Week 26: Nine Justices, One Argument

Max: Okay, so here's the setup: nine justices, one Supreme Court term, and this week alone they dropped rulings that could reshape how millions of people live in this country. We're talking TPS deportations, birthright citizenship still incoming, gun rights and a voting rights gut punch that barely made the front page. Blake: And SCOTUSblog is tracking twelve more opinions still outstanding. The term's not over. Max: I'm Max. Blake: I'm Blake. This is the Common Thread. Max: So Blake, CNN reported yesterday that Thursday's six-to-three rulings (both authored by Alito) cleared the way to end TPS protections for roughly three hundred and fifty thousand Haitians and sixty-one hundred Syrians. Courts are locked out of reviewing those decisions. Blake: That's interesting; and there's a second shoe still in the air: ABC News is calling the birthright citizenship ruling one of the most highly anticipated of the year; could drop as early as Monday. Max: Right, Right, Right; and that one goes all the way back to the Fourteenth Amendment. We're talking eighteen ninety-eight precedent, Executive Order XY 14160, the whole thing. Blake: And if the Court sides with the Administration, ABC News notes a US birth certificate would no longer be sufficient proof of citizenship going forward. Max: Like for anyone. Blake: For any child born after the order takes effect. Max: Mm-hmm. Blake: Yeah. Max: Dude!" And then on top of that, concealed carry, Voting Rights Act, the term has been busy. Blake: Walk me through the math on that and you realize this isn't a collection of separate cases, there's a Speaker 3: Ah. Blake: through line. Max: That's exactly what we're going to get into, starting right now with the TPS rulings and what the Sotomayor-Alito courtroom confrontation tells us about where this Court is actually heading. OK, so quick question before we go anywhere: what if birthright citizenship, the TPS deportations, the Voting Rights Act, Fed independence, what if those aren't four separate stories? Speaker 4: Go on. Max: Like, imagine a restaurant that keeps rotating the menu but keeps ordering the same ingredient. The kitchen isn't confused, there's a theory. Blake: I want to pressure test that because it all connects as a pattern the brain loves and the evidence doesn't always support it. support; so walk me through the actual case. Max: Fair. Start with what NPR reported: "Fifty eight argued cases this term, and of the biggest ones, the thread running through almost all of them is the same question: Who gets to check executive power, and how much? Blake: Right; and then Thursday happened- Max: Thursday CNN reported the Court handed Trump two major immigration wins, six to three. Just as Alito writing both, the TPS ruling (Temporary Protected Status), basically said courts have almost no role in reviewing whether the President can end those protections for Haitians and Syrians. Blake: So judicial review gone for that whole category of executive decision. Max: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the second ruling restarted a controversial asylum policy on top of that. Blake: Okay, so the press calls it a win for Trump on immigration, which... Which, sure; but what's the structural claim underneath? Max: That's the sharper question, because this isn't just about Haitians and Syrians-it's about whether courts can push back at all when the executive decides who stays and who goes. Blake: Hmm. And then you stack the Voting Rights Act ruling earlier this term. NPR flagged it essentially gutted what remained of the nineteen sixty five act. Same architecture: Speaker 5: Right. Blake: courts pulling back, executive and political branches moving forward. And birthright citizenship is still pending. ABC News called it one of the most highly anticipated rulings of the year. It's about a century of legal precedent. Who is an American citizen at birth? And it's sitting right there in the same pile. So the question isn't whether Trump won on immigration Thursday. The question is whether this Court is systematically redrawing who holds power and who can challenge it. Max: Which is a slightly bigger question than Cable is asking. Blake: Slightly. So where does a Court with that pattern land when the case is literally about the definition of citizenship? Max: Shocks. Blake: So CNN reported that Alito wrote both six-to-three decisions on Thursday. Two cases, same author, same margin, same day. The TPS ruling and the asylum metering case. Max: And the headline everywhere is, Trump wins. Dude, that framing buries the actual story. Blake: Completely. Walk me through what Alito actually held. The law creating TPS, Congress passed it in 1990, contains language that That "expressly