Tag: supremecourt

When Colorado removed Trump from the ballot, a Supreme Court showdown looked likely. Maine removed all doubt.

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DENVER (AP) — First, Colorado’s Supreme Court ruled that former President Donald Trump wasn’t eligible to run for his old job in that state. Then, Maine’s secretary of state ruled the same for her state.

Both decisions are historic. The Colorado court was the first court to apply to a presidential candidate a rarely used constitutional ban against those who “engaged in insurrection.” Maine’s secretary of state was the first top election official to unilaterally strike a presidential candidate from the ballot under that provision.

What’s next? Can Trump be put back on the ballot?

Both decisions are on hold while the legal process plays out. That means that Trump remains on the ballot in Colorado and Maine and that his political fate is now in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Maine ruling will likely never take effect on its own. Its central impact is increasing pressure on the nation’s highest court to state clearly whether Trump remains eligible to run for president after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

What’s the legal issue that could keep Trump off the ballot?

After the Civil War, the U.S. ratified the 14th Amendment to guarantee rights to former slaves and more. It also included a two-sentence clause called Section 3, designed to keep former Confederates from regaining government power after the war.

“Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution doesn’t require a criminal conviction to take effect.”

The measure reads: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”

Congress did remove that disability from most Confederates in 1872, and the provision fell into disuse. But it was rediscovered after Jan. 6.

See: Nikki Haley was asked by N.H. voter to name Civil War cause. Slavery was absent from her answer.

How does this apply to former president Trump exactly?

Trump is already being prosecuted for the attempt to overturn his 2020 loss that culminated with Jan. 6, but Section 3 doesn’t require a criminal conviction to take effect. Dozens of lawsuits have been filed to disqualify Trump, claiming he engaged in insurrection on Jan. 6 and is no longer qualified to run for office.

All the suits failed until the Colorado ruling. And dozens of secretaries of state have been asked to remove him from the ballot. All said they didn’t have the authority to do so without a court order — until Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows’s decision.

See: As Colorado court bars Trump from ballot, poll finds 62% of GOP voters would want him as nominee even with more legal woes

Also: Police investigating ‘incidents’ against Colorado justices after Trump removed from state’s ballot

The Supreme Court has never ruled on Section 3. It’s likely to do so in considering appeals of the Colorado decision — the state Republican Party has already appealed, and Trump is expected to file his own shortly.

Bellows’s ruling cannot be appealed straight to the U.S. Supreme Court — it has to be appealed up the judicial chain first, starting with a trial court in Maine.

The Maine decision does force the high court’s hand, though. It was already highly likely the justices would hear the Colorado case, but Maine removes any doubt.

Trump lost Colorado in 2020, and he doesn’t need to win it again to garner an Electoral College majority next year. But he won one of Maine’s four Electoral College votes in 2020 by winning the state’s 2nd Congressional District, so Bellows’s decision would have a direct impact on his odds next November.

Until the high court rules, any state could adopt its own standard on whether Trump, or anyone else, can be on the ballot. That’s the sort of legal chaos the court is supposed to prevent.

What is Trump’s argument?

Trump’s lawyers have several arguments against the push to disqualify him. First, it’s not clear Section 3 applies to the president — an early draft mentioned the office, but it was taken out, and the language “an officer of the United States” elsewhere in the Constitution doesn’t mean the president, they contend.

Second, even if it does apply to the presidency, they say, this is a “political” question best decided by voters, not unelected judges. Third, if judges do want to get involved, the lawyers assert, they’re violating Trump’s rights to a fair legal procedure by flatly ruling he’s ineligible without some sort of fact-finding process like a lengthy criminal trial. Fourth, they argue, Jan. 6 wasn’t an insurrection under the meaning of Section 3 — it was more like a riot. Finally, even if it was an insurrection, they say, Trump wasn’t involved in it — he was merely using his free speech rights.

Of course, the lawyers who want to disqualify Trump have arguments, too.

The main one is that the case is actually very simple: Jan. 6 was an insurrection, Trump incited it, and he’s disqualified.

Why has this process taken so long?

The attack of Jan. 6, 2021, occurred nearly three years ago, but the challenges weren’t “ripe,” to use the legal term, until Trump petitioned to get onto state ballots this fall.

