The Supreme Court’s Next Target Is Marriage Equality. It Won’t Be the Last.

[maestrob]

Trust the liberal justices: Dobbs puts many other rights in grave and immediate jeopardy.
BY MARK JOSEPH STERN
JUNE 24, 20221:41


Slate Magazine article here:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... ality.html

[jserraglio]

Yes. And when Clarence finally breaks his self-imposed three decades of monastic Grand Silence and tells you what his fellows are hellbent to do, believe him, not them.

[Rach3]

https://www.postalley.org/2022/06/27/th ... s-plunged/

[maestrob]

https://www.postalley.org/2022/06/27/th ... s-plunged/

Why, oh why, are so many people surprised and dismayed that we were lied to by people with no integrity?

It boggles the mind.

These radical right wingers cannot be reasoned with or appeased. They can only be defeated.

Let's get to work before it's too late.

Never forget.

[Rach3]

Continued assault on voting and allowing more lawsuits against the media:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/28/politics ... index.html

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/2 ... 2_o759.pdf

[Rach3]

State’s Rights Thomas, and his fellow Confederates, vote to deny a US serviceman relief for war -related injury when Texas denys him that relief in violation of Federal law.Thankfully,Thomas lost, this time:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/2 ... 3_o758.pdf

[jserraglio]

Thomas does seem to have found his voice after 30 years.

[Rach3]

From Huffington Post today:

" The Supreme Court is allegedly the most passive, slowest-moving branch of government. But in a little more than one week’s time, the court may end up rewriting as much American law as any Congress or presidency in recent memory.



Just consider what the court has done since last Tuesday:


― It has invalidated gun restrictions in states that hold about one-fourth of the population and created a new constitutional standard for firearm restrictions that will make defending other limits (including parts of a new law that President Joe Biden signed last week) even more difficult.


― It has forced publicly funded school voucher programs to include religious establishments and required districts to allow coach-led, post-game prayers on the field, and in the process dispensed with a decades-old legal test designed to prevent official government endorsements of faith.


― It has ended the right to an abortion, effectively allowing the procedure to be illegal or nearly illegal across a broad swath of the country, while also rejecting the constitutional foundation of privacy rights that protect same-sex marriage and use of contraception.


To put things a bit differently, the court has gutted limits on gun possession, severely weakened the wall between church and state, and taken away a right that has existed for nearly 50 years ― reinterpreting the First, Second, Fifth, Ninth and 14th Amendments in the process.

And it’s not done yet.


The final batch of opinions due out Thursday includes a case about the Environmental Protection Agency and climate change that could, as HuffPost’s Paul Blumenthal wrote earlier this year, “crush the ability” of the federal government to regulate everything from toxins in the water to the safety of consumer products.


About the only major issue on which the court isn’t writing new doctrine is race. And that will likely happen next year, when the justices take up cases that could end affirmative action and eviscerate what’s left of the Voting Rights Act.


How you feel about these changes depends, obviously, on where you come down on issues like abortion, guns and school prayer. But it also depends on what role you think the Supreme Court should play in governing ― and more specifically, when it ought to be making the kind of sweeping changes it just unleashed."

( Rach3: Power always corrupts.)

[Belle]

This article is just about right: Nero plays his fiddle (not very well).

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/06/2 ... -activist/

You're a laughing stock. Please do grow up soon; Russian troubles are REALLY heading your way (and Mrs. Clinton has nothing to do with it; this time it's legitimate).

Get your maps out and see how close Ukraine is to NATO countries. You'll soon find out what it's like dealing with a real tyrant who doesn't care how many he kills - unlike the tinpot 'tyrant' Donald Trump, who hasn't got a friend in the entire world - let alone an army to kill his opponents.

[barney]

I thought you were telling us a year ago he has 70 million friends.

[jserraglio]

Your country is a laughing stock and nobody is laughing harder than the Chinese

You're a laughing stock. Please do grow up soon; Russian troubles are REALLY heading your way

On June 28, China was laughing at us; on the 29th, suddenly it’s Russia doing the laughing.

The whole world is laughing at us!!!

Are you aware that you’re trolling a Trump tagline, dear Belle? All the while cowering beneath the U.S. military umbrella, fearful of attack from both Russia and China.

You are biting my hand, Belle, the same hand that with my hard-earned tax dollars shields you and the oodles of wealth you flaunt.

I await your apology. Do the decent thing for once in your life.

Meanwhile, what the Russian threat to NATO has to do with the topic of this thread, marriage equality, I haven’t the slightest notion.

