The Teeter-Totter of Supreme Court Justice

By: Lisa Van Houten

If the barometric pressure suddenly changed yesterday in the D.C. area, it might have been due to Democrat politicians and liberal media hyperventilating after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the long-standing, historic principle of presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts when in office.  The Left went into hysterics, ridiculously claiming that Trump, if elected in November, will now be free to send Seal Team 6 to assassinate his political enemies – Justice Sotomayor herself fanned those flames, falsely making that outrageous claim in her dissent.  “When [the president] uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune.  Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune,” she writes.

President Biden took to the airwaves Monday night to also mislead the nation, claiming that this ruling would make the president a “king” and falsely stating that it “almost certainly means there are virtually no limits on what a president can do.” Biden also alleged that the immunity ruling sets “a dangerous precedent because the power of the office will no longer be constrained by the law, even including the Supreme Court of the United States.”

Yet the majority opinion from the Supreme Court specifically states: “The President is not above the law.”  The opinion also made clear that immunity only applies to actions within his “constitutional authority.”  In addition, the ruling clarifies that the president is not immune from impeachment; the Constitution gives Congress the power to hold a president accountable for unconstitutional actions.

Yet, facts don’t matter to the Left.  President Biden and his fellow Democrats have often threatened the Supreme Court and even openly boasted about ignoring it’s rulings, which Biden has done as he’s continued to forgive students loans, despite the Supreme Court ruling that it’s unconstitutional.  Repeatedly, Democrats attack the Supreme Court, labeling it as a “MAGA court” doing the bidding of the Right.

Yet, in actuality, the Supreme Court is made up of two solid, constitutional justices (Thomas and Alito); three liberal justices who typically seem to rule by ideology, rather than the Constitution (Kagan, Sotomayor, and Brown-Jackson); and four supposedly conservative justices, but who, in reality, teeter in the murky middle, with one never knowing on which side they’ll land (Roberts, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney-Barrett).

This has been made clear in recent days as we’ve seen the so-called conservative majority rule constitutionally on several important cases, including the one mentioned above, but then see some of those middle-of-the road justices refuse to uphold constitutional principles, as they recently did in an important free speech case.

Last year U.S. District Court Judge Terry Doughty issued an injunction that prohibited the federal government from colluding with Big Tech to censor online posts which the government wanted to silence.  Judge Doughty purposefully released his ruling on July 4, 2023 and the 5^th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld his injunction, protecting the free speech of Americans.

However, last week the U.S. Supreme Court reversed that decision, giving the Biden administration a green light to continue their censorship ploys heading into the 2024 election.

Justices Roberts, Kavanaugh and Barrett joined the three liberal justices, ruling 6-3 in Murthy V. Missouri that the plaintiffs who brought the suit against government censorship lacked standing, thus throwing out the case.  Barrett wrote the majority opinion in which she implied that Big Tech’s censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop report was a safeguard against foreign interference, writes Tristan Justice at the Federalist.

Justices Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch dissented, with Alito writing in the dissent: “We are obligated to tackle the free speech issue that the case presents.  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.”  Justice Alito went on to warn, regarding the government censorship of Americans’ online speech: “It was blatantly unconstitutional, and the country may come to regret the Court’s failure to say so.”

We all remember the Deep State’s efforts to censor online speech, working with Big Tech to label as “misinformation” any posts which the government didn’t like.  Expressing an opinion regarding Covid that differed from the government’s narrative, sharing evidence of election interference, dissent from the LGBT propaganda about transgenderism, etc. could result in you being kicked off Facebook or Twitter and/or having your post censored. Mark Zuckerberg admitted during an interview with Joe Rogan that Facebook suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story at the FBI’s urging.

“The ruling essentially allows the federal government to continue trampling on the First Amendment rights of ordinary Americans by deputizing social media companies to do what federal agencies cannot do directly: police what Americans are allowed to say online,” warns John Daniel Davidson, adding: “Don’t repose your hopes for the survival of the republic and our Constitution in an elusive conservative majority of black-robed justices.”

Robert Knight, writing for The Washington Times, aptly labels the Supreme Court as “schizophrenic,” which has “booted all too many opportunities to do the right thing.”  Knight also writes: “We keep hearing that this Court is ‘right-wing’ or ‘far right.’ But it is not. It gets some things right, such as smacking the EPA in 2023 and again this week for overreaching its authority, but it often bails on big questions.”  I urge you to read his excellent piece in which he lays out recent examples where many of the so-called conservative justices punted or ruled wrongly on important constitutional issues.

However, there have also been some very significant, encouraging decisions at the close of this Supreme Court term for which we can be very thankful.  We’ll expound on those in the days ahead.

Yet, our ultimate hope isn’t in nine judges, but in the Supreme Judge of Heaven and Earth.  Pray that these earthly judges will align their rulings with His truth and the inalienable rights in which He endowed mankind.

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