RFK-Jr’s Anti-Vax Crusade Loses Bigly at SCOTUS
Haven’t seen this written about yet, but everyone’s least favorite anti-vax crusader and Presidential spoiler candidate just got shot down by SCOTUS today, which dismissed both of his frivolous anti-vaccine lawsuits without so much as a comment. From Bloomberg:
The US Supreme Court turned away two vaccine-related appeals from Children’s Health Defense, the group founded by immunization skeptic and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The justices left intact a federal appeals court decision that said the group and five parents lacked legal standing to challenge the Food and Drug Administration’s emergency approval of Covid-19 vaccines for children.
The high court also turned away contentions, pressed by Children’s Health Defense and 13 students, that Rutgers University violated the Constitution by making vaccination against Covid a condition of attending classes in the fall of 2021.
Kennedy, who is on leave as the chairman and chief legal officer of Children’s Health Defense, was listed as one of the lawyers pressing the appeal in the Rutgers case.
The justices didn’t request a response from either the FDA or Rutgers, signaling they weren’t seriously considering accepting either appeal. Both rejections came without comment or public dissent.
The cases are Children’s Health Defense v. FDA, 23-1161, and Children’s Health Defense v. Rutgers, 23-1222.
Meanwhile, in other SCOTUS news Newsweek is reporting that Roberts may finally be taking some token action against Alito’s progressively more promiscuous political controversies:
The Supreme Court may have deprived Justice Samuel Alito of the honor of writing a major decision because of his political controversies…
Writing on X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday, lawyer and Supreme Court expert, Steve Vladeck, noted that Alito’s concurring opinion on Gonzalez v. Trevino was far longer than the per curiam decision of the majority.
The per curiam decision is an agreed decision that isn’t attributed to any specific judge.
Vladeck said the fact that it was a short per curiam opinion of only five pages, compared to a 16-page concurring opinion by Alito, suggests that Alito had written the lead decision but it was taken from him.
As Gonzalez involves a politically charged dispute, Chief Justice John Roberts may have instructed Alito not to write the lead opinion.
…
Vladeck noted that Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in his concurring opinion that the court should never have taken the case, a strong indication that, unlike Alito, Kavanaugh was not interested in writing the lead opinion in the case.
Kavanaugh also wrote that the per curiam decision had very little to do with the case, which Vladeck believes may be an indication that it was written after the court decided that Alito should not write the lead opinion.
