Election Day-ish

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 30th of June. You’re listening to WORLD Radio and we are so glad you’re here. 

Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

First up on The World and Everything in It: Another four decisions as the Supreme Court winds down a session full of big cases.

But first, an opinion on mail-in ballots, Watson v Republican National Committee. This 5-4 ruling lets states count ballots postmarked by Election Day, even if they arrive five days later. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the three liberals in affirming Mississippi’s law.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote the dissent. 

Here’s Senior legal fellow at Advancing American Freedom, Hans Von Spakovsky:

SPAKOVSKY: There is a point at which Justice Alito criticized the majority opinion, saying that this is going to increase the lack of confidence that the American people have in the integrity election process, and also lead to a slurry—that's the word he used—a slurry of questions about election procedures across the country.

EICHER: Beyond legal theory, Von Spakovsky saw the logistical concerns about the mail system, based on a report of the Inspector General of the Post Office.

SPAKOVSKY: That sounds pretty good until you realize that means that 4% of the ballots are getting in too late, and those were in their best jurisdictions. In other places, they met the on-time deadlines only like 80 to 84% of the time, which means large numbers of ballots were arriving too late to be counted.

In the majority opinion, Justice Barrett explicitly noted that the Court was not questioning the power of Congress to regulate federal races. She wrote that policy arguments on deadlines belong to legislatures and not courts.

This adds pressure on Congress now to pass the SAVE Act which would require mailed ballots in federal elections to be received by Election Day.

REICHARD: Next, the conservative majority gave the Trump administration some power to fire heads of regulatory agencies. But it drew a sharp line at the nation’s central bank. It’s considered an independent agency within the executive branch.

In Trump v Cook, a 5-4 decision blocks President Trump’s attempt to oust Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.

Oliver Dunford is senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation:

DUNFORD: And the merits question is whether the president properly removed her with cause. And what the U.S. Supreme Court said today is that the president is unlikely to prevail in that argument, that he is probably going to lose… and so for now, Miss Cook gets to keep her job.

The Court did not decide the broader constitutional question of whether the president has authority to remove her at will. Instead, it held that Cook was entitled to legal due process before removal. So, the case returns to the lower courts for further proceedings.

EICHER: In Trump v Slaughter, a 6-3 ruling that President Trump may remove Federal Trade Commissioners. This one involved Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter. The president did not give a reason for her firing.

Again, Dunford who filed an amicus brief in support of the president:

DUNFORD: Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion and he said that “for cause” removal protection was unconstitutional because it violated the separation of powers and more specifically, the executive power was vested solely in the president by the Constitution.

REICHARD: This decision means protections for leaders in other independent executive agencies are now in doubt.

DUNFORD: This means that the president can remove all of those members, commissioners, all the leaders of those agencies for any reason or no reason under the premise that they are executive branch agencies, they exercise executive power, which is to say the president's power, and therefore, because he is responsible for their actions, he can remove them at will.

My legal-affairs colleague Jenny Rough now, with the fourth case.

JENNY ROUGH: Finally, Chatrie vs United States. 

In 2019, a man robbed a bank. Typically, the police would look for evidence leading to a suspect. Here, the police had no suspect. So they got what’s known as a geofence warrant.

JOEL JOHNSON: So a geofence warrant is sort of like a reverse way of doing an investigation.

Joel Johnson is a former Justice Department attorney and a professor at Pepperdine University.

JOHNSON: So the police draw what’s called a virtual perimeter, or a geofence, around, like a crime scene. And they pick a time window, and then they ask a tech company, like Google, to tell them which phones or devices were inside that perimeter during that specific time.

Over a dozen innocent bystanders were swept up in the search. But police found their suspect.

He argued, though, that the government violated his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches, so the evidence of his location should be excluded from trial.

The Supreme Court first addressed whether a geofence warrant is tantamount to a search. Answer: Yes, in a 6 to 3 ruling.

JOHNSON: What they held unequivocally is that there was a search here, and so presumptively, you have to get a warrant, a valid warrant.

That’s now clear for all cases going forward. But what’s unclear? Whether the search was reasonable. For a warrant to be valid, a search must be justified. The Supreme Court sent the case back to the lower court to decide.

Justice Samuel Alito filed a dissent, joined in part by Justices Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett.

Johnson says this case does two things. First:

JOHNSON: It does seem to confirm that cell phones are special under the Fourth Amendment, and I think we all sort of intuitively agree with that, that there’s a lot of privacy interest in our cell phones.

Second, the last time the court decided a Fourth Amendment cell phone case was in 2018. Since then, three new justices have joined the court. This was their first opinion on the topic and it shows how they line up on the divided issue. But?

JOHNSON: None of them wrote very much. Barrett has a very short dissent … so she didn’t think this was a search. Kavanaugh joined the majority, but didn’t write separately, so we don’t really know his specific views.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was also in the majority and did not write separately.

For WORLD, I’m Jenny Rough.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.