June 3, 2025 • 15 mins
Our Heritage Foundation expert on the Supreme Court broke down expected rulings coming in June.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
All right, ruminators, third and final hour at least for
today of The Morning Show with Preston Scott. He is Jose.
I am Preston, and it is great to have back
with us on the program. He's a friend of the show.
Hans von Spakowsky is the Senior Legal Fellow for the
Edwin Mees Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the
(00:23):
Heritage Foundation. How are you, sir, Preston.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I'm doing just great, and that's nice to talk to
you again.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
It is delightful to have you back on the show.
I prepped your team with what I wanted to talk about,
but I'm going to throw you a curveball to a
certain extent what I got to talk talking with the
audience yesterday just about I wondered if Donald Trump was
We know now that in his first term he had
(00:52):
a lot of people around him that were not his friends.
And I'm curious, do you think he got bad advice
on his choice is for the Supreme Court? What is
your appraisal of the makeup of the court right now?
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Well, my appraisal is that Alita, Alito and Thomas are
rock solid conservatives. They seem to always get it right.
The other conservatives, Amy Cony barrett Is is proving to
be a disappointment. Cavanaugh and Gorsic often get it right,
(01:35):
but occasionally they signed Kavanaugh more than Gorsach side with
Justice Roberts, who you know, on a lot of a
lot of cases, he's he's good. You know, he was great,
for example, in the case a couple of years ago,
where where the Supreme Court finally told American colleges this
(01:58):
is the Harvard, you know, your Carolina, you cannot discriminate
in your college admissions based on Ray. So on the
other hand, you know, he sometimes I think is too
politically politically motivated and not wanting to do something that
(02:19):
really might have set the left. And so for example,
it hadn't been for him, Obamacare would not be enforced today.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
I use that as the example. I have tried to
avoid saying conservative and liberal justices because it's my tendency,
and I've tried to go with activist and originalist. And
when Justice Roberts to me, in that ruling, defined what
an activist judge is an activist judged in my definition,
(02:49):
And you tell me, Hans, if this definition works or not.
An activist judge does what he or she thinks they
meant or what it ought to be. They don't on
what is written, what the law is. And if the
law is flawed, so be it. Let Congress fix it.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yes, no, that's exactly. You do what the law says,
what the Constitution says. And you know it was Justice
Scalia once said, Congress often did things that are totally stupid,
but it wasn't his job to fix that. His job
(03:28):
was to apply the constitution.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
And that's where we are today. And I feel the
unpredictability of the court right now is in a lot
of ways, it's creating its own set of problems.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yes, no, I agree. And the refusal of Chief Justice
Roberts he apparently starting to change, but the refusal of
him until recently just to start stepping in and stopping
some of these staying some of these nationwide injunctions that
(04:02):
have been issued all across the country, that was a
real problem.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Give me your bottom line on those district nationwide injunctions.
Do district judges have that level of authority?
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Or no?
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Only and very rare, very restricted circumstances. And from what
I have seen, every single one of the nationwide injunction
so far issued by judges have been unlawful and totally unjustified.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Talking Supreme Court with Hans von Spakovsky with the Heritage Foundation, Hans,
what rulings that we've seen of late are the most consequential.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Oral arguments normally end in April and the Court spends
May and June writing up all their opinions. Last week
actually was very unusual because, as you know, they held
oral art arguments in the Justice Department asking for an
emergency stay of the injunctions against President Trump's executive order
(05:10):
on birthright citizenship. Like I said, that was rare. Arguments
aren't usually held in May. But look, there's more than
a dozen important cases that we are now waiting on
decisions on. For example, the US versus Scrammeti case. That's
the case out of Tennessee in which Tennessee, along with
(05:32):
Oh Gosh, more than a dozen states banned the surgical
mutilation and abusive drug treatment of minors children to do
so called gender transitions, and they were sued. The Supreme
Court is going to say whether states have a right
to top that kind of abuse of a treatment. There's
(05:57):
a porn case, free speech Relection versus Paxton Texas passed
what it is just a common sense law. They passed
the law saying that if you are a porn site,
you have to verify that somebody as an adult before
they can use your site. Right, and these porn of
(06:19):
groups all got together and have sued over that. There's
another there's another case. If you can believe this government
of Mexico as sued Smith and Wesson saying that their
production and sale of firearms is the approximate cause of
(06:41):
injuries in Mexico stemming from violence committed by the drug cartels.
