The Supreme Court ended its term with a flurry of important decisions that covered a lot of important ground. How did it do? There are some clunkers on the list, but overall I think their performance was better than most liberals give credit for.
- Affirmative action: A poorly argued decision that relies on a time limit invented out of whole cloth. Nonetheless, its effect is modest and the end result was most likely both inevitable and popular.
- Watersheds. The worst of the recent decisions. Discards the plain text of Congress in favor of a tortured rule that mostly reflects personal pique.
- Gerrymandering. A surprising but correct decision that racial gerrymandering remains illegal under the Voting Rights Act.
- Native American adoptions. Correctly concluded that Congress has the right to give preference to tribal families in adoption decisions involving native children.
- Gay marriage. This one is hard. The decision to allow public businesses to discriminate against couples who want to celebrate gay marriages is unpalatable, but there's a genuine free speech issue here that's entirely distinct from mere conduct. I'm not so sure the Court got this wrong.
- Student loans. A very close call that hinges on arguably equivocal text. I think the Court might have ended up barely on the correct side of this, but I'm not entirely sure.
- Independent state legislature. An easy and clearly correct decision against right-wing nutbaggery. Of course state legislatures are "bound by the provisions of the very documents that give them life."
- Border arrests. Another easy and correct decision. Arrest priorities at the border are plainly a federal prerogative.
- Section 230. The Court was correct in refusing to get involved in a dispute over Section 230 oversight of internet platforms. The law is both clear and necessary, and it's up to Congress to change it if it desires.
Out of nine major decisions, I'd say the ending score is five correct; two close calls; one wrong but modestly so; and one plainly wrong. That's . . . not bad, all things considered.
As many people have already said elsewhere, the Court is allowed to choose the cases it will hear, and the lower court decisions determine what comes to their attention in the first place. So whether the balance of the Court's decisions are favorable or not has to be adjusted for the fact that they're hearing a lot of extreme cases that in other times wouldn't even be considered.
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This.
Assuming the Court *did* get 5 of these 9 cases right, made 2 "close calls", and got 2 wrong, any reasonable chart or graph ought to account for the extreme right-wing selection bias under which these cases (and many like them) get on the Court's docket.
The student loan forgiveness text seems pretty clear. Also, the plaintiffs didn't have standing to sue under any reasonable interpretation of standing.
The Court just made up a vague rule that says if the ramifications are big enough, the clear text of a law can be ignored.
Uh-oh. That Centrist Kevin guy is back.
Or maybe "that Realist Kevin" guy is here. We don't get to have everything our way, just because we know we're right. The other guys know they're right. That's why we have elections, courts, and compromises.
On the web design case- is it the same outcome if, instead of a gay couple, it is black man and a white woman?
The tenets of which religion are against black-white marriage?
From 2011, but I doubt it's changed much since then:
"Today, opposition to interracial marriage is low, but it still lingers. Among religious groups, evangelicals remain the most opposed to interracial marriage, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press (Pew)."
https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2011/june/opposition-to-interracial-marriage-lingers-among.html
But I don't think its part of their religion. Evangelicals could also be the most opposed to red light cameras. It doesn't mean their religion is the cause of their opposition. I agree its a slipper slope. But I think there is a fundamental difference between a small group of people blaming some archaic racist belief on their religion when there is no evidence that belief is an actual tenet of the religion versus, for example, the well documented tenet of Catholicism (about a quarter of our population is Catholic) being against gay marriage.
Religious text means whatever the believer wants it to mean. To take an extreme non-Christian example, many Muslims believe that an exhortation to women to "dress modestly" necessarily implies the burqa. There are parts of the Bible that can just as easily be construed to prohibit interracial marriage.
Also from 2019:
https://sojo.net/articles/christian-opposition-interracial-marriage-still-problem
Atticus argues that only certain, favored, organized religions are allowed to violate the Constitution.
The extremist court didnt say this, Atticus is just wildly throwing sheets on the wall to see what sticks.
"Atticus is just wildly throwing sheets on the wall to see what sticks."
IOW, trolling.
Indeed. And a particularly nasty one. Atticus has also made it clear -- very clear --that he's not a nice guy in real life. I wouldn't want to live on the same block as him, let alone have beer. OTOH, most of the regulars seem, interesting, congenial and have any number war stories they could share over a beer. Or two. Okay, Make it three.
You're first sentence is wrong in two ways. I never said anything about certain favored, religions. Just that, ideally, your objection just be based on some actual tenet of an actual religion and not just an excuse to act upon racism or bigotry. And it's also wrong because, per the supreme Court, they are not violating the constitution.
Some people just really want to believe their homophobia is sanctioned by "god" rather than their own prejudices.
I mean, they disavowed it in 2013, but Mormons said that interracial marriage was a sin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interracial_marriage_and_the_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-day_Saints#:~:text=In%20the%20past%2C%20leaders%20of,no%20longer%20considered%20a%20sin.
I'm not an expert on Mormonism, but I'm sure there's a splinter group of "Orthodox Mormons" or something out there, living with their multiple sister-wives in the mountains of Idaho or wherever, who still think interracial marriage is a sin and that the Mormon Church simply said it's not in 2013 to avoid lawsuits and protect their tax status.
