Why Obama Keeps Losing at the Supreme Court

In cases before the Supreme Court last year, President Barack Obama’s Justice Department relied on outlandish legal theories that pushed a constitutional interpretation of extreme federal power. That posture led to unanimous losses in three very different areas of law: religious liberty (Hosanna-Tabor Church v. EEOC), criminal procedure (U.S. v. Jones) and property rights (Sackett v. EPA).

A year later, as the Court prepares to rule on affirmative action, the Voting Rights Act and gay marriage, the administration’s track record hasn’t improved. Notwithstanding the technical win on the health-care law, which was only achieved thanks to Chief Justice John Roberts’s controversial decision to rewrite it, the government has continued to suffer unanimous defeats. Not all its cases are losers, to be sure, but this administration’s pursuit of expansive authority tends to lose big.

Consider another major case from the 2011-12 term: Arizona v. U.S.

The conventional narrative is that the Supreme Court smacked down a perniciously anti-immigrant Arizona law that gave state police more power to enforce immigration laws. That interpretation simply isn’t correct. Only four sections of the law reached the Supreme Court — most of its provisions weren’t even challenged — and the U.S. won split decisions on three and unanimously lost the fourth.

http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/why-obama-keeps-losing-supreme-court