The Supreme Court is a joke. It’s not funny

On Thursday, in In their ruling halting the Biden administration’s plan to limit ozone pollution from reaching other states, Supreme Court justices repeatedly accidentally referred to “nitrous oxide” — known as laughing gas — instead of the chemicals at issue in the case. The opinion, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, was posted online hours before the errors were corrected.

The next day, the Supreme Court struck down a fundamental principle of administrative law, “Chevron deference,” that has long authorized federal agencies to interpret and implement statutes—assuming that federal courts would defer to those agencies’ reasonable interpretations of ambiguous laws. Now, the justices will be able to fill any policy gaps left by Congress: They are true experts, the court ruled.

Taken together, these decisions are a perfect representation of the current Supreme Court: Our country is run by an all-powerful, undemocratic institution that is in many ways a complete joke — except for the fact that it is downright corrupt. As Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissenting opinion on Friday, “Majorities despise restraint and cling to power” — and justices are “making a mockery” of long-standing judicial principles.

Americans, generally speaking, seem to recognize that the court doesn’t just issue orders and strikes, as Chief Justice John Roberts once promised to do. A poll released by the Associated Press on Thursday found that 70 percent of Americans believe Supreme Court justices are more likely to try to shape the law to fit their own ideologies, while only 28 percent expect the court to be fair and impartial . Even most Republicans, whose party controls the Supreme Court, believe the justices’ decisions are guided by their ideology.

Many of the court’s decisions this term — and in recent years — have had a distinctly humorous tone.

The text contains five accidental references to laughing gas, nitrous oxide — instead of nitrogen oxides. Ohio v. Environmental Protection Agency a decision that will ultimately result in more people breathing polluted air.

There was a court opinion overturning its landmark Chevron decision — a key goal of the conservative legal movement in recent years, but not always; Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas had already authored an opinion in his defense before he changed his mind.

A decision has been made to allow Americans to re-add “shock studs” to their semi-automatic rifles to allow them to fire faster, with judges ruling that the accessories are not covered by a long-standing federal ban on fully automatic weapons — a potentially deadly joke coming to a city or town near you.

In one of the court’s most discreet and scandalous decisions, judges ruled that a garbage collection company did not violate federal anti-bribery laws when it made a $13,000 payment. dollars to the mayor of Indiana who helped her obtain a government contract.

“Is a $100 Dunkin’ Donuts gift card to a garbage collector unlawful?” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the court’s opinion. “What about a $200 Nike gift card to a county commissioner who voted to fund new school sports facilities? Would college students be able to take their college professor to Chipotle for their graduation ceremony?”

Simply put, these things are not the same—they would never be covered by a bribery statute. As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted in her dissenting opinion, the bribery statute “was not designed to apply to teachers receiving fruit baskets, soccer coaches receiving gift cards, or newspaper delivery drivers receiving tips at Christmas.”

The justices have not yet ruled on former President Donald Trump’s claim to a broad, perpetual shield of immunity from prosecution. The court’s decision to accept the case delayed Trump’s federal trial over the election challenge, which is unlikely to happen before the election; the justices have dragged out a decision in the case so long that they extended the court’s term until July for the first time in several years.

The Supreme Court’s increasingly absurd antics and overtly ideological impulses are part of a broader pattern: In recent years, the court has used twisted cases to impose its ideological agenda on America.

Last year, a court issued a decision allowing companies to discriminate against LGBTQ customers in a case that was ultimately hypothetical. None of these clients apparently ever sought to hire the web designer at the center of the case. The court also invalidated President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan last year, even though the student loan servicing company at the center of the case suffered no potential financial harm.

In a 2022 case, justices allowed public school officials to restore prayer in public schools, citing the example of a high school football coach who apparently did not want to return to work.

The Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, has become a laughing stock. Unfortunately, the joke is on us and it is not funny at all.

More from Rolling Stone

The best of Rolling Stone