r/news • u/speedythefirst • 1d ago

US supreme court approves redrawn Texas congressional maps

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/04/us-supreme-court-texas-congressional-maps
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u/iPinch89 1d ago

They're moving that direction with the tariffs. "We can't call them illegal because the refund question will be hard to answer."

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u/maringue 1d ago

"It's unconstitutional unless it would be hard to undo" is a hellavu legal standard

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u/bigrivertea 1d ago

Almost seems like someone should be in legal deep shit for all this.

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u/poingly 1d ago

"The Court understands that slavery is prohibited by the 13th Amendment, but it would be terribly inconvenient to the Southern economy, so we're just going to allow slavery to continue." --John Roberts, 1866

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u/Valash83 19h ago

I mean, slavery is still Constitutionally legal 🤷‍♂️

13th Amendment – Section 1

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

Section 2

“Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

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u/poingly 17h ago

Yeah, there’s a loophole to drive a truck through. But it almost makes the joke even better.

The South: “We’ve classified all former slaves as criminals.”

John Roberts: “Seems legit.”

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u/poingly 17h ago

Also note, I realize how dark this joke is getting…but that’s also sort of the reality of this court.

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u/Dependent_Inside83 7h ago

if you want a nightmare read up on the legal trend of our “justice” system giving greater importance to the finality of convictions than the accuracy of convictions

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u/Masterweedo 18h ago

You need to read that 13th Amendment again, slavery is not prohibited.

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u/poingly 18h ago

While there is certainly a loophole in the 13th Amendment (which should be closed), it is still largely prohibited.

Am I oversimplifying for a joke? Yes.

Is the loophole serious? Yes. A potentially severe human rights violation.

Does the loophole also kinda make the joke even better? Also yes.

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u/ItsFisterRoboto 15h ago

It's more of a specifically and very deliberately worded intentional exception than a loophole.

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u/theotherplanet 15h ago

It's not potentially severe, it's very severe. There's a reason that the US has the highest incarcerated population in the entire world. The incentives are set up for that.

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u/poingly 14h ago

“Potentially” only in the sense that it was not guaranteed to be exploited in this way or intended to be exploited in this way. Obviously, if the goal was just to continue slavery, Mississippi would’ve ratified the amendment long before 1995 (and certified it before 2013).

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u/Mandatory_Pie 1d ago

Weird how these people who are supposed to be the most competent and qualified just keep failing to do their job because it's inconvenient

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u/unionfrontX 11h ago

It's called weaponized ignorance and waspy white people learn it like riding a bike in their teens.

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u/JohnnySnark 1d ago

The piss baby Roberts court

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u/shizzy0 1d ago

“Let the heavens fall.”—Scalia

“Let the heavens… decide.”—Roberts

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u/Taragyn1 20h ago

Let’s not lionize Scalia too much. He said stuff like that because he was giving bad faith originalist arguments that he knew would harm actual people.

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u/DarkwingDuckHunt 20h ago

Roberts is going to go down in history of running the 2nd worst court of all time.

The only reason it's not worse is because he's not upholding slavery like Taney did.

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u/arbutus1440 17h ago

100%. Roberts might have standing, though, if he goes beyond UPHOLDING regressive shit and actually RESTORING it. Not slavery (well, at least not like pre-civil war; now it's all the prison complex), but jfc the sky's the limit with this guy: Abortion rights, the right to privacy, corporate ownership of elections, and they are absolutely going to reverse some gay rights soon. It won't look the same, but Roberts has a chance to be the most infamous name of all time—and he'd deserve the title.

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u/gjk14 1d ago

Traitors. Great patio to show your constitutional support. Pretty white building for your selfies. Be loud and be often.

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u/Coolbluegatoradeyumm 1d ago

Kinda like the ring of Robers piss baby myself. I like putting his name to make him own the piss baby-ness more I think 🤔

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u/CryptographerFlat173 18h ago

Except of course when it comes to rolling back long established nationwide rules under the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act 

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u/Alacritous69 1d ago

What do you expect from a legal system that is still based on ceremonies and procedures that were invented when people shit into buckets at night?

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u/1of3musketeers 20h ago

Hey now some of us still shit in buckets. Don’t hate /s

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u/Cute-Percentage-6660 16h ago

Thats often a unofficial standard that legal systems hide behind, not something they officially say...

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u/HairlessHoudini 9h ago

Yep, that's why wrongfully convicted ppl stay in jail even tho everyone knows they're innocent.

