Cases

Representatives are allocated by population. The higher the state’s population, the more representatives they have.

The total number of representatives has been fixed for a while. This means that if one state gets more representatives, some other state gets fewer.

Not only do representatives determine the make up of the House, they also determine the make up of the electorial collage.

Thus, the number of representatives a state has is critical in determining political outcomes.

One of the issues currently being debated is a new census before the 2028 election. There are indications that some states, such as California, are overrepresented because the census counted criminal illegal aliens. Look into the 3/5s clause in the Constitution for why this is an issue.

After every census, the states can redistrict based on the new census numbers.

In 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This act sets new rules for how the representatives should be chosen by the many states.

Unfortunately, this act is likely at odds with the Constitution. In particular the Fourteenth Amendment. Any law that Congress passes that is contrary to the Constitution is void. Unfortunately, it takes a case reaching the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court agreeing the law is contrary to the Constitution for the law to be struck down.

Of course, this hasn’t stopped rogue, agenda-driven, inferior court judges from pretending that Congress can pass laws restricting the powers of the Article II executive.

The question then becomes, “How do you create districts for a state that are representative of the people of the state?”

Generally the districts of a state are created to control the outcome of elections.

Here is part of the 2011 congressional districts of Maryland:

If you look at Congressional District 01 in orange, you can see that it has many counties within it. But more importantly, it extends into Baltimore County. The same with District 02. Most of the military of the Aberdeen Proving Grounds and Edgewood Area are in District 02. But I also include a part of Baltimore City and Howard County.

I’m sure you would not be surprised to learn that the very high concentration of PoC voting Democrat causes Districts 01 and 02 to be Democrat districts.

The current congressional districts follow the county borders.

The way this worked was that everybody knows that Baltimore is a huge Democrat stronghold. It is so huge that they can dilute it with Republicans and still come out for the Democrats.

By using the Democrat voters of Baltimore in districts 1, 2, 3, and 7 they made 4 of the 8 districts +Democrat. District 4 is using the Democrat voters of Montgomery County to overwhelm the Republican voters of the rest of the district. Districts 5, 6, and 8 are Democrat strongholds; they don’t need any help from the city.

This districting leaves Republicans of Maryland without representation in Congress.

In Louisiana v. Callais the Supreme Court is hearing a case challenging the VRA on Constitutional grounds.

In Robinson v. Ardoin in 2023, a district court found that Louisiana had violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The inferior court ordered the state to create an additional majority-black district to avoid “vote dilution.”

This court order resulted in Louisiana’s SB8. The sponsor of SB8 said “We all know why we’re here. We were ordered to draw a new Black district, and that’s what I’ve done”.

That new district stretches 250 miles from the Shreveport in the northwest to Baton Rouge in southeast Lousiiana.

All to create another black district. When we say black district, what is really meant is “Democrat district.”

Well the Supreme Court got the case and decided to punt. Thomas was unhappy with that and told the world how unhappy he was.

This case was argued on March 24th in the 2024 term. Instead of issuing an opinion before the end of the term, the Court instead put the case back on the calendar for reargument.

It appears that the Court wants to be briefed on specific aspects of the case.

Conclusion

This case is outside my knowledge base. In trying to understand the question presented, I’m lost. And that is just one page. Thank goodness Thomas writes in English that I can understand.

This is just another case clawing back the rights of The People after years of reverse descrimination.

On June 27, 2025, the Supreme Court issued their opinion in Trump v. CASA which found that the courts do not have the authority to grant universal injunctions.

This put the left in a tailspin. If they can’t get universal injunctions, they can’t stop the Trump Administration in the courts. The current battle plan of the deep state, leftist *bleep*, is to delay, delay, delay.

During Trump’s first term, they neutered him by cutting him off from his trusted associates and then throwing up roadblocks at every occasion. The goal was to delay his actions until he was removed from office.

This time around, they are using the courts because Trump v2.0 is better, faster, and better equipped to deal with their games. He issues executive orders that explicitly state that he wants the law to be followed. He doesn’t zero a budget; he reduces it to the required minimum. He doesn’t close an agency; he just folds all their duties into other agencies and guts the workforce.

