Supreme Court – American Conservative Movement https://americanconservativemovement.com American exceptionalism isn't dead. It just needs to be embraced. Sat, 05 Oct 2024 13:21:35 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.2 https://americanconservativemovement.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/cropped-America-First-Favicon-32x32.png Supreme Court – American Conservative Movement https://americanconservativemovement.com 32 32 135597105 Will the Supreme Court Decide That Religious Charter Schools Are Unconstitutional? https://americanconservativemovement.com/will-the-supreme-court-decide-that-religious-charter-schools-are-unconstitutional/ https://americanconservativemovement.com/will-the-supreme-court-decide-that-religious-charter-schools-are-unconstitutional/#respond Sat, 05 Oct 2024 13:21:35 +0000 https://americanconservativemovement.com/will-the-supreme-court-decide-that-religious-charter-schools-are-unconstitutional/ (RealClearEducation)—Recently, I was on a 3-person panel discussion and debate at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. We were asked to address the question of whether religious charter schools are constitutional. We also shared how we thought the U.S. Supreme Court would rule. This issue has risen to the forefront of educational debate largely because of the U.S. Supreme Court Carson v. Makin (2022) case and an effort in Oklahoma to found a religious charter school, St. Isadore of Seville Catholic Virtual School.

In 2023-2024. However, one should note that these developments did not launch the momentum to rule in favor of religious charter schools, but they built on earlier debates and statements from prior cases including Justice Stephen Breyer’s question in the Espinosa vs. Montana Department of Revenue (2020) case, asking about religious charter schools. Bill Clinton’s speech in 1995 in Vienna, Virginia stating that past U.S. Supreme Court decisions regarding faith were misinterpreted has also played an important role in the debate on religious charter schools.

The Carson v. Makin (2022) case, based in Maine, played a major role in increasing the momentum for religious charter schools. In that case, the state of Maine had provided vouchers for a good number of parents who desired to send their children to non-religious private schools. In contrast, however, Maine’s government did not provide these vouchers for parents who wished to send their children to religious private schools. In a decision penned by Chief Justice Roberts, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 6-3 that the Maine voucher program was unconstitutional because it discriminated against faith-based schools.

As important as the Carson v. Makin (2022) case is, there remain three issues that the U.S. Supreme Court needs to address in any decision on the constitutionality of religious charter schools. First, are religious charter schools constitutional? Second, to what degree may state governments impose restrictions on religious private schools that may inhibit their religious freedoms or beliefs? For example, Adam Frey, the Attorney General of Maine, clarified the state of Maine’s policy following the Carson v. Makin (2022) decision. Frey declared that in order for any private school to participate in the voucher program, it had to agree to follow Maine’s Human Rights Act. The question that the U.S. Supreme Court needs to answer is to what extent states may initiate such actions. How far is it legally permissible for them to go? Where does one draw the line?

The third issue that the U.S. Supreme Court must address is that it needs to determine whether those who run charter schools are state or private actors. This is because the vast majority of people who run charter schools are private groups. However, these charters are defined by law as public schools and are supported by tax-payer dollars. If the Court rules that those who operate the charter schools are state actors, then because they must be non-sectarian, religious charter schools will be ruled unconstitutional. However, if the Court rules that charter schools are private actors, then religious charter schools will be ruled constitutional.

The problem is that determining whether those who run charter schools are state or private actors will not be easy. This is because the courts have often disagreed with each other in their conclusions. For example, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2010 (in Caviness v. Horizon Community Learning Center), determined that charter schools were private actors when it came to firing educators. That is, no state hearings were necessary. The case is likely particularly salient, because it cited a U.S. Supreme Court case, Rendell-Baker v. Kohn (1982)This case involved a private school that was very similar to a charter school. It was created to help kids really struggling in school and received about 90% of its funding from the government. The U.S. Supreme Court also found the school to be a private actor in the case of an employee being fired. The Court might view the Rendell-Baker v. Kohn (1982) case as the pivotal one in terms of helping establish precedent for its eventual decisions on religious charter schools, in part because it is a U.S. Supreme Court case. However, in a 2022 Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals case (Peltier v. Charter Day School), regarding school dress codes, the ruling was that those who ran charter schools were state actors.

Whether the Court will utilize the St. Isadore of Seville Catholic Virtual School case to address these issues or wait for a future case remains to be seen. Nevertheless, given that Carson v. Makin (2022) and Justice Breyer’s 2020 statement have brought this issue to the forefront, one can foresee a scenario in which one may not have to wait long.

During the panel discussion, I opined that the U.S. Supreme Court will likely eventually rule that religious charter schools are constitutional. I did not give a precise timeline regarding when such a ruling might take place. Nevertheless, the other two academics on the panel agreed with my prediction, one of whom was a well-seasoned Harvard law professor.

Almost as salient as the issue of whether religious charter schools are constitutional is the context the U.S. Supreme Court establishes in their decision. The U.S. Supreme Court will either provide a narrow context for its decision or a broader one. An example of a narrow context would be declaring that religious charter schools are constitutional, but the Court will leave it up to the states to determine the degree of implementation. An example of a broader context would be if the U.S. Supreme Court decides that if a state has charter schools, it must at least offer the possibility of having religious charter schools.

