Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by sjm-lbm 123 days ago
If you read the opinions, it's even less clear. The majority does not make it at all clear whether or not refunds are due, and Kavanaugh's dissent specifically calls out this weakness in the majority opinion.

Even if the executive branch's actions stop here, there's still a lot of arguing in court to do over refunds.
2 comments
jeffbee 123 days ago
It is not a "weakness" of the majority that the criminal activity has left a mess.
link
sjm-lbm 123 days ago
No, but it is a weakness that they have neglected to provide the clarity that would be required to clean it up.
link
Terr_ 123 days ago
All rulings can be better, but Kavanaugh contributed to making the mess in the first place, as he and conservative members of the court spent 2025 voiding lower-court injunctions against similar radical policies, essentially telling lower-courts to "let Trump move fast and break things."

In other words, Kavanaugh is lying: He doesn't actually care about legal clarity or mess-prevention. If he did we wouldn't even be in this situation in the first place.

link
sjm-lbm 123 days ago
I agree with your first point (and I wasn't trying to defend Kavanaugh, just pointing out that the dissent calls something out), but I disagree with your second. Kavanaugh isn't lying - this ruling causes some chaos and uncertainty and I think that one of the reasons Kavanaugh doesn't like it is because it causes some chaos and uncertainty - but, to your first point, he doesn't appear to be acting in good faith.

The Supreme Court absolutely could have handled this much better, and is part of the reason there's so much to undo.

link
vkou 123 days ago
In society, isn't it generally accepted that the person shitting on the floor be the one responsible for cleaning up after himself?
link
MadnessASAP 123 days ago
Anybody who has worked a service/retail job can tell you that the person literally shitting on the floor rarely is the one to clean it up.

And unfortunately that extends to the metaphor as well. Society would like to see those responsible for the mess to also be responsible for the cleanup. However society expects that everybody but the mess maker will be left cleaning up.

link
jopsen 123 days ago
Yeah, tax payers will pay the refund, and the interest accrued on the refund -- when the makaes it's wats through the courts in 3 years
link
Terr_ 123 days ago
Meh, Kavanaugh indirectly caused the whole mess, and directly caused many related and similar ones. It's a bad-faith complaint, Kavanaugh's actual track record is "always let Trump move fast and if he breaks things then whatever."

Basically we have a legal processes for courts going "this is weird and unlikely to stand and hard/impossible to fix afterwards, so do nothing until you get a green light", using temporary restraining orders and injunctions.

Yet Kavanaugh et al spent the last year repeatedly overriding lower-courts which did that, signaling that if someone said "let's figure this out first" to radical and irreparable Republican policies, the Supreme Court would not have their backs.

______________

> In case after case, dissenting justices have argued that the Court has “botched” this analysis and made rulings that are “as incomprehensible as [they are] inexcusable,” halting lower court injunctions without any showing that the government is facing harm and with grave consequences, including in some cases in which the plaintiffs are at risk of torture or death. The majority’s response to these serious claims? Silence.

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/supr...

link