It is not uncommon for an insular people hailing from underpopulated regions to believe everybody else in the world thinks small. You exhibit just such Lilliputian thinking.

For instance, you project your own unfamiliarity with Ukraine onto America. Ignorant as you yourself admit to be about most things in America, you seem quite unaware that millions of Ukrainians have made their home here in North America. There are almost 50,000 Ukrainian-Americans living about 10 miles from me: their churches and other cultural institutions being found all over my city.

But it doesn’t seem to matter to you what the topic is. You have your anti-American axe poised to grind and once it is sharpened, you hack away in petty resentment.

[Rach3]

Thomas,Alito,and Gorsuch object to the Court's unwillingness to review a case that would have enabled those 3 anti-Government fanatics to throw out New York's rules mandating health care workers be vaccinated against COVID:


https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/2 ... 3_3f14.pdf

Those 3 along with Barrett object to the Court's approving Biden's repeal of Trump's " Remain in Mexico" immigration asylum edict.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/2 ... 4_7l48.pdf

Let COVID in , but not asylum seekers .

[Rach3]

And next Term, SCOTUS will allow State legislatures to rig and/or over turn State and Federal election results, just int time for Trump's 2024 race:

Check out this gift article, at no cost to you: The justices will look next term at a case from North Carolina, where Republicans want to restore a redistricting map rejected by the state’s supreme court.

https://wapo.st/3Otote9

[maestrob]

You're right. This is alarming.

[Rach3]

And next Term, SCOTUS will allow State legislatures to rig and/or over turn State and Federal election results, just int time for Trump's 2024 race:

In cases earlier this Term, 4 of the Justices indicated an interest in looking at the "State legislature doctrine", and have already ruled Federal Courts should not get involved in State elections.

[maestrob]

And next Term, SCOTUS will allow State legislatures to rig and/or over turn State and Federal election results, just int time for Trump's 2024 race:

In cases earlier this Term, 4 of the Justices indicated an interest in looking at the "State legislature doctrine", and have already ruled Federal Courts should not get involved in State elections.

If that's so, then SCOTUS should refuse to hear such cases, no?

[Rach3]

If that's so, then SCOTUS should refuse to hear such cases, no?

Correct, and they have reversed at least one Federal Court below that did get involved.

[Rach3]

Btw, tell your GOP friends and family that thanks to their support of Trump , enabling his appointment of 3 crazies to SCOTUS, as well as GOP Federal and State legislators of like mind, their daughters and granddaughters may not have access to contraception, back to the rhythm method only. The ladies need to choose wisely.The ladies’ first experience may be your friends’ or families’ new “ in-law.”

[Rach3]

An analysis of Justice Clarence Thomas' views on the superiority of males, guns, and Clarence Thomas:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-co ... new-yorker


He even has privileged Frat Boy Kavanaugh worried ( I suspect Thomas does not like Kavanaugh ).

[Rach3]

Reverend Alito goes to Rome

By Linda Greenhouse,NYT, Aug.11,2022

(Ms. Greenhouse, winner of a 1998 Pulitzer Prize, reported on the Supreme Court for The Times from 1978 to 2008 and was a contributing Opinion writer from 2009 to 2021.)
Barely a month after handing down the majority opinion that erased the right to abortion, Justice Samuel Alito traveled to Rome to give a keynote address at a “religious liberty summit” convened by the Religious Liberty Initiative of the University of Notre Dame’s law school. As the video that Notre Dame posted of the bearded justice delivering his remarks made clear, this was a victory lap.

The press coverage of that speech last month mainly focused on his snarky comments about world leaders who had the effrontery to criticize what the Supreme Court had done in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. “One of these was former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, but he paid the price,” Justice Alito deadpanned as laughter filled the majestic Galleria Colonna.

One can debate the degree of bad taste displayed by such a remark, but that’s not my concern. What interests me about his talk was its substance: a call to arms on behalf of religion.

“The challenge for those who want to protect religious liberty in the United States, Europe and other similar places,” Justice Alito said, “is to convince people who are not religious that religious liberty is worth special protection.”

On one level, there is nothing surprising about such a declaration from Justice Alito. We know where he stands on religion. He is the author of a long string of opinions that have elevated the free exercise of religion above civil society’s other values, including the right not to be discriminated against and the right to enjoy benefits intended for all. He wrote a concurring opinion in June’s astonishing decision that permitted a high school football coach to commandeer the 50-yard line after games for his personal prayers over the public school district’s objection.