Whatever the Court decides, it will have a substantial long-term impact on schools and society. If the court decides that religious charter schools are constitutional, one result is that will like give families more options in terms of choosing schools for their children. According to David Tyack in his book, The One Best System, the American system of schooling is far too monolithic and the historical trend toward increased centralization is not consistent with the nation’s diversity. In the next several years the nation will discover whether the U.S. Supreme Court agrees.

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Democrats Are Escalating Supreme Court War With Unconstitutional Bill Targeting Presidential Immunity Ruling https://americanconservativemovement.com/democrats-are-escalating-supreme-court-war-with-unconstitutional-bill-targeting-presidential-immunity-ruling/ https://americanconservativemovement.com/democrats-are-escalating-supreme-court-war-with-unconstitutional-bill-targeting-presidential-immunity-ruling/#comments Mon, 05 Aug 2024 06:19:39 +0000 https://americanconservativemovement.com/?p=210213 (DCNF)—Democrats’ latest proposal for a bill targeting the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling highlights their willingness to undermine a co-equal branch of government when they don’t like the outcome of its decisions, legal experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Days after President Joe Biden called for a constitutional amendment making it clear “no President is above the law or immune from prosecution for crimes committed while in office,” Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer introduced a bill that aims to reverse the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling. Schumer’s “No Kings Act” introduced on Thursday doesn’t stop with reversing the Supreme Court’s decision, but would strip the Supreme Court of jurisdiction to even consider challenges to prosecuting a former president for alleged crimes related to official acts, along with challenges to the bill itself.

“None of that is constitutional,” Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, told the DCNF in reference to the provisions of Schumer’s bill.

Shapiro said both Schumer’s bill and Biden’s proposal for an amendment are “making too much” of Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion.

“It’s a reasonable and fairly narrow decision,” he said. “The outcry about it is either disingenuous or just not understanding the law.”

The Supreme Court held on July 1 that presidents have immunity from criminal prosecution for “official acts” taken in office. The majority opinion left the task of analyzing which allegations in former President Donald Trump’s indictment are official acts subject to immunity for the lower courts.

John Yoo, University of California, Berkeley law school professor, told the DCNF that “the call to override the Court on the presidential immunity decision is part and parcel of Kamala Harris’s progressive assault on the Constitution.”

“Overruling the Court — through unconstitutional means such as a statute — show the disregard progressives hold for a co-equal branch of government,” Yoo said. “It fits with the call to place term limits on the Justices, which Biden proposes and Harris supports, or even to pack the Court, which Harris called for in 2020. It is an obvious threat, even if it never passes, against the Court simply because progressives disagree with the Court’s interpretation of the Constitution.”

Vote line-ups from the past term conflict with Democrats’ narrative that the Supreme Court is “out of control.”

Several high-profile cases, including challenges to the abortion pill and former president Donald Trump’s eligibility for the 2024 ballot, ended in unanimous rulings. Just half of the 22 decisions that split 6-3 were divided along expected ideological lines, with the Republican-appointed justices on one side and the Democrat appointees on the other, according to Empirical SCOTUS.

Cornell Law School professor William Jacobson told the Daily Caller News Foundation the bill is just “the latest salvo in the Democrats’ war on the Supreme Court.”

“If Democrats want to abolish presidential immunity, they cannot do so retroactively, but could try to pass a prospective constitutional amendment,” Jacobson told the DCNF. “Recognizing the unlikelihood of a constitutional amendment, Schumer seeks an end run by trying to limit the right to appeal to the Supreme Court. Whether that work-around is viable remains to be seen, but there is nothing principled about it.”

Biden proposed on Monday implementing term limits for justices, passing a binding code of ethics and enacting a constitutional amendment clarifying presidents do not have immunity from prosecution for official acts.

Since Schumer’s bill would limit the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction, South Texas College of Law Houston professor Josh Blackman highlighted in Reason that “a conviction of the President of the United States would stop with the inferior courts, and most likely, the D.C. Circuit, which by the way, will have a Democratic-appointed majority for at least the next two decades or so.”

Blackman noted the bill stands “no chance” of passing in the current Congress, but could pass if Vice President Kamala Harris wins the election and Democrats take majorities in both houses.

“Once the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction is stripped for presidential immunity, it is only a matter of time before similar bills are passed for abortion, the Second Amendment, RFRA, and so on,” Blackman wrote. “This bottomless hole keeps going deeper.”