restricts courts from reviewing DHS determinations on whether to extend or terminate that status." So the court didn't say, "Haiti is safe." No, that's the critical distinction: the court said that question is beyond judicial review-whether to send someone back, that call now belongs entirely to the executive branch. Courts are out. Max: Okay, but Blake, real talk, what does that mean for an actual family? Like a Haitian nurse in Springfield, Ohio who's been here legally for 10 years. Blake: Work permit expires. Deportation protections gone. And according to CNN, roughly 350,000 Haitians and 6,100 Syrians are directly in that position right now. Max: Wow. Blake: Ohio's Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican, said 10,000 Haitians in his state go from legally employed yesterday to illegal today. Max: A Republican governor calling it a mistake? Blake: Exactly; and beyond those numbers, CNN reported the ruling could affect protections for more than a million people across seventeen countries-seventeen countries-so this isn't just Haiti and Syria. Max: Not even close. And that's the structural problem, because courts are now blocked from reviewing any of those terminations. Which brings us to the courtroom theater, because dude, it got wild in there. Blake: Wild by Supreme Court standards, which is basically someone raising their voice. Their voice slightly above a whisper. Max: Fair-but Sotomayor read her dissent out loud from the bench-that's rare on its own. Then Alito, visibly caught off guard, fired back off the cuff. CNN said it "stunned" court observers. Blake: And the court's own press office had to issue a statement the next day calling it a "misunderstanding." The Supreme Court issuing a PR clarification-that doesn't happen. Max: That doesn't happen. Blake: What that exchange tells you is the fracture on this court isn't just ideological, it's personal. Kagan's dissent quoted Trump's own statements about Haitians eating pets. Alito's majority didn't even include those quotes. Max: Wait, Alito just Left them out? Blake: Left them out; Kagan put them back in herself. Max: Hmm." So the majority and the dissent aren't even operating on the same factual record. Blake: Which matters for what's coming next, because the same court, same nine justices, is about to rule on whether a president can redefine who counts as a citizen by executive order. That tension doesn't go away; it walks right into the birthright citizenship case. Max: So those same nine justices, fresh off the TPS rulings, are sitting on Trump v. Barba, the birthright citizenship case, and the ruling hasn't dropped yet. Blake: Still pending, SCOTUSblog says they're expecting it before the summer recess in early July. Twelve opinions left, one of the biggest still in the queue. Max: Okay, so let me set the table here. You go back to eighteen fifty seven. Dred Scott says Black Americans aren't citizens. The Fourteenth Amendment in eighteen sixty eight repudiates that. Fact: Born here, you're a citizen; then eighteen ninety eight, Wong Kim Ark, a Chinese American cook from San Francisco, gets blocked at the border after visiting family in China. Court says, nope, born on U.S. soil, citizen. End of discussion. Blake: Or so we thought. Speaker 3: Hmm. Max: For a hundred and twenty six years. Blake: Walk me through what the government is actually arguing, because it's more surgical than people realize: they're not saying overrule Wong Kim Ark. They are saying the eighteen ninety eight opinion kept describing Wong's parents as domiciled in San Francisco-twenty plus years permanent address. The government's position is that domicile is the key variable, not soil, Max: and the challengers say, "Wait, hold on. Domicile was a background fact nobody disputed, it wasn't the holding. The Fourteenth Amendment says subject to the jurisdiction, not subject to the jurisdiction. Provided your parents have a green card. Blake: Right; and this is where it gets messy for the administration. Even Gorsuch pushed back. Max: Wow! Blake: He pointed out there were no strict immigration laws when the Amendment was ratified in eighteen sixty eight. Anybody could show up and establish domicile. So the government's framework doesn't map onto the world that wrote the Amendment. Max: Dude, that's the conservative Justice asking the hard question. Blake: The consensus trap right on schedule. Max: Okay, but Blake-the part the Press is completely sleeping on. ABC News reported that if this order is upheld, a US birth certificate alone would no longer be sufficient proof of citizenship. Federal agencies would have to evaluate the immigration status of your parents before issuing a Social Security number or passport. Blake: For every child born here. Max: Yeah. The Migration Policy Institute puts the direct number at two hundred and fifty five thousand children a year who'd lose automatic citizenship. Automatic Citizenship.