Folks, we have a bunch of breaking news from the Supreme Court of the United States. This of course is a Ben Reax, and we can only bring you Ben Reax thanks to our sponsors. So this is why I'm now going to tell you about the creditors who profit from your debt. They benefit when you are trapped in high interest payments.
They want you drowning in student loans, medical debt, credit cards, debt, and expensive mortgages because financial strain makes you easier to control. It's time to take back control and fight back and that's where PDS debt comes in. PDS debt understands your financial situation is unique. Look beyond just numbers to create a personalized plan, specifically for you.
There's no minimum credit score required to get help. The goal is to help you save more payoffs at FASTER, put money back where it belongs in your pocket. The first major decision was a case concerning the question of President Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship. So as you'll recall, the president back on January 20, 2025, we first took over office from Joe Biden, he issued an order restricting birthright citizenship to apply only to kids who have one biological parent who's a US citizen or a lawful permanent resident.
So the basic idea was that if you come across the border, you and your spouse, both the legal immigrants, then you have a baby in the United States, that baby according to the executive order really should not be counted as an American citizen because that kid is, according to the Trump administration's argument, subject to the jurisdiction of another state, wherever they are from. They're not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States because they're not citizens, of the United States. Well, this case is not really about the content of the executive order. It really is about the injunction that was then issued by a district court judge.
That's what this case was about. And what this case found, again, by a 6-3 majority, the conservatives on the case made the case by a 6-3 majority, the conservatives found that nationwide injunctions are not a thing. It has been a massive problem for the Trump administration ever since President Trump took over district court judges, essentially based on one lawsuit deciding that they are just going to enforce whatever they think is their decision nationwide. They'll put a nationwide stop on any policy passed by the presidents of the United States via executive order.
And there is no precedent for that. And that's exactly what the court found. The court looked at this. But the court found is that there is in fact no basis to suggest that any district judge across the country has the unilateral ability to simply implement whatever its opinion is for the entire country.
That is not a thing. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, again, can point out that a lot of people on the right, you don't understand exactly how the judiciary works or how jurisprudence works just because a Republican appoints a justice doesn't mean that justice is always going to vote the way that a Republican would want. It also does not mean that that person is now some sort of David's, you know, self-left wing candidate. And that's certainly not true of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who delivered the opinion of the court again.
The vote was 6-3, the usual split. The Republican appointees on one side, the Democratic appointees on the other. Justice Barrett delivered the opinion of the court. She said the United States has filed three emergency applications challenging the scope of the federal courts authority to enjoin government officials from enforcing an executive order.
Traditionally courts issued injunctions prohibiting executive officials from enforcing a challenge to lower policy only against the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. In other words, if I sue you in federal court or if I sue the federal government in federal court and injunction is placed, that injunction is placed for my case. It's not placed for everyone across the country who is, quote, unquote, similarly situated. The injunctions before us today says Justice Barrett reflected more recent developments, district courts asserting the power to prohibit enforcement of a lower policy against anyone.
These injunctions, known as universal injunctions, likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to federal courts. Remember, the scope of power held by the federal courts is defined by the Constitution of the United States or by Congress. But there is no third source of judicial power where the court gets to decide its own levels of power. So the court found that the government's applications have been granted to partially state the injunctions entered below.
And that makes perfect sense. Again, the basic issue here is that there is nothing in the history of the US judicial system that suggests universal injunctions from district courts are a thing. As the court points out, universal injunctions were not a feature of federal court litigation until sometime in the 20th century. The D.C.
Circuit issued what some regard as the first universal injunction in 1963. Yet such injunctions remained rare until the turn of the 21st century when they were gradually accelerated. The bottom line, universal injunction was conspicuously non-existent for most of our nation's history. It's absent from 18th and 19th century equity practice settles the question of judicial authority that the absence continued into the 20th century renders any claim of historical pedigree even more implausible.
Faced with this timeline, the principal dissent accuses us of misunderstanding the nation of the nature of equity as being frozen in amber at the time of the judiciary act. Not so. We set up a foreign senate again. Equity is flexible at the same time.
Its flexibility is confined within the broad boundaries of traditional equitable relief. In other words, you can't just randomly make up universal injunctions and then start applying them without any sort of limitation. Now the court goes out of its way to smack down Justice Kitachi Brown Jackson's dissent, which is truly a crazy dissent. I mean, her dissent in this case essentially says that because she feels like at any district court judge, it should be able to issue any nationwide injunction against the executive branch.
