S7 Ep20: SCOTUS Again Takes on the 2nd Amendment—What Could Go Wrong?

What It Covers

Strict Scrutiny hosts Kate Shaw and Steve Vladeck analyze the Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling striking down Trump's tariffs, examine lower court defiance patterns across 547 cases, preview the February SCOTUS sitting including a Second Amendment drug-user firearms case, and discuss the asylum case Noem v. Al Otro Lado heading to the March sitting.

Key Questions Answered

• •Tariff ruling coalition shift: Track Kavanaugh, not Gorsuch, as the swing vote most likely to support Trump. In the tariffs case, Kavanaugh joined Thomas and Alito in dissent while Gorsuch joined the majority. Every publicly visible Trump-era vote shows Roberts, Barrett, and Gorsuch voting against Trump more frequently than Kavanaugh, reframing this as the Roberts-Barrett court in consequential cases.
• •Major Questions Doctrine asymmetry: Barrett's concurrence signals she sees minimal daylight between the major questions doctrine and existing statutory interpretation canons. This matters for future Democratic administrations — the doctrine can veto ambitious executive action when Congress is gridlocked. Getting to five votes against the doctrine requires Barrett plus four others, making her position a critical variable to monitor in future regulatory cases.
• •Court defiance scale: DOJ filed a list of over 50 violations across 547 cases in a single New Jersey district after a court ordered compliance accounting. A Minnesota judge separately documented nearly 100 violations in January alone. The pattern reflects both deliberate noncompliance culture at DHS and logistical collapse — insufficient lawyers, no agency responsiveness to DOJ counsel, and no attorney general enforcement pressure.
• •Contempt sanctions targeting: Judge Provenzino in Minnesota fined a JAG lawyer $500 per day for failing to return a detained immigrant's documents after a release order. Vladeck argues sanctions must climb the chain of command to agency heads and senior officials, not JAG lawyers who lack control over DHS compliance. Courts that threaten high-level appearances should follow through to create meaningful accountability pressure.
• •Second Amendment drug-user case mechanics: In United States v. Hamane, the court must choose between the strict Bruen test requiring a near-identical historical analog and the looser Rahimi test requiring only a general historical principle. The government points to historical habitual drunkard laws to justify prohibiting firearm possession by unlawful drug users. The defendant's alleged Iranian Revolutionary Guard connections may make this another case where the court's sympathy for the defendant is limited.
• •Asylum case Noem v. Al Otro Lado: The Supreme Court took this case despite no circuit split, signaling the Trump administration wants a ruling permitting categorical asylum denial for anyone stopped on the Mexican side of the border. If the court rules for the government, the administration gains a tool to block asylum claims before individuals physically reach a port of entry, effectively ending asylum processing without legislative action.