utilization of the right codified in the Second Amendment is more akin to a glorified “privilege,” than a fundamental, immutable, unalienable right.

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Copyright © 2022 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.