Daily Archives: May 26, 2022

SCOTUS For The Average Joe

Average Joe SCOTUS: Unicolors Inc v. H&M Hennes & Mauritz LP

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Unicolors Inc makes clothing decisions and shit. Like any company, they copyright their design. Back in 2011, they created a design they, with all the imagination they could muster, called EH101.’

Along comes H&M, a clothing company, who made their equally creatively named design called Xue Xu.

Both are seen here:

Having a hard time seeing a difference? Well, so was Unicolors. So they were like, “Hey, H&M, you copyright violating mother fuckers, that’s our design! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

H&M, apparently incapable of making a fair argument that this actually wasn’t a straight up copy, tried a more creative approach. H&M was like, “Hey, these assholes at Unicolors use a single copyright for 31 different designs, and that’s bullshit. One design gets one copyright.

A district court however, was unimpressed with this creative logic, telling H&M to shut their mouth now about this “31 designs” shit. They have a copyright, it’s valid unless the copyright office says it isn’t, and you’re a merry bag of assholes.

The district court stated that unless there’s an intent to defraud, the copyright can’t be invalidated, and as such, H&M doesn’t have license to violate it.

In steps those contrarian assholes at the ninth circuit who were like, “Wait a fucking minute. Where the fuck did you district court assholes read any ‘intent to defraud’ language in copyright law? You made that shit up. You know you assholes should’ve just referred the matter to the copyright nerds, and had them look into the potentially errant copyright.”

So now SCOTUS is charged with determining whether the district courts should have sent this shit to the Copyright nerds or just roll with it on their own.

In a 6:3 non-partisan decision, SCOTUS sided with Unicolor Inc. That whether the courts thinks the copyright is bullshit doesn’t mean a god damn thing. If these assholes have a valid copyright, then everyone else is beholden to it, unless the copyright office decides they fucked up, and pulls the copyright.

Justice Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch felt that Unicolors lied on their application to get them to even hear this shit. They were told they were going to hear a fraud case, not some jurisdictionalesque bullshit like this. So they’re pissed off they were misled.

Hear oral arguments and read about the case here.

Libertarianism, SCOTUS For The Average Joe

Average Joe SCOTUS: Whole Women’s Health v. Jackson

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Do you remember hearing something about a case a long time ago, I think it was called Roe v. Wade? I hear it’s kinda famous. Well anyway, ever since, people rolling around with a Jesus fish on their car, have been on a crusade to do something about that. Especially the ones rolling around in Texas.

In Roe v. Wade, SCOTUS recognized you have two competing rights. A female’s bodily autonomy, versus the life of a fetus. But a fetus has never really been legally ruled as a life with constitutional rights, although it’s never been ruled out either. So back in the day, SCOTUS came up with a trimester system, where the first trimester, a woman’s bodily autonomy was the prevailing right, the second trimester they were somewhat equal, and the third trimester, the fetus had the prevailing right. Seemed fair to any fair minded person, but still the war rages on.

The latest battle on this front took place in Texas, and their fancy new SB8 abortion law. Knowing they couldn’t directly contradict Roe v. Wade’s precedent, Texas went for the most inventive shit ever. They passed a law that said, if you received an abortion, or were the physician who performed one, you could be sued by anyone in the great state of Texas. So they didn’t make it a criminal action, which was their way of not going against the Roe precedent, but they made it so it could cost people so much money, they wouldn’t do it.

They argued that they concede the first six weeks of pregnancy, but opponents argue six weeks can be nearly impossible to have cause to think one is pregnant, and give them the time needed to make the decision and have the procedure. One would basically need to take a pregnancy test shortly after each time they had sex to do all that within the time frame Texas set forth.

In steps Whole Women’s Health (WWH), a Texas abortion provider who submitted a petition to SCOTUS, that just said, “WTF is this bullshit?”

Originally, they asked SCOTUS to block the law, but they declined to do so. So now that it’s in effect, SCOTUS is hearing the case on their normal merits docket. So the question facing them is, can government pass a law that violates precedent, if the precedent pertained to criminal law, and this new law is merely civil litigation?

