As former President Donald Trump moves to secure a bond that would allow him to appeal the massive $465 million civil judgment against him in New York, an unlikely ally may emerge from the Supreme Court: The late liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Specifically, Ginsburg’s landmark 2019 opinion on excessive fines that she authored before passing away.
In the case Timbs v. Indiana, Ginsburg wrote the unanimous ruling. Ginsburg and the Supreme Court determined the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on excessive fines applies not just to the federal government, but to state and local jurisdictions as well.
Her powerful opinion traced the principle’s lineage back to the Magna Carta’s requirements that penalties “be proportioned to the wrong” and not deprive one of their livelihood.
“Exorbitant tolls undermine other constitutional liberties,” Ginsburg ruled, reinforcing how protections against excessive financial punishments are a critical part of the U.S. constitution’s civil liberty guarantees.
The ruling marked the first time the Supreme Court explicitly extended the Eighth Amendment’s excessive fines clause to constrain states — in addition to the federal government.
Ginsburg’s opinion joined other Bill of Rights provisions like due process and protections against cruel and unusual punishment in being deemed applicable at all levels.
Legal scholars contend this established precedent could now provide Trump’s lawyers a potential avenue to challenge the jaw-dropping financial penalty levied against him by a New York state judge as a violation of his constitutional rights.
In an op-ed for The Los Angeles Daily News, writer Susan Shelley outlined how Ginsburg’s reasoning in Timbs v. Indiana effectively prohibits the “exorbitant” fines Trump now faces.
The courts ruled Trump misrepresented his asset valuations to banks and fined him hundreds of millions of dollars as punishment — despite the banks arguing on his behalf.
The punishment, Shelley argues, is grossly disproportionate to the actions at issue and therefore violates Ginsburg’s ruling in 2019.
“This was a civil fraud trial, without a jury, in which the judge found Trump guilty of giving his assets a too-high valuation to get good loan terms, even though the bank adjusted those values downward before approving a loan that was paid back fully and on time, with interest,” Shelley wrote.
While the Timbs case involved a more modest asset forfeiture of $42,000, Ginsburg’s sweeping constitutional logic centered on fines being reasonably “proportioned” regardless of numeric value or government jurisdiction.
This establishes legal grounds for Trump. His lawyers could argue New York’s penalty qualifies as an excessive financial punishment aimed more at punitive retaliation than reasonable accounting.
For Trump and his Republican allies who reviled Ginsburg as an exemplar of liberal judicial activism, suddenly finding their legal fortunes partially resting on one of her final Court opinions adds an air of irony.
Yet as Trump mulls his next move, the late justice’s powerful Eighth Amendment reasoning may prove to be his most key defense against what his team has branded as a partisan “lawfare” attack disguised as a civil offense.
In his fight against the courts, Trump could leverage Ginsburg’s civil liberties framework to his benefit – an unlikely ally in the lead up to the all-important 2024 presidential election.
The Horn editorial team