And as Justice Amy Coney Barrett points out, in the opinion, the principal dissent focuses on conventional legal terrain like the judiciary act of 1789, our case is on equity. Justice Jackson, however, chooses a starting line of attack that is tethered, neither to these sources nor frankly to any doctrine whatsoever. Waving away attention to the limits on judicial power as a mind-numbing technical query, she offers a vision of the judicial role that would make even more ardent to the fender of judicial supremacy blush. Inertelling the fundamental role of courts is to order everyone to follow the law full stop.
And she learns, of course, lack of power to quote, require the executive to adhere to a law universally. Courts will leave a gash in the base of tenants of our founding charter that could turn out to be a mortal wound. Well, as the court points out, that's kind of crazy. So basically, in her vision, a district court's opinion is not just persuasive, but it has the legal force of a total and final judgment.
It's basically like a district court is the Supreme Court of the United States. The court says, we will not want Justice Jackson's argument, which is ours with more than two centuries worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this. Justice Jackson decry is an imperial executive while embracing an imperial judiciary, which of course is the point.
For the left, the answer, always and forever, is more power to whatever branch is useful to them. There is no actual through line to their jurisprudence. There's always been the problem with constitutional jurisprudence from the left. Okay, so that is the first major case that came down in favor of President Trump versus Johnson.
Second major case came down in favor of the right. That case is called Mahmoud versus Taylor. So the basis for this case is that Christian and Muslim parents in Montgomery County, Maryland, sued the local school board for revoking an opt-out option for kids when LGBTQ plus minus divided by signed themed storybooks are used in elementary classrooms. So basically, they're just going to force kids to listen to LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign, and to provide parents or allowing them the possibility of opt-out.
And Muslim and Christian families, students, and this violates our freedom of religion. The parents again argue that this is not just teaching people what the law is. It actually is encouraging a particular moral point of view at odds with the religious practice of the parents. Justice Samuel Lido, who's excellent on religious liberty issues, delivered the opinion of court against the six three ruling, Republican appointees on the one side, Democratic appointees on the other.
Justice Lido says, the Board of Education Montgomery County, Maryland, has introduced a variety of LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign inclusive storybooks into the elementary school curriculum. These books and associated educational instructions provided to teachers are designed to disrupt children's thinking about sexuality and gender. The board has told parents it will not give them notice when the books are going to be used, and that their children's attendance during these periods is mandatory. Now, again, that's an extraordinary thing.
I remember when I went to public school, I went to public middle school, when I went to public middle school, we reached the age where LAUSD decided that it was necessary, that you be taught sex ed. And my parents, who already taught me about sex, did not wish to have a bunch of left-wing algebra shoveled into my brain by a bunch of public school educators, and so they opted me out. And they were allowed to opt me out because religious freedom and all that. Well, this particular school district said, no, you cannot opt out no matter what you do.
Today, says the court, we hold that parents have shown their entitled to a preliminary injunction. A government burdens the religious exercise of parents when it requires them to submit their children to instruction that poses a very real threat of undermining the religious beliefs and practices the parents wish to instill. And a government cannot condition the benefit of free public education on parents' acceptance of such instruction. Based on these principles, we conclude that parents are likely to succeed in their challenge to the board's policies.
And Justice Alito goes into excruciating detail, pointing out what exactly happens in these books that are being taught to extremely small children about sexual fluidity, gender identity, same-sex marriage, and all the rest. And it is very, very obvious, very clear, of course, that the goal here is not just to teach what the law is, nationally in the United States, that men, and women, and women are women. The idea here is that it's supposed to be upheld as a moral good. And you can't opt out.
You're not allowed to opt out according to the local school district. So says the Supreme Court under Justice Alito's majority opinion. To begin, we hold the parents are likely to succeed on their claim. The board's policies unconstitutionally burden their religious exercise.
We start by describing the nature of the religious practice issue here and explaining why it is burdened. At its heart, the free exercise clause of the First Amendment protects the ability of those who hold religious beliefs of all kinds to live out their faiths in daily life and performance of religious acts. And for many people, if they face the country, they're a few religious acts more important than religious education of their children. And so if that is contravened by the public school system overthrown by the public school system, if parents are told that they cannot actually educate their kids as they see fit by the public school system, by opting them out of politically charged material like this, that's a violation of the First Amendment.