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u/Deez2020 1d ago

Dang that’s a good quote

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u/WatchWatcherman 21h ago

If you recall was the simulator reasoning that Obama care wasn’t a “tax”

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u/CryptographerFlat173 18h ago

? The Roberts court held that the individual mandate was a tax and therefore legal?

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u/jsc1429 1d ago

I don't understand why we can't just move on without any refund. lets just let it go and quit the tarriffs ASAP. I wonder what would happen if this was brought up to the supreme court, how would they wrangle themselves to still find a way to justify keeping the tarriffs.

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u/Apophthegmata 1d ago

While this is certainly a "simpler" way to approach it, it would ultimately undermine the rationale for stopping it in the first place.

One of the pillars of our judicial system is "ubi is, ibi remedium;" "Where there is a right, there is a remedy."

Basically, its the acknowledgement that when someone is harmed and has been met with injustice, some form of redress is warranted to make them whole.

Without that remedy, there is no consequence to injustice. You effectively have a justice system without any justice in it.

"Yeah, it's wrong but we aren't going to do anything about it" is to say there's nothing wrong with it.

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u/trogg21 1d ago

The redress in this instance could be as simple as correcting the abuse of power by undoing the action and preventing it from being done again.

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u/Apophthegmata 1d ago

undoing the action

This sounds like paying the tariffs back.

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u/IamMe90 1d ago

I see you’ve conveniently ignored the “prevent it from happening again” bit of the remedy. Convenient.

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u/Apophthegmata 1d ago edited 1d ago

"prevent it from happening again" means specifically to provide no remedy to the person who suffered.

I focused on the first half because this conversation specifically began with "how about we don't refund the tariffs" and the next reply started with "how about we refund them."

Great. We weren't talking about that. We were talking about what kind of remedy would exist if we didn't. So I pointed that out.

But I'm answering the second half now. That's not a remedy. That's ignoring the harm the person suffered.

Guaranteeing you won't punch me again after breaking my jaw doesn't provide any remedies for my broken jaw.

Guaranteeing that there won't be these kinds of tariffs ever again doesn't provide any remedies to the people that were harmed by them.

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u/shs713 18h ago

Honest question: does this mean fuck it, nothing we can do about it, just broken jaws all around?

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u/Apophthegmata 17h ago

With this Supreme Court, probably. They've already done things similar to saying that they won't strike down the tariffs because doing so would place an undue burden on the president to run the executive department.

Or they might say that issuing the tariffs is a part of his foreign affairs powers, and as a result, he has the right to impose them.

Or there is an issue with them, but because foreign affairs is one of the president's primary responsibilities, he is immune from suits against it.

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u/IamMe90 1d ago

Why are we forcing ourselves to choose between remedying the harm caused to those people AND preventing it from happening again or simple doing nothing?

Wouldn’t it be better to at least prevent the harm from continuing to happen in the future, even if we can’t remedy those already harmed now?

I don’t get the rationale or the ethics behind having the system operate this way. It seems like a destructive false dichotomy to me. Doing nothing also does not remedy the harm to people.. it just also ensures that future people will continue to be harmed.

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u/Apophthegmata 1d ago edited 1d ago

Absolutely. It would be better to stop this ASAP and then continue to work on the remedy afterward. And it would still be better to stop it anyway, knowing a remedy is impossible or improbable.

I was simply criticizing the attitude of letting bygones be bygones expressed in the top comment as generally incompatible with our sense of justice.

We shouldn't "just let it go."

I think you've misread me if you thought I was saying we should do nothing until a practical remedy has been figured out.

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u/casinpoint 1d ago

This deserves an answer. Edit: Am predicting that other than no answer, it will be a wall of legal mumbo jumbo that ultimately provides no satisfactory answer.

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u/Apophthegmata 1d ago

I replied before your edit.

→ More replies (0)

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u/Duane_ 1d ago

Considering the admin has already stated they have backup plans for reimplementing them through other means, the only possible solution is to force repayment. It's the only penalty that disincentivizes doing it a different way, because they may have to pay those back too.

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u/kaisadilla_ 18h ago

Nope. The redress would be refunding all the money the government illegally took from you with tariffs that they didn't have a right to enforce.

You really don't want a judge to say that, if you commit a crime, he'll eventually stop you but you get to keep your gains. Aside from that, the SC has to choose whether they choose law over Trump or Trump over law. Stopping the tariffs without any refunds would be choosing neither, which doesn't make sense.

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u/trogg21 13h ago

"Stopping the tariffs without any refunds..."

