For those who have been watching, some of the biggest cases before SCOTUS had yet to have their decisions announced. Today, three of the big ones with major consequences were delivered.

Let’s look at each of the three cases and see what SCOTUS has given us now.

Fischer v. United States

The case with the biggest election consequences, and that will have the most immediate impact, is Fischer v. United States. This was the “January 6th” case that challenged the novel interpretation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which allowed prosecutors to charge, convict, and sentence people for entering the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 imposes criminal liability on anyone who corruptly “alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding.” 18 U. S. C. §1512(c)(1). The next subsection extends that prohibition to anyone who “otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so.” §1512(c)(2). We consider whether this “otherwise” clause should be read in light of the limited reach of the specific provision that precedes it.

Joseph Fischer was one of many people charged with violating this act. Today, SCOTUS ruled that the law had been applied wrongly by prosecutors, since the January 6th protestors did not actually destroy anything that kept the official proceeding from moving forward once the building was cleared.

To prove a violation of §1512(c)(2), the Government must establish that the defendant impaired the availability or integrity for use in an official proceeding of records, documents, objects, or other things used in an official proceeding, or attempted to do so.

This was a 6-3 decision, but the breakdown is not what you would think. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson sided with the MAJORITY, writing:

Notwithstanding the shocking circumstances involved in this case or the Government’s determination that they warrant prosecution, today, this Court’s task is to determine what conduct is proscribed by the criminal statute that has been invoked as the basis for the obstruction charge at issue here. I join in the Court’s opinion because I agree with the majority that §1512(c)(2) does not reach “‘all forms of obstructive conduct’” and is, instead, “limited by the preceding list of criminal violations” in §1512(c)(1).

And Justice Amy Coney Barrett, along with Sotomayor and Kagan, dissented. Barrett even WROTE the dissent.

Joseph Fischer allegedly participated in a riot at the Capitol that forced the delay of Congress’s joint session on January 6th. Blocking an official proceeding from moving forward surely qualifies as obstructing or impeding the proceeding by means *other than* (emphasis in the original) document destruction. Fischer’s alleged conduct thus falls within (c)(2)’s scope.

What does this mean now? A lot of people who were convicted of this charge may be headed back to court, and it also means that the case against Donald Trump, which rested heavily on this charge, could be done for.

Since the DC case against Trump is currently waiting on the pending SCOTUS case regarding presidential immunity, this ruling on the very basis for some of the charges now throws the whole prosecution in doubt. What will Special Counsel Jack Smith do now?

…Smith has made a trial before the election an overriding priority. The court has pushed to achieve that result. However, they are fast running out of runway and this decision rips the wings off the plane for Smith in my view…

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) June 28, 2024

…I expect that Smith has a plan for this eventuality. He has been here before. He was unanimously overturned by the Supreme Court in his conviction of Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell. Notably, as with today, the Court found his theory to be dangerously "boundless."

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) June 28, 2024

Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo

This case may have the most far-reaching consequences of any of the cases. SCOTUS, in a 6-2 decision (as Justice Jackson recused herself as she had heard part of this case in the lower courts), struck down “Chevron deference,” which allowed agencies to interpret laws or rules if Congress was not specific.

When the Supreme Court first issued its decision in the Chevron case more than 40 years ago, the decision was not necessarily regarded as a particularly consequential one. But in the years since then, it became one of the most important rulings on federal administrative law, cited by federal courts more than 18,000 times.

Although the Chevron decision – which upheld the Reagan-era Environmental Protection Agency’s interpretation of the Clean Air Act that eased regulation of emissions – was generally hailed by conservatives at the time, the ruling eventually became a target for those seeking to curtail the administrative state, who argued that courts, rather than federal agencies, should say what the law means. The justices had rebuffed earlier requests (including by one of the same lawyers who argued one of the cases here) to consider overruling Chevron before they agreed last year to take up a pair of challenges to a rule issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service. The agency had required the herring industry to pay for the costs, estimated at $710 per day, associated with carrying observers on board their vessels to collect data about their catches and monitor for overfishing.