(Featured Image Media Credit: Screen Capture/CSPAN)

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The Supreme Court Just Opened the Door to a New Orwellian Censorship Regime https://americanconservativemovement.com/the-supreme-court-just-opened-the-door-to-a-new-orwellian-censorship-regime/ https://americanconservativemovement.com/the-supreme-court-just-opened-the-door-to-a-new-orwellian-censorship-regime/#respond Fri, 05 Jul 2024 09:36:22 +0000 https://americanconservativemovement.com/?p=209525 DCNF(DCNF)—The Supreme Court’s decision in a recent case challenging the Biden administration’s censorship efforts unleashed renewed threats to Americans’ ability to speak and listen freely online while effectively putting a legal remedy out of reach ahead of the 2024 election, legal experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Last year on Independence Day, U.S. District Court Judge Terry A. Doughty issued the initial injunction blocking a range of government agencies from communicating with social media companies to suppress speech, calling the government’s actions “Orwellian.” But one year later, with the Fifth Circuit’s narrower injunction now lifted by the Supreme Court in Murthy v. Missouri, officials have free rein to again employ the same tactics.

“It’s basically a roadmap for government actors, not just the federal government, but also state and local government actors, to reach out to social media companies and pressure them into censoring this disfavored speech,” Center for American Liberty associate counsel Eric Sell told the DCNF.

The Supreme Court held that plaintiffs in the case, who included two states and five individuals, did not have standing to seek an injunction against the government.

In her majority opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said the plaintiffs failed “to link their past social-media restrictions to the defendants’ communications with the platforms.” She also noted that platforms had “independent incentives to moderate content,” making it difficult for the plaintiffs to establish they were harmed directly as a result of the government’s requests.

Justice Samuel Alito worried in his dissent that the Supreme Court’s ruling, though it did not reach the merits of the issue, would send the message that coercive government campaigns against certain speech can run unchecked if “carried out with enough sophistication.”

Alito wrote that the Court “permits the successful campaign of coercion in this case to stand as an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear, and think.”

John Vecchione, senior litigation counsel at the New Civil Liberties Alliance, which represents some plaintiffs in Murthy v. Missouri, told the DCNF that the majority’s decision gives government officials “wide running room” to put pressure on companies behind the scenes.

Agencies such as the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) already resumed communications with social media platforms after multiple justices appeared sympathetic to the government’s position during oral arguments in March, reports indicated at the time.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement following the ruling that the Court’s decision “helps ensure the Biden Administration can continue our important work with technology companies to protect the safety and security of the American people.”

“If courts require very strong evidence of causal links plus an ‘ongoing’ campaign just to get standing, government agencies can use that procedural requirement to escape judicial scrutiny of even very extensive indirect censorship,” George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin wrote last week in Reason. “That problem is likely to become more severe as agencies figure out the relevant standing rules, and try to tailor their threatening communications to firms in ways that exploit them.”

Without an injunction, there’s nothing preventing the government from doing during the 2024 election what it did to encourage platforms to restrict content in 2020. As documents uncovered in the course of litigation revealed, officials demanded companies censor speech not only about COVID-19 but also the election.

During 2020, CISA engaged in “switchboarding” efforts, which allowed state and local election officials to flag “misinformation” posts for the agency, which it would in turn share with social media platforms.

State officials have also undertaken similar actions.

Sell represents a client, conservative political commentator Rogan O’Handley, who sued when his account was allegedly censored and later suspended by Twitter after California’s Office of Election Cybersecurity flagged it over a 2020-election related post. The Supreme Court declined on Monday to take up his case.

As the Murthy v. Missouri case returns to the district court, Vecchione said they will seek more evidence of government coercion through discovery.

“The Supreme Court has demanded a very high standard, and if the government is going to press on that standard, well, they’ve got to drop their shorts and show us everything,” Vecchione said.

Some plaintiffs suggested Congress step in after the ruling.

Health Freedom Louisiana co-director Jill Hines said Congress should “act immediately to defund agencies and third parties actively involved in this broadly pervasive and unconstitutional censorship scheme.” Stanford University School of Medicine professor Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya likewise said concrete action is needed to “restore free speech rights as a central plank of the American civic religion.”

Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression Chief Counsel Robert Corn-Revere made a similar call for Congress to “take action.”

“Despite reams of evidence documenting government pressure, the court held today these plaintiffs lacked standing to sue,” he said. “FIRE is concerned about what this means for future First Amendment plaintiffs. But the majority opinion notes courts have the power to stop government attempts to pressure social media platforms when proven. That’s important.”

NCLA Chief Executive Officer Philip Hamburger wrote in a column Tuesday that the decision made the First Amendment “for all practical purposes, unenforceable against large scale government censorship.”

“The decision is a strong contender to be the worst speech decision in the court’s history,” he said.

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Trump Says the Immunity Ruling Is a “Big Win for Democracy” https://americanconservativemovement.com/trump-says-the-immunity-ruling-is-a-big-win-for-democracy/ https://americanconservativemovement.com/trump-says-the-immunity-ruling-is-a-big-win-for-democracy/#respond Tue, 02 Jul 2024 07:17:49 +0000 https://americanconservativemovement.com/?p=209464 (ZeroHedge)—The Supreme Court on Monday ruled in a 6-3 vote that former presidents, including Trump, enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct involving official acts during tenure in office, but he’s not immune from unofficial acts.

As Bloomberg notes, the decision – which kicks the ball back to the lower court – ‘all but ensures’ that a trial won’t happen in Trump’s classified documents case before the November election.