But the length of time also gets at another issue — no one has really wanted to rule on the merits of the case. Most judges have dismissed the lawsuits because of technical issues, including that courts don’t have the authority to tell parties whom to put on their primary ballots. Secretaries of state have dodged, too, usually telling those who ask them to ban Trump that they don’t have the authority to do so unless ordered by a court.

No one can dodge anymore. Legal experts have cautioned that, if the Supreme Court doesn’t clearly resolve the issue, it could lead to chaos in November — or in January 2025, if Trump wins the election. Imagine, they say, if the high court ducks the issue or says it’s not a decision for the courts to make, and Democrats win a narrow majority in Congress. Would they seat Trump or declare he’s ineligible under Section 3?

Why was this action taken in Maine?

Maine has an unusual process in which a secretary of state is required to hold a public hearing on challenges to politicians’ spots on the ballot and then issue a ruling. Multiple groups of Maine voters, including a bipartisan clutch of former state lawmakers, filed such a challenge, triggering Bellows’s decision.

Bellows is a Democrat and the former head of the Maine chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. Trump’s attorneys asked her to recuse herself from the case, citing social-media posts calling Jan. 6 an “insurrection” and bemoaning Trump’s acquittal in his impeachment trial over the attack.

She refused, saying she wasn’t ruling based on personal opinions. But the precedent she sets is notable, critics say. In theory, election officials in every state could decide a candidate is ineligible based on a novel legal theory about Section 3 and end their candidacies.

Conservatives argue that Section 3 could apply to Vice President Kamala Harris, for example — it was used to block from office even those who donated small sums to individual Confederates. Couldn’t it be used against Harris, they say, because she raised money for those arrested in the unrest after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in 2020?

Is this a partisan issue?

Bellows is a Democrat, and all the justices on the Colorado Supreme Court were appointed by Democrats. Six of the 9 U.S. Supreme Court justices were appointed by Republicans, three by Trump himself.

But courts don’t always split on predictable partisan lines. The Colorado ruling was 4-3 — so three Democratic appointees disagreed with barring Trump. Several prominent legal conservatives have championed the use of Section 3 against the former president.

Now we’ll see how the high court handles it.

Read on:

Trump’s name can appear on ballot in Michigan, says state’s top court

Georgia election workers sue Rudy Giuliani again, seek to bar him from repeating lies about them

Trump’s Republican rivals rally to his defense after Colorado ballot ruling

Supreme Court to hear case that could undermine obstruction charges against hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants

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December 29, 2023
The Supreme Court blocked student-loan cancellation. Here’s what happens next for your loans.

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Student-loan payments are poised to resume this fall without smaller balances now that the U.S. Supreme Court has blocked President Joe Biden’s loan cancellation plan.

The Biden administration’s loan forgiveness initiative would have canceled up to $10,000 of debt for eligible borrowers, and in some cases up to $20,000.

But the Supreme Court’s conservative majority ruled on Friday that the executive branch overstepped its authority by trying to wipe out billions in student loan debt on its own.

“Six States sued, arguing that the HEROES Act does not authorize the loan cancellation plan. We agree,” Chief Judge John Roberts said, writing for the 6-3 majority.

Now it’s time for more than 40 million borrowers with federal student loans to figure out their next move. They are staring at more than $1.6 trillion in student loan debt. Add on private student loans, and the number climbs to $1.7 trillion.

Federal student loan payments have been on hold since March 2020.

On Friday, the Department of Education filed notice saying it would embark on a regulatory process that would seek an alternative pathway to student-debt relief. Activists have focused on a provision in the Higher Education Act, allowing the Department of Education to “compromise, waive, or release,” any right to collect on student loans.

Approximately 26 million people had either applied for loan forgiveness or were already eligible for the relief as of late last year, the White House said.

Here’s what to know.

When do student-loan payments restart?

In October, according to the Department of Education. Expect more specifics soon on those payments. “We will notify borrowers well before payments restart,” the department said.

While payments start coming in October, interest starts accumulating on the loans in September. Loan balances have not been accumulating interest since the payment pause started in March 2020, during the pandemic’s early days.