That is a ridiculous lawsuit because most of the cartels
are equipped with military weapons which they get from corrupt
Mexican military officials. But again that's an important case. There's
(07:04):
a big registricting case out of Louisiana, and look one
of the most important ones that were waiting on and
they just had arguments. A couple of weeks ago. Is
a case out of Maryland that could affect kids, our
kids all over the country. A school board in Maryland
said no parents are allowed to opt their kids out
(07:28):
of the instructions on gender and sexuality that we are
putting into the school program. And this goes down as
low as pre kindergarteners, teaching them about gay sex and
drag queens and things like that. And this wasn't in
(07:52):
one class, you know, a class on sex education. They
are infusing it into the entire curriculum, including English classes.
And they told parents, done, can't opt your kids out
of that. That's a really really important case.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
It's it's remarkable the things that we find being litigated now.
You know, when when you and I, when you and
I were younger, the difference between what was legal and
what was right was pretty narrow. Now it's massive in
some places.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Oh yeah, no, no it is. And look, the problem
in Maryland I just to talk about is so bad
that it was a coalition of Jewish families, Muslim families,
Christian families, all of whom sued this school board which
(08:44):
absolutely refused to take this basically propaganda of the left
out of the school curriculum and refuse to let their
parents parents opt their kids out of it, even though,
as they pointed out before the Supreme Court, the school
(09:04):
lets parents opt their kids out of all kinds of
other stuff, including you know, fizit and all kinds of
other activities. But no, they're not allowed to opt out
of this. Why. Well, because the whole point of this
is to spread this left wing propaganda into the schools
and to basically brainwash these kids.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Yeah, it's grooming. It's trying to normalize something that is abnormal.
It seems that, you know, President Trump this time around
very very different than the first time around. He knows
what he's facing. He has surrounded himself with different people
that I think mostly are signed on. Are the executive
orders you mentioned in the break how busy things are
(09:46):
for you? Is? Are the executive orders designed to do
exactly what they're doing to force cases before the Supreme Court?
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Well, I think some of them are. But I think
the main thing is he's trying to get as much
as he can or the full extent of the executive
authority he's got. I mean, I actually just told him
up the numbers Presdent yesterday. President in the first four
months of his presidency has signed one hundred and fifty
two executive orders, thirty eight memoranda, and fifty seven proclamations.
(10:19):
Proclamations are important. That's, for example, how he used a
proclamation to declare that Venezuelan TDA gang, a terrorist group.
So he realizes he's got one term. He wants to
get as much done as possible. And I got to
(10:41):
tell you, he and his people have been doing a
really good job. Despite some of the setbacks in the
Lower Court, they've been doing a great job. And I
actually think that in many ways, Democrats shot themselves in
the foot. And the reason I say that is that, look,
(11:01):
if he had gotten re elected to a second term
right away, he still would have been dealing with so
many of the problems he encountered in the first term.
Agreed those four years out of office, and the fact
that I could tell you this was a real phenomenon Washington.
Liberals in this town, in the law firms, in the corporations,
(11:24):
did everything they could and try to make sure that
none of the top people in the Trump administration got
regular jobs. They tried to keep them out of private industry,
out of law firms. So what did they do. They
formed all these NGOs, nonprofit groups, and what do they
(11:46):
do During that four year period, they worked on and
developed all of the policy changes they were going to make,
all the stuff that we have now seen in those
one hundred and fifty two eeos Basically, they spent four
years preparing to be back in office, and that is
why we have seen So we've seen more accomplished in
(12:10):
the first four months of this presidency than I think
any president ever in our history.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Why do you think, circling back to the Supreme Court
for a second, why do you think MS thirteen members
have more standing than say, people questioning voters, citizens questioning
the twenty twenty election.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Well, that's one of the problems with our judicial system
right now, and in particular, this problem is caused by
the fact that if you look at the individuals that
Barack Obama and even more so Biden appointed and got
confirmed to the federal court, they are the most left wing,
(12:51):
radical ideologues that have ever sat on the federal bench.