The justices, voting 6-3 along ideological lines, said a federal appeals court was too categorical in rejecting Trump’s immunity arguments, ruling for the first time that former presidents are shielded from prosecution for some official acts taken while in office. The majority ordered the lower courts to revisit the case to decide the extent of the allegations that are off limits to prosecution.

“Just as former presidents have immunity from civil liability for official acts, they have immunity from criminal prosecution unless they are impeached and removed from office for the crime alleged. This decision is supported by the writings of the framers of the Constitution, the text of the Constitution and Supreme Court precedent,” wrote X user Martin Harry.

As constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley notes, now “the issue is whether what constitutes official acts,” adding that the ruling will “further delay the lower court proceedings, but Trump will have to argue that his actions fall within these navigational beacons.”

“The lower court judge has been highly favorable for Jack Smith in the past. Yet the court is arguing that there is a presumption of immunity for their official acts beyond the absolute immunity on core constitutional powers.”

Meanwhile, Justice Thomas called into question the legality of Smith’s office:

In a blistering dissent, Justice Sotomayor writes that the ruling “makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our constitution and system of government, that no man is above the law.”

“Relying on little more than its own misguided wisdom… the court gives former President trump all the immunity he asked for and more.”

Special counsel Jack Smith is leading two federal probes against Trump, both of which led to criminal charges. In Washington, Trump has been targeted over alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election, while a Florida case revolves around the mishandling of classified documents – for which Trump has claimed presidential immunity.

In response to the ruling, Trump said on Truth Social that it was a “”BIG WIN FOR OUR CONSTITUTION AND DEMOCRACY.”

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Supreme Court Delivers Crippling Blow to Permanent Bureaucracy’s Power Over Our Lives https://americanconservativemovement.com/supreme-court-delivers-crippling-blow-to-permanent-bureaucracys-power-over-our-lives/ https://americanconservativemovement.com/supreme-court-delivers-crippling-blow-to-permanent-bureaucracys-power-over-our-lives/#comments Sat, 29 Jun 2024 13:15:59 +0000 https://americanconservativemovement.com/?p=209073 DCNF(DCNF)—The Supreme Court handed small fishing companies a victory Friday in their lawsuits against the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), overturning a decades-old precedent that expanded the power of the administrative state.

Siding 6-3 with the fishermen, the Supreme Court reversed its 1984 landmark case, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which lower courts relied on to uphold NOAA’s rule forcing companies to doll out $700 per day — around 20% of their revenue — t0 pay the salaries of federally mandated on-board observers. The principle of Chevron deference, rooted in the landmark case, instructed courts to defer to reasonable agency interpretations of statutes when the language is ambiguous.

“Chevron is overruled,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority ruling. “Courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, as the [Administrative Procedure Act] requires.”

Small fishing companies sued NOAA after the agency required businesses to pay for the on-board monitors based on its interpretation of the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA), the law governing fishery management. In both Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce, lower courts deferred to the agency’s interpretation of the law, citing the Chevron ruling.

Roberts called Chevron “a judicial invention that required judges to disregard their statutory duties.”

“Perhaps most fundamentally, Chevron’s presumption is misguided because agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities,” Roberts wrote. “Courts do.”

Critics of Chevron argued the doctrine, in practice, enabled agencies to assert their interpretations of the law without resistance from the judiciary, giving the government the automatic upper hand when challenged in court and raising significant separation-of-powers concerns.

New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association (NEFSA) highlighted the burden NOAA’s rule placed on businesses in an amicus brief. The short training sea monitors receive does not equip them for the rough conditions on board, the association argued, creating safety concerns and forcing crews to shoulder the burden.

Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the dissent that the majority “disdains restraint, and grasps for power.”

“Its justification comes down, in the end, to this: Courts must have more say over regulation over the provision of health care, the protection of the environment, the safety of consumer products, the efficacy of transportation systems, and so on,” she wrote. “A longstanding precedent at the crux of administrative governance thus falls victim to a bald assertion of judicial authority.”

New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) President Mark Chenoweth said that “the dismantling of the unlawful Administrative State has officially begun.”

“NCLA’s fishermen clients have landed the biggest catch of their lives by persuading the U.S. Supreme Court to take its thumb off the scale when ordinary Americans are contesting unlawful government regulations,” Chenoweth said in a statement. “When NCLA was founded less than seven years ago, taking down Chevron deference was priority number one, because agencies have used it so often to violate people’s civil liberties. That ability ends today!”

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Supreme Court Rules 9–0 for IRS, Denying Refund in Estate Tax Dispute https://americanconservativemovement.com/supreme-court-rules-9-0-for-irs-denying-refund-in-estate-tax-dispute/ https://americanconservativemovement.com/supreme-court-rules-9-0-for-irs-denying-refund-in-estate-tax-dispute/#comments Sun, 09 Jun 2024 10:01:05 +0000 https://americanconservativemovement.com/?p=205477 (The Epoch Times)—The Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of the IRS on June 6 in a dispute over tax on shareholders’ life insurance policies.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the court’s 9–0 decision in Connelly v. Internal Revenue Service. The case concerns two brothers’ closely-held corporation. After one of the brothers died, tax authorities and the estate did not agree on the value of the stock.

