Did you know that the Supreme Court is deciding on cases not related to health care or immigration? True story! The Court handed down more decisions today, one of which will make happy(ish), the other of which will make you want to renounce your citizenship.
First things first, the SCOTUS ruled that sentences of life without parole in the case of juvenile defendants is unconstitutional under the Eight Amendment which prohibits crual and unusual punishment.
The decision was another of the 5-4 clunkers that Justice Roberts said he was going to try to avoid. It was in reference to two cases which fell under an Alabama law—which appears to be one of those tough-on-crime laws that politicians pass in August of an election year without considering the legal or moral or personal repurcussions—that required life without parole for juveniles convicted of homicides. It appears the requirement part was the problem; not allowing juries and judges to take into account mitigating circumstances, such as the defendant's age, in sentencing made the law cruel and unusual. Justice Kagan, who wrote the decision, via CBS News:
In neither case did the sentencing authority have any discretion to impose a different punishment. State law mandated that each juvenile die in prison even if a judge or jury would have thought that his youth and its attendant characteristics, along with the nature of his crime, made a lesser sentence (for example, life with the possibility of parole) more appropriate.
Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Thomas both wrote dissents, with Roberts arguing that the law fell well short of the death penalty, which has been declared constitutional, and Thomas arguing under ye olde Federalist logic that the Court had no right to tell Alabama how many kids it could kill. (Roll tide!)
So that's good, no more life sentences for kids. Here's puppies (courtesy Buzz Feed, sigh, drink):
Now, then, the SCOTUS also summarily rejected a challenge to Citizens United via a century-old Montana law banning corporate contributions to elections. The law had been passed in response to gold barons buying elections in the oughts, but that was before the Supreme Court decided that money = speech. Via the Los Angeles Times:
Despite the Citizens United decision, the Montana Supreme Court had refused to strike down the state's ban on election spending by corporations. Its judges cited Montana's history of "copper kings" who bribed legislators. Advocates of campaign finance reform had hoped that the current wave of election-related spending would help make their case for the need to reconsider Citizens United.
The decision was another of the 5-4 clunkers that Justice Roberts said he was going to try to avoid. The usual suspects dissented, including Breyer, Sotamayor, Kagan and Ginsburg, with Breyer penning the dissent:
Montana's experience, like considerable experience elsewhere since the Court’s decision in Citizens United, casts grave doubts on the Court’s supposition that independent expenditures do not corrupt or appear to do so. [Same LAT link as above]
However, Breyer admitted that with the current composition of the Court—these are the same guys who ruled on CU in the first place—any reversal on the issue was extremely unlikely.
And just so we're clear, Thomas thinks the federal government has no right to intrude upon a state's sentencing of a child, but every right to intrude upon its protection of its election from corruption. Federalism!
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