And they apparently think that in their courtrooms their kings
and queens and they can do anything they want until
and unless some higher court overturns them. And that's the
way they're acting, and that that is a real problem
(13:11):
throughout our judiciary.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Hans. We did some math based on a ten million
figure of illegals in the country, which could be significantly off,
but it's at least that that if you look at
that it's about an hour of judicial work per person
if you get them into federal district court. There's six
hundred and seventy seven federal district judges. That's seven and
(13:35):
a half years of hearings and court appearances if they
do eight a day for the rest of the you know,
and take no other cases. Does in Congress, does Congress
have the opportunity to address this pass a law to
allow for this process to be changed.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Yes, because the Supreme Court has said on more than
when it came that aliens who are illegal in the
country are entitled to some due process. But it's not
what people believe under the Constitution. What Congress has said
is the new process they're entitled to is what Congress
gives them. And if Congress, for example, were to change
(14:19):
the law to say the only hearing you get is
your opportunity to present your case before an employee of
the Justice Department or the barbaroinger Homeland Security and that's it,
Congress could do that and that would be perfectly legitimate
under what the Supreme Court has said.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Last question for you before we let you go, what
will it take before the Supreme Court settles the issue
of protecting women's sports in Title nine as it was written.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
It's going to take the Supreme Court finally issuing a
tough decision on this, the same way they issued a
very tough decision like we were talking about begin when they,
you know, three years ago, when they finally said to
American college and universities, you have to stop discriminating on
(15:09):
the basis of race in your admissions. And the Supreme
Court is going to have to get a case once
again where they tell colleges, athletic associations and others that
Title nine of the Civil Rights Act, which protects women
in colleges and universities, particularly in sports, it means what
(15:33):
it says. I mean, that's what they have to tell them.
It means what it says.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Hans always, I love the time and I appreciate you
carving out some for us. Thanks you very much. Sure,
thanks for having me my pleasure. Hans von Spakowski with
the Heritage Foundation on the Morning Show with Preston Scott
All right, ruminators, third and final hour at least for
today of The Morning Show with Preston Scott. He is Jose.
I am Preston, and it is great to have back
with us on the program. He's a friend of the show.
Hans von Spakowsky is the Senior Legal Fellow for the
Edwin Mees Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the
(00:23):
Heritage Foundation. How are you, sir, Preston.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I'm doing just great, and that's nice to talk to
you again.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
It is delightful to have you back on the show.
I prepped your team with what I wanted to talk about,
but I'm going to throw you a curveball to a
certain extent what I got to talk talking with the
audience yesterday just about I wondered if Donald Trump was
We know now that in his first term he had
(00:52):
a lot of people around him that were not his friends.
And I'm curious, do you think he got bad advice
on his choice is for the Supreme Court? What is
your appraisal of the makeup of the court right now?
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Well, my appraisal is that Alita, Alito and Thomas are
rock solid conservatives. They seem to always get it right.
The other conservatives, Amy Cony barrett Is is proving to
be a disappointment. Cavanaugh and Gorsic often get it right,
(01:35):
but occasionally they signed Kavanaugh more than Gorsach side with
Justice Roberts, who you know, on a lot of a
lot of cases, he's he's good. You know, he was great,
for example, in the case a couple of years ago,
where where the Supreme Court finally told American colleges this
(01:58):
is the Harvard, you know, your Carolina, you cannot discriminate
in your college admissions based on Ray. So on the
other hand, you know, he sometimes I think is too
politically politically motivated and not wanting to do something that
(02:19):
really might have set the left. And so for example,
it hadn't been for him, Obamacare would not be enforced today.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
I use that as the example. I have tried to
avoid saying conservative and liberal justices because it's my tendency,
and I've tried to go with activist and originalist. And
when Justice Roberts to me, in that ruling, defined what
an activist judge is an activist judged in my definition,
(02:49):
And you tell me, Hans, if this definition works or not.