--But the administrative machinery this builds, who decides, who checks, what database gets it wrong? Blake: And the downstream question nobody's asking-if an Executive Order can narrow one phrase of the Fourteenth Amendment, which phrase is next? Max: That's exactly why this isn't just an immigration story. The ruling still hasn't landed, but while everyone was watching these immigration cases, this court was also quietly redrawing two others. Do other corners of the constitutional map-Seventh Amendment, Voting Rights-and that picture is worth looking at together. Speaker 4: That's where we're going. Max: Shifting gears, two rulings that barely cracked cable news. But they matter. Blake: Yeah, let's talk about them. First one, Wolford versus Lopez. Hawaii had a law that said if you've got a concealed carry permit, you still need the property owner's explicit permission before walking into a gas station, a restaurant, a grocery store, anywhere open to the public. The default was no guns unless the owner said yes. Max: Right. And Alito, writing 6-3, says that's unconstitutional. His line was the law hobbles with the Second Amendment protect. Protects-The right to carry arms as you go about your daily life. The default flips: now you can carry unless the owner posts a sign saying "no. Blake: So the gun owner's right is now the baseline. The business owner has to opt out. Max: Exactly, and this doesn't just hit Hawaii. SCOTUSblog noted California, Maryland, New York, New Jersey all have similar laws, four more states. Blake: Now, Callais, this one's older, April twenty ninth. But connect the dots with me. Louisiana was ordered under the Voting Rights Act to draw a second majority black congressional district. They did. Then a group of non-black voters sued, said it was a racial gerrymander. Six three, Alito again, the map comes down. Max: Wait, wait, wait. Louisiana was following a court order to comply with the VRA, and the court said complying with the VRA itself was unconstitutional? Blake: That's the bind. Alito rewrote the 40-year-old year old Gingles framework now section two only kicks in if plaintiffs show a strong inference that the state intentionally discriminated by race. Justice Kagan's dissent said the ruling rendered section two all but a dead letter. Max: And in P.R.'s like this, Callais is the third major ruling since twenty thirteen's Shelby County that's chipped away at the VRA. Shelby gutted the preclearance requirement; this guts the vote dilution standard. And it Blake: Wow! Max: did. Blake: Where does that assumption come from that the VRA is still functioning? Walk me through the math: Shelby in two thousand thirteen, the court in Brnovich in two thousand twenty one, now Callais, three rulings, three pillars knocked out. Max: Meanwhile, Thursday we also get a six-to-three gun ruling expanding individual carry rights. So the court is simultaneously pulling back federal protection of political participation and pushing out individual Second Amendment rights. Blake: Two lines moving in opposite directions-that's not random. When you look at Callais alongside Wolford, the TPS cases, the birthright question, you start to see the architecture. Max: And that's exactly what we need to sit with because the whole picture comes into focus when you put them all on the same wall. So all of these pieces-TPS, birthright citizenship, the VRA, guns-they're not random. They're answering the same question. Blake: Which is... Max: Who decides? Every single time. Blake: Walk me through the logic, because the press version is just the court does what Trump wants. That doesn't hold up. Max: Right; and here's where that falls apart: same term, different court. CNN reported the justices blocked Trump's emergency tariffs back in February, Learning Resources versus Trump, six to three. Blake: Six to three against Trump on tariffs. Max: Chief Justice Roberts wrote it-IEEPA, the nineteen seventy seven emergency law. Blake: Wow! Max: Congress never authorized the president to levy sweeping tariffs through it. Roberts said that. That plane only Blake: So the theory sharpens: deference to executive discretion over people (immigration, personnel), restraint over markets (those are two very different Max: mm Blake: categories). Max: -hmm). Cable almost never draws that line-it's just "the court sided with Trump" or "the court blocked Trump. Blake: Let's pressure test the bigger picture then. What's the actual constitutional vision? Max: Okay, so strong Article II executive over people and agencies, individual enumerated rights under