The Supreme Court Speaks Part of the genius of the Framers of our country was designing a government where power is shared among distinct government entities that keep each other in check, as the Framers understood that power can corrupt the powerful. The Supreme Court, in this system, serves as the final interpreter of our laws and protector of our Constitution; though Congress should only pass laws it believes are constitutional, and is free to pass revisions to laws it believes the Court has misinterpreted. Given the end of its most recent term last week, it seems like a good time to look at some of the decisions the Court made that will have lasting impact. For farmers, ranchers, and others who make their living from the land, the Court’s decision in Sackett v. EPA was a welcome rebuke to the overreaching of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which was trying to define its power to regulate “the waters of the United States” far beyond what Congress intended. This power grab not only blocked many Americans from managing their own land, it attempted to take power from the states to regulate its in-state waters. The case is also important as the Court seems finally to be reining in unelected bureaucrats in executive agencies who wield their power with little accountability. In a case that did not receive widespread national attention, the Court ruled that California may ban the sale of pork produced by means California considers inadequate to protect the welfare of breeding pigs, even though 87% of pork sold in California comes from pigs raised outside the state. This case hinged on how to interpret language in the Constitution that limits states’ power to implement laws that discriminate against or significantly burden interstate commerce. The California case was a 5-4 decision, indicating that this type of issue will continue to vex the courts. In a pair of cases, the Court ruled that neither public nor private universities may make admissions decisions based on the color of a high school student’s skin, effectively ending race-based preferences in higher education. America finally achieved a consensus to oppose race-based distinctions with the passage of civil rights laws in the 1960s. But in recent decades, radical ideologues in the Democratic Party have implemented race-based discrimination to reward some racial and ethnic groups, while penalizing unfavored racial and ethnic groups. Harvard, for example, was found to be limiting the admission of accomplished Asian-American high school students, to increase the school’s enrollment of other racial groups. While these cases concerned university admissions, the underlying rationale also calls into question the racial spoils system that is currently prevalent in large corporations and other institutions. The Court blocked President Biden’s attempted $400 billion school loan “forgiveness” program that he had decreed unilaterally. The Court ruled that if the president wants to write off the balances of school loans taken on by tens of millions of Americans to afford the sky-high tuitions charged by most universities, there is a process to do that: Congress must pass a bill and the president must sign it to create a law to permit loan forgiveness. Presidents have snatched too much power away from Congress; the Court is trying to restore the balance of power written into the US Constitution. The core importance of free speech and religious liberty in our nation was reaffirmed by the Court in Creative LLC v. Elenis. The Court ruled that the First Amendment rights of free speech and religious liberty block a state from requiring a website designer to create websites that would communicate a message she opposes. In this case, Colorado argued that its law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation would require her to make a website celebrating a same-sex marriage, despite such a message violating her religious convictions. The far-Left mischaracterizes these decisions as “extreme MAGA,” ignoring the sound Constitutional foundation on which they are based, as part of its campaign to undermine the independence of the Supreme Court and justify the Left’s efforts to expand and pack the Court with Left-wing extremists. We must remain united to defend our system of government against this radical plan to tear it apart. No votes this week. The House will be in session on Tuesday, July 11, 2023. This week, I visited Lincoln County where I received updates from local officials on expanding the county jail, broadband projects funded by the Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act (IIJA), and my office’s intervention in getting the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) to release an order of suppressors to the Star City Police Department. Rep. Crawford | 2422 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515 Unsubscribe [email protected] Update Profile | Constant Contact Data Notice Sent by [email protected]