The Supreme Court left open an avenue for nationwide injunctions to take place. That path is a “class action.”

This requires a class certification. The court must determine if a group of individuals has similar claims that can be grouped together.

The investigation and filing process normally takes a few months to a year to complete. My understanding is that the average is closer to 12 months than 2 months.

After the investigation, the request for class certification is filed, and the court decides. This takes from 6 months to 2 years.

Our timeline, June 27, 2025, no more universal injunctions. On June 27th, the court orders the parties to file how Trump v CASA impacts this case by July 2nd. On July 2nd, the plaintiffs (bad guys) said that this is really a class action suit. On July 25, the court says that they are treating this as a certified class and grants an injunction.

We are about 10 days from reading another SCOTUS opinion and order telling this court to knock it the F___ off.

Note, the Washington Post is reporting this as a TRO. It is not. It is a preliminary injunction which can be appealed.

Maybe we’ll see the Second Circuit Court do the right thing. I doubt it, but the D.C. Circuit Court did.

We are into the 2025 term. The Justices are on vacation, yet they are still issuing opinions relating to orders almost weekly.

This is another win for Trump. So far every case to reach the Supreme Court has been a win for the Trump Administration.

The left is having hissy fits.

The frustration in the Court’s opinion is highlighted here. “…squarely controlled…” is court speak for “We told you ungrateful incompetent rogue judges how to do this already! Don’t you make me stop this car!” The following does not differ in any pertinent respect: telling those same self-important, agenda-driven hacks that they were told how to do exactly this type of case.

Justice Kavanaugh wrote a concurring opinion. His opinion is that the Court should just grant certiorari and issue a full opinion.

The inferior courts continue to play games to get what they want. It is just stupid.

They keep losing, but it makes for great headlines.

So tomorrow we will hear about the great Justice Kagan and how she brought the heat down on the conservatives of the Court.

Sotomayor is the target today. She wrote the dissent, which Kagan and Jackson joined.

The issue that Sotomayor is having is called “reading comprehension”

Trump ordered McHahan to take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department [of Education]. The Sotomayor decided that “facilitate the closure” and “close” mean the same thing.

They don’t.

The law requires that there be a Department of Education. It describes what the functions of the department will be. Nowhere does it say “there shall be 3,284 employees” nor how the executive chooses to organize what employees the department has.

The law requires a few people to be employed by the DoE. That could be as small as “the director.”

When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law,… does not mean they have broken the law. Nor did the Executive order the closure of the DoJ. Sotomayor is known to talk differently to regular people than she does to the other justices. Trump talking to The People is not the words he used in the his Executive Order. This is normal.

It hands the Executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out.

And here is her big mistake: the Constitution grants the power of the Executive to one person, the president. The president decides how best to execute the laws of the United States. He decides who is necessary to carry them out.

The courts do not get to decide how the Executive administers, staffs, or prioritizes the executive branch. That is the responsibility of the executive, and the executive (president) has the only authority to do so.

Sotomayor is upset because without that gigantic staff, the DoE won’t be able to award over $120 billion of our tax dollars in student aid.

Since she also believes that student loans can be forgiven, this means she believes that the Executive should be forced to hand over billions of dollars to students.

“Well, bless your heart.”

“Even the gun nuts want assault weapons bans, they keep telling me ‘come and take it'”

“May you live in interesting times.”

All of these sound polite yet are not. They have meaning that is decades or even centuries old.

“Bless your heart” is a southern way of politely saying, “you can go F yourself.”

“Come and take it.” is a reference to Mexico attempting to take a cannon from a small Texas town. They didn’t. It means that we will not go quietly into the dark.

“May you live in interesting times” is a translation of a Chinese curse.

“My estimated colleague” is a term of phrase used in congress to mean, “That MFing AH.” Or similar words.

“My friend” in oral arguments means, “That stupid ass that is arguing with me.”

