In Isabellas County, Michigan, the Pung family lost its ranch style home due to a mere $2,242 in disputed taxes. The country government sold the place for $76K at a public auction. The buyer then flipped it for $195,000. I'm a recovering anarcho-capitalist, so I will try not to go on too much of a bender about how much this sucks. But boy is the world of property taxation and enforcement offering up a delicious cuba libre to someone who is trying to get with the twelve steps, here!!! In May 2023, U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Tyler v. Hennepin County that home equity theft is unconstitutional. The Court determined that seizing excess value over a tax debt violates the fifth amendment's taking clause. So was Pung simply a straightforward application of Tyler ? No such luck. Lower courts essentially gave the Pungs the difference between the tax debt and the public auction value. But the Pungs asked the Supreme Court to affirm that (...
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Prelude: for those who were paying close attention to my haiku last week: yes, I did have the procedure done and, yes, things turned out well. There is nothing nasty growing inside my butt. Prelude complete. Anyway: I don't want to say much here about the ROYAL CARRIBEAN case issued by the US Supreme Court last week, in part because I may have something to say about it two months from now, as part of my annual round-up of all things SCOTUS. I'll only for today note that the case has Justice Thomas writing for the court, as one of an eight-member majority thereof, with Justice Kagan the sole standout. And my only point is to ask a question. Does anyone know of another decision within the last couple of years that came down just that way? In many politically sensitive cases, one gets a 6-3 lineup. Sometimes the split consists of appointees of Presidents of the Republican Party versus those of Presidents of the Democratic Party, as in LOUISI...
I am happy to report that on Wednesday November 5 the Justices of the US Supreme Court gave the lawyers from the US Justice Department a hard time during oral arguments on the legitimacy of President Donald Trump's monarchical tariff system last week. The question is whether Trump's extraordinary sweeping impositions, and modification, of tariffs on a country by country basis can be said to be warranted by the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The only honest answer is "no". Fortunately, most of the Justice seem inclined to give that honest answer, upholding the courts below. Chief Justice John Roberts (an appointee of President George W. Bush) said flatly that this law "has never been used to justify tariffs. No one has argued that it does until this particular case." Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, appears to want to be part of a decision that emphasizes that Congress has no power to delegate away its own proper constitutional r...
This will be a somewhat shorter post than yesterday's: not because its material is any less important, but simply because somewhat less demands to be said about the two cases I feature today than about yesterday's unholy trinity. Two decisions this year demanded that the high court take some role in shaping the post- Dobbs landscape of abortion jurisprudence. They may be considered opposite ends of a spectrum. One of these involved FDA approvals of early-term abortion medications: the second questioned whether the federal government has mandated life-saving abortions in hospital emergency rooms in a manner that can pre-empt state law. First then, last month the Supreme Court dismissed FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine , a lawsuit in which the named Alliance sought to restrict access to the pill mifepristone. Non-surgical abortions are typically conducted with a two-pill regimen: mifepristone followed by misoprostol. This seems to be the most effective (a...
I gather there was an important 2005 decision of the US Supreme Court regarding the internet. With my usual promptness I'm kind of catching up with it 14 years later/ Yes, the tech has changed a lot in 14 years, but the changes have made the decision more important, not less. They have raised issues such as how the decision applies to new unexpected variants of internet use. The gist of it is that the Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Thomas, upheld a decision by the FCC that cable companies that sell broadband internet services do NOT provide a telecommunications service as defined by the Communications Act of 1934. [Mark THAT date.] I'm just laying down a marker. I'll have to come back to the subject. https://casetext.com/case/national-cable-telecommunications-assn-v-brand-x-internet-services-4