What Does It Mean When A Court Says "You Have No Standing"? Whatever They Want It To Mean
Article III does not mention standing. It became the go to silver bullet when a judge or court does not want to hear a case.
Did Donald Trump get snookered with Amy Coney Barrett?
Justice Amy Coney Barrett was billed as an originalist judge in her confirmation hearing before being approved to the Supreme Court.
a legal philosophy that the words in documents and especially the U.S. Constitution should be interpreted as they were understood at the time they were written.
This originalist description of Coney Barrett is becoming increasingly questionable. Recently in Fischer v United States, the majority, including Judge Jackson, ruled the DOJ statute shopped. Instead of charging Jan. 6 defendants with a misdemeanor carrying a six-month sentence, they were charged with a felony crime violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2) — a provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, with a 20-year sentence that pertains to defendants damaging documents, objects, or other things used in an official proceeding, without ever bringing any proof. Coney Barrett dissented with the dangerous opinion that statutes can be broadly even imaginatively interpreted.
There is no getting around it: Section 1512(c)(2) is an expansive statute. Yet Congress, not this Court, weighs the “pros and cons of whether a statute should sweep broadly or narrowly.” United States v. Rodgers, 466 U. S. 475, 484 (1984). Once Congress has set the outer bounds of liability, the Executive Branch has the discretion to select particular cases to prosecute within those boundaries. By atextually narrowing §1512(c)(2), the Court has failed to respect the prerogatives of the political branches. Cf. ante, at 15. I respectfully dissent.
Her most recent majority ruling opinion in Murthy v. Missouri certainly raises red flags. The Supreme Court majority sided with the Biden administration in its multiple violations of 1st Amendment rights of Americans through its proxy use of social media platforms, by bizarrely claiming the plaintiffs had “no standing.”
The plaintiffs, without any concrete link between their injuries and the defendants’ conduct, ask us to conduct a review of the years-long communications between dozens of federal officials, across different agencies, with different social-media platforms, about different topics. This Court’s standing doctrine prevents us from “exercis[ing such] general legal oversight” of the other branches of Government. TransUnion, 594 U. S., at 423–424. We therefore reverse the judgment of the Fifth Circuit and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
A link to Justice Barrett's whole opinion.
Mind you. The court record regarding this case was 26,000 pages, yet the majority could find no basis for the suit!
In the dissenting opinion joined by Justices Gorsuch and Thomas, Justice Alito had no problem finding evidence:
If the lower courts’ assessment of the voluminous record is correct, this is one of the most important free speech cases to reach this Court in years.
Their communications with Facebook were virtual demands,” he wrote, pointing to the White House’s many requests to remove “misinformation” related to COVID-19. And Facebook’s quavering responses to those demands show that it felt a strong need to yield.
These past and threatened future injuries were caused by and traceable to censorship that the officials coerced, and the injunctive relief she sought was an available and suitable remedy. The evidence was "more than sufficient" to establish the plaintiff's standing to sue.
The Court, however, shirks that duty and thus 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. That is regrettable.
It was blatantly unconstitutional, and the country may come to regret the Court’s failure to say so.
For months, high-ranking Government officials placed unrelenting pressure on Facebook to suppress Americans’ free speech. Because the Court unjustifiably refuses to address this serious threat to the First Amendment, I respectfully dissent.
Article III defines the unique powers of the Judicial Branch
The Constitution states the judicial power of the Supreme Court and inferior courts extends only to “cases” and “controversies.” For a case or controversy to exist, there must be an injured party harmed by someone else’s unlawful conduct.
The most famous case denying rights prior to the court created doctrine of standing? The Dred Scott v Sanford case of 1857 aka “Dred Scott decision”
Dred Scott was a slave owned by William Emerson who resided in Missouri, a slave state. Emerson took Scott with him to Illinois, a free state, and the Wisconsin territory for four years. While there, Scott met and married Harriet Robinson. Emerson met and married Eliza Irene Sanford when transferred to Louisiana. The Emerson’s took Dred and Harriet Scott back to Missouri, where Emerson later died. Scott tried to purchase their freedom from Emerson's widow, who refused. Eventually with the help of abolitionist lawyers, they sued Mrs. Emerson on the grounds that since they were previously living in a free state, they should be free. The first case heard by the Missouri circuit court which upheld the precedent of "once free, always free". This was eventually overturned by the Missouri State Supreme Court, which ruled their state was not obligated to abide by other states rules. Scott should have filed in Wisconsin territory.
The Scott's ownership was eventually transferred to John F. A. Sanford, Mrs. Emerson's brother, a resident of New York. The Scotts lost in Federal court and appealed to the Supreme Court, Dred Scott v Sandford. Incidentally, “Sanford” is misspelled due to a clerical error.
Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, who “crossed swords with Lincoln” on more than one occasion, wrote the majority opinion. It stated that black people, whether free or enslaved, could not be American citizens and were constitutionally unable to sue for citizenship in the federal courts. The U.S. government had no authority to regulate slavery in its states or territories, and since slaves were property, freeing them would violate the owner's Fifth Amendment rights of due process.
What eventually overturned, so to speak, the decision was the Civil Rights Bill of 1866, which mandated that:
all persons born in the United States," with the exception of American Indians, were "hereby declared to be citizens of the United States." The legislation granted all citizens the “full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property.
And the Fourteenth Amendment of 1868, Section 1:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
The case Frothingham v Mellon in 1923 where the doctrine of “standing” was first introduced
Since the founding of the Republic, it has been understood as a fact, that government officials are responsible to “We the People” for their actions.
A story worth reading is how Congressman Davey Crocket was confronted by a constituent named Mr. Bunce for voting to give $20,000 in charity to widows and orphans after a fire in Georgetown. Mr. Bunce asked where in the Constitution was Crocket authorized to do such a thing? Congress clearly could have taken up a collection instead of using the people's money.
When Congress once begins to stretch its power beyond the limits of the Constitution, there is no limit to it, and no security for the people. - Mr. Bunce to Davey Crockett
The first push of Progressivism came between 1890 and 1920. Despite actions, some being contradictory in their purpose, the lives of workers and the poor did improve, with child labor laws and workers compensation laws. During this time, the actual nanny state began, starting with the government deciding mothers and children needed special protection. Theodore Roosevelt started the ball rolling with the United States Children’s Bureau in 1912. In 1921 under Republican President Warren G. Harding, the Sheppard-Towner Act, also known as the Maternity Act, was passed, giving federal funds to participating states that cooperated with its guidelines to improve maternal and infant health. Frothingham v Mellon, with later the state of Massachusetts joining in, was challenging the implementation of the Maternity Act. Mellon was Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon.
Fun fact: The Maternity Act was the predecessor to the Social Security Act of 1935. See the way the government snowball turns into an avalanche?
Before 1923, Americans many times as tax paying citizens, sued to challenge the constitutionality of federal statutes. The Frothingham case for the first time addressed the issue of standing, the requirement that plaintiffs be the proper parties to bring the lawsuit in question.
The basis for the suit
The Act—which provided appropriations to states complying with its measures for protecting infant and maternal health—was an invasion by Congress of the right of local self-government reserved to the states by the Tenth Amendment. By spending taxpayer money in this unconstitutional manner, asserted the plaintiff, the statute would deprive her of property without due process of law.
Massachusetts argued that the Act had invaded the powers of the state government. The state was faced with what it argued was an unconstitutional dilemma: “to yield to the Federal Government a part of its reserved rights or lose the share which it would otherwise be entitled to receive of the moneys appropriated.”
The Supreme Court ruling. Warning! No food or drink when reading!
Regarding Frothingham:
An individual lacked standing to challenge a federal statute as unconstitutional solely on the basis that the plaintiff was a taxpayer. The taxpayer’s “interest in the moneys of the Treasury . . . is shared with millions of others; is comparatively minute and indeterminable; and the effect upon future taxation, of any payment out of the funds, so remote, fluctuating and uncertain, that no basis is afforded for an appeal to the preventive powers of a court of equity.
The provider of the funds the federal government spends has no say in how they are spent! Since this tax burden is shared with millions who are not complaining, tough!
Regarding Massachusetts:
The state could not act as parens patriae (as a parent) to protect its citizens from the statutes of the United States; with respect to those citizens’ relationship with the federal government, “it is the United States, and not the State, which represents them as parens patriae.” (emphasis mine)
Read that again! The Supreme Court ruled that the United States acts as your parent as if you were a child or mentally incompetent!
And you wonder why the government thinks it owns you!
Remembering case decisions are based on previous decisions, this case is the basis for the rules the courts created to use to determine standing.
What is the Court created doctrine of “standing”?
When talking about standing, there are two aspects: 1) there must be an injured party that was harmed. 2) Caselaw from previous standing rulings is used by courts to create their rules how to determine harm.
When the Court wants to reach the merits of a case, the standing doctrine is often relaxed. Conversely, when the Court wishes to avoid deciding the merits of a case--or perhaps, when it wants to shut a whole category of cases out of court--, the requirements for standing are tightened.
The Court has riddled these rules with inconsistently applied exceptions and has also applied shifting definitions to the words of the rules.
That is the danger we are in now with the Court’s present standing caselaw. The very rules meant to restrain the courts’ power have become their license to extend it.
But just as important, infinitely flexible rules allow judges to pick and choose outcomes in cases without looking like they’re doing that.
We need to wake up, America. This nation is slipping downhill faster than we think possible.
May be another David Souter. Supreme Court justices have a way of disappointing the president who chose them and his following. President Eisenhower said he had only 2 regrets, and both were sitting on the Supreme Court.