Did SCOTUS Finally Wake Up to the Threat of State Nullification of Federal Law?

Politics
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Supreme Court declined to remove the lower court’s stay against the law.

Hopefully, the Supreme Court is finally catching on that this trend of back door nullification of Federal law needs to stop.

Texas’s SB8 and Missouri’s Second Amendment Preservation Act are both designed to evade Federal Judicial Review by employing private actors.

The intent is to restore the doctrine of nullification, a doctrine that was crushed, supposedly for good, at Appomattox Court House.

Of course, some of the other provisions of Missouri’s SAPA are facially unconstitutional.

https://house.mo.gov/billtracking/bills131/biltxt/intro/hb0436I.HTM#:~:text=(1)%20All%20federal%20acts%2C,invalid%20in%20this%20state%2C%20shall

Link to the text of SAPA.

Ultimately, this is NOT about gun control, abortion or any other specific issue.

For example, California has tried the same thing, except in their case against the gun industry rather than in favor.

But ultimately, their law should fall on the same grounds that Missouri’s and Texas’s laws must fall.

State’s cannot nullify, period.

State’s have tried to get around Federal Court jurisdiction by creating private rights of action, where the individual lawsuits could be stopped, but the underlying law could not be invalidated.

However, there is a fatal weakness in this strategy.

The Federal Government can sue the State directly in its sovereign capacity and seek a declaratory judgement. While these laws have removed individual State actors (Governor, Attorney General, other employees) from enforcement, ultimately they cannot remove the State itself from culpability.

United States v Missouri (captioned Missouri v United States at the Supreme Court) is exactly such a case. It is the sovereign United States against the sovereign Missouri. And there are clues that the United States will prevail at the Supreme Court (over the wishes of Thomas, Gorsuch and Alito).

Ultimately, I think the remaining Justice will rule that this sort of backhanded nullification is bad for the rule of law and must cease.

While I sympathize with the motivations of Missouri with SAPA, I absolutely cannot support this means of proceeding, any more than I can support what is going on in Texas and California.

The Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter of the Constitution, not the several States. Ultimately, States will be unable to evade their jurisdiction.

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Not a big deal.

Missouri remains a bumpstock-friendly, constitutional-carry state that always receives top scores from any relevant source in nearly every category for our inherent right to keep and bear arms.

The SCOTUS remains mostly sane. It’s only a matter of time before our right to own and use suppressors is restored. :wink:

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:face_vomiting: Oh how I despise that term.

Pity.