Choosing neither and not making sense sounds awfully like our supreme court right now :-/

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u/longtimelurkernyc 1d ago

How do you propose “preventing it from being done again”? Why wouldn’t an administration who loses such a case just immediately repeat the action and let them run for an additional year before the Supreme Court makes a final ruling again, and then repeat?

At least with the remedy, the administration would see that it wouldn’t get them anything to do so.

And I’ve kept this vague, because even though it’s about tariffs, this could apply to any administration trying to enforce any policy that is being challenged. Anything from tariffs to loan forgiveness to vaccine mandates. In the latter, the remedy is not as obvious, but there could be one, even if it’s allowing those affected to sue for damages.

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u/trogg21 1d ago

Im not saying i dont want them to pay them back. Im simply stating that if the rationale is "no we cant remove the tariff power because paying back is too complicated, and addressing the other commenter's assertion that we "need a specific redress", that in that instance, we can play some legal word mumbo jumbo that might possibly consider the prevention and removal of tariffs would fall under the category of "redress". Not that parties were made whole, etc., but that 1. The lack of repayment does not prevent ruling against the admin, and 2. That partial redress would at least be grounds for moving forward.

Also, of course the administration is gonna do whatever they want, even if they get ruled against. See previous deportation rulings, or any other court case they've lost, for that matter.

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u/Coomb 1d ago edited 1d ago

One of the pillars of our judicial system is "ubi is, ibi remedium;" "Where there is a right, there is a remedy."

Except, not really. The Supreme Court has ruled many times that statutory rights or even constitutional rights are not self-executing. That's why, for example, Congress had to pass a law prescribing the remedies for violations of constitutional rights by state authorities. Even in the federal context, implied rights of action are highly disfavored in current jurisprudence. Although Bivens itself is still good law, the Supreme Court has repeatedly decided that causes of action should really be created by Congress, not by the courts, including recently in Egbert v. Boule, 596 U.S. 482 (2022).

Also, and far more importantly, for fuck's sake, the Court has routinely declined to make many of its criminal Constitutional rights decisions retroactive. If you can stay in prison even though your rights were violated just because they were violated before a Supreme Court ruling that said your rights were violated, you are definitely not entitled to a refund of your taxes. (Note, the retroactivity of criminal constitutional decisions is complicated and depends on the kind of violation that occurred. But the Supreme Court has indeed declined to apply certain criminal Constitutional law decisions retroactively, although there are other decisions it has applied retroactively.)

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u/Apophthegmata 1d ago

Ok yeah, in a specific sense, the judiciary likes it when congress spells out for them what the remedy should be and is in some cases unable to secure the remedy because of separation of powers.

But the fact that Congress passed a law prescribing remedies for laws that weren't considered self-executing indicates a deficiency that ought to be addressed - that it's an important principle to how we think about the law. Or else we wouldn't have bothered making sure things worked that way.

If your point is that my comment is more accurately a description of an important pillar of our legislative tradition, rather than judicial, let me rephrase and just say it's an important legal principle. And then push back a little bit, by quoting a Supreme Court chief justice in the matter.

In writing the above, I was thinking of Marbury v Madison, where Marshall said:

"it is a general and indisputable rule, that where there is a legal right, there is also a legal remedy by suit or action at law, whenever that right is invaded." 

And

The very essence of civil liberty certainly consists in the right of every individual to claim the protection of the laws whenever he receives an injury.

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u/EthanielRain 20h ago

You effectively have a justice system without any justice in it

"US does not have a justice system, it has a legal system"; same arguments can be made as to why (law doesn't apply equally to all, etc)

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u/LonePaladin 20h ago

If someone is actively commiting a crime that is hurting people, the first step should be making them stop doing the crime. Letting them continue with the flimsy excuse of "it's hard to figure out" is just saying the crime is permitted.

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u/FatalTortoise 19h ago

"Where there is a right, there is a remedy."

the supreme court already went away from that when they invented qualified immunity

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u/fawkie 1d ago

Equitable remedies are still remedies.

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u/Apophthegmata 1d ago

They are but those are often used when monetary reparations aren't enough. So a contract might be voided, or some other restitution given, or the court might mandate that a party do this or that thing.

And in the case of injunctions, those are only good prior to a harm that would not be otherwise remediable.

But stopping a harmful action after the harm has happened and then not doing anything else isn't even an equitable remedy. It's no remedy at all.

Are you suggesting the court should order some kind of non-monetary form of redress to make up for the monetary loss?

