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samuel alito
In 'Major Smackdown' of 5th Circuit, Supreme Court Upholds Biden-Era Ghost Gun Ban
"Today, seven members of the Supreme Court followed the law and did not capitulate to special interests like the NRA, and our streets will be safer for it," said one Democratic senator.
Mar 26, 2025
In what one gun control group hailed as "a BIG win for public safety," the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a Biden-era rule regulating ghost guns, which can be made using 3D printers, obtained without background checks, and smuggled into high-security locations.
The high court ruled 7-2—with Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissenting—in Bondi v. Vanderstock that ghost guns, which are virtually untraceable, are firearms subject to regulation by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).
NEW: The Supreme Court just upheld ATF’s critical ghost gun rule 👏👏👏 They ruled that ghost gun kits are legally firearms, meaning they must have serial numbers and can only be sold by licensed sellers after a background check. This is a BIG win for public safety.
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— GIFFORDS ( @giffords.org) March 26, 2025 at 7:57 AM
In 2022, the Biden administration enacted rules including a licensing requirement for companies making and selling ghost gun parts, mandating serial numbers for such components, and subjecting buyers to background checks. Ghost gun component manufacturers and Second Amendment advocates sued the government, claiming that ghost guns are not firearms as defined by the landmark Gun Control Act of 1968.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the plaintiffs in a 2023 decision striking down the ATF ghost gun rules.
However, while conceding that some ghost gun kits may not qualify as firearms under the law, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority that others "'contain all components necessary' for 'a complete pistol' and can be completed in perhaps half an hour using commonly available tools."
"But even as sold, the kit comes with all necessary components, and its intended function as instrument of combat is obvious," Gorsuch added. "Really, the kit's name says it all: 'Buy Build Shoot.'"
Today's decision is a pretty major smackdown for the 5th Circuit, which angrily rejected the ghost gun regulations as an egregiously unlawful assault on the rights of at-home gunsmiths. Gorsuch's opinion says the 5th Circuit badly misapplied the law in a number of ways. When you've lost Gorsuch...
— Mark Joseph Stern ( @mjsdc.bsky.social) March 26, 2025 at 7:16 AM
Responding to the ruling, David Pucino, the legal director and deputy chief counsel at the Giffords Law Center, said: "Ghost guns are the gun industry's way of skirting commonsense gun laws and arming dangerous people without background checks. We are thrilled that the Supreme Court has upheld the ATF rule that treats ghost guns as what they are: guns."
"We've seen how the rise in ghost guns has contributed to increases in crime and gun deaths in communities across the United States," Pucino added. "The Supreme Court's ruling is a huge win for public safety."
The legal division of Everytown for Gun Safety also hailed what it called the court's "lifesaving decision."
"We applaud the Supreme Court for doing the right thing by upholding a lawful and critical rule that protects public safety, and by rejecting the gun lobby's extreme legal agenda," Everytown Law executive director Eric Tirschwell said. "The ATF ghost gun rule has broad support from state and federal law enforcement, who have all affirmed it is crucial to keeping our communities safe—and data shows it is reducing the number of ghost guns recovered at crime scenes nationwide. We look forward to seeing this downward trend continue."
As Everytown noted, "early data indicates a drop in ghost gun recoveries at crime scenes since the ATF's rule went into effect," and "New York City, Baltimore, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Oakland, and other cities reported declines in ghost gun recoveries" in 2023.
Great news coming out of the Supreme Court! In a 7-2 decision, Justices have upheld the ban on ghost guns. These untraceable weapons have no legitimate use and are the perfect firearms for use in crime. This is a victory for public safety!
— Team ENOUGH ( @teamenough.org) March 26, 2025 at 7:16 AM
"At 17, my son, Guy, was badly wounded when he was shot with a ghost gun by a minor too young to legally purchase a pistol. No one should have to go through the trauma of learning that your child has been shot and may not survive," Denise Wieck, a volunteer with the gun control advocacy group Moms Demand Action, said following Wednesday's ruling.
