THE UNSUPREME COURT CAN GO TO HELL

Today’s deluge of of fascist bullshit and treason from the Unsupreme Court and its assault on the rule of law.

From Associated Press:

The Supreme Court strips the SEC of a critical enforcement tool in fraud cases

The Supreme Court on Thursday stripped the Securities and Exchange Commission of a major tool in fighting securities fraud in a decision that also could have far-reaching effects on other regulatory agencies.

The justices ruled in a 6-3 vote that people accused of fraud by the SEC, which regulates securities markets, have the right to a jury trial in federal court. The in-house proceedings the SEC has used in some civil fraud complaints, including against Houston hedge fund manager George Jarkesy, violate the Constitution, the court said.

“A defendant facing a fraud suit has the right to be tried by a jury of his peers before a neutral adjudicator,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court’s conservative majority.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who read from her dissent in the courtroom, said that “litigants who seek to dismantle the administrative state” would rejoice in the decision.

Federal agencies that oversee safety in mines and other workplaces are among many that can only impose civil penalties in in-house, administrative proceedings, Sotomayor wrote, joined by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan.

“For those and countless other agencies, all the majority can say is tough luck; get a new statute from Congress,” she wrote.

The case is among several this term in which conservative and business interests are urging the nine-member court to constrict federal regulators. The court’s six conservatives already have done so, including in a decision last year that sharply limited environmental regulators’ ability to police water pollution in wetlands.

The agency had already reduced the number of cases it brings in administrative proceedings pending the Supreme Court’s resolution of the case.

The high court rejected arguments advanced by President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration that relied on a 50-year-old decision in which the court ruled that in-house proceedings did not violate the Constitution’s right to a jury trial in civil lawsuits.

The justices ruled in favor of Jarkesy after the SEC appealed a decision in which the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out stiff financial penalties against Jarkesy and his Patriot28 investment adviser. (why am I completely unsurprised he’s a far right pissant?)

The appeals court found that the SEC’s case against Jarkesy, resulting in a $300,000 civil fine and the repayment of $680,000 in allegedly ill-gotten gains, should have been heard in a federal court instead of before one of the SEC’s administrative law judges.

Jarkesy’s lawyers noted that the SEC wins almost all the cases it brings in front of the administrative law judges but only about 60% of cases tried in federal court.

The appeals court also said Congress unconstitutionally granted the SEC “unfettered authority” to decide whether the case should be tried in a court of law or handled within the executive branch agency. And it said laws shielding the commission’s administrative law judges from being fired by the president are unconstitutional.

Those issues got virtually no attention during arguments in November, and the court chose to resolve the case only on the right to a jury trial.

What it means for the Supreme Court to block enforcement of the EPA’s ‘good neighbor’ pollution rule

The Environmental Protection Agency will not be able to enforce a key rule limiting air pollution in nearly a dozen states while separate legal challenges proceed around the country, under a Supreme Court decision Thursday.

The EPA’s “good neighbor” rule is intended to restrict smokestack emissions from power plants and other industrial sources that burden downwind areas with smog-causing pollution.

Three energy-producing states — Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia — challenged the rule, along with the steel industry and other groups, calling it costly and ineffective.

The Supreme Court put the rule on hold while legal challenges continue, the conservative-led court’s latest blow to federal regulations.

The EPA adopted the rule as a way to protect downwind states that receive unwanted air pollution from other states. Besides the potential health impacts from out-of-state pollution, many states face their own federal deadlines to ensure clean air.

Judith Vale, New York’s deputy solicitor general, told the court that for some states, as much as 65% of smog pollution comes from outside its borders.

The Supreme Court decision blocks EPA enforcement of the rule and sends the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which is considering a lawsuit challenging the regulation that was brought by 11 mostly Republican-leaning states.

An EPA spokesman said the agency believes the plan is firmly rooted in its authority under the Clean Air Act and “looks forward to defending the merits of this vital public health protection” before that appeals court.

The rule is on hold in another dozen states because of separate legal challenges. The states are Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and West Virginia.

“Today’s move by far-right Supreme Court justices to stay commonsense clean air rules shows just how radical this court has become,’' said Charles Harper of environmental group Evergreen Action.

“The court is meddling with a rule that would prevent 1,300 Americans from dying prematurely every year from pollution that crosses state borders. We know that low-income and disadvantaged communities with poor air quality will bear the brunt of this delay,’' Harper said.

The legal odyssey for OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma and its owners

Members of the Sackler family who own OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma have been cast as prime villains in the U.S. opioid epidemic.

The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a deal for the company to settle thousands of lawsuits over the toll of opioids through bankruptcy court. The deal was to be financed largely through the company being converted to a public benefits corporation, with profits being used to fight the opioid crisis, and the owners kicking in up to $6 billion for the same purpose.

But in a 5-4 ruling, the court rejected the plan because it would have extended protection from civil lawsuits to company owners who didn’t seek bankruptcy protection themselves — and not all the parties agreed to that..

Overdose deaths remain near a record high. The 2023 total is projected to be above 107,000, with about three-quarters of those involving opioids.

About twice as many people in the U.S. are now dying each year from opioid overdoses as from car crashes.

Documents made public as part of lawsuits showed that family members pushed for more sales of OxyContin, which ultimately made them billions.

The deal they eventually reached called for family members to contribute up to $6 billion over time — representing around half the family’s collective fortune — to fight the crisis, with at least $750 million of that going to individual victims in payments ranging from about $3,500 to $48,000.

The Sacklers would also give up ownership of Purdue, and the company would become known as Knoa Pharma, a business structured for its profits to battle the epidemic. In exchange, family members would be protected from civil lawsuits.

In 2020 the company pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective program to prevent drugs from being diverted to the black market, providing misleading information to the DEA and paying doctors in a speakers program to encourage them to write more prescriptions. The plea was part of a deal with the federal government to settle criminal and civil cases that included $8.3 billion in penalties and forfeitures. But it was to pay only a small fraction — $225 million — so long as it executed the settlement through bankruptcy court.

At a hearing in 2021, Richard Sackler said that he, the family and the company bore no responsibility for the opioid crisis. In the same hearing, a cousin, Mortimer D.A. Sackler, expressed some sympathy, saying, “We’re sorry if a medicine that we put out that was intended to relieve pain caused pain.”

The next year Richard and two other family members appeared remotely for an unusual court hearing in which a woman who lost a son to overdose called them “scum of the earth.” (She w as being generous - TC)

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