“We will also be in direct touch with borrowers and ramping up our communications with servicers well before repayment resumes to ensure borrowers and their families are receiving accurate and timely information about the return to repayment,” an Education Department spokesperson said.

There’s a range of estimates on how much student-loan borrowers typically pay each month on their loans.

According to Bank of America data, $180 was the median monthly student-loan payment as of January 2020. Federal Reserve research before the pause said the average monthly payment was $393, while the median payment was $222.

Can I lower my payments?

Possibly yes, with a range of income-driven repayment plans through the Education Department. These plans are supposed to make repaying loans more affordable by letting borrowers modify their monthly payments based on their income.

While these plans already exist, the department is reworking them. As a result, more monthly income will be shielded from the calculations on what a person could repay for student loans each month, meaning payments will become more affordable. While the revised plans are not in effect yet, the existing plans are up and running.

Many people will likely struggle to fit a student-loan bill back into their budget — the question is how far that financial hardship will go. Student-loan payments would be hitting at a time when car loan and credit-card delinquencies are already rising from their pandemic lows, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Part of the Biden administration’s Supreme Court arguments pointed to the possible economic consequences of resuming student-loan payments without canceling some of the debt.

Without cancellation, there will be a “surge” of loan defaults and delinquencies once payments resume, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the justices during oral arguments earlier this year.

Analysts at Bank of America agree more delinquencies are coming once student loan payments resume.

What if I miss my first payment?

When deciding which debts have to get paid first, a student-loan bill might fall behind other monthly debts like a mortgage or a credit-card bill.

Anywhere from roughly one-third to three-quarters of borrowers could miss their first student-loan bill when payments resume, according to projections from the credit score company VantageScore.

A missed first payment — in theory — could eventually lead to an average 49- to 82-point reduction in a credit score ranging from 350 to 850, VantageScore researchers said.

However, President Biden on Friday announced a temporary “ramp-up” — a 12-month grace period for borrowers who miss student-loan payments. If borrowers miss payments during this time, they won’t be reported to any of three main credit bureaus — Equifax
EFX,
+0.37%,
TransUnion
TRU,
+1.06%
and Experian
EXPGF,
+0.80%
— and they won’t go into default.

The ramp-up will run from Oct. 1, 2023 through Sept. 30, 2024.

“This is not the same as the student-loan pause, but during this period — if you miss payments — this ‘on ramp’ will temporarily remove the threat of default or having your credit harmed,” Biden wrote in a tweet Friday.

Prior to the payment pause and Biden’s ramp-up announcement, loan servicers waited for a borrower to miss three straight payments before they reported it to the credit reporting bureaus, according to Scott Buchanan, executive director of the Student Loan Servicing Alliance.

In the meantime, brace for potentially long call hold times, curtailed hours and loan servicer glitches, borrower advocates say. It stems back to Congressional cuts on the funding for vendor contracts that handle the day-to-day details of student-loan repayments.

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June 30, 2023
Liberals regain Wisconsin Supreme Court majority ahead of abortion-ban ruling

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MADISON, Wis. — A Democratic-backed Milwaukee judge won the high stakes Wisconsin Supreme Court race Tuesday, ensuring liberals will take over majority control of the court for the first time in 15 years with the fate of the state’s abortion ban on the line.

Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Janet Protasiewicz, 60, defeated former Justice Dan Kelly, who previously worked for Republicans and had support from the state’s leading anti-abortion groups.

The victory speaks to the importance of abortion as an issue for Democrats in a key swing state, with turnout on pace to be the highest ever for a Wisconsin Supreme Court race that didn’t share the ballot with a presidential primary.

In a jubilant scene at her victory party, the other three liberal justices on the court joined Protasiewicz on the stage and raised their arms in celebration.

Protasiewicz tried to downplay the importance of abortion as an issue in her victory, even though she and her allies, including an array of abortion rights groups including Planned Parenthood, made it the focus of much of her advertising and messaging to voters.

“It was really about saving our democracy, getting away from extremism and having a fair and impartial court where everybody gets a fair shot in the courtroom,” Protasiewicz told The Associated Press after her win. “That’s what it was all about.”