Also, it's not like there's a Federal Application for Religious Licensing or anything. As far as I know, anybody can start a new religion or break off of an existing one at any time, and eventually be recognized as a "church" by the IRS. Considering how many sects of Protestantism there are... it wouldn't surprise me if there's at least one out there that opposes interracial marriage still (and maybe has escaped attention for it from the IRS, who generally doesn't allow racist institutions to be tax-exempt).
look hard enough and you'll find a sect somewhere that believes interracial marriage is ungodly. it might be small and obscure, obviously crazy and way, way, way out of the mainstream but as sure as i'm typing this, it exists. do the members of this sect also not deserve the court's/constitution's protections?
All it takes is a couple of Dobbs decisions to destroy the reputation of the SCOTUS. Pair that with the obvious financial corruption, and the Roberts court is well on the way. Shame.
This certainly seems like judging on a curve. After all did we really need a court case to establish that DAs need to make priorities, and that the federal government sets the priorities on immigration? Apparently with this court we do, and so that counts as one of the victories. That the Voting Rights Act wasn't simply thrown out was a pleasant surprise, but mostly because previously a less conservative version of this court ruled that another section of the Act was now invalid based on one of those time limits they just made up based on a lack of understanding of reality.
It is somewhat hard to make the case that halving the number of minorities at elite universities (from an already low level) doesn't matter when that decision is handed down by a court composed of 8 members who went to just two of those elite universities (including one of the plaintiffs in the case).
And the idea that it is possible to read "wave or modify" as excluding large modifications seems an odd blind spot for Drum. After all, waiving is the most extreme modification possible in this case. Roberts argument, to the degree he has one, is that when we talk about modifying something we have an implicature in place that we mean a minor modification. But when modification is added to waive it makes no sense to say that there remains an implicature that the modification has to be minor. This is another case where Roberts doesn't accept the text means what it says because he doesn't want it to say that.
It is true that none of this is as crazy as the guy who wants to limit routing government behaviour based on ridiculous conspiracy theories. But that is settting the bar very low for the Supreme Court.
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
I think we can safely say this is a Humpty Dumpty court.
Kevin keeps lowering the bar. The Supreme Court keeps pushing it and Kevin sinks to accept whatever comes next.
ISL is too much, but gay marriage and minority education is gladly thrown overboard because at least they didnt end democracy!!
I strongly suggest people listen to Strict Scrutiny. Really excellent.
https://crooked.com/podcast-series/strict-scrutiny/
Pingback: Why can the Supreme Court overturn the student loan forgiveness program? – Kevin Drum
The evil twin of me sorts hopes those people in Idaho build their cabin, and then get flooded out. Since they are not in a watershed or flood plain, according to them, no flood insurance.
Karma.
Even grading on a curve its a pretty poor curve.
When you take constitutional law "poor" SC decisions are poor at the rate of one per year, not like, well out of the last nine only two were poor.
Its a very, very idealistic Court. The Warren Court was from 1953 through 1969, 16 years. Via Wikipedia, not a super great legal source, they cite about 32 decisions, so to be the most liberal court in the history of the Court its like two decisions a year.
This court is running at like 5 or so, by my count. Its more reactionary than the Warren Court was liberal, that's for sure.
And among those 32 cases are ones everyone agreed with, by the way, not just the Loving v. Virginia's.
The problem with the "303" case is that there wasn't an actual case. If one compares the actual wedding website/planing market it becomes clear that she likely doesn't have a viable business model. Had she been required to actually actuate her plan the most likely outcome would have been it outright fails or she backs up into a series of cut and paste templates that require a minimum of wholly anodyne developer inputs (dates, places, names).
There are a quite a few wedding websites out there to choose from. all of them are basic templates. They are designed to handle the nuts and bolts of a wedding - announcements, invitations, dates, places. etc. They are mostly free or low cost and are designed to expire after the actual wedding. The bucks are in things like paper (snail-mail announcements and invitations,gift registry, etc.).
Is there a market for the sort of developer intensive site that she envisions? If not - no case. Does a developer having to make anodyne, content neutral tweaks to a template constitute compelled speech? It would seem necessary to have an actual case.
Based on what I've read and thought so far about the concluded Supreme Court term, I generally agree with this sentiment:
"There are some clunkers on the list, but overall I think their performance was better than most liberals give credit for."
And yet the Washington Post has this headline out over the July 4th holiday:
"Biden faces renewed pressure to embrace Supreme Court overhaul"
And the story includes such updates as:
"The Congressional Progressive Caucus, a group of more than 100 lawmakers, recently renewed its push to expand the court."
In the aftermath of the Dobbs v. Jackson case overturning Roe v Wade, the Democrats could and did marshal majority support against the Dobbs decision and against Republican efforts to restrict abortion access.
But the situation this year is different. Affirmative Action was unpopular, and the decision to rescind it has (according to initial polling results) slim majority approval. The web designer case is seen by many as an important assertion of Free expression rather than a limitation or loss of anyone's rights. And the court, as far as I could tell, received pretty good coverage for it's decision on that independent state legislature case.
If you look over at Lefty sites like the DailyKos, the headlines and articles seem to believe that these recent decisions are a historic assault on minority rights and an egregious abuse of power from unelected officials. But I just don't think that assessment is accurate.
And it strikes me as very unwise to adopt the approach promoted by the Congressional Progressive Caucus at this time. There may have been a window last year, after Dobbs, when the public may have been sympathetic to efforts to reform/reorganize the Supreme Court. But that window has closed (at least until after the next Presidential election). Going to war with the Supreme Court at this time, right after they issued decisions with majority approval (affirmative action case) and promoted popular free speech rights (web designer case), would be bad strategy. At best that would be counter productive; at worst: self destructive.