Closely-held corporations commonly enter into agreements that require the redemption of a shareholder’s stock after the shareholder dies to preserve the closely held nature of the business. Under such routine estate-planning devices, corporations that enter into such agreements purchase life insurance on the shareholder to make sure the transaction is funded.

The Supreme Court held that life insurance proceeds that will be used to redeem a decedent’s shares must be included when calculating the value of those shares for purposes of the federal estate tax.

The appeal of Thomas Connelly, executor of the estate of the late Michael Connelly, was rejected by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit in June 2023.

The IRS said the estate owed close to $1 million after it found that St. Louis-based Crown C Corporation, a building materials business, failed to report life insurance proceeds after Michael Connelly died in 2013.

Michael Connelly, who was president and CEO of the corporation when he died, owned 77.18 percent of the company’s shares, while Thomas Connelly owned 22.82 percent.

The executor filed an estate tax return reporting the value of his late brother’s shares as $3 million, but the IRS conducted an audit in which an accounting firm valued the shares at more than $3.8 million at the time of the brother’s death.

The IRS determined that the life insurance proceeds needed to be included in the valuation of the corporation, which meant the company had a value of $6.8 million at the date of death. The IRS found that the estate owed an additional $890,000. The estate paid the amount and then sued the tax agency in federal court in Missouri.

The Supreme Court examined whether a life insurance policy obtained to finance the company’s repurchase of the late co-owner’s shares should be factored into the valuation of the stock.

The estate argued the stock should not be taxed because the proceeds were to be used to repurchase the outstanding shares. The IRS countered that the shares were subject to tax based on the fair market value as measured by what they could be sold for when the co-owner died.

The case concerns an important question of federal tax law on which the federal courts of appeal disagree, according to the surviving brother’s petition.

Under the Internal Revenue Code, when an individual dies that person’s estate is subject to federal estate tax calculated based on the fair market value of the estate’s holdings at the time of the death.

“In many cases, fair market value can be determined through a straightforward analysis of public markets. But when a particular type of asset is not freely traded, fair market value must be determined on the basis of assessment and evaluation,” the petition states.

“Under applicable Treasury regulations, life-insurance proceeds payable to a corporation may be relevant to determining the value of a decedent’s stock in the corporation in some circumstances but not others.”

“The question presented is whether the proceeds of a life-insurance policy taken out by a closely held corporation on a shareholder in order to facilitate the redemption of the shareholder’s stock should be considered a corporate asset when calculating the value of the shareholder’s shares for purposes of the federal estate tax.”

In his new opinion, Justice Thomas recounted that the Connelly brothers entered into an agreement to make sure the company would stay in the family if either brother passed away. In that pact, the corporation could be forced to purchase the deceased brother’s shares.

To finance this possible share redemption, the corporation took out life insurance on each brother. After Michael Connelly died, there was a dispute over how to value his shares for calculating the estate tax.

“The central question is whether the corporation’s obligation to redeem Michael’s shares was a liability that decreased the value of those shares. We conclude that it was not and therefore affirm” the decision of the 8th Circuit, Justice Thomas wrote.

The justice explained that when Michael Connelly died, the corporation was worth almost $4 million and the family valued his shares at about $3 million. But the tax agency took the view that the corporation’s value was closer to $7 million because of the $3 million in insurance proceeds. This made the decedent’s shares worth a little over $5 million.

“Because a fair-market value redemption has no effect on any shareholder’s economic interest, no willing buyer would have treated [the] obligation to redeem … as a factor that reduced the value of those shares,” Justice Thomas wrote.

Crown C Corporation’s “contractual obligation to redeem Michael’s shares did not diminish the value of those shares.

“[R]edemption obligations are not necessarily liabilities that reduce a corporation’s value for purposes of the federal estate tax[,]” the justice wrote for the court.

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Trump Calls on SCOTUS to Decide His Fate… and the Fate of the Nation https://americanconservativemovement.com/trump-calls-on-scotus-to-decide-his-fate-and-the-fate-of-the-nation/ https://americanconservativemovement.com/trump-calls-on-scotus-to-decide-his-fate-and-the-fate-of-the-nation/#comments Mon, 03 Jun 2024 00:42:10 +0000 https://americanconservativemovement.com/?p=204622 Since the bogus conviction of President Donald Trump in the kangaroo courts of Manhattan, his lawyers have been talking about appealing the verdict all the way to the top. Now, Trump himself has called on the Supreme Court to intervene.

On a post he made on Truth Social, he said:

The “Sentencing” for not having done anything wrong will be, conveniently for the Fascists, 4 days before the Republican National Convention. A Radical Left Soros backed D.A., who ran on a platform of “I will get Trump,” reporting to an “Acting” Local Judge, appointed by the Democrats, who is HIGHLY CONFLICTED, will make a decision which will determine the future of our Nation? The United States Supreme Court MUST DECIDE!

The sentencing itself is less important than the timing. Trump has already noted that he is “okay with it” if Judge Juan Merchan sentences him to jail time, but if he’s taken into custody then it will completely upend the Republican National Convention scheduled for four days after the sentencing.