In the Supreme Court, the majority opinion refers to “the principal dissent” or “JUSTICE KAGAN’s dissent”. If there is only one dissent, they will refer to it as “the dissent.”

They do not call each other out by name. It isn’t polite, it isn’t respectful.

Justice Barrett wrote this. And 5 other justices signed on to it. This is a public spanking of the least qualified justice on the Supreme Court. “…view is at odds…” is court speak for “is wrong.”

I can’t find the words to express how much of a slap in the face this language is. This is the Law Professor talking down to a C- student that didn’t bother to do their homework.

The highlighted phrase indicates that this is not just Justice Barrett with this opinion of Jackson, it is all the Justices that signed on to the majority opinion. There is no mistaking this for anything than what it is. The majority is calling out Jackson as being unqualified to sit on the court.

There are dozens of articles out there talking about how the end to Universal Injunctions is good for this country. This case will end most of the legal battles against the Trump Administration.

The only reason these cases were being filed was to stop the Trump Administration from carrying out their actions. There have been no findings of merit in any of these cases. Merely inferior court judges saying they think the plaintiffs (bad guys) might win, and because it is so important, they are blocking the Administration.

Under normal circumstances, this would be a 3 to 10 year block on the Administration.

Now that the delay tactic is gone, there is no reason to file losing cases. The money will dry up, and these cases will just evaporate.

Conclusion

I have been disappointed that Amy hasn’t voted for cert in a number of Second Amendment cases. What I have noticed is that her arguments are clear and well-founded in our Nation’s history and traditions of regulations. She is doing the right thing, even if I don’t like the outcomes.

This case is still another “plain text, history, and tradition” result. This court has been standing firm in that belief.

When Kagan wrote the majority opinion in S&W v. Mexico, she referenced the plain text of the constitution, the plain text of the regulation, and the history and tradition of this Nation’s regulations.

I’m looking forward to a great Second Amendment opinion in the 2025 Term, likely released in June, 2026.

The district courts have been attacking the Trump administration wherever possible. Many have overstepped their authority to intrude on the Article II executive.

A judge in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts decided that he was a final arbitrator of United States foreign policy. To that end, he issued a preliminary injunction stopping the deportation of criminal illegal aliens to third-party countries.

The criminal is detained in the United States. He is taken before an administrative judge, where he is given full due process. The judge can order the criminal released into our country with orders to report for further legal actions. He can decide that the person is not a criminal alien, and turn him loose or to other authorities. Or he can issue a deportation order.

At times, the criminal is not just here illegally, he has committed some other crime. In those cases, they are given a full trial. When they are found guilty, the judge can sentence them according to sentencing guidelines. After serving their sentence, they are then deported. The Article III judge will have ordered them deported, as part of their sentence.

In the alternative, the judge can just deport them. Make them someone else’s problem.

When we deport somebody, the rules say that they should be deported to the country of origin or to the last country they came through to reach the United States.

I’m not breaking it down. Some people hold multiple citizenships. Some people are citizens of their birth country and then move and become citizens in another country. Just assume that they are being sent to the correct country of origin.

Unfortunately, some of these criminal, illegal, aliens are nasty pieces of work. Many countries will refuse entry to people that they deem to be undesirable.

That includes many countries that feel that somebody convicted of murder is undesirable. Regardless of their citizenship.

My understanding is that under international law, a country is required to accept a deportee who is a citizen of their country.

As we well know, international law doesn’t really mean much. Countries have and do refuse entry to people that commit heinous crimes.

Having all of that in hand, let’s look at the facts of this case, according to Sotomayor.

The person being deported, O.C.G., had a removal order in place. He was being returned to his origin country, Guatemala.

When he learned of this, he begged an Immigration Judge to grant “withholding of removal to Guatemala”. Ok. This means that the next place he can be deported to is the last country he was in. Namely, Mexico.

Now, Sotomayor says that the Immigration Judge granted that withholding of removal to Guatemala and not to Guatemala and Mexico because there was no removal order to Mexico.

