This is little more than a doubly-disappointed… squib.

I do understand that Second Amendment absolutists are the firm majority at the Supremes. All that means is that there will be more senseless death, often at the hands of profoundly mentally-ill shooters in the future, as we’ve seen in the past — it will undoubtedly occur. “Oh well“, says the majority (and in the view of the majority, even Congress cannot change this — it is some form of mandated lunacy — by the Constitution).

I disagree, but that is the reality of the alignments in this set of nine.

I write instead to note that in a separate decision this morning, conservative Justice Gorsuch joined the Brown-Jackson dissent, making four for the dissent — about what steps the government must take, before declaring an asylum seeker removable, en absentia. That is a moderately encouraging development, as it suggests he will garner Roberts’ vote, in more important immigration matters — in the future.

At least that is how I see it, as Roberts himself well knows this decision today sits on a legal fiction. The consolidated cases decided this morning — ones which will get far less press than bump stocks — is Campos-Chaves, et al. v. Garland, and here is the best of the dissent:

…[T]he majority says that a noncitizen who receives a noncompliant NTA followed by a paragraph (2) notice can always “attend the hearing” to protest the deficient NTA. Ibid. That is entirely beside the point. Congress put the burden on the Government to send complete NTAs to noncitizens facing removal every time it initiates a removal proceeding. Instead of requiring the Government to shoulder that burden, the majority effectively shifts it onto the noncitizens — individuals perhaps unfamiliar with this country and its laws — tasking them with the responsibility of addressing the Government’s mistakes. That is not the statute Congress wrote. . . .

When the Government issues an NTA under paragraph (1) that lacks time and date information but follows up with a notice under paragraph (2) that sets the time and date of a removal hearing that the noncitizen subsequently misses, I fully understand the instinct to conclude that the Government’s initial lack of compliance was insignificant.

Some might even think it unfair that noncitizens could seek rescission of their removal orders based on an initial notice that seems only technically defective, given the Government’s subsequent action. My response to them is simple: Congress thought otherwise. The statute it wrote specifically establishes the what, when, and how of the notice that is due to noncitizens facing removal. The statute also allows noncitizens who have been ordered removed in absentia to seek rescission of the removal order if the required notice is not received. I can no more judge that policy decision than I can change it. Today, the Court makes the unfortunate mistake of doing both….

This is me, trying to tease a silver lining, out of a day of dark gray clouds… onward. Out, into the bright sunshine now.

नमस्ते