The Supreme Court must act BEFORE sentencing and undo this horrible evil being perpetrated against not only Trump but against the entire country.

It is not hyperbole to note that jailing the leading presidential candidate will cause extreme turmoil for the nation. Not only would it further polarize a country that is already on the verge of mass conflict, but it would improve the chances of a disastrous selection to be installed in the White House. Whether that’s Joe Biden, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Nikki Haley, or any other candidate who would be viable if Trump is taken out, the nation will be in the darkest place it has been in since the Civil War.

Some would argue our future is even darker than that bloody period.

At the very least, the Supreme Court or one of the lower courts will need to delay his sentencing until the appeals process is complete. It would be nice if his conviction is completely reversed so we won’t have to listen to repetition of the words “convicted felon” that Alex Soros has orchestrated in the media. But even if that doesn’t happen in time (and I believe it will happen once it gets to the Supreme Court or before), then at the very least Trump must be allowed to continue on the trajectory of being the Republican nominee for president.

Join the conversation at The Liberty Daily Substack.

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All Three Liberal Supreme Court Justices Recuse Themselves in Lawsuit Over 2020 Election Fraud Case https://americanconservativemovement.com/all-three-liberal-supreme-court-justices-recuse-themselves-in-lawsuit-over-2020-election-fraud-case/ https://americanconservativemovement.com/all-three-liberal-supreme-court-justices-recuse-themselves-in-lawsuit-over-2020-election-fraud-case/#respond Thu, 30 May 2024 05:55:12 +0000 https://americanconservativemovement.com/?p=204109 (The Epoch Times)—In a rare move, all three liberal Supreme Court justices recused themselves on May 28 from a case involving a lawsuit filed against them for rejecting a previous lawsuit that sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

In the case, the Supreme Court turned away a longshot bid by Raland J. Brunson of Ogden, Utah, who has gained notoriety among Trump supporters for his legal activism.

The case at hand is known as Brunson v. Sotomayor. The petitioner sued Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson in their official capacities for voting on Feb. 21, 2023, to deny the petition for certiorari, or review, in his previous lawsuit, Brunson v. Adams.

The three Democrat-appointed justices recused themselves, citing judicial disqualification mandates in the U.S. Code and the Code of Conduct for Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, which the nation’s highest court adopted in November 2023.

The previous lawsuit was Brunson v. Adams, in which Mr. Brunson sued hundreds of members of Congress in 2021, claiming that they violated their oath of office by not investigating election fraud in the 2020 election and by certifying the election victory of then-challenger Joe Biden, over then-incumbent President Donald Trump in a vote that concluded in the early morning of Jan. 7, 2021, following the security breach at the U.S. Capitol.

Rep. Alma Adams (D-N.C.) appears in the short title of the petition filed in the appeal because she was named first in the list of 388 respondents. Also included as respondents were President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and former Vice President Mike Pence. The lawsuit sought the removal from office of President Biden, Vice President Harris, and the members of Congress.

In the unorthodox lawsuit, Mr. Brunson argued that avoiding an investigation “of how Biden won the election, is an act of treason and an act of levying war against the U.S. Constitution which violated Brunson’s unfettered right to vote in an honest and fair election and as such it wrongfully invalidated his vote.”

In that appeal, the Supreme Court denied the petition for certiorari, or review, in an unsigned order on Jan. 9, 2023. No justices dissented. No reason was provided for the decision. At least four of the nine justices have to vote to approve a petition for certiorari for it to advance to the oral argument stage.

The court denied a petition for rehearing on Feb. 21, 2023, in an unsigned order without providing a reason. No justices dissented.

This week, the Supreme Court denied the petition for certiorari in Brunson v. Sotomayor in an unsigned order without providing a reason. No justices dissented, but Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson did not participate in the ruling.
The petition had been docketed with the high court on March 29, with Mr. Brunson serving as his own counsel.

Mr. Brunson argued in the second lawsuit that the justices violated their judicial oath in Brunson v. Adams.

The lawsuit began in state court but the justices as federal officers had the case removed to federal district court.

The district court found that the state court lacked jurisdiction in the suit, holding that the official capacity claims against the justices were tantamount to claims against the United States, which enjoys sovereign immunity. Sovereign immunity is the legal doctrine that the government cannot be sued without its consent.

The district court determined that the state court lacked jurisdiction and that the district court therefore lacked derivative jurisdiction due to the official capacity claims triggering the justices’ sovereign immunity.

The district court dismissed the action, finding that the justices enjoyed immunity.

Mr. Brunson appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, arguing that even if derivative jurisdiction had been required, the state court still retained jurisdiction because the doctrine of sovereign immunity runs afoul of the First Amendment’s right to petition for redress of grievances.

On Feb. 9 of this year, the 10th Circuit dismissed the appeal.

In the Supreme Court proceeding, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, functioning as attorney for the justices being sued, waived the federal government’s right to respond to the petition in the Supreme Court in a document that was docketed on May 2.

Mr. Brunson argued that the three justices violated their oath of office “by giving aid and comfort to enemies of the Constitution, which is an act of treason, fraud and a breach of contract.”

