Neil Gorsuch Slams Supreme Court Ruling: ‘Trash Heap’
Neil Gorsuch Slams Supreme Court Ruling: ‘Trash Heap’
Published Jun 14, 2024 at 12:12 PM EDTUpdated Jun 14, 2024 at 5:00 PM EDT01:05
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Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch wants the Supreme Court to correct its “trash heap” ruling in a bankruptcy case.
On Friday, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in the case Office of the United States Trustee v. John Q. Hammons Fall 2006, LLC.
The case centered on a 2017 law that increased quarterly fees large companies paid to fund the U.S. Trustee. However, North Carolina and Alabama, not part of the U.S. Trustee program, did not impose a matching fee increase in their bankruptcy courses, leading to a disparity in how much companies paid, according to Reuters. In 2022, the court found that the increase was unconstitutional.
In this case, the court heard arguments about whether refunds should be issued to fix this previous constitutional violation. The majority of the court’s justices ruled that prospective parity, rather than refunds, would be the proper remedy.
Newsweek reached out to the Supreme Court’s public information office for comment via email.
“Respondents, a group of Chapter 11 debtors, argue that they are entitled to a refund. But, as respondents forthrightly concede, adopting their preferred remedy would require us to undercut congressional intent and transform, by judicial fiat, a program that Congress designed to be self-funding into an estimated $326 million bill for taxpayers,” the majority opinion, authored by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, reads.
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The case divided the conservatives on the court. Justices John Roberts, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh joined the liberal justices in the majority opinion, while Justices Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett dissented.
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Gorsuch, who wrote the dissenting opinion, offered a scathing rebuke of the majority in the case, suggesting they believe the value of a constitutional wrong is “not much.” He argued that the constitutional violations brought forth in the case should be refunded.
“Two years ago, we held that this geographically discriminatory treatment violated the Constitution’s Bankruptcy Clause— a provision that, we stressed, was not ‘toothless,'” he wrote. “Today, however, the Court performs a remedial root canal, permitting the government to keep the cash it extracted from its unconstitutional fee regime.”
He slammed the majority for allegedly refusing “to recognize what remedy our cases call for when that kind of past wrong is established,” referring to “damages.”
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In a footnote to his dissent, Gorsuch bla