There is no record of why the Judge did this, only Sotomayor’s statement. The Judge knew that O.C.G. didn’t want to go to Mexico. He could have granted a withholding of removal to Mexico at the same time.

The judge did not.

Under the Trump administration, they looked at what they had. They had a legal removal order. It is legal to send him back to Mexico or Guatemala by statue, but he can’t be sent to Guatemala.

Bingo, he’s now on his way to Mexico.

When he arrived in Mexico, they said, “We don’t want your ass here.” and promptly deported him to Guatemala. It appears that there was no Immigration Judge in Mexico willing to grant a withholding of removal to Guatemala. Poor O.C.G.

From someplace in Guatemala, O.C.G. reached out to lawyers in the United States to start a class action suit to stop the administration from deporting criminal aliens to third-party countries.

Lacking in Sotomayor’s dissent is anything about O.C.G.’s criminal record. Nor was there was no evidence in the record that O.C.G. suffered any torture in Guatemala.

There is only O.C.G.’s claims.

The Immigration Judge who granted the withholding of removal found that O.C.G. was likely to suffer if deported to Guatemala. Therefore, the United States did not. The United States has no say on what Mexico does with its criminal illegal aliens.

This district judge feels that the United States is responsible for making sure nothing bad happens to these criminals after they are kicked out of our country.

The case is, DHS v. D.V.D. et al., No. 24A1153 606 U.S. ____ (2025).

(Feature Image is Raymond M. DiGuiseppe, who argued the case before the Ninth Circuit merits panel)

This was a big case with all the big names involved. We had Chuck Michel and Anna Barvir from Michel & Associates PC. If there is a Second Amendment case happening in California, they are likely to be there. The NRA was there. Erin Murphy, Paul Clement, Matthew Rowen, and Nicholas Gallagher from Clement & Murphy. You should know their names, think Bruen.

Regardless, Raymond is the one that argued and ran this case.

This was a unanimous opinion by all three judges. This is great. It is a win for The People. The 1 gun per 30 days is currently enjoined. The people of The People’s Republic of California have one of the rights the rest of the citizens of these United States enjoy.

Is this judgment going to stand? I do not believe so. The People have had a few wins in the district courts of California, and we have had a few wins with merits panels of the Ninth Circuit. In every case, the Ninth Circuit has then agreed to hear the case en banc and reversed the merits panel.

According to one of the judges that sits on the Ninth Circuit, the Ninth Circuit is over 150 to 0 against The People in Second Amendment cases.

History

In 1999, the state of California enacted a one-gun-a-month law. The law banned the purchase of more than one “concealable handgun” per 30-day period. In 2019, the law was extended to “handgun, semiautomatic centerfire rifle, completed frame or receiver, or firearm precursor part”.

You just have to love that made up term “firearm precursor part”. Does that mean a billet of 6061? Does it mean a raw forging of aluminum? Does it mean an 80% lower? Yeah, when does it stop being a pipe from The Home Depot, and it becomes a firearm precursor part?

The plaintiffs in the district case became Appellees at the circuit level are the good guys. They wanted to buy more than one firearm per month. The case is a facial challenge to the law.

The judges looked at this case “de novo”, or as if it were new. Because the case was a facial challenge, they only considered the text of the statute. It is the burden of the plaintiffs (good guys) to establish that no set of circumstances exists under which the law would be valid.

The Analysis

This is correctly stated and a good summary. It is at this point where most of the rogue, inferior, courts go off the rails.

Teixeira was decided in 2017, against The People. Yet, it is quoted multiple times. Ezell v City of Chicago, in front of the Seventh Circuit court in 2011, was also a loss for The People. Both cases preceded Bruin and as such need to be reanalyzed in light of the Bruen analysis. In other words, they are likely bad law.

They did not cite to Minneapolis Star & Tribune C v. Minnesota. This is because that case is a Supreme Court opinion and was a much stronger indictment for not messing with The People’s rights via restricting ancillary actions. In that case, the state (bad guys) put a tax on the ink purchased by large newspapers.