He urged the Supreme Court to grant his petition, alleging the justices were guilty of “fraud, violations of the Oath of Office and … treason.”

“These serious offenses need to be addressed immediately with the least amount of technical nuances of the law and legal procedures because these offenses are flowing continually against Brunson’s liberties and life and consequently is [sic] a continual national security breach.

“Seeking a redress of grievances, as Brunson has done herein, is a great power one retains to protect himself from the encroachment of a tyrannical government. Brunson’s personal voice and the way he can protect his personal constitutional protected rights and the U.S. Constitution,” the petition stated.

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Retired Supreme Court Justice Claims That Politics Don’t Play a Role in the Court’s Decisions https://americanconservativemovement.com/retired-supreme-court-justice-claims-that-politics-dont-play-a-role-in-the-courts-decisions/ https://americanconservativemovement.com/retired-supreme-court-justice-claims-that-politics-dont-play-a-role-in-the-courts-decisions/#respond Mon, 22 Apr 2024 21:32:00 +0000 https://americanconservativemovement.com/?p=202895 (The Epoch Times)—Former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer said that his former high court colleagues are not easily swayed by public opinion when deciding key cases.

Speaking on “This Week” Sunday, the former justice disagreed with claims that the U.S. Supreme Court has become politicized.

“No judge should or will be moved by the temperature of the day,” he said, quoting law professor Paul Freund, “but every judge will be aware of the climate of the season.”

He also responded to a question on whether political division has impacted the Supreme Court: “Hard to say. It’s a different, it’s a very complex institution … I’ve not seen politics in the court. And I’ve been a judge for 40 years.” Sometimes, however, they have to consider the real-world consequences of their rulings, he added.

Instead, the justices are influenced by their interpretations of the U.S. Constitution and various laws, their relationships, and sometimes how they are viewed by the public, Justice Breyer said.

“It may be that you can find a compromise in the conference or a way of approaching things in the conference that will, in fact, solve a number of problems. And that could be one of the problems,” the retired justice said. “[Former Supreme Court Justice] Sandra O’Connor used to say this: The first unwritten rule is nobody speaks twice ’til everyone speaks once. Second unwritten rule: Tomorrow is another day. You and I were the greatest of allies on case one. Case two, we’re absolutely at loggerheads,” he added.

Justice Breyer retired in June 2022, setting up the nomination and confirmation of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Since his retirement, the Supreme Court has faced a number of protests, including when the court overturned Roe v. Wade that same year, as well as a ruling against affirmative action the following year.

The Supreme Court this year issued a 9-0 ruling that ruled against states that blocked former President Donald Trump from appearing on ballots during the 2024 election.

Last month, Justice Breyer also rejected claims that the Supreme Court is becoming biased. “The political people desperately want to say that the judges are deciding on political bases. I don’t think that’s true,” he said.

Disagreements among the justices are civil, he added, and are generally private. “It’s important because then everyone feels they’ve participated. Everyone feels that the others have a chance to listen to them,” the former justice said.

This week, the Supreme Court will hear arguments regarding the former president’s claim of presidential immunity in a variety of cases. The former president appointed three justices when he was in office.

The election-related case against President Trump has been on hold while his immunity appeals are pending, meaning that no pre-trial preparations have taken place since mid-December.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan is expected to give prosecutors and defense attorneys at least three months to get ready for trial if the case returns to her court. Further pre-trial legal battles are certain even after the case resumes in her court.

The trial is expected to take months, which means it will likely coincide with the election unless it begins by August. Special counsel Jack Smith’s team has said the government’s case should take no longer than four to six weeks, but that doesn’t include any defense President Trump could put forward. Jury selection alone could take weeks.

The Supreme Court has agreed to decide a legally untested question: whether former presidents are immune from prosecution for official acts performed in office. This question is novel because, until President Trump, no ex-president had ever been charged with a crime. The Supreme Court has previously held that presidents are immune from civil liability for official acts.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Texas Versus DC at the Border Is the Most Important Political Battle in Decades https://americanconservativemovement.com/texas-versus-dc-at-the-border-is-the-most-important-political-battle-in-decades/ https://americanconservativemovement.com/texas-versus-dc-at-the-border-is-the-most-important-political-battle-in-decades/#comments Thu, 25 Jan 2024 11:44:55 +0000 https://americanconservativemovement.com/?p=200659 (DiscernTV)—Hyperbole has never been my style. I balk every four years when I hear how THIS presidential election is the most important of our lifetime. Passionate political commentators have said that about every election since Bush-Dukakis.

I cringe when I hear about this or that being the most important battle in generations… except for now since I’m the one saying it. The battle between Texas and the United States government, between Governor Greg Abbott and Joe Biden, really is the most important political battle in ages. It’s not just our sovereignty at stake with a border invasion in progress. That alone is huge. It’s also the constitutional debate over state’s rights. It’s also the incessant question about judicial supremacy.