He was a vigorous dissenter during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, when the court upheld the attendance limits that governments were placing on religious as well as secular gatherings. And later, when the court reversed itself on that issue after Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s arrival, he was part of the five-member majority that established a new “most favored nation” status for religion — meaning that any time the government, for whatever reason, grants a secular entity an exemption from a restriction or regulation, the failure to offer religion a similar exemption is presumptively unconstitutional.

So yes, we know all that. But Justice Alito’s Notre Dame speech still merits close examination for what it reveals about the assumptions built into his worldview. What does it mean, for example, to assert that it is “people who are not religious” who need to be persuaded that religion is worthy of special treatment? Do all religiously observant people naturally believe that religion merits more protections than other values? There’s scant evidence for that; in any event, that has not been our law, at least not until recently. Still on the books is a 1990 decision, Employment Division v. Smith, which provides that the Constitution’s free exercise clause offers no special religious exemption from a “neutral” law that is “generally applicable.” That decision’s author was Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the more overtly religious people to sit on the Supreme Court in modern times.

Justice Alito followed his observation with a scornful appraisal of law professors (presumably exempting the many in attendance at his speech). “A dominant view among legal academics,” he said, was that society should treat religion “just like any other passionate personal attachment, say rooting for a favorite sports team, pursuing a hobby or following a popular artist or group.”
Continuing, he noted that law professors often pose hypothetical scenarios, and he posed one of his own: Suppose a court had a rule against attorneys wearing headgear. Attorney A, a “rabid Green Bay Packers fan,” insists on wearing a Packers green and gold cap in the courtroom. Attorney B is an Orthodox Jew who wears a skullcap. Attorney C is a Muslim woman in hijab or any other head covering. “If A can’t wear his Packers hat, is it still possible to accommodate B and C?” Justice Alito asked. “Well, for me, the Constitution of the United States provides a clear answer. Some of my colleagues are not so sure. But for me, the text tells the story. The Constitution protects the free exercise of religion. It does not protect the free exercise of support for the Packers.”

Even aside from his swipe at his fellow justices who haven’t signed up for his crusade, to call this kind of talk simplistic is far too generous. Justices and legal scholars alike have struggled for decades to identify the right balance for religion within a pluralistic society, an effort Justice Alito reduced to a cartoonish either/or. Even were I willing to cut him some slack for loose talk among friends (I don’t know whether he was aware that Notre Dame would post the video online), I would still find the narrowness of his vision deeply disturbing. He offered no acknowledgment, none, of the harm that can occur when religion is elevated above all other claims to recognition and respect.

For example, in the aftermath of his opinion in the 2014 Hobby Lobby case, tens of thousands of women have never received the contraception coverage to which the Affordable Care Act entitled them because they work for employers with objections to particular forms of birth control. His opinion in 2020 extending the so-called ministerial exception to cover nonministerial employees of religious organizations stripped those employees of the protection of federal laws that prohibit job discrimination. And, of course, the very opinion he bragged about to his audience in Rome, an opinion that as I have recently explained was grounded in religious doctrine rather than constitutional law, took no account of its devastating impact on women.

In speeches as well as opinions, Justice Alito has warned of growing hostility to religion, and he did the same in Rome, denouncing what he called hostility to “at least the traditional religious beliefs that are contrary to the new moral code that is ascendant in some sectors.” This was the Alito of his opinion dissenting from the Obergefell v. Hodges decision, which recognized a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. He predicted then that “those who cling to old beliefs will be able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes, but if they repeat those views in public, they will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such.”

In Rome, more clearly than in the past, Justice Alito provided his own definition of religious liberty, an expansive definition that mirrored the court’s holding in this summer’s praying coach case. In that case, the school district in Bremerton, Wash., had offered the coach an alternate place where he could pray after the games. But the coach insisted that he felt religiously compelled to pray in public in full view of the spectator stands. The court, which in the past was notably stingy when it came to the free speech rights of public employees, endorsed this expression of militant Christianity.

In his Rome speech, Justice Alito did not refer explicitly to that case, but his definition of religious liberty underscored and explained the court’s remarkable departure. Religious liberty must mean more than simply “freedom of worship,” he said. “Freedom of worship means freedom to do these things that you like to do in the privacy of your home, or in your church or your synagogue or your mosque or your temple. But when you step outside into the public square, in the light of day, you had better behave yourself like a good secular citizen.” And he added, “That’s the problem that we face.”If that is a problem, it’s one that Justice Alito has solved for himself. His religion does not reside in the quiet recesses of his home or chambers. His is religion on the march. And that’s the problem the rest of us face now.

