Week 34: Twenty Cases, One Argument

Max: Twenty. That's how many cases the Supreme Court's already granted for the term starting October fifth, and cable's about to cover every single one like it fell out of nowhere. Blake: Twenty separate breaking news graphics. Zero thread connecting any of them. Max: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Blake: I'm Blake. Max: And I'm Max. This is The Common Thread. Blake: Our approach this week, treat the whole term as one document. Every case is one paragraph in the same argument about who actually decides. Max: Before we even touch October, though, we're circling back to June. Constitution Center's calling it one of the landmark sessions- Blake: Mm-hmm. Max: ... and we think three of those rulings are really one scorecard on presidential power. Blake: That's interesting because the coverage ran them as three unrelated headlines. Max: Then we're headed to Arizona, where a voter rolls fight could change what your county recorder does before twenty twenty-eight. Blake: And a fresh circuit split on AR-15 bans. Illinois upheld. New Jersey struck down. Max: Wow. Blake: Somebody's got to settle that. Max: Oh, and Blake's got two money cases nobody's covering, a four zero one K fight and a carbon dispute that could set a price on emissions from inside a county courtroom. Blake: That one's flying under the radar completely. Max: Grab your coffee. This one's got range. Blake: Let's start where the term actually started, back in June. Max: Twenty cases, one line in the court's docket, and cable's gonna cover it like twenty unrelated headlines again. Blake: That's the mistake right there. A term isn't twenty headlines. It's one document with one argument running under it all. Max: I'm Max. Blake: I'm Blake. Max: According to Constitution Center, by July thirteenth, the justices had already granted cert in twenty cases for the term starting October fifth- Blake: Wow. Max: ... one of them consolidated. Blake: Twenty cases, and oral argument hasn't even started. Max: The first one they grabbed- Blake: Hmm. Max: Anderson versus Intel Corporation, locked in before summer even hit. Blake: And last term, Reasons wrap-up counted just- Max: Mm-hmm. Blake: ... fifty-nine cases total. So the fall docket is already a third built. Max: The plot is already moving. Nobody's watching yet. Blake: The sequel's already outselling the original. Max: Which is why we start with June, the ledger the court just closed out. Blake: So what did the justices actually decide before summer break, and who gets to decide next? Max: So Cable's about to misread this whole term for the second year running. Same mistake, new docket. Blake: That's why I keep coming back to the Ledger. Three lines from June connect. Start with Trump versus Slaughter. Decided June twenty-ninth, the Court let the President remove FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter without cause. Max: Which takes a chunk out of Humphrey's Executor, ninety-one years standing. Blake: Nearly gone. Then Learning Resources versus Trump, six to three, the Court ruled the International Emergency Economic Powers Act doesn't authorize the tariffs. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the statute only gives the President limited power- Max: Wow. Blake: ... nothing close to what the tariffs needed. Max: Wait, they lost that one? Blake: Lost it outright. And the next day, Trump versus Barbara, the court wouldn't let an executive order rewrite birthright citizenship. Max: So he wins the power to fire a regulator, loses the tariffs, loses the citizenship order- Blake: Mm-hmm. Max: ... but watch how June covered it. Three separate scorecards. Win here, lost there, lost there. Blake: Three separate op-eds, three separate outrages. Nobody added the column. Max: Kind of the whole reason we're doing this show. Walk me through the sum, though. What connects a fired commissioner to a tariff schedule to a citizenship clause? Power. Every one of those cases is asking who gets to act without asking Congress first. Blake: And the court's answer was fine on personnel, not fine on money, not fine on the Constitution's own text. Max: Which I'd call the correct split. A tariff is a tax you pay at the register. That's Congress's call- Blake: Right Max: ... not an emergency power shortcut. Blake: The people who'd usually cheer that outcome mostly didn't cover it that way. Max: And Barbara wasn't close either. Wire coverage noted the Court didn't touch the Citizenship Clause's text at all. It just said an order can't undo it. Blake: One win on controlling agencies, two