For a quick recap of what led to this, Texas started putting up defensive measures to seal off parts of the southern border. This included razor wire, which has been proven to be a great deterrent except when Customs and Border Protection agents step in to help the invaders. The Supreme Court, thanks to an unexpected (for some) leftist stance by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, ruled that the federal government could cut the wires.

DC, on cue, started cutting. So Abbott started putting up even more razor wire.

The Biden-Harris regime made threats. Governor Abbott released a defiant and important statement:

The federal government has broken the compact between the United States and the States. The Executive Branch of the United States has a constitutional duty to enforce federal laws protecting States, including immigration laws on the books right now. President Biden has refused to enforce those laws and has even violated them. The result is that he has smashed records for illegal immigration.

Despite having been put on notice in a series of letters—one of which I delivered to him by hand—President Biden has ignored Texas’s demand that he perform his constitutional duties.

  • President Biden has violated his oath to faithfully execute immigration laws enacted by Congress. Instead of prosecuting immigrants for the federal crime of illegal entry, President Biden has sent his lawyers into federal courts to sue Texas for taking action to secure the border.
  • President Biden has instructed his agencies to ignore federal statutes that mandate the detention of illegal immigrants. The effect is to illegally allow their en masse parole into the United States.
  • By wasting taxpayer dollars to tear open Texas’s border security infrastructure, President Biden has enticed illegal immigrants away from the 28 legal entry points along this State’s southern border—bridges where nobody drowns—and into the dangerous waters of the Rio Grande.

Under President Biden’s lawless border policies, more than 6 million illegal immigrants have crossed our southern border in just 3 years. That is more than the population of 33 different States in this country. This illegal refusal to protect the States has inflicted unprecedented harm on the People all across the United States.

James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and the other visionaries who wrote the U.S. Constitution foresaw that States should not be left to the mercy of a lawless president who does nothing to stop external threats like cartels smuggling millions of illegal immigrants across the border. That is why the Framers included both Article IV, § 4, which promises that the federal government “shall protect each [State] against invasion,” and Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which acknowledges “the States’ sovereign interest in protecting their borders.” Arizona v. United States, 567 U.S. 387, 419 (2012) (Scalia, J., dissenting).

The failure of the Biden Administration to fulfill the duties imposed by Article IV, § 4 has triggered Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which reserves to this State the right of self-defense. For these reasons, I have already declared an invasion under Article I, § 10, Clause 3 to invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself. That authority is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary. The Texas National Guard, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and other Texas personnel are acting on that authority, as well as state law, to secure the Texas border.

Over the years, I have been a harsh critic of Greg Abbott’s. I believe that he acts way too slowly, reacting to pressure instead of proactively addressing issues. Even in this scenario we can argue that the border crisis has been blatantly apparent since 2022 at the latest, so actions now are way behind. But I’ll give him credit that he’s doing something now. I’ll give him even more credit for doing so in such a bold and important manner.

The invasion is an existential threat. Anyone who cannot see that is likely not “sophisticated” enough to be reading any of my posts so I’ll stipulate that I don’t need to convince our readers about it.

But as I noted before, this battle is important because it may mark the moment many of us have sought for years, even decades. States have rights and few have taken appropriate actions to defend those rights. In fact, it has been Democrats and their assertion of rights to become “sanctuaries” that represent the most aggressive actions taken by states in recent years. Finally, we have a states’-rights battle that WE can fight.

And fight we must. Tyranny is rising in America and while most states are bad in their own right, they are far less threatening than federal tyranny. If you don’t like tyranny in your state you can move. If you don’t like tyranny spreading across the nation, the only viable option is to fight or flee to another country. For most of us, fleeing is not acceptable. This is OUR nation.

We have a unique opportunity to kill three birds with one stone. We can slow the border invasion, assert states’ rights, and send a strong message about judicial supremacy by backing Governor Abbott and others who will follow suit. Some are already showing that support, including the truckers who are on their way.

But we need more than just protests. We need legislative action at both the state and federal level. Obviously we cannot apply enough pressure to get Capitol Hill to pass anything meaningful until constitutional conservatives have control of both chambers. That’s not going to happen any time soon. But at the state level we can encourage and even pressure legislators to pass laws that will reassert the states’ responsibility to defend its people, especially when the federal government works against them.

You’ll notice that I said “reassert” the right and responsibility of the states. It’s already there. As Abbott noted, the Biden-Harris regime is acting against the Constitution and therefore he MUST act in defiance of both executive and judicial ineptitude to defend the Constitution and protect Texans. As General Michael Flynn noted:

America is being overrun by people from all over the world. Making the matter even more serious, in an increasingly dangerous world, the immigrants could constitute a fifth column.

In allowing this invasion, Biden has not just been inept — he is deeply corrupt. As I said, he is carrying out Obama’s plan to “fundamentally transform” America — for the worse.

What can be done? We need Texans to rally behind Abbott. We need other states to rally behind Texas. And this just may be a time when the people need to find a way around an obviously unconstitutional Supreme Court ruling.

We absolutely MUST respond by backing Greg Abbott and anyone else fighting not only the invasion, but also federal overreach and judicial supremacy. The outcome of this battle will reverberate for generations.

Sound off about this story on my Substack.

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