[Rach3]

A detailed,documented,and chilling look at what 6 of SCOTUS has become over time, now with Alito and Thomas calling the shots, Alex Jones ,Tucker Carlson, Proud Boys clones.The article is long, but if interested I can post if the link does not work or there is a paywall:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022 ... new-yorker

Here are some brief excerpts:

"During his confirmation hearings, Democratic senators—Joe Biden among them—pressed him to answer why, on his 1985 application for the Office of Legal Counsel job, he had listed membership in an organization called the Concerned Alumni of Princeton (cap). The group was made up of disgruntled former Princetonians who criticized various changes on campus, including coeducation and the university’s efforts to recruit minorities and public-school graduates. (Princeton, the group’s founder declared, should consist of “a body of men, relatively homogenous in interests and backgrounds.”) Senator Patrick Leahy told Alito he was puzzled that someone with his background would want to join such an ultra-Wasp club. Alito said that he didn’t recall joining the group, but had likely been prompted by his objection to the downgrading of the R.O.T.C. program, which cap also cared about (though not as much as it cared about preserving Princeton for élite white males). " (Rach3: What? You listed your membership in CAP on your application for White House Counsel, because you knew Ed Meese, then the US AG loved CAP, but later told the Senators you dont recall joining the group when they expressed criticism of CAP, thus of you ??!! That's 2 lies a your confirmation hearing.)...

While at the Solicitor General’s office, Alito wrote a memo defending police officers’ right to shoot fleeing suspects regardless of the threat they posed. The case involved a fifteen-year-old Black boy, Edward Garner, who, according to Alito’s memo, was killed by a Memphis police officer who “could see that his target” did “not appear to be armed.” (Garner was carrying a purse containing ten dollars.) An appellate court had upheld a civil-rights case brought by Garner’s father against the Memphis Police Department and city officials; the State of Tennessee was now appealing to the Supreme Court. Alito wrote:

'Any rule permitting the use of deadly force to stop a fleeing suspect must rest on the general principle that the state is justified in using whatever force is necessary to enforce its laws. Assuming that a fleeing felony suspect is entirely rational . . . what he is saying in effect is: “Kill me or allow me to escape, at least for now.” If every suspect could evade arrest by putting the state to this choice, societal order would quickly break down.'

The Supreme Court sided with Garner’s father. Writing for the majority, Justice Byron White declared, “It is not better that all felony suspects die than that they escape.”....

The Dobbs opinion is blinkered in similar ways. Alito emphasizes that the Roe decision immediately caused political fallout for “those on the losing side—those who sought to advance the State’s interest in fetal life.” Opponents of abortion “could no longer seek to persuade their elected representatives to adopt policies consistent with their views.” It’s strange, then, that Alito’s opinion shows so little interest in the workability or consequences of overruling Roe—especially given that he hammers Roe and Casey for establishing impracticable standards based on fluctuating knowledge about fetal development. Rebouché, the Temple law professor, said of Alito’s opinion, “The mentality is ‘This should have been illegal in the first place, so who cares about those people who had a legal right one day and woke up the next day and now it’s a crime?’ ”

Tonja Jacobi, of Emory, found Alito’s opinion appallingly lazy, given that it was issued half a century after Roe: “Even if you believe that life begins at conception—even if that were scientifically, demonstrably true—what do you do about that? Can you still ask someone to potentially sacrifice health and well-being—maybe their life—in favor of this other life? If I drive recklessly and put someone in the hospital and they’re going to die, I still have no obligation to give them my kidney. To me, the opinion elides the most difficult questions. It just reiterates arguments made by Justice William Rehnquist in his dissent in Roe.”

Alito’s opinion, Neil Siegel noted, condemns Roe for having “deepened division.” The nastiness of Alito’s opinion in Dobbs, he said, “performs exactly what it criticizes Roe for doing.”...


In the end, Alito may be angry for the same reasons that many conservatives of his demographic are angry—because they find their values increasingly contested; because they feel less culturally authoritative than they once were; because they want to exclude whom they want to exclude, and resent it when others push back. Neil Siegel told me he thought Alito was frustrated because he knows, at some level, that he is fundamentally “dissenting from American culture and where it is ineluctably heading—a society that is increasingly diverse and secular.” As Siegel put it, “The Supreme Court doesn’t really have the power to change that.” Maybe not. But Alito is clearly trying. ♦