When the Supreme Court is not impressed

There were two instances in the last week when the U.S. Supreme Court gave none too subtle indications what they thought.

The first concerned yet another California case that challenged the indoor church ban. Even after the Supreme Court had issued an injunction against the ban earlier in the month, the Ninth Circuit in a different case allowed the ban to continue. Within less than two weeks of the Ninth Circuit ruling, the Supreme Court overturned them. The slap down on the Ninth Circuit decision made it clear that the technical distinctions between the cases were not enough to reach a different decision. As one pundit put it, these were distinctions without a difference.

As an aside, the lawyer for Santa Clara County took a head scratching approach. One day after filing their reply brief with the court, the attorneys announced that the ban would be lifted within a week. As a practice pointer, if you’re going to basically concede the issue, don’t waste the Court’s time by making them start working on reading your brief. To state the obvious: justices don’t appreciate that.

The second time in a week where the Court showed they were not impressed concerned the two remaining “release the Kraken” suits by Sidney Powell questioning the election results. Here, the Court didn’t even bother with a smackdown. The order simply said, without further explanation, that the petitions were denied.

This action by the Court is analogous to how you deal with a fly. You can either give it your attention and swat it or you can decide that it isn’t even worth bothering with it and simply wave your hand to make it go away.