An activist judge does what he or she thinks they
meant or what it ought to be. They don't on
what is written, what the law is. And if the
law is flawed, so be it. Let Congress fix it.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yes, no, that's exactly. You do what the law says,
what the Constitution says. And you know it was Justice
Scalia once said, Congress often did things that are totally stupid,
but it wasn't his job to fix that. His job
(03:28):
was to apply the constitution.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
And that's where we are today. And I feel the
unpredictability of the court right now is in a lot
of ways, it's creating its own set of problems.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yes, no, I agree. And the refusal of Chief Justice
Roberts he apparently starting to change, but the refusal of
him until recently just to start stepping in and stopping
some of these staying some of these nationwide injunctions that
(04:02):
have been issued all across the country, that was a
real problem.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Give me your bottom line on those district nationwide injunctions.
Do district judges have that level of authority?
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Or no?
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Only and very rare, very restricted circumstances. And from what
I have seen, every single one of the nationwide injunction
so far issued by judges have been unlawful and totally unjustified.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Talking Supreme Court with Hans von Spakovsky with the Heritage Foundation, Hans,
what rulings that we've seen of late are the most consequential.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Oral arguments normally end in April and the Court spends
May and June writing up all their opinions. Last week
actually was very unusual because, as you know, they held
oral art arguments in the Justice Department asking for an
emergency stay of the injunctions against President Trump's executive order
(05:10):
on birthright citizenship. Like I said, that was rare. Arguments
aren't usually held in May. But look, there's more than
a dozen important cases that we are now waiting on
decisions on. For example, the US versus Scrammeti case. That's
the case out of Tennessee in which Tennessee, along with
(05:32):
Oh Gosh, more than a dozen states banned the surgical
mutilation and abusive drug treatment of minors children to do
so called gender transitions, and they were sued. The Supreme
Court is going to say whether states have a right
to top that kind of abuse of a treatment. There's
(05:57):
a porn case, free speech Relection versus Paxton Texas passed
what it is just a common sense law. They passed
the law saying that if you are a porn site,
you have to verify that somebody as an adult before
they can use your site. Right, and these porn of
(06:19):
groups all got together and have sued over that. There's
another there's another case. If you can believe this government
of Mexico as sued Smith and Wesson saying that their
production and sale of firearms is the approximate cause of
(06:41):
injuries in Mexico stemming from violence committed by the drug cartels.
That is a ridiculous lawsuit because most of the cartels
are equipped with military weapons which they get from corrupt
Mexican military officials. But again that's an important case. There's
(07:04):
a big registricting case out of Louisiana, and look one
of the most important ones that were waiting on and
they just had arguments. A couple of weeks ago. Is
a case out of Maryland that could affect kids, our
kids all over the country. A school board in Maryland
said no parents are allowed to opt their kids out
(07:28):
of the instructions on gender and sexuality that we are
putting into the school program. And this goes down as
low as pre kindergarteners, teaching them about gay sex and
drag queens and things like that. And this wasn't in
(07:52):
one class, you know, a class on sex education. They
are infusing it into the entire curriculum, including English classes.
And they told parents, done, can't opt your kids out
of that. That's a really really important case.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
It's it's remarkable the things that we find being litigated now.
You know, when when you and I, when you and
I were younger, the difference between what was legal and
what was right was pretty narrow. Now it's massive in
some places.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Oh yeah, no, no it is. And look, the problem
in Maryland I just to talk about is so bad
that it was a coalition of Jewish families, Muslim families,
Christian families, all of whom sued this school board which
(08:44):
absolutely refused to take this basically propaganda of the left
out of the school curriculum and refuse to let their
parents parents opt their kids out of it, even though,
as they pointed out before the Supreme Court, the school
(09:04):
lets parents opt their kids out of all kinds of
other stuff, including you know, fizit and all kinds of
other activities. But no, they're not allowed to opt out
of this. Why. Well, because the whole point of this
is to spread this left wing propaganda into the schools
and to basically brainwash these kids.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Yeah, it's grooming. It's trying to normalize something that is abnormal.
It seems that, you know, President Trump this time around
very very different than the first time around. He knows
what he's facing. He has surrounded himself with different people
that I think mostly are signed on. Are the executive
orders you mentioned in the break how busy things are
(09:46):
for you? Is? Are the executive orders designed to do
exactly what they're doing to force cases before the Supreme Court?