The agency stopped the monitoring in 2023 because of a lack of funding. While the program was in effect, the agency reimbursed fishermen for the costs of the observers.

After two federal courts of appeals rebuffed challenges to the rules, two sets of commercial fishing companies came to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to weigh in.

Chief Justice Roberts himself wrote the majority opinion.

Perhaps most fundamentally, Chevron’s presumption is misguided because agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do. The Framers, as noted, anticipated that courts would often confront statutory ambiguities and expected that courts would resolve them by exercising independent legal judgment. And even Chevron itself reaffirmed that “[t]he judiciary is the final authority on issues of statutory construction” and recognized that “in the absence of an administrative interpretation,” it is “necessary” for a court to “impose its own construction on the statute.” Id., at 843, and n. 9. Chevron gravely erred, though, in concluding that the inquiry is fundamentally different just because an administrative interpretation is in play. The very point of the traditional tools of statutory construction—the tools courts use every day— is to resolve statutory ambiguities. That is no less true when the ambiguity is about the scope of an agency’s own power—perhaps the occasion on which abdication in favor of the agency is *least* appropriate (emphasis in the original).

This is a HUGE blow to the Deep State, and everyone knows it.

No. While it does restore the judiciary's role in statutory interpretation, the transfer of power is to Congress, which is now expected to write laws that are clear, rather than to promulgate vague outlines that are then abused by unelected bureaucrats. https://t.co/11aJgcwjfO

— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) June 28, 2024

This is a sharp rebuke to the federal agencies who have twisted interpretations for their benefit. Naturally, Democrats in Congress are whining about having to actually WORK again.

This partisan Supreme Court just shredded another precedent, overturning the Chevron decision and weakening our ability to combat the climate crisis, hold corporations accountable, and much more.

Our people and our planet will feel the consequences.

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) June 28, 2024

Grants Pass v. Johnson

In a win for Gavin Newsom – yes, you’re reading that right, he wanted this ruling – SCOTUS ruled that the Eighth Amendment does not allow for public camping by the homeless.

The court ruled 6-3, with the conservative majority siding with Grants Pass. Three liberal judges dissented. The majority of justices said that laws regulating camping on public property do not violate the U.S. Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Friday’s ruling is expected to have wide-ranging impacts including in Portland where city officials have tried to enact ordinances that regulate where and how people can camp.

The case started when the city of Grants Pass in southern Oregon began fining people $295 for sleeping outside as the cost of housing escalated and tents sprung up in the city’s public parks. The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the law under its holding that banning camping in places without enough shelter beds amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

Grants Pass appealed to the Supreme Court, asking them to overturn that decision.

For those willing to enforce the law (and some cities will not), this gives them the ability to get tent cities and homeless encampments moved or eliminated. As Seattle talk radio personality Jason Rantz points out:

For years, cities like Seattle have been shackled by legal constraints that prioritized the rights of the homeless to camp on public property over the rights of taxpaying citizens to live in clean, safe neighborhoods.

The Ninth Circuit’s misguided 2018 decision in Martin v. City of Boise set a dangerous precedent, effectively rendering cities powerless to address the proliferation of encampments. While this kind of policy was cheered on by activists in Seattle, it was forced on cities like Burien, where leaders understand that encampment sweeps must be part of an overall homeless policy. Grants Pass just provided a beacon of hope for cities with reasonable leaders.

As much as the Radical Left would have you believe otherwise, the Supreme Court homeless ruling in Grants Pass isn’t about being heartless or unsympathetic to those struggling with homelessness. It’s merely about restoring balance and common sense while offering cities another tool to move the homeless into shelters where they can get the help they desperately need.

It’s been a busy 24 hours in the political world. Between last night’s debate and today’s rulings, the Democrats are having quite a bad day. This weekend’s polls and reactions are sure to be wild and dazed, and we are still waiting for SCOTUS to rule on presidential immunity. It’s not over yet, dear readers.

Featured image via MarkThomas on Pixabay, cropped, Pixabay license