In light of the record before us, the court, we hold that the board's introduction of the LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign inclusive storybooks combined with its decisions with whole notice to parents and to forbid opt outs substantially interfere with the religious development of their children and imposes the kind of burden on religious exercise that the Supreme Court has previously found unacceptable. And as they point out, like many books targeted at young children, the books are unmistakably normative. They are clearly designed to present certain values and beliefs as things to be celebrated and certain contrary values and beliefs as things to be rejected. So one book, for example, is called Prince and Knight in a clearly conveys message that same sex marriage should be accepted by all as they cause for celebration.
The young reader is guided to feel distressed at the Prince's failure to find a princess and to celebrate when the Prince finally meets his male partner. The book relates to the quote on the two men's wedding day, the air filled with cheer and laughter for the Prince and his shining night was of happily ever after. Though celebrating the same sex wedding are not just family members and close friends with the entire kingdom. For young children to whom this and other storybooks are targeted, such celebration is liable to be processed as having moral connotations.
Well, yes, of course, that's the entire frame of the thing. It is designed to be that thing very clearly. The sense of course suggests that if you allow for parents to religiously raise their children, then you will not be able to teach kids about evolution or whatnot, but that's not what these cases are about. Again, what these cases are about are not factual matters.
If you were teaching kids in school at an appropriate age that in the United States, men can marry men and women can marry women. Thanks to a Burgevel. And then you say, there's no opt out for that. That at least is arguable.
But if you are teaching third graders that it is a positive good, an excellent positive good for boys to marry boys, girls to marry girls, girls to be boys and all the rest, that of course is what Justice Alito calls a chilling vision of the power of the state to strip away the critical rights of parents to guide the religious development of their children. Okay, so that is the second big opinion today. Justice Thomas has a great concurrence. Of course, I'm a huge Justice Thomas.
He points out that this shouldn't really be restricted just to LGBTQ plus minus divide by itself. He extended sex education. He says what is now labeled sex education is a 20th century innovation. The practice of teaching sexuality and gender identity to very young children at school appears to be significantly more recent than even typical sex education.
Although the plaintiffs place the storybook curriculum's recency and lack of historical pedigree and issue. The board failed to identify any tradition of teaching children, sexuality and gender, much lesser tradition of preventing parents from opting their children out of such instruction. Okay, so that is the second big case decided in favor of conservatives and religious people as well. The Trump administration case, and then there's the religious case.
And then finally, there's a third decision, Justice Thomas wrote the deciding opinion in free speech coalition versus Paxton. There's a 2023 Texas law that required porn sites to verify age for access. And that will apply to any site where at least one third of the content is deemed to be harmful to minors. And originally, opponents said this is a violation of the First Amendment because regulations have to meet strict scrutiny standards.
Texas says this is not a content based restriction. Rational basis review is appropriate because there's compelling interest protecting children from harmful material online. It's an early tailor to achieve a compelling government interest. And the court finds alongside the state of Texas in this particular case, Justice Thomas says, Texas, like many states, prohibits the distribution of sexually explicit content to children.
But although that prohibition may be effective against brick and mortar stores, it is proved challenging to enforce against online content. In efforts to address this problem, Texas enacted HB 1181, which requires certain commercial websites that publish sexually explicit content to verify the ages of their visitors. This requirement furthers the lawful end of preventing children from accessing sexually explicit content. It burns adult visitors of those websites who all agree have a First Amendment right to access at least some of the content the websites publish.
They granted cert, certiorari, to decide whether these burdens likely render that while unconstitutional, we hold they do not. The powers require age verification within the state's authority to prevent children from accessing sexually explicit content. It is a constitutionally permissible exercise of that authority. It's not an undue burden.
It is not some gigantic burden for somebody who's above the age of 18 to type in their age. That's the basic finding. The fact that again, the three liberals on the court found this to be some sort of violation of core First Amendment liberty is insane. By the way, I would have gone further.
Pornography should not be covered by the First Amendment. It's the case that Robert Borkam has made back in the 1970s, the notion that the founding fathers were sitting around talking about the necessity of accessing pornography when they wrote the First Amendment is insane. In fact, the pornography laws on the books, I believe every state at the time of the founding. But put all of that aside, the bottom line here is that the three big decisions that came down today via the Supreme Court are all in favor of conservatives.
In that makes sense. That makes this the most conservative term in modern Supreme Court history other than the last couple of Supreme Court terms. It cannot be overstated how important it was to tell Trump won the 2016 election because if you're not won the 2016 election, you would have a left wing bench cramming down the worst form of left wing radicalism imaginable via the Supreme Court. All right, folks, I'm sure we'll have tons more about this on Monday's show.
Have yourself a great weekend.