"Though Guy suffers the consequences of the gunshot wound to this day—including an epilepsy diagnosis, anxiety, and the loss of an eye—we have both turned our grief into power through education and advocacy," Wieck added. "We are deeply relieved by today's ruling, which will help ensure that a tragedy like ours never happens again."
Democratic lawmakers also welcomed Wednesday's ruling.
"Ghost guns have been a terror on our streets, haunting our communities, and taking lives," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement. "For years, I have been warning of the dangers of these untraceable guns, and I strongly supported the Biden administration's rule to crack down on these treacherous kits."
"Today, seven members of the Supreme Court followed the law and did not capitulate to special interests like the NRA, and our streets will be safer for it," Schumer added, referring to the National Rifle Association. "Senate Democrats will continue to push Republicans to take commonsense actions to keep ghost guns off the streets."
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Alito and Thomas Urged to Recuse From Key Case Over 'Cozy Ties' to Right-Wing Kingpin
"Americans deserve a legal system that isn't influenced by billionaires and special interest backers pushing an agenda at the expense of working families," said a watchdog group leader.
Mar 19, 2025
Ahead of U.S. Supreme Court arguments next week, a watchdog group asserted Wednesday that right-wing Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas must recuse themselves from a case "whose outcome could have sweeping consequences," citing "significant conflicts of interest" due to their relationships with "conservative kingpin Leonard Leo."
In Federal Communications Commissionv. Consumers' Research, a right-wing group is challenging the constitutionality of the FCC's Universal Service Fund program.
Vox's Ian Millhiser reported Wednesday that "if the Supreme Court accepts an argument raised by a federal appeals court, which struck down the federal program, it would bring about one of the biggest judicial power grabs in American history, and hobble the government's ability to do, well, pretty much anything."
In the new report about Alito and Thomas, the watchdog Accountable.US issued a similar warning about the case's potential impacts: "Effectively defunct for almost a century, the nondelegation doctrine prohibits Congress from passing off its legislative power to federal agencies... Reviving the doctrine would cripple agencies' ability to govern consumer safeguards, social security, Medicare, and more during a time when the Trump administration has begun to slash federal agencies."
"Now before the high court, the case presents an obvious conflict of interest for many of the justices who are personally tied to (and in some cases, friends of) the conservative activist Leonard Leo, who is closely connected to Consumers' Research," the analysis explains, pointing to reporting that Leo is the group's "main backer."
While "all six conservatives now sitting on the Supreme Court can credit Leo with helping to shepherd their confirmations," the watchdog's report states, the right-wing legal activist is "close personal friends" with Alito and Thomas.
According to the report:
- Leo has known Justice Thomas since the early 1990s when Leo was clerking in D.C. Since then, Leo has traveled with Thomas and invited him to his personal residence in Maine. The justice is also the godfather to one of Leo's daughters. Justice Thomas' wife, Ginni, has previously called Leo her "hero" and "mentor." Over the past 15 years, Leo and Ginni have worked together on several projects, operationalizing the outside game of conservative dark money and politics.
- Leo has also traveled with Justice Alito, most notably to Alaska on a private fishing trip (which Justice Alito did not disclose at the time). Leo's Federalist Society has also sponsored numerous trips overseas for Alito, some of them attended by Leo himself.
"Americans deserve a legal system that isn't influenced by billionaires and special interest backers pushing an agenda at the expense of working families. Justices Thomas and Alito's cozy ties to Leonard Leo and thereby Consumers' Research fly straight in the face of that, and present a clear conflict of interest impeding their ability to rule impartially on the case," said Accountable.US president Caroline Ciccone in a statement.
"Public trust in the Supreme Court is already at an all-time low because of misguided conduct by justices–this case threatens to degrade it further," Ciccone continued. "The Supreme Court simply cannot be trusted to defend the Constitution if it doesn't adopt an obligatory, enforceable code of conduct that cleans up the impropriety that's existed on the court for years. Thomas and Alito must recuse themselves and restore a semblance of integrity to the highest court."