The phrase “meaningful constraints” is where this opinion starts to go sideways. Because they are quoting case law from before Bruen they are sneaking in “interest balancing”. The state does not get to decide what is or is not a “meaningful constraint.”

They don’t get to because they always extend it to far. Is a $200 tax on a firearm accessory that much of a constraint? Is a requirement for government permission to purchase a firearm accessory? Or to ask for permission to move it across state lines?

According to the federal government, it is not a meaningful constraint. Nor does the state of California think it is a meaningful constraint.

This makes the statement erroneous. This is why I call foul on citing to bad case law to support current cases.

Making a Summary Because I’m tired

California argued that the Second Amendment doesn’t guarantee a right to possess multiple firearms, and even if it did, restricting the frequency of firearm purchases is not a meaningful constraint.

This panel swatted that one down. They point out that if the state was right and because things apart from firearms are arms. The state could argue that if a person owned a knife could be banned from purchasing a firearm.

They get the plain text section right.

Unfortunately, only in part. They claim that delays that serve presumptively valid purposes are constitutional but that in this particular case, the law purpose of the delay is the delay.

They found that there is no history or tradition of meter the exercise of a constitutional right.

Of course, the infringers use the “nuanced approach” argument. That phrase now makes me sick. It tells me the bad guys are about to lie through their teeth and expect me to smile.

Here the court reaches the correct conclusion but for the wrong reasons. This can be bad for the Second Amendment rights of the People.

The nuanced approach only applies to things that are not bans. This is a ban, a metering of rights. In Heller, the Supreme Court found that there was no history or tradition to support firearm bans. This means that a one-per-month ban is unconstitutional, period.

The merits panel then spends a half dozen pages of electrons to find other reasons to find no tradition.

Conclusion

It is a win. I’ll take it.

It is not good case law. They did not create a general understanding of “Plain text” and they did not do a correct history and tradition analysis.

This suggests, to me, that this opinion will be cited by the anti-gun people in the future, in negative ways.

Regardless, this opinion will not stand. It will get overturned by the en banc panel. The Supreme Court is unlikely to grant cert if they request cert.

This bit of text is quoted in almost every case where the state is defending their blatant infringements.

They still use this citation, even post Bruen. After Bruen, they added a ⁣more nuanced approach.

What these two quotes have in common is that they are “dicta”.

Dicta is short for obiter dictum. It refers to statements made by a judge in a legal opinion which are not essential to the decision of the case.

What is essential is the holding.

Part of the problem is that the superior courts would rather not resolve the same issues over and over again. They want a one and done case.

The core holding in Heller was that the Second Amendment was an individual right. As such, any ban of a class of firearm, defacto or not, was unconstitutional.

That’s it. The entire discussion on dangerous and unusual, in common use for lawful purposes, and “this is how you perform Second Amendment jurisprudence” is dicta.

Because it is “just” dicta, the inferior courts can choose to ignore it. Or pick and choose which parts of dicta they wish to use.

The rogue inferior courts will use the “not unlimited” to search for the boundaries. Then they will find that the particular law is outside the boundaries of the Second Amendment.

The Bruen opinion introduced more dicta. These dicta were directed orders to the inferior courts. No more two-step shuffle. No more means balancing.

The inferior courts were told, clearly, that the process of picking a level of scrutiny, and then applying a balancing procedure was unacceptable.

They were told to first look at the plain text of the Constitution. The very same language the Court has been using for decades, if not centuries. These inferior courts have shown that they are perfectly capable of reading the plain text of every part of the Constitution, except the Second Amendment.

Once the conduct “touches fingers” with the Second Amendment, the burden shifts to the state to show that their regulation is a match for this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.

In Rahimi, they said that a person can only be temporarily denied their Second Amendment protected rights. The inferior courts then proceeded to decide that a permanent loss of Second Amendment protected rights was Constitutional, when applied to anybody who could have been sentenced to more than a year in jail/prison.

This is also dicta. This paragraph was written by Justice Kagan. Justice Sotomayor wrote something similar in Rahimi, I believe. Where she also admitted that the AR-15 was in common use for legal purposes.

