(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Samuel Alito has Absolutely Forgotten How the Law Works (OR-- Spoiler-Alert: He Doesn't Care) [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-03-06

Lost in the utter insanity of Trump’s Address to Congress Tuesday was the Supreme Court’s emergency ruling on Trump’s freeze of foreign aid and USAID payments. To recap, several weeks ago, Federal District Judge Amir Ali ordered the Trump Administration and the State Department to resume payments under USAID contracts for services already rendered. Yes, you read that right: the judge ordered that contracts that had already been entered into for services already provided need to be paid. VERY controversial stuff that goes against the grain of all prior American jurispru— oh wait, that’s actually about as basic as it gets. If you enter into a contractual obligation with someone to provide a service, and they provide that service, you need to pay them. And in an unsigned 5-4 opinion on their emergency docket, the Supreme Court seemingly agreed (let’s set aside that apparently only 5 of 9 Supreme Court justices believe that contracts should be honored; there is only so much mind-numbing news we can evaluate at one time).

Apparently though, this is hard stuff for Samuel Alito. He vehemently disagreed with the majority in a scathing opinion that should call into question any legal judgement he may have once claimed to possess. Alito wrote:

“Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars? The answer to that question should be an emphatic “No,” but a majority of this Court apparently thinks otherwise. I am stunned.”

What?! Really, WHAT?! First of all, this is not a single district-court judge forcing the United States Government to spend money. This is a district court judge ordering the United States Government to meet contractual obligations that it has already entered into and spend money ALLOCATED BY CONGRESS to simply pay its bills. Does Alito not understand this? Or does he not care? That’s probably a question for a different essay. But the gross misrepresentation of the merits of this case and the legal question at issue should truly call into question just what Alito is doing on the Court and what is his agenda.

Alito acts as if a judge has ordered the Federal Government to start spending money on his pet environmental projects, or arbitrarily declared that the Federal Government is required to pay for every abortion conducted in the United States. No, Congress passed a bill that allocated money. That bill was signed into law by the President of the United States. That law called for the US State Department to pay various organizations to provide specific services (such as provide medical and health support to fight the spread of the Ebola Virus). The State Department then contracted those organizations to provide those services, and the services WERE PROVIDED. Judge Ali simply ruled that we now have to spend the money the way it was legally intended and pay the people we asked to provide those services.

Alito complains that this money will now be “los[t] forever,” as if Congress didn’t legally allocate this money to be provided for this express purpose, and the State Department didn’t already spend it. I don’t know about you, but after I use my credit card to spend money at a store, I generally don’t get to cancel the payment, but then keep the items I bought. Apparently Alito hasn’t done his own shopping in quite some time. If he had, he might be “stunned” to find out that this is how capitalism works. Like Alito, I’m stunned too, stunned at how a Supreme Court Justice can fail to grasp such a fundamental principle of our legal system as a contract.

Over the past six weeks, there have been so many mind-numbing moments that defy even the most basic logic that it is easy to overlook this one. But we should not overlook the day that Samuel Alito (AND Gorsuch, AND Thomas, AND Kavanaugh) essentially said that Donald Trump should be allowed to arbitrarily decide that he is not legally required to spend money allocated by Congress and signed into law on services already provided if he doesn’t like those services or disagrees with Congress. On second thought, “stunned” isn’t the right word for that. I believe it’s “scary.”

-Peter Porcupine

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/3/6/2308508/-Samuel-Alito-has-Absolutely-Forgotten-How-the-Law-Works-OR-Spoiler-Alert-He-Doesn-t-Care?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/