the Bill of Rights, which is why guns expand, and a sharply contracted role for Congress in federal courts when it comes to administrative oversight. Blake: And the VRA fits that last piece: courts step back from enforcing Section Two, agencies lose independent authority after Humphreys Executor. Kidder, it's a package! Max: Dude, and this is what I want people to sit with: these don't expire when a president leaves; these are structural rulings. Blake: The president in twenty thirty two inherits this framework, Democrat or Republican. Max: Whoever wins twenty twenty eight walks into an office that has broader power over people and narrower power over markets. That's the actual inheritance. Blake: I'll say where I think the court got it right: the tariff ruling is sound; Congress writes tax law, that's Article II, full stop. Speaker 3: We'll stop. Max: And I'd say the TPS deference is the one that genuinely worries me. No judicial review at all over a decision affecting hundreds of thousands of people? Blake: Hmm. Max: That's a big ask. Blake: Two honest assessments, no scoreboard. Max: That's the job. And look, if this framework is going to shape governance for 20 years, that's a reason to actually read one of these opinions, not a summary. Blake: SCOTUSblog publishes plain language breakdowns of... of every decision-free. That's where we'd start. Max: And we've got one more stop to make on that front. Alright, shifting gears. So what do you actually do with all of this? That's where I want to get concrete. Yeah, so two things. First one's super specific. NPR reported there are still eight cases left out of 58 argued this term, and this thing's likely running into early July. Your state legislature is probably already reacting to the Callais ruling. Redistricting legislation. Redrawing maps. Call your state rep's office this week and just ask, where do we stand on redistricting after Callais? Blake: And you don't need a script-just-"I heard about the Louisiana ruling; what's happening in our State?" That's it. Max: Dude, that's a three minute call, you can do it on your lunch break. Blake: I've seen people spend more time picking a Netflix show. Max: Way more time. Okay, second thing, and Blake, this one is for the person who watched three cable segments on birthright citizenship and came out knowing less than when they started. Blake: The consensus trap at its finest. Max: SCOTUSblog, s c o t u s b l o g dot com, publishes plain language summaries of every decision-free-they've been doing it since two thousand two-won a Peabody for it-and the summaries take maybe ten minutes to read. Blake: And I want to be precise here. We're not saying read the full eighty page opinion. We're saying read SCOTUSblog's plain English breakdown first. Max: Exactly; because once you've read one actual majority opinion, even just the syllabus up top, cable coverage of the same case sounds completely different; you start hearing what they left out. Blake: You notice the framing; you notice the things that got skipped. Max: It's like reading a restaurant menu before someone describes the food to you; you catch way more. Blake: And the birthright citizenship ruling is coming. NPR says the next opinion day is Monday the twenty-ninth. That one's worth reading in real time, not just waiting for the hot takes. Max: Hundred percent. So call your state rep about redistricting and pull up SCOTUSblog when the birthright ruling drops. Those are your two moves. Blake: Two concrete things. That's the week. Max: That's the week. All right, that's a wrap on week twenty-five; nine justices and, honestly, one consistent argument playing out across all of it. Blake: The TPS ruling Thursday was the one that stuck with me. Courts are now barred from reviewing those deportation calls. That's not a footnote. That's a structural shift. Max: And I keep coming back to what you said: the Haitian nurse in Springfield-that's who this is about, not abstractions, real people-ten years in, no recourse. Blake: That's where the theory meets the ground-and birthright citizenship. SCOTUSblog says the ruling could land as early as Monday. It could be the biggest decision of the term. Max: So here's the one thing: this court is building a framework, executive deference over people, restraint over markets, and it's going to shape the presidency for decades. Blake: Read the SCOTUSblog plain language summary when it drops. Seriously, it's free. Max: And call your state rep; ask where your state stands after the Kelo ruling. Your town needs you in the room. Blake: Thanks for spending your Saturday with us. If this helped you see the week more clearly, send it to one person who needs it. Max: Subscribe so you never miss a Saturday. We'll see you next week.