Politics

Ask Jordan: Could the Supreme Court stop presidential immunity reform?

Published

2 years ago

November 11, 2024

Ask Jordan: Could the Supreme Court stop presidential immunity reform?

“If Congress passes a law that says a president isn’t immune from criminal acts committed in office, could the Supreme Court decide the law is unconstitutional even though there’s nothing in the Constitution about it? Could it stand (assuming this partisan Court followed the law for a change)? Or does this horrible immunity decision make that impossible?”

— Lisa Ruml, Dover, New Jersey

Hi Lisa,

Yes, the current Supreme Court could (and likely would) say that such a law is unconstitutional. While I agree with you that the immunity ruling in Trump v. United States was unfounded, the Supreme Court is nonetheless seen as the decider of constitutional meaning. With that in mind, the ruling takes issue with your premise that there’s nothing in the Constitution about immunity, because the court framed its decision against the backdrop of “our constitutional structure of separated powers.”

To be sure, there are situations where Congress can override a Supreme Court ruling by passing a law. If there’s a decision about what a law means (as opposed to what the Constitution means), Congress can pass a new law addressing that ruling. For example, then-President Barack Obama signed into law the 2009 Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Actwhich overrode a 2007 case that was decided on statutory (not constitutional) grounds. The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had noted in her 2007 dissent that “the ball is in Congress’ court” — and Congress acted.

The political response to the immunity ruling highlights this reality. The background I laid out above is probably the reason that President Joe Biden’s court reform support includes a constitutional amendment saying former presidents aren’t immune from prosecution, as opposed to a regular law saying so. An amendment is of course more difficult to accomplishthough it has happened 27 times before — with agreement of two-thirds of the House and Senate, plus three-quarters of the states.

Another long-shot way to overturn the immunity ruling is for the court to do so directly. Absent an unlikely change of heart by the current justices, that would hinge on a new court composition, which could take years to happen, if it ever does. The 2022 Dobbs ruling overturning 1973’s Roe v. Wade was the product of a decades-long conservative legal movement push to remake the courts. Dobbs has likewise sparked a backlash, but whether it prompts a movement that remakes the Supreme Court remains to be seen. Without a similar movement in response to this era’s rulings, we may be stuck with them.

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Jordan Rubin

Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro,” a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined BLN, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.

Politics

World Cup fuels ticketing reform demands

Published

6 hours ago

June 21, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Demands are growing for a political reckoning over ticket scams at the World Cup — and beyond.

The National Independent Venue Association and Fan Alliance, organizations representing and advocating for entertainment venues and artists respectively, sent a joint letter to Congress on Thursday, calling on lawmakers to ban speculative and ghost tickets, cases where resellers flog tickets they don’t actually have.

The letter — addressed to Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer — includes nearly two dozen accounts of fans who say they were scammed out of thousands of dollars trying to get tickets to the World Cup, which began last week. The groups are also asking fans to share their own stories with elected officials via the Fix the Tix Fan Action Center that launched last week.

“Every one of these stories erodes the public’s faith that consumers should and will be protected from fraud,” NIVA Executive Director Stephen Parker and Fan Alliance founder Donald Cohen wrote. “We urge Congress to work with us to prevent fraud like this in the future and finally enact ticket resale consumer protections that will protect Americans and ensure affordability.”

The letter flagged fans like Dacy Gillespie, who bought World Cup tickets for her sons on Christmas, only to learn on match day — months later — that the seller couldn’t deliver them. And Skylie Shore, who Parker and Cohen said spent well over $6,000 on tickets to the Scotland-Haiti match on June 13, but was forced to wait outside the stadium because she couldn’t access them as fans marched in on gameday.

“These examples reveal a consistent pattern: consumer deception, speculative ticket sales, and broken-hearted American families at the hands of resale ticketing companies like StubHub,” Parker and Cohen wrote.

In a statement, StubHub spokesperson Jack Sterne said that the platform does not allow speculative ticket sales, and blamed FIFA for users’ difficulty in accessing their tickets.

“We understand that attending the World Cup represents a significant investment in time and money, and we take our responsibility to every fan who books through our platform seriously,” Sterne said in a statement. “Many of the issues fans are facing trace back to the event organizer’s technology infrastructure, newly announced transfer restrictions, and a new app that was launched just a month ago.”

In response, FIFA said in a statement that the organization “can guarantee the validity and delivery of tickets purchased through its official platforms” and that FIFA.com/tickets “is the official ticket sales channel” for the tournament.

NIVA and Fan Alliance are urging congressional leadership to place universal price-gouging limits on ticket resale, enact stringent fines on perpetrators and a violation-reporting mechanism for ticket scams, and require secondary ticketing platforms to produce data on ticket fulfillment and consumer complaints.

The groups are not the only ones monitoring for evidence of shady ticket practices. Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway issued a consumer guidance in advance of the tournament, urging match-goers to beware of fraud and promising to hold offenders accountable. And the FBI in May put out a public service announcement, warning fans against purchasing tickets on copycat websites modeled on FIFA’s.

“With the World Cup coming to Kansas City, excitement is high and, unfortunately, so is the potential for fraud,” Hanaway said in her statement. “Missourians should be able to enjoy this once-in-a-generation event without fear of being deceived. My office will hold accountable anyone who seeks to exploit our families, and we stand ready to assist anyone who encounters suspicious activity.”