losses on taxing power and the Constitution itself. That's the actual scorecard. Max: And that same fight, who decides, the president or Congress, is about to show up sideways aimed at states instead. Blake: Meaning? Max: Arizona's registration case, same question, new defendant, a state claiming authority Congress says it doesn't have. Blake: That's the one I want next. Max: Same who decides fight, new battlefield. Arizona's up next, Republican National Committee versus Mi Familia Vota. Blake: What's Arizona actually asking the court for? Max: They want the state registration form to require satisfactory evidence of citizenship, and they want to cancel registrations when someone can't produce it. Blake: Walk me through where that runs into federal law. Max: The National Voter Registration Act sets a floor. The federal form only needs an attestation under penalty of perjury, no extra paperwork. Blake: So the question is whether states can stack requirements on top of that floor. Max: Right. And there's a second piece, whether Arizona can audit its own voter rules within ninety days of a federal election. Blake: That's the NVRA's quiet period rule. Congress built that window so counties aren't purging rolls right before people vote. Max: Arizona's argument is an audit isn't a purge. Blake: Who actually absorbs the cost if states get to run their own citizenship checks? Max: County recorders. My cousin works elections in Maricopa. Every new verification step means more mailers, more staff, more confused people calling the office. Blake: Roll Call reported civil rights groups arguing the last round of proof-of-citizenship rules landed hardest on minority voters. Longer lines, more rejected forms. Max: And the RNC reads that same statute and says states just want clean rolls. Blake: Both sides waving the same fifteen words like it decides the case for them. Max: Nobody's covering this on cable, but every county recorder in the country needs an answer before twenty twenty-eight. Blake: Whoever runs your polling place is going to be following instructions the justices haven't written yet. Max: And that same fight, floor versus local control, moves straight from voter rolls to the gun shelf. Blake: Cook County's assault weapons ban, incorporation doctrine, and a stack of Bruen briefing waiting on deck. Max: Same fight, way higher stakes. This one's guns. Blake: How high? Max: SCOTUSblog reported the court granted cert June thirtieth in Viramontes versus Cook County and consolidated it with Connecticut's case, Grant versus Higgins. Blake: Same legal question in both? Max: One question: Do the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect AR-15 platform rifles? Viramontes argues the Seventh Circuit botched Bruen and skipped past Heller's common use test entirely. Blake: That's interesting. Why'd the circuit uphold the ban in the first place? Max: District court and Seventh Circuit both said Cook County's ordinance survives history and tradition review. That same court just did it again, upheld Illinois' statewide ban on July ninth. Blake: And? Max: Eight days later, the Third Circuit went en banc- Blake: Wow. Max: ... and struck down New Jersey's near-identical ban, ten to five. Blake: So the exact same rifle is protected in Trenton and a crime in Chicago. Max: That's the split. Bloomberg Law called the Third Circuit the only one to break that way against six circuits that upheld similar bans. Blake: Bruen's supposed to give you a rule: text, history, tradition. Two courts read the same history, land opposite eight days apart. Is that a rule or a coin flip? Max: A coin flip with footnotes. Blake: I mean it. What's the founding era analog for banning a rifle that didn't exist in seventeen ninety-one? Max: There isn't one directly. Both sides argue by analogy, dangerous and unusual versus common use. Reporting puts bans in roughly a dozen states on the table, plus whatever's left of the federal ban that lapsed back in two thousand and four. Blake: One ruling touches state law and revives a federal debate that's been dead twenty years. Max: You know, our church's safety team trains with rifles that are legal to own in our county and would be contraband forty minutes north. Blake: Nobody voted for that inconsistency. A panel did. Max: One hour of argument this fall settles it for every state on that list. Blake: Speaking of stakes buried in paperwork, wait till you hear what's sitting in your four-oh-one-k docket. Shifting gears, two cases nobody's Chyron will ever run. Anderson versus Intel's Investment Policy Committee, granted January