The new court controlled 4-3 by liberals is expected to decide a pending lawsuit challenging the state’s 1849 law banning abortion enacted a year after statehood. Protasiewicz said during the campaign that she supports abortion rights but stopped short of saying how she would rule on the lawsuit. She had called Kelly an “extreme partisan” who would vote to uphold the ban.

In addition to abortion, Protasiewicz’s win is likely to impact the future of Republican-drawn legislative maps, voting rights and years of other GOP policies. It will also ensure that liberals will have the majority leading up to the 2024 presidential election and immediately after.

Four of the past six presidential elections in Wisconsin have been decided by less than a percentage point and Trump turned to the courts in 2020 in his unsuccessful push to overturn his roughly 21,000-vote loss in the state. The current court, under a 4-3 conservative majority, came within one vote of overturning President Joe Biden’s win in the state in 2020, and both major parties are preparing for another close race in 2024.

Kelly is a former justice who has also performed work for Republicans and advised them on a plan to have fake GOP electors cast their ballots for Trump following the 2020 election even though Trump had lost.

Ahead of the vote, Protasiewicz called Kelly “a true threat to our democracy” because of his advising on the fake elector scheme.

Kelly had expressed opposition to abortion in the past, including in a 2012 blog post in which he said the Democratic Party and the National Organization for Women were committed to normalizing the taking of human life. He also had done legal work for Wisconsin Right to Life.

Kelly was endorsed by the state’s top three anti-abortion groups, while Protasiewicz was backed by abortion rights advocates.

Kelly was appointed to the state Supreme Court by then-Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, in 2016. He served four years before being defeated in 2020 on the same ballot as the Democratic presidential primary. Kelly was endorsed by Trump that year.

Trump did not endorse this year. Protasiewicz’s endorsements included Hillary Clinton.

Kelly tried to distance himself from his work for Republicans, saying it was “irrelevant” to how he would work as a justice. He tried to make the campaign about Protasiewicz’s record as a judge, arguing that she was soft on crime and accusing her of being “bought and paid for” by Democrats.

The Wisconsin Democratic Party gave Protasiewicz’s campaign more than $8 million, leading her to promise to recuse herself from any case brought by the party.

Protasiewicz said that while she anticipates many of the issues raised in the campaign will come before the court in the coming years, she pledged to be impartial and not beholden to Democrats and her liberal backers who poured an unprecedented amount of money into the race.

“I’ve told everybody on the entire time that I was running, despite the fact that I was sharing my personal values, every single decision that I will render will be rooted in the law,” she said. “And that is the bottom line. They’re independent and rooted in the law.”

Kelly, in a statement after his loss, said Protasiewicz “made her campaign about cynical appeals to political passions, serial lies, and a blatant disregard for judicial ethics and the integrity of the court.”

“I wish Wisconsin the best of luck,” he said. “I think it will need it.”

Protasiewicz was outspoken on Wisconsin’s gerrymandered legislative maps, calling them “rigged.” Kelly accused her of prejudging that case, abortion and others that could come before the court.

The state Supreme Court upheld Republican-drawn maps in 2022. Those maps, widely regarded as among the most gerrymandered in the country, have helped Republicans increase their hold on the state Legislature to near supermajority levels, even as Democrats have won statewide elections, including Tony Evers as governor in both 2018 and 2022 and Biden in 2020.

Protasiewicz will serve a 10-year term starting in August replacing retiring conservative Justice Pat Roggensack.

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April 4, 2023
Sen. Sherrod Brown: American consumers losing power over their savings and paychecks is an emergency, too.

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The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank sent shockwaves through the global economy and had the makings of another crisis. Depositors raced to withdraw money. Banks worried about the risk of contagion. I spent that weekend on the phone with small business owners in Ohio who didn’t know whether they’d be able to make payroll the next week. One woman was in tears, worried about whether she’d be able to pay her workers.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Federal Reserve responded quickly, took control of the bank, and contained the fallout. Consumers’ and small businesses’ money was safe. That Ohio small business was able to get paychecks out.

The regulators were able to protect Americans’ money from incompetent bank executives because when Congress created the Federal Reserve in 1913 and the FDIC in 1933, it ensured that their funding structures would remain independent from politicians in Congress and free from political whims.