After S&W v. Mexico was decided, many of the plaintiffs (good guys) filed notices with their respective courts, pointing them to the opinion. The gist of many of these notifications were, “The plain text is implicated. The burden shifts to the government to prove their ban is justified by this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. The Supreme Court stated that a firearm or class of firearms can only be banned if it is both dangerous and unusual. If a firearm or class of firearm is in common use, it is not unusual and cannot be banned. Justice Kagan said AR-15s are in common use.”

Well, the replies to those filings have started to come in. In a shocking turn of events, the infringers are now arguing that the Justice Kagan quote is “just dicta” and should be discarded. That it is just meaningless noise.

(But please remember that my dicta, “not unlimited”, cannot be discarded. It was put into a Supreme Court opinion.)

The state has stepped up and opened their mouth in an Amicus brief in —Trump, President of The United States, et all., v. CASA, Inc., et al., 2025 606 U.S., n. 17 (not a good cite). The gist of the case is that the state of Illinois had a Bruen tantrum and created a new assault weapon and magazine ban.

Now the United States DoJ is sticking their oar in the water. Ugh.

Yeah, I’ll believe that when the cows come home.

The United States has strong interests in ensuring that these questions are correctly resolved; Now, isn’t that weasel words?

that the Second Amendment is not treated as a second-class right; and that law-abiding Americans in this Circuit are not deprived of the full opportunity to enjoy the exercise of their Second Amendment rights.

Wait, WHAT?

Yes, the Supreme Court did say, in Heller and Bruen that the Second Amendment isn’t a second class right.

Exactly, Illinois passed a “Bruen tantrum bill”. They did not get the message.

…the key question under the Second Amendment’s text is whether the banned semiautomatic firearms are “Arms”

Well, Doh, of course AR-15s are “Arms” under the plain text.

Please note that the quote comes from the S&W v. Mexico was written by Justice Kagan. In other words, we now have two lefty Justices writing things that are pro-Second Amendment.

Ok, what happened? The DoJ are the bad guys, aren’t they?

Exactly, if the plain text of the Second Amendment interacts with the conduct, bearing assault weapons in this case, then the Second Amendment’s protections presumptively apply to that conduct. The state bears the burden of proving a history of historical regulations that are a match.

Furthermore, while many said that Rahimi was bad for The People, it keeps showing up in positive ways in these court cases. Now if the rogue courts would just follow simple instructions.

The DoJ goes on to correctly apply the “in common use” process. The Supreme Court has already done the work of determining what this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulations are in reference to firearm bans. They determined that for an arm to be banned, it must be both dangerous and unusual.

If an arm is in common use among The People, it is not unusual and cannot be banned.

One of the things the DoJ points out, that I had not noticed, is that these rogue, inferior courts, have decided that Heller severed the Second Amendment’s prefactory clause from its operative clause. These rogue courts were then able to argue that if a weapon was militaristic, the operative clause did not protect it.

This is just BS. The Supreme Court actual recognized that the Second Amendment also protects the right to keep and bear arms for individual self-defense, but also collective self-defense.

My gosh, the DoJ just said that suppressors are “arms” under the Second Amendment and thus fall under the “in common use” shortcut.

Conclusion

The United States of America Department of Justice just filed one of the most powerful motion, supporting the Second Amendment, I’ve ever read. It calls out the rogue inferior courts. It says that rogue inferior courts are wrong in how they are interpreting the Second Amendment.

In general, parties to a case are careful in their wording to not offend the court. This is why you don’t normally read statements in a motion saying the court got it wrong.

This motion did precisely that. It called out the Seventh Circuit court for intentionally reinterpreting the Supreme Court to get their agenda-driven results.

In a unanimous opinion, delivered by Justice Kagan, the Supreme Court held:

Thomas and Jackson both wrote concurring opinions. I have not read them yet.

This is a huge win. In just the skim I did, they specifically call out advertising as being irrelevant.

I intend to have an article on Saturday. This case advances Second Amendment jurisprudence.