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Comment by kennywinker | Hacker News Reader

Coming soon - supreme court declares that federal government can’t regulate phone calls because constitution doesn’t give a right to no annoying calls. “It’s up for the states to decide” says majority opinion.

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Inter-state phone calls are clearly subject to the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution, and therefore within the regulatory purview of the US Congress. Even Clarence Thomas would agree.

Instead, they'd say that Congress didn't clearly intend for the FCC to be able to regulate phone calls.

More likely, it would actually be the court ruling that the legislature is not allowed to delegate its authority to regulate phone calls to the FCC.

Heh you joke but look up laws related to door-to-door sales. Despite the fact there isn't a homeowner in the country that wants people to physically come on their property, interrupt their day and spam them to their face - it is impossible to get a law passed preventing it.

Have you heard of these things called trespassing laws? And stand your ground laws? Don't need a "no soliciting" law if you got those. All you have to do is say you felt threatened by the salesperson and thought they were going for a gun. /s

You say "there isn't a homeowner in the country that wants people to..." as if that should have some bearing on how the Court determines cases.

The job of the Court is not to determine what's good or bad policy, or to react based on people's wishes. The Court's job is to interpret the laws through the lens of the Constitution. If the Constitution doesn't give Congress the authority to do something (as it certainly wouldn't in your example, see Article I Section 8 [1]), it's the job of the Court to strike down the law no matter how many people would like the law.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlei

that might be the "Court's job", but that doesn't mean they will be doing their job without extreme personal/political bias that allows them to bend the lens to their liking.

They are 100% reacting to people's wishes, even if CWuestefeld thinks they are not.

If your interpretation of the role of the federal government is true, there are thousands of laws - such that we’re looking at a meltdown of civil society in america if they’re all overturned. But a theocratic and biased court is now using that interpretation to strike down the specific laws they were appointed to break. Not all the laws that fall outside that interpretation, just the ones they don’t like.

You can’t have it both ways. Either you have a civil society with things like an FDA and an EPA, or you have none of that and a deeply dysfunctional country.

So if we're not to use the Constitution to determine what are the proper legal powers of the federal government, how can we decide what the rules are to be? It seems like you're advocating just tossing out the Constitution since it's inconvenient.

Well the system we had before the american taliban took over the court was working pretty well - inferring rights, and responsibilities from an agreed upon intent of the constitution - i.e. freedom, separation of church and state, federal oversight of cross-state issues, etc.

That sounds nice in theory but intractable when 40% of the country agree on one ‘intent’ and 40% agree on a dramatically different ‘intent’.

This action is pursuant to the TRACED Act

https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/151

> This bill establishes rules and requirements to deter criminal robocall violations.

> Specifically, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) must [do stuff related to caller ID]. The bill also implements a forfeiture penalty for violations (with or without intent) of the prohibitions on certain robocalls.

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