Obama wins, America loses in big week for Supreme Court decisions

America’s political and media classes are on high alert for the US Supreme Court decision on President Obama’s signature health care legislation. The Scotusblog spent the weekend overhauling its servers in preparation, and creating a LiveBlog-only site just to handle the expected traffic. They got nearly 100,000 viewers to the live feed on Monday morning (Washington DC time) in expectation of a ruling that now won’t happen until today. [caption id=“attachment_359895” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Reuters”]  [/caption] It is unprecedented for such a major court decision on a such a pivotal and divisive change to the social contract just months before a presidential election. Although “Obamacare”, as Republicans love to call it even though it wasn’t written by Obama, was not dealt with on Monday, two other significant cases were. Let’s start with what is good news for Obama, mostly. In Arizona v US, the federal government challenged the southwestern state’s controversial illegal immigration law. The court upheld parts of the law but rejected three specific sections opposed by the Obama administration. It is a victory of sorts in that it upholds that immigration is a federal government matter during a presidential term that has seen repeated clashes between the state and national level. As the Washington Post summarised what was rejected in the immigration law:

“The court ruled that Arizona cannot make it a misdemeanor for immigrants to fail to carry identification that says whether they are in the United States legally; cannot make it a crime for undocumented immigrants to apply for a job; and cannot arrest someone based solely on the suspicion that the person is in this country illegally.”

But the bit they upheld was the most controversial part - allowing police to check the immigration status of anyone they detain or arrest if they have a “reasonable suspicion” they are in the US illegally. Opponents fear it will lead to rampant racial profiling and the Supreme Court left the door open to this provision being challenged. Even if only a partial victory for Obama, it further draws a clear line for crucial Latino voters about Democrat versus Republican approaches to immigration. Combined with Obama’s decision to stop deporting children of illegal immigrants, this can only help the incumbent president. Some, including Arizona governor Jan Brewer and some legal experts argue the decision is a victory for states’ rights and a defeat for Obama. Regardless, the court ruling leaves a now bizarre law that says you check someone’s immigration status if you believe they’re illegal, but you can’t arrest them. The law has been on hold awaiting this decision, so theoretically, now hundreds or thousands of people picked up for other crimes, can now be quizzed about how American they are, but then would have to be let go. The Supreme Court has left intact the underlying suspicion of anyone who doesn’t look like you, and they must expect that will eventually come back to haunt them. This will be further complicated by the court effectively saying immigration is a national issue, but can be enforced locally. National policy, state-level law, local paranoia. The second decision was short - one-page short. The overturning of a Montana Supreme Court ruling was also a clash of a state trying to go its own way, and conflicting with a national approach. The US Supreme Court justices were so confident of their position they overturned Montana without even holding a hearing or asking for legal arguments. For the past century, Montana had a law banning corporate money in state and municipal politics. Now it has been struck down by the infamous Citizens United case of 2010 that opened the floodgates to unlimited political spending by outside groups. It was plainly a political decision, split 5-4 between the judges who created the Citizens United mess in the first place, and those who opposed it. “Citizens and the nation are not going to accept the Supreme Court-imposed campaign finance system that allows our government to be auctioned off to billionaires, millionaires, corporate funders and other special interests,” said Democracy 21’s Fred Wertheimer, an experienced activist and expert in election laws. Citizens and the nation don’t get a choice. This is the new reality. Opponents of Citizens United hoped the Montana case was a chance to undo the 2010 decision. Instead, it has merely re-enforced political spending by outside forces, and now allows out-of-state money to be spent in Montana, effectively making the situation even worse. The cost for this presidential election has been estimated at beyond $1 billion for each candidate - the money now matters more than policy. Whichever party loses in November, they will claim it is because of money in politics. In this case, the losers are right. Politics in America is being destroyed by money from all directions, forcing elected representatives to spend more time fundraising than representing constituents, and driving attack ads to be ever more nasty and divisive. The future of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) will be decided today but the future of the United States will be decided by the money spent campaigning for the presidency in November.