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Well, I think some of them are. But I think
the main thing is he's trying to get as much
as he can or the full extent of the executive
authority he's got. I mean, I actually just told him
up the numbers Presdent yesterday. President in the first four
months of his presidency has signed one hundred and fifty
two executive orders, thirty eight memoranda, and fifty seven proclamations.
(10:19):
Proclamations are important. That's, for example, how he used a
proclamation to declare that Venezuelan TDA gang, a terrorist group.
So he realizes he's got one term. He wants to
get as much done as possible. And I got to
(10:41):
tell you, he and his people have been doing a
really good job. Despite some of the setbacks in the
Lower Court, they've been doing a great job. And I
actually think that in many ways, Democrats shot themselves in
the foot. And the reason I say that is that, look,
(11:01):
if he had gotten re elected to a second term
right away, he still would have been dealing with so
many of the problems he encountered in the first term.
Agreed those four years out of office, and the fact
that I could tell you this was a real phenomenon Washington.
Liberals in this town, in the law firms, in the corporations,
(11:24):
did everything they could and try to make sure that
none of the top people in the Trump administration got
regular jobs. They tried to keep them out of private industry,
out of law firms. So what did they do. They
formed all these NGOs, nonprofit groups, and what do they
(11:46):
do During that four year period, they worked on and
developed all of the policy changes they were going to make,
all the stuff that we have now seen in those
one hundred and fifty two eeos Basically, they spent four
years preparing to be back in office, and that is
why we have seen So we've seen more accomplished in
(12:10):
the first four months of this presidency than I think
any president ever in our history.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Why do you think, circling back to the Supreme Court
for a second, why do you think MS thirteen members
have more standing than say, people questioning voters, citizens questioning
the twenty twenty election.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Well, that's one of the problems with our judicial system
right now, and in particular, this problem is caused by
the fact that if you look at the individuals that
Barack Obama and even more so Biden appointed and got
confirmed to the federal court, they are the most left wing,
(12:51):
radical ideologues that have ever sat on the federal bench.
And they apparently think that in their courtrooms their kings
and queens and they can do anything they want until
and unless some higher court overturns them. And that's the
way they're acting, and that that is a real problem
(13:11):
throughout our judiciary.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Hans. We did some math based on a ten million
figure of illegals in the country, which could be significantly off,
but it's at least that that if you look at
that it's about an hour of judicial work per person
if you get them into federal district court. There's six
hundred and seventy seven federal district judges. That's seven and
(13:35):
a half years of hearings and court appearances if they
do eight a day for the rest of the you know,
and take no other cases. Does in Congress, does Congress
have the opportunity to address this pass a law to
allow for this process to be changed.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Yes, because the Supreme Court has said on more than
when it came that aliens who are illegal in the
country are entitled to some due process. But it's not
what people believe under the Constitution. What Congress has said
is the new process they're entitled to is what Congress
gives them. And if Congress, for example, were to change
(14:19):
the law to say the only hearing you get is
your opportunity to present your case before an employee of
the Justice Department or the barbaroinger Homeland Security and that's it,
Congress could do that and that would be perfectly legitimate
under what the Supreme Court has said.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Last question for you before we let you go, what
will it take before the Supreme Court settles the issue
of protecting women's sports in Title nine as it was written.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
It's going to take the Supreme Court finally issuing a
tough decision on this, the same way they issued a
very tough decision like we were talking about begin when they,
you know, three years ago, when they finally said to
American college and universities, you have to stop discriminating on
(15:09):
the basis of race in your admissions. And the Supreme
Court is going to have to get a case once
again where they tell colleges, athletic associations and others that
Title nine of the Civil Rights Act, which protects women
in colleges and universities, particularly in sports, it means what
(15:33):
it says. I mean, that's what they have to tell them.
It means what it says.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Hans always, I love the time and I appreciate you
carving out some for us. Thanks you very much. Sure,
thanks for having me my pleasure. Hans von Spakowski with
the Heritage Foundation on the Morning Show with Preston Scott
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