SCOTUS is on a roll
June is usually a big time for SCOTUS decisions, and here comes another:
Today the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned lower court decisions in the consolidated cases of Ruan vs. United States and Kahn vs. United States. The two physicians were convicted of prescribing opioid pain medicine “outside the usual course of [medical] treatment” and were sentenced to prison.
The jury in Ruan was not instructed to consider Dr. Xiulu Ruan’s “good??faith defense,” i.e., that he was indeed prescribing the drug “legitimately” to treat pain based upon his good??faith assessments of his patients’ medical contexts and requirements. The Eleventh Circuit Appeals Court denied Ruan’s request to vacate the lower court decision on the grounds that he was denied a “good faith” defense.
The Supreme Court held “the Government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant knowingly or intentionally acted in an unauthorized manner.”
And you know what? That decision was unanimous.
Another case was handed down today:
The case is about a high school coach who used to go out to the middle of the field and offer a private prayer after a game. He did this alone and without inviting anyone to join him. However, some students and players did wind up joining him, as did players from the other team.
The prayers were short.
The District he worked for forbade him from doing this, claiming that the Establishment Clause of the Constitution, and the Lemon “endorsement” test, required them to forbid him from privately praying.
He did it anyway, and the District dropped him as an employee.
Please read the whole thing. This ruling in favor of the coach’s right to offer a private prayer (in public) in the school sports setting was decided by the familiar 6-3 vote.
Ruan sounds correct, and 9-0 says so.
During the recent pandemic, many doctors around the country have lost their licenses and/or been threatened with prosecution for prescribing contrary to CDC guidelines or for expressing reservations about mRNA vaccines. On the flip side of this will be states which pass anti-abortion laws and how they will handle the prescribing of early abortion medications which also have non-abortifacient uses.
In my youth I would never have imagined a 6-3 vote to permit individual prayer in public. It should be 9-0.
I agree with the Ruan decision, but I doubt the ruling would have been unanimous if the doctor involved was named John Smith instead of Xuilu Ruan.
Based on numerous sparring events on the internet, I have come to the conclusion that many of the younger people have been taught that the goals of the American Revolution when it came to religion was like the goals of the French Revolution when it came to religion.
It does not matter to most how much you try to get them to read Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in it’s full context. All they know or want to know is some vague idea about “ separation of church and state”.
Sad state of affairs when doctors are afraid to prescribe pain killers.
There were some doctors abusing the system. I suspect they were at the bottom of the barrel,competence wise.
Same a Drs. specializing in abortion. Can’t cut it in the real world.
RE: SCOTUS deciding that it’s OK for a football coach leading prayers on the field .
Sotomayer, Kagan, and a third judge dissented saying, in part, that school kids are vulnerable and need to be protected.
Yet somehow, it’s OK for drag queens to perform their adult only shows in front of grammar school kids.
Having read most of the details of football coach case, I would agree with decision.
But for purely political reasons, I almost wish that the coach had been forcing all the players to pray just before the games started, and that the SCOTUS would have then allowed the lower court ruling to stand. Then we could have said, “See, the 5 or 6 justices are not ideologs.”
Now we’ve got this “Catholic cabal” meme really rolling. The New Puritans!
“The Supreme Court held “the Government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant knowingly or intentionally acted in an unauthorized manner.”
The problem here is that the goverment and medical “authorities” are so corrupted as to be willing participants in mass murder.
“It’s Time To Admit The FDA Is The Enemy Of The People, And Is Killing Americans For The Globalist Agenda”
“They are fast-tracking killer shots for infants.
They are promoting killer shots for big pharma and the globalist agenda.
The vaccinated are dropping like flies on a hot southern afternoon.
The FDA under Biden has no accountability!
The FDA now wants to approve new mRNA killer shots with no safety trials.”
https://creativedestructionmedia.com/opinion/2022/06/25/its-time-to-admit-the-fda-is-the-enemy-of-the-people-and-is-killing-americans-for-the-globalist-agenda/
“FDA plans to abandon clinical trials for future Covid Vaccines…”
https://brownstone.org/articles/the-fdas-future-framework-for-covid-vaccines-is-reckless-plan/
JohnTyler,
“Sotomayer, Kagan, and a third judge dissented saying, in part, that school kids are vulnerable and need to be protected.”
Either blatant hypocrisy or cognitive dysfunction, in either case Prima Facie evidence of unfitness for the office held.
Although I never really cared for Trump when he started gaining traction in the election I was being him, thinking that if this silly, obnoxious man could get elected and give us one more vote on the Supreme Court he had my vote. Lots of other folk at that time were not on board.
I have read through the Ruan opinions (majority and concurrence) once and will have to do so at least one more time to figure out the legal nuances. But the majority opinion struck me as extremely forced. I think statutes should be read in their grammatical sense; the majority violates this common-sense principle to make its holding work, except that I don’t think that it works. J Alito’s concurrence makes much more sense. Unfortunately, the majority opinion is the opinion of the court, and the lower federal courts will have to attempt to apply it. As far as I understand, the states can deal with the interplay between elements of a crime and affirmative defenses, and how burdens of proof and persuasion work, in their own ways.
The relief of pain is part of the Hippocratic Oath. It is part of what a doctor is suppose to do. Political interference of that is what is criminal.
One reason I always read Neo, and seldom Ace, is the lack of snark*, no “Sarah Day O’Connor” disrespect to Sandra. Even when I agree that many of Sandra’s opinions, like the Lemon Test, are a bit ditsy.
Conservatives should be pushing an amendment to the Constitution to explicitly allow states to offer educational student vouchers on a per student basis including to religious schools which teach based on religious beliefs.
The de facto establishment of atheism as the state religion continues to create students whose values are less good than religious based values.
[*I’m not fully consistent on snark, usually also reading Steve Sailor whose snarky posts on the rise of Black car deaths is played down by the Dem media; but it doesn’t add enjoyment for me. I’m truly sad about the truth about the ditsy Dem decisions.]
SCOTUS may be “on a roll”…but the severely morally-compromised Stasi pit-bulls of the SEC are at it again…
“Firm merging with Trump’s Truth Social parent company faces grand jury subpoenas;
“The jury is seeking information about the company’s merger with Trump’s TMTG”—
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/all-things-trump/firm-merging-trumps-truth-social-faces-grand-jury-subpoenas
One great ruling after another. The Thomas Court Rocks!