This particular case hinges around state officials who were sued by abortion providers for violating their constitutional rights as outlined in Roe v. Wade, and Mark Dickson, who most abortion providers consider to be a Jesus freak and all around asshole. They expect him to be the overzealous douchebag suing people left and right over this.

The government officials were like, “We have sovereign immunity, or whatever the fuck you call it. You can’t be suing us like this.”

Also interesting to note, when they asked SCOTUS to put the law on hold, SCOTUS declined to do so, because they were like, “you’re asking us to prevent the government from enforcing the law, but the way this fucktwats wrote it, they don’t enforce it, the people do, by suing providers. So we can’t force them to stop doing something the law doesn’t have them doing in the first place.” This of course supports Texas’ creativity in passing this in the first place.

Counsel for WWH came out swinging, and declared shenanigans. Counsel flat out accused them of blatantly violating Roe v. Wade precedent, then trying to be clever and using the whole civil litigation scheme to get around it.

When questioned by Justice Roberts about this scenario where people are being sued trying to exercise a constitutional right, counsel for Texas argued that there was precedent for this. People are sued for lawful possession of a firearm all the time, and they’re just trying to exercise they’re 2nd amendment right. So what’s the big fucking deal suing people for trying to exercise their constitutional right to bodily autonomy as identified in Roe v. Wade.

In a unanimous decision, SCOTUS sided with Whole Women’s Health. They they can in fact proceed to a pre-enforcement challenge of this ridiculous law. Furthermore, Justice Roberts, along with Justices Breyer, Kagan, and Sotomayor were like, “What the fuck is even the purpose of our judicial review if punks like these assholes in Texas can just skirt our rulings with creative bullshit like this. We need to nip this shit in the bud right meow.”

Hear oral arguments or read about the case here.

SCOTUS For The Average Joe

Average Joe SCOTUS: Badgerow v. Walters

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Denise Badgerow worked as a financial advisor for REJ properties, run in part by the respondent Greg Walters, in Louisiana. As a condition of her employment, she agreed to arbitration for any disputes with the three principals of her employer (including Walters), but not her employer itself.

Eventually, after a couple years, she was fired. She claims it’s because she was a woman, which is kinda odd, since they presumably knew this when they hired her. But she also claims they were engaging in securities fraud, and she blew the whistle on that shit.

Badgerow was persistent as hell, going to the EEOC to complain about their gender discrimination, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority to complain about their business practices, and a federal district court.

All three of them found Badgerow to be out of line, and a bit burdensome, dismissing all her claims entirely and ordering her to arbitration as she agreed to. Her employer asked the federal court to confirm the decisions. While that was going on, Badgerow sued the three principals of the company in state court, saying the decision they got was obtained by fraud.

This has to be the most confusing, and boring case I’ve ever read, bar none. But essentially, SCOTUS is being asked if the federal courts have jurisdiction to rule on an arbitration award, just because a federal question was in play. The question being, in the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), it gives federal courts jurisdiction to hear a case if the matter at hand is a federal issue, which this isn’t. However, if they’re merely confirming, vacating, or modifying a previous ruling, no such jurisdictional issue is mentioned.

In an older SCOTUS case, Vaden v. Discover Bank, the court ruled that a federal court may “look through” an arbitration petition, to see if the beef the two parties have, is even their jurisdiction. So that’s what the federal court did. They “looked through” this case, and decided they did have jurisdiction, despite the fact that the issue was not a confirm/vacate/modify (CVM) issue.

See, pretty fucking boring, right?

In an 8:1 decision, where only justice Breyer dissented, SCOTUS determined the federal courts do not have jurisdiction because the jurisdictional rule isn’t in the section of the FAA regarding CVM issues.

Justice Breyer, the retiring curmudgeon, felt that going so literal with the FAA’s wording, is overly complex and confusing, apparently being a big friend of the federal courts.

Hear oral arguments or read about the case here