7 Times Jonh Roberts Was a Leftist Hack

 

By Kylee Zempel
TheFederalist.com

Knock, knock. Who’s there? Unelected leftist politicians in robes with lifetime tenure. Turns out, the Supreme Court is a joke, and the punchline is Chief Justice John Roberts.

Two high court decisions this week brought that reality into focus, when the George W. Bush-appointed chief sided with leftist justices to say sexual orientation is “sex,” and that the current commander in chief can’t undo unlawful executive action from a past president because of his reasons.

Roberts has quite the track record of leftist judicial activism, however, of which you’ll find a few notable instances below. It’s about time we call a spade a spade — or in this case, call a hack a hack.

1. Supported Unconstitutional Obamacare

From the moment then-President Barack Obama signed into law the infamous Affordable Care Act that colloquially bears his name, the mess of a law was ripe for legal challenges. In 2012, the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, despite a legitimate challenge based on the Commerce Clause. This faulty 5-4 decision fell solely on the swing vote of Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion.

In it, he dreamed up a “constitutional” justification for the Obamacare monster that rested solely on the tax penalty enforcing the law’s individual mandate. It’s fine, Roberts unreasonably reasoned, because Congress has the power to tax.

Then in 2015, Roberts again saved the Affordable Care Act in King v. Burwell, when he sided with the leftist majority to extend Obamacare tax credits to federal exchanges.

“Maybe ‘Obamacare’ should be renamed ‘Robertscare’ for the justice who went out of his way to save the individual mandate,” wrote Chris Jacobs in The Federalist.

2. Sided with Leftists to Block Louisiana Abortion Law

In February 2019, in the first abortion-related case after President Trump appointed Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the bench, Roberts joined the leftists in a 5-4 decision to block Louisiana from enforcing an abortion law that would have required abortionists to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. This law would have resulted in one remaining doctor legally qualified to perform the barbaric procedure. Opponents of the state law argued it would lead to the destruction of “safe and legal” abortions, an obvious oxymoron.

The majority’s order blocking the law was brief and unsigned, without a written opinion, meaning Roberts and the leftist justices offered no explanation for their decision.

3. Endorsed the Administrative State’s Unchecked Power

The Supreme Court in 2019 ruled unanimously in favor of U.S. Marine Corps veteran James L. Kisor, who had filed a disability claim with the Department of Veterans Affairs but was denied repeatedly after presenting to the VA what he considered “relevant” materials in support of his claim.

Roberts, however, wrote an opinion concurrent with that of the leftist justices, refusing to strike down a 1997 legal doctrine known as Auer deference. Auer defers broad leeway to agencies to interpret their own ambiguous rules, granting the administrative state unchecked power.

4. Denied Census Citizenship Question

After Roberts established that adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census would indeed be constitutional and consistent with the Administrative Procedures Act, the chief justice joined with the leftists on the bench to strike the question because they thought the Trump administration’s reason for asking it was disingenuous. Seriously.

“For the first time ever, the Court invalidates an agency [Commerce Department] action solely because it questions the sincerity of the agency’s otherwise adequate rationale,” wrote Justice Clarence Thomas in dissent. “Unable to identify any legal problem with the Secretary’s reasoning, the Court imputes one by concluding that he must not be telling the truth.”

5. Censored a GOP Senator to Hide Spygate Info

In blatant disregard for the prerogatives of the U. S. Congress, Roberts censored and consequently undermined Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., during the Senate’s partisan Trump impeachment trial.

Paul submitted a question card, which included the name of Eric Ciaramella, whom RealClearInvestigations had identified as the whistleblower central to the impeachment inquiry. After reading the question to himself, Roberts promptly stated, “The presiding officer declines to read the question as submitted.”

The senator’s question did not ID Ciaramella as the whistleblower. In fact, it didn’t even use the term “whistleblower.” Paul later disclosed his anodyne question on Twitter.

Make no mistake, in declining to read Paul’s question, Roberts, an unelected judge, shamelessly censored an elected representative in the performance of his senatorial duties.

READ: The Question About Eric Ciaramella That Chief Justice John Roberts Just Refused To Read

6. Pretended Boys Can Be Girls and Girls Can Be Boys

“There is only one word for what the Court” did Monday, said Justice Samuel Alito. “Legislation.”

Along with Trump appointee Gorsuch, Roberts once again joined the leftists on the bench in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, this time to absurdly write “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” into the word “sex” in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which protects against employment discrimination.

While it might please Roberts to tell employers they cannot fire an employee or disqualify an applicant for being gay or transgender,  that’s Congress’s job, and Congress has repeatedly declined to pass such a law. Plus, there is simply no way to define “sex” as “sexual orientation.”

As author and professor Robert Gagnon explains, in accordance with the court’s ruling, “a man must be allowed to join a professional women’s sports team if he shows himself to be equal or better than the women on the team, irrespective of whether the man in question identifies as a woman. Denying his employment would be sex discrimination because, if not for his sex, he would be accepted onto the team.”

Roberts and Gorsuch’s judicial activism creates egregious precedent ripe for abuse, or as The Federalist’s Joy Pullmann notes, “the LGBT version of Roe v. Wade.”

7. Upheld Unlawful DACA — Because Reasons

Roberts’ ushering in of politically expedient outcomes continued Thursday, when the Supreme Court blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, an Obama-era administrative rule unauthorized by Congress that afforded special protections and considerations to illegal immigrants who were smuggled into the United States as children.

Without ruling on the “wisdom” of Obama’s policy, Roberts joined the leftists in a 5-4 decision, writing for the majority that the current Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to eliminate DACA were conducted in an “arbitrary and capricious” manner that violated the Administrative Procedures Act.