supreme court

Do you have health care? Have you been able to stay on your parents' health insurance longer? If you say yes then you're one of the 17 million American youth that could lose that if the Supreme Court overturns the Affordable Care Act, according to a legal brief filed on Thursday.

According to The Hill

"Some 20 million young adults between the ages of 18 and 34 currently don't have insurance, the group argues. When the full benefits of the law kick in in 2014, about 8 million young adults will qualify for Medicaid and another 9 million will become eligible for federal subsidies to buy private insurance on new state health insurance exchanges.

The group's amicus brief argues that the requirement that everyone have insurance — the crux of the legal challenges against the law — "does not impose a significant burden on young adults."

"On the other hand," the brief argues, "eliminating this and other pillars of the [healthcare reform law] would undermine the regulatory scheme and harm the health and
economic well-being of millions of young Americans by denying them access to affordable"

Court cases against the law have been going back and forth in district courts for the better part of the last year and now the Supremes have said they will decide the fate. It's on the docket for March 26, 27 and 28 and The Hill says "a decision is expected in June, before the 2012 presidential election." Given the Supreme Court's affinity to corporations and the fact that the health care industry and insurance companies are behind the law, you'd think they'd support it, right?

Here's a fun project: My Jar of Pennies vs. The Supreme Court.

We're doing this because we're furious at the Supreme Court (at least the 5-4 Republican majority that decided Citizens United). And we don't want to feel powerless about the fact that corporations, even foreign corporations like BP, can now essentially spend billions of dollars to buy US elections. It's just wrong. It's morally wrong. It's un-American. And the Supreme Court 5 should be ashamed of themselves. Shame! So we're putting them on trial in front of the American people. Big Corporations have their billions. We have our jars of pennies. And we're going to fight back. We're going to collect millions of pennies and put moral heat on politicians, corporations, and the 5 Republican villains who sit on Supreme Court.

Add yourself to the facebook page here

There's going to be a small kick-off action at Noon this Monday June 21 in front of the Supreme Court. Bring your pennies and be in a video shoot. The video will promote a National Day of Action in front of every local Congressional office when Congress is home in August.

Update: Cliff Schecter notes that Sen. Obama has condemned the decision, but Sen. Clinton, who stands to benefit most from depressed youth turnout, is mum. Curious. And disappointing.
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As you may have heard, the Supreme Court issued a decision today upholding Indiana's photo ID law. By a vote of 6 - 3 the court determined that Indiana's photo ID law, which requires all voters have a valid government issued photo ID listing their current address, was necessary to prevent voter fraud. This, despite the fact that the court admitted there was no evidence of such fraud ever taking place in Indiana.

This ruling could have potentially huge repercussions in the upcoming Indiana Primary. According to Rock the Vote polling data, almost 1 in 5 18 - 29 year olds do not own valid photo ID listing their most recent address. Young voters are highly transient. We move from state to state, town to town, dorm to dorm for years. I'm 29 years old and I've lived in 9 different residences and 3 different states in the last 12 years. I'm about as politically active as you can be, but under such stringent photo-ID laws, I probably would not have been able to vote at least 9 of those years.

Worse, the ruling not only applied to Indiana but left the door wide open for similar challenges in other states - creating the potential for a landslide of voter suppression in the November election.

This could be a huge deal if Republicans play hardball (and when don't they play hardball). Let me repeat, Rock the Vote estimates that this could disenfranchise 1 in 5 young voters. That's huge - millions of people huge - particularly in a year where we are seeing incredible gains in youth participation.

Rock the Vote sent out an email noting the backwards thinking in the Supreme Court's decision:

) The Court admits in its ruling that the reasoning behind imposing this strict law – the desire to prevent voter fraud – was inapplicable in Indiana. In its ruling, the Court stated "the record contains no evidence that the fraud…in-person voter impersonation at polling places – has actually occurred in Indiana…" (page 2, emphasis added)

2) The Court also downgrades the constitutional right to vote. Justice Scalia, joined by Justices Thomas and Alito, stated "petitioners' premise that the voter-identification law might have imposed a special burden on some voters is irrelevant." (page 3, emphasis added)

3) Finally, the Court states that the burden of obtaining this identification is not "a significant increase over the usual burdens of voting" (page 3), reiterating the sentiment behind the Seventh Circuit's shocking statement that voters who do not obtain the required identification are choosing to "disenfranchise themselves" rather than go to "the expense of obtaining a photo ID." (Crawford v. Marion County Election Bd., 472 F.3d 949, 952 (7th Cir. 2007), cert. granted, 168 L. Ed 2d 809 (2007))

The ACLU, Rock the Vote, YDA, Common Cause, and Speaker Pelosi's office have all issued statements (though some curiously leave young people out of the affected constituencies.

Shorter version: this is bad.

The Supreme Court handed down a decision this week against x-high schooler Joseph Frederick who created the banner “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” during a parade in support of the Winter Olympics.

“It remains to be seen what far-reaching effects the decision will have on students' free-speech rights. There's still a great deal of confusion regarding the issue since there are really no hard-and-fast rules concerning what forms of speech are acceptable when you're a student — and which ones could land you in front of a judge.”

When students ask Witold "Vic" Walczak — the legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania — for a general rule of thumb when it comes to students' First Amendment rights, "What I usually tell them is, if it involves political or religious speech, you've got fairly extensive rights. Beyond that, not so much. Truth be told, students did not have significant expressive rights before now, except when it dealt with religious and political [matters]." MTV

Me: Damn… were did those free speech rights go?
Answer: Did you check between the cushions of the supreme court?

more below the jump