The majority then announced, with an opinion from Chief Justice John Roberts, that it was overthrowing the student loan forgiveness program, granting a request from six Republican state attorneys general on behalf of a loan servicer, the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority, that did not want to be used as a plaintiff. Without MOHELA, the states did not have standing to bring the suit—they are not directly harmed.

Roberts and the majority weren’t going to be bothered by the fact that their plaintiff was an unwilling participant in this highly partisan scheme. “By law and function, MOHELA is an instrumentality of Missouri … The [debt forgiveness] plan will cut MOHELA’s revenues, impairing its efforts to aid Missouri college students,” Roberts wrote. “This acknowledged harm to MOHELA in the performance of its public function is necessarily a direct injury to Missouri itself.”

Never mind that in oral arguments the state admitted that MOHELA wasn’t aiding Missouri college students because it hadn’t paid into that fund in 15 years, and “said in its own financial documents that it doesn’t plan to make any payments in the future.”

  • LordR@kbin.social
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    2 years ago

    Even worse was the other case that was based on a gay person’s marriage. Turns out he is/was not gay, already married, had a child and didn’t know that his name was used for a case.

    The US Supreme Court is judging made up cases now.

    As a European I hope that everyone in the US will vote accordingly to at least try to bring back some semblance of rationality back.

    • Laxaria@lemmy.world
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      One of the challenges in overcoming the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is needing a sufficient leftist majority in both branches of Congress to pass legislation, and this majority needs to be large enough to overwhelm the more restrained members of that majority. If this ever actually happens, the revamp of the SCOTUS is an inevitability.

      The grim reality is insofar as legislation goes, any law passed or executive action taken can be challenged legally and the SCOTUS seems very willing to grant cert in arbitrary and capricious manners to overturn the legislation (or past judicial decision). The only saving grace of this series of decisions lately is revoking the independent state legislature theory, but that doesn’t really stop state governments from committing electoral fraud :/

      Rationality isn’t returning to the SCOTUS for a long time sadly.

  • Seraph@kbin.social
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    2 years ago

    There’s no way out of this without expanding the court right? There are no easy ways to get these lifetime appointments removed, are there?

    Edit: actually I just read they are trying to impose supreme court term limits!

    • HipHoboHarold@kbin.social
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      The only other option is to bust out the guillotine. Waiting for them to die naturally is gonna take too long, they clearly will never retire if their own free will, and no one in charge seems to care enough to do anything about their crimes.

      So either we expand or revolt.

        • HipHoboHarold@kbin.social
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          2 years ago

          Less “calling for”, and more so realizing that a lot of regimes in the world only got taken care of through people rising up. Sometimes violence has been needed, and that can be shown throughout this countries history.

      • ExecutiveStapler@kbin.social
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        2 years ago

        Absolutely not true, another option besides just murdering them is to place term limits on the court. Link is a bill introduced by Ro Khanna that’d have the most senior judge replaced every 2 years. If there were enough dems in the House and Senate reforms would absolutely be possible.

      • chinpokomon@kbin.social
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        Sure, but only for an impeachment offence. Even if there was unanimous consent for everyonebut the majority Justices, we’re talking 300000000 to 5, that disagreed with a decision, the decision still stands and isn’t an impeachable offense. So a Justice would have to do something egregious. Then impeachment would have to have a majority consent of the House and 2/3rds consent of the Senate, and the Senate would then have to make a motion to remove that Justice. So it isn’t realistic that this would happen, especially with the razor thin margins of control in both chambers. Party politics would block the removal.

    • HipHoboHarold@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      So rather than going for the party who has a chance of doing anything good, just throw fuel to the fire. Give them the entire government.

      • RestrictedAccount@kbin.social
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        2 years ago

        No. Rather than going for the party who has a chance of doing anything good, they are going to vote for a party that will do the exact opposite of something good.

    • Kbin_space_program@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      That’s how Trump got in in 2016. Rust belt states being tired of being constantly lied to by democrats went and got lied to worse by the GOP

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      2 years ago

      @dankapotamus

      @Arotrios

      The time for that line of thinking is in the primaries. It’s a lot of work, but learn what the candidates in the primary stand for and vote as liberal as you can. Voting for anyone other than the Democratic nominee (or in very, very few cases a well-established third party with a high likelihood of winning) might as well be no vote at all.

      The first-past-the-post system we have makes it nearly impossible for a third party to win and basically ensures that whatever party they are closest to also loses.

    • ExecutiveStapler@kbin.social
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      Two things:

      1. The Dems don’t take your vote for granted, they just can’t accomplish anything substantial with such historically slim majorities in the legislature. Link has a chart that shows the majorities in the legislature over time, notice than the margins have been massive in the past, such as during the New Deal era, but they’ve been razor thin recently. You can’t pass housing reform, health care reform, college reform, abortion reform, etc. with razor thin margins thanks to our dramatic polarization.

      2. The Dems are not a monolith. Due to our FPTP voting system, we have two coalitions pretending to be parties, with the Dems being a mixture of everything from barely represented democratic socialists to fiscally conservative moderates. Vote in your primary to choose who in that spectrum you want, and in the general realize you can only choose between the party that gives tax cuts to the wealthy and inspires discord in our nation and the party that actually tries. Voting for a third party is just useless, look at link if you’re not convinced.

    • Arotrios@kbin.socialOP
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      @dankapotamus I disagree - while there’s certainly deadlock on the federal level, your vote absolutely matters, especially when it comes to state and local politics. Take a look at the states that have democratic super-majorities. Best example of progress in action is in Minnesota right now.

      That being said, speaking to your larger point, I think that if ranked-choice voting were implemented, we’d have a much more effective democratic process that would allow protest votes that didn’t directly harm your best interests. Sadly, given the state of American politics, if you make under $150k a year or are a member of any minority group, if you don’t vote Democratic, you’re voting against your own interests.

    • mrnotoriousman@kbin.social
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      I’m incredibly liberal but to be honest,

      Literally every time I see this it’s followed by insert right-wing view/talking point

      • NotTheOnlyGamer@kbin.social
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        Because no one is all-left or all-right, or all-Liberal or all-Conservative. It’s not any form of doublethink to, say, support the right of a business to choose who they do business with - while also believing that we should be closing tax loopholes on businesses and corporations so that they pay a fairer share of the US tax bill. That’s just one example, but others exist. No one I’ve ever met that was sane fully supports every point of the party line they usually side with. You will also see cases where people say, “I’m conservative but to be honest, liberal/left-wing talking point”. It’s how sane people work.

  • Anna@kbin.social
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    2 years ago

    Agreed, if things don’t go exactly my way, I want it changed until they do. Our opinion or no opinion at all! Right guys?

  • Darnov@kbin.social
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    Could also abolish SCOTUS. Maybe force it to not be a lifetime appointment and rather it be a rotating committee from lesser courts?

    • Machinist3359@kbin.social
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      Circuit judges elected every 16 years w/o term limits by a popular vote would probably strike a nice balance. The role requires expertise, which is only really established by years in the field. Also want to avoid the election cycle being too influential on decisions. Yet, there needs to be a democratic mechanism.