sixteenth, the first case of the whole term. Max: Wait, Intel? The chip company? What's a chip company doing at the Supreme Court over money stuff? Blake: Every big employer runs a four-oh-one-k, and Intel's committee picked the investment menu for it. The question is what a fiduciary actually owes the worker whose retirement sits in that menu. Max: So this is about my own four-oh-one-k statement? Blake: Yours, mine, anyone with a workplace plan under ERISA. What do you think a fiduciary duty even means? Max: Uh, don't steal the money? Blake: Lower bar than that. It's about whether the process they used to pick funds held up under scrutiny. Performance isn't the test. Max: Huh, that's actually kind of terrifying when you put it that way. Blake: Same week, October fifth, Newsweek's reporting the term opens with Suncor Energy versus Boulder County. Max: Boulder, Colorado? Blake: Mm-hmm. Max: Suing an oil company? Blake: Boulder County's suing on climate damages tied to emissions that crossed state lines. The question: Does federal law block a state court from pricing that? Max: Wait, a county courtroom setting energy prices for the whole country? Blake: Simple mechanism. If Colorado juries can price interstate carbon, every energy company's cost of capital moves. Max: Wow. Blake: And guess whose pension fund holds that stock? Max: Mine. Again. Blake: Pleading rules decide whose retirement account absorbs the risk before anyone reaches the merits. Max: I came in thinking this show was about guns and ballots. Blake: Two quiet cases, same size stakes. Stack all four together- Max: There is one question sitting under all of them, isn't there? Twenty cases, four topics, one question underneath all of them. Who decides? Not the White House alone, not nine justices alone. The accountable person closest to the decision. Blake: Right. The court keeps pushing authority towards legislatures, towards counties, towards the fiduciary actually holding your four-oh-one-k statement. Max: Which sounds great until you realize that means we're the accountable actor now. No more blaming nine people in robes. Blake: That's the catch for center-right listeners specifically. Win at the court, lose the county commission race, and the fight's back in five years under a different president. Max: Yeah, a ruling doesn't implement itself. Somebody in a beige office with a badge has to actually do it. Blake: So here's the ask. Pull up the court's granted and noted list for the new term. It's public. Constitution Center's been tracking it. And find RNC versus Mi Familia Vota. Max: Read the actual question presented, not the headline and not what cable tells you it says. Blake: Then call your county recorder's office. Ask one question: How would you implement this if it goes either way? Citizenship verification, roll audits, all of it. Max: I already know my recorder's office phone number by heart at this point. Blake: That's the phone call. Here's the second step. Sit down with your kid, if you've got a teenager, and ask them, "What's the difference between a statute and a constitutional right?" Max: Use this term as the example. The AR-15 cases are a constitutional question, Second Amendment, incorporation, the whole Bruen fight. The NVRA case is a statute. Congress wrote a floor, and the fight's about whether states can build on top of it. Blake: One, Congress can rewrite next session. The other, it takes an amendment or a different bench. Max: That's a real civics lesson sitting in your kitchen this week. No textbook required. Blake: Twenty cases, one document, and the homework's due before October fifth. Max: Go make the call. So that's the term. Four separate fights, one document underneath. Blake: Removal power, tariffs, citizenship, now Arizona's voter rolls. Max: Mm-hmm. Blake: Same question each time. Who actually decides? Max: And county recorders will be the ones who have to live with whatever answer comes down. Blake: Don't wait for the opinion. Go read the question presented in Mi Familia Vota yourself. It's short. Max: Then call your county recorder or election office. Ask them directly, "How would you implement this ruling either way?" Blake: And talk to your kid tonight about the difference between a statute and a constitutional right. Congress can rewrite one next session. Max: Right. Blake: The other needs an amendment. Max: That's concrete enough for one week. Blake: Good. Max: If this helped you see the week clear, share it with someone who needs it and subscribe. We're back every Saturday. Blake: Thanks for spending the hour with us. Max: See you next week.