In addition to releasing the report, Accountable.US and two other groups, Take Back the Court and United for Democracy, argued for Alito and Thomas' recusal in a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts—who on Tuesday publicly condemned right-wing attacks on the federal judiciary.
"The Supreme Court has been engulfed by corruption scandals, many of which centering around the right-wing justices' overly friendly relationships with powerful billionaires and special interests," United for Democracy senior adviser Meagan Hatcher-Mays said Wednesday. "At the same time that Justices Thomas and Alito were accepting lavish gifts and trips from billionaires, they were hearing cases with those same billionaires' legal interests at stake."
"It's impossible for the American public to trust in Supreme Court rulings when this kind of glad-handing is taking place," she added. "The appearance of impropriety is clear in FCC v. Consumers' Research given Leonard Leo's long-time friendship with Justices Thomas and Alito and his financial entanglements with Consumers’ Research. Justices Thomas and Alito must recuse themselves immediately."
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'Literally Eat Sh*t': Supreme Court Strikes Down EPA Clean Water Rule
"This ruling undermines decades of progress in environmental protection and leaves communities vulnerable to unchecked pollution," said one critic.
Mar 04, 2025
The right-wing U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned federal rules regulating the discharge of water pollution, weakening the Clean Water Act in an unusual case in which one of the country's greenest cities found itself at odds with the Environmental Protection Agency.
The high court ruled 5-4 in San Francisco v. Environmental Protection Agency that EPA limitations banning discharges that cause or contribute to violations of water quality standards are an overreach of the agency's statutory authority. The California city joined polluter lobbyists including the National Mining Association, American Farm Bureau Federation, and American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers in challenging the EPA's so-called "end-result" requirements.
The ruling severely limits the power of the EPA and states to safeguard water quality under the Clean Water Act (CWA) and undermines the landmark law's stated mission to "restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation's waters."
In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court weakened the Clean Water Act's limitations on raw sewage discharge into our water. This will hurt the health of Americans, especially working class people from all backgrounds. Americans deserve clean water.
— Nina Turner ( @ninaturner.bsky.social) March 4, 2025 at 8:57 AM
Writing for the majority—which also included Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch—far-right Justice Samuel Alito asserted that the EPA "resorting to such requirements is not necessary to protect water quality," and that "if the EPA does its work, our holding should have no adverse effect on water quality."
Alito apparently did not take into account what the Sierra Club has called the Trump administration's " unprecedented" attacks on the EPA, one of numerous federal agencies targeted by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency for terminations and cutbacks.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the three liberal justices—Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—in dissent.
Tuesday's ruling follows Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, a 2023 decision in which the high court severely curtailed protections for "waters of the United States" by holding that the CWA only covers wetlands and permanent bodies of water with a "continuous surface connection" to "traditional interstate navigable waters."
Responding to Tuesday's ruling, Sanjay Narayan, chief appellate counsel of Sierra Club's Environmental Law Program, said in a statement that "SCOTUS' decision ignores the basic reality of how water bodies and water pollution work, and could stymie the ability of the EPA to implement the Clean Water Act, a bedrock environmental law that has kept water safe for the last 50 years."
"Because the EPA is not allowed to include health-based standards when regulating water pollution, it'll need to know everything about what might be discharged before a clean water permit can be issued—making the permitting process delayed and incredibly expensive," Narayan added. "The result is likely to be a new system where the public is regularly subjected to unsafe water quality."
Waterkeeper Alliance CEO Marc Yaggi said that "bit by bit, the power of the Clean Water Act is being undermined, weakening protections for our waters, and limiting EPA's ability to safeguard public health and the environment."
"The Supreme Court has set a dangerous precedent that could compromise the safety of our rivers, lakes, and drinking water sources," Yaggi added. "This ruling undermines decades of progress in environmental protection and leaves communities vulnerable to unchecked pollution."
Campaign for New York Health executive director Melanie D'Arrigo said on social media, "The five Supreme Court justices who voted to weaken the Clean Water Act should be forced to drink a nice tall glass of raw sewage discharge."
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