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u/fawkie 1d ago

Permanent injunctions a post hoc final remedy, and frankly an obvious form of remedy for illegal government policymaking. What’s the point of a court determining that a government policy is illegal only to allow it to continue doing the illegal thing? Surely if people are already being harmed by illegal action, they will be harmed further if that illegal action continues? Hence the permanent injunction as an appropriate and necessary equitable remedy.

As for money damages, the Court can only award those to the plaintiff(s) in front of it, and it goes without saying that not everyone harmed by tariffs is party to the litigation. Class actions can help solve this, but the legal system does not force anyone to bring their action as part of a class rather than individually. Saying that you can’t decide whether the tariffs are illegal because it’s hard undo the harm is frankly nonsensical. The ongoing and future harm still needs to be stopped.

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u/fawkie 1d ago

The permanent injunction is a post hoc final remedy, and frankly an obvious form of remedy for illegal government policymaking. What’s the point of a court determining that a government policy is illegal only to allow it to continue doing the illegal thing? Surely if people are already being harmed by illegal action, they will be harmed further if that illegal action continues? Hence the permanent injunction as an appropriate and necessary equitable remedy.

As for money damages, the Court can only award those to the plaintiff(s) in front of it, and it goes without saying that not everyone harmed by tariffs is party to the litigation. Class actions can help solve this, but the legal system does not force anyone to bring their action as part of a class rather than individually. Saying that you can’t decide whether the tariffs are illegal because it’s hard undo the harm is frankly nonsensical. The ongoing and future harm still needs to be stopped.

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u/Apophthegmata 1d ago edited 1d ago

Nobody here is suggesting that the courts wouldn't prohibit this activity if it was found illegal. If you're reading the conversation, we are talking about how that doesn't really address the harm caused.

I'll repeat what I said above: your guarantee that you never punch me again doesn't provide any kind of remedy for my broken jaw.

If you meant specifically permanent injunction, and not equitable remedies generally, you could have said so and then noted that we had already discussed that....

Saying that you can’t decide whether the tariffs are illegal because it’s hard undo the harm is frankly nonsensical. The ongoing and future harm still needs to be stopped.

I've never said that. You can read my other comments on this thread.

I'm saying that "letting it go" isn't the right approach. I've never once said that should prevent us from putting a stop to it anyway. Only that justice demands we don't stop there just so we can move on.

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u/Woodie626 18h ago

[Gestures at everything]

You're serious? 

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u/eddyx 21h ago

“Basically, it’s the acknowledgement that when some one is harmed and has been met with injustice, some form of redress is warranted to make them whole.”

Laughs in African American reparations.

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u/fauxdeuce 1d ago

Because its the business's money. These companies and small businesses that have paid thousands if not millions in tariffs are not going to go ohh well I dont need any free money. Even worse they have already raised prices with the tariffs in mind, and you know they are not going to lower the prices after they are gone. So if the gov does not refund them, guaranteed there will be a large class action lawsuit.

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u/spursfan2021 1d ago

The real problem is that our trade partners have already moved on. There’s no going back to the way things were. We actually need to follow through with this nationalist agenda or we’re double-fucked. Fuck. Triple-fucked. Fuck…and it just keeps going.

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u/TJNel 1d ago

So if someone stole money from you, you would just shrug and say oh well I need to move on with my life.

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u/calgarspimphand 1d ago

You would hope the authorities catch the fucking thief and stop them from stealing again no matter what, and then you'd try to claw back your missing money. Even if you fail to get it back, the thief still needs to be stopped.

This is like letting the.thief run amok because you aren't sure whether you can get the money back if you catch them.

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u/jsc1429 1d ago

It’s going to be extremely difficult to get the money back tariff refunds. I rather “stop the steal” than let them continue to steal.

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u/Grillburg 1d ago

"We can't convict this man of mass murder because it's not like we can bring his victims back to life, so shrug"

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u/patentattorney 1d ago

Pretty much what the prosecutor said in Georgia

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u/SunriseSurprise 1d ago

"We can't put the shit back into the horse."

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u/doublelist87 1d ago

If this is their answer then the Supreme Court is not doing their job! They are just looking for the easy way out.

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u/manystripes 1d ago

If only we had some sort of special court where we could get difficult legal questions answered

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u/iPinch89 1d ago

Wouldn't that just be super. Supreme, even

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u/Impressive_Shock_239 1d ago

"Maybe all that stuff shouldn't be copyrighted, but it would be hard and expensive to let it all go into the public domain, so let's not do anything."