For a woman who cannot get into law school (she failed her "baby Bar" exam last week), Kim Kardashian sure made legal waves.
The Supreme Court handed down a 9-0 decision today on the First Step Act, also known as the Kim Kardashian Law because of her success in lobbying President Donald John Trump to support the proposal. Her law was one of the few truly bipartisan acts passed by Congress in the past two decades.
Reuters reported, "The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled that potentially hundreds of low-level crack cocaine offenders cannot benefit under a 2018 federal law that reduced certain prison sentences in part to address racial disparities detrimental to black [criminals].
"The justices in an opinion by conservative Justice Clarence Thomas ruled 9-0 against Tarahrick Terry of Florida, who had asked them to include offenders like him -- people who had been arrested in possession of small amounts of crack cocaine -- within the scope of the First Step Act signed into law by former President Donald Trump.
"The First Step Act provision in question made retroactive another 2010 law, called the Fair Sentencing Act, that reduced a disparity that had left sentencing for crack cocaine crimes more severe than for powder cocaine crimes."
The justices refused to extend the law beyond what Congress wrote.
In her concurring opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor urged Congress to change the law.
The argument is that since most crack cocaine criminals are black and most powder cocaine criminals are white, the sentences should be the same. That is a superficial argument given the disparity in the potency of the drug and the harm crack does to society.
But the real winner in all this is Kardashian, who wants to be something more than a celebrity with a cartoonish body, four kids, three ex-husbands, and a ton of money. Her father was a criminal defense lawyer (part of OJ Simpson's dream team), which explains why she is siding with convicts. Given her admitted drug use as a teen, perhaps she feels some guilt over not being arrested.
As for Terry, his 15 1/2-year sentence for 3.9 grams of crack has been upheld by appellate courts including the highest in the land. If the Supreme Court unanimously upholds your sentence, you got what you deserved.
The Biden administration sided with Terry. After all, the president's son is a cokehead.
But the law is the law.
As Justice Thomas wrote, "In light of the clear text, we hold that §2(a) of the Fair Sentencing Act modified the statutory penalties only for subparagraph (A) and (B) crack offenses—that is, the offenses that triggered mandatory-minimum penalties. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed."
Clear text.
There's a novel concept in Washington.
The 9-0 vote supports Jonathan Turley's theory that the justices are banding together as a warning to Democrats not to try to stack the court. Sotomayor's concurring opinion could have easily become a dissent but they decided to hang together rather than hang separately.
Democrats may regret threatening to pack the court, because Breyer, Kagan, and Sotomayor may pick up the habit of siding with conservatives.
That's the article: Supreme Court upholds Kim Kardashian Law
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