But now, as the U.S. Supreme Court considers the case of Community Financial Services Association v. CFPB, these independent watchdogs’ ability to keep our financial system stable faces an existential threat.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is the only agency solely dedicated to protecting the paychecks and savings of ordinary Americans, not Wall Street executives or venture capitalists. Corporate interests have armies of lobbyists fighting for every tax break, every exemption, every opportunity to be let off the hook for scamming customers and preying on families.

“ The CFPB’s funding structure is designed to be independent, just like the Fed and the FDIC. ”

Ordinary Americans don’t have those lobbyists. They don’t have that kind of power. The CFPB is supposed to be their voice — to fight for them. The CFPB’s funding structure is designed to be independent, just like the Fed and the FDIC. Otherwise, its ability to do the job would be subject to political whims and special interests — interests that we know are far too often at odds with what’s best for consumers.

Since its creation, the CFPB has returned $16 billion to more than 192 million consumers. It’s held Wall Street and big banks accountable for breaking the law and wronging their customers. It’s given working families more power to fight back when banks and shady lenders scam them out of their hard-earned money.

The CFPB can do this good work because it’s funded independently and protected from partisan attacks, just as the Fed and the FDIC are. So why, then, does Wall Street claim that only the CFPB’s funding structure is unconstitutional?

Make no mistake — the only reason that Wall Street, its Republican allies in Congress, and overreaching courts have singled out the CFPB is because the agency doesn’t do their bidding. The CFPB doesn’t help Wall Street executives when they fail. It doesn’t extend them credit in favorable terms or offer them deposit insurance like the other regulators do. The CFPB’s funding structure isn’t unconstitutional — it just doesn’t work in Wall Street’s favor.

If the Supreme Court rules against the CFPB, the $16 billion returned to consumers could be clawed back. What would happen then — will America’s banks really go back to the customers they’ve wronged with a collection tin?

“ Invalidating the CFPB and its work would also put the U.S. economy — and especially the housing market — at risk. ”

Invalidating the CFPB and its work would also put the U.S. economy — and especially the housing market — at risk. For more than a decade, the CFPB has set rules of the road for mortgages and credit cards and so much else, and given tools to help industry follow them. If these rules and the regulator that interprets them disappear, markets will come to a standstill.

By attacking the CFPB’s funding structure and putting consumers’ money at risk, Wall Street is putting the other financial regulators in danger, too.

The Fifth Circuit’s faulty ruling against the CFPB is astounding in its absurdity — the court ruled that the authorities that other financial agencies, like the Federal Reserve and the FDIC, have over the economy do not compare to the CFPB’s authorities. In other words, the court is claiming that the CFPB supposedly has more power in the economy than the Fed.

That’s ridiculous. Look at the extraordinary steps taken to contain the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank — the idea that the CFPB could take action even close to as sweeping is laughable.

But we know why the Fifth Circuit put that absurd assertion in there — they recognize the damage this case could do to these other vital agencies, and to our whole economy.

“ Imagine what might happen if another series of banks failed and the FDIC did not have the funds to stop the crisis from spreading.”

The FDIC’s own Inspector General has stated that the Fifth Circuit ruling could be applied to their agency. If that happens, the FDIC and other regulators could be subject to congressional budget deliberations, which we all know are far too partisan and have resulted in shutdowns. Imagine what might happen if another series of banks failed and the FDIC did not have the funds to stop the crisis from spreading, or the Deposit Insurance Fund to protect depositors’ money. Imagine if politicians caused a shutdown, and we were without a Federal Reserve.

U.S. financial regulators are independently funded so that they can respond quickly when crises happen. It’s telling, though, that plenty of people in Washington don’t seem to consider the CFPB’s issues in the same category. Washington and Wall Street expect the government to spring into action when businesses’ money is put at risk. But when workers are scammed out of their paychecks, that’s not an emergency — it’s business as usual.

When Wall Street’s abusive practices put consumers in crisis, the CFPB must have the funding and strength it needs to carry out its mission — to protect consumers’ hard-earned money.

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.

More: Supreme Court to hear case that will decide the future of consumer financial protection

Also read: Senate Banking Chair Sherrod Brown sees bipartisan support for changes to deposit insurance

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March 27, 2023