SCOTUS — The Undoing of America

The Will of the People Subverted

Constitutional and legal precedents are meaningless now. The will of the people is subverted. This subversive Supreme Court of the United States of America has overturned precedent after precedent. They couch their rulings as originalism and claim they are interpreting the Constitution the way the Founding Fathers would have done. Except, they’re not using the words of the Founding Fathers. In his leaked draft opinion on overturning Roe v. Wade, Alito harked back to a witch burner, Sir Matthew Hale (born 1 November 1609, died 25 December 1676), an English barrister and Puritan during the era of the British Civil War. Note… not only was Hale never a presiding judge in America, there was not even a United States of America when he lived. Hale was a citizen of Britain. He was a British judge and “ jurist who conceived the notion that husbands can’t be prosecuted for raping their wives, who sentenced women to death as “witches,” and whose misogyny stood out even in his time.” [ProPublica]

Back in February of 2019, the radically packed SCOTUS’ right-wing Justices denied a Muslim the comfort of his own Imam to pray at his side as he was executed — but would allow the prison to impose upon the man the prison’s only Christian chaplain “for security reasons.” The Court’s ruling effectively overturns the constitutional precedent of the Establishment Clause by imposing preference for one religious denomination by the State, as Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent. The ruling seems to allow Alabama to establish Christianity as the only state-approved “safe” religion.

Prison officials would only allow their own Christian chaplain to offer the prisoner solace from inside the execution chamber. They said it would be a security risk to let someone into the room who wasn’t an employee of the state’s corrections department. [NPR]

The SCOTUS gutted the long-standing precedent of Miranda rights protections, ruling that violating those rules is NOT a violation of the Constitution. The ruling bars citizens’ from suing police and authorities when evidence is inappropriately acquired or coerced by abusing the constitutionally guaranteed rights of plaintiffs. Miranda rights have been rendered essentially meaningless.

The court held that a violation of Miranda rules — which protect the Constitutional right against compelled self-incrimination — isn’t a violation of the Constitution itself. Police therefore can’t be sued under the civil rights law Tekoh relied on because that statute allows suits when officials violate rights “secured by the Constitution,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote. [Reuters]

In the wake of hundreds of mass shootings, while our Congress wrestled with some modicum of new gun control, the SCOTUS looked at state's rights in New York and decided the state has no right to set gun control laws. They struck down a 108-year-old precedent, ruling against the New York state gun control law limiting concealed carry guns — on the same day Congress finally agreed to pass a bill, a very narrow gun control measure… the “Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.”

On June 23, the same day the act passed the Senate, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 6–3 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen. The majority opinion, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, struck down a New York law that required people seeking licenses to carry handguns in public to have a “special need for self-protection.” In issuing its decision, the court established for the first time in its history that people have a constitutional right “to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.” [PBS Frontline]

The SCOTUS struck down the nearly 50-year precedent of Roe v. Wade, undoing women’s right to bodily autonomy — claiming abortion rights are not “deeply rooted” in American history and tradition. More than that, the concurring opinion by Thomas targets every right passed under interpretations of the 14th Amendment. His opinion specifically calls for the Court to “reconsider” rulings on rights to contraception (Griswold v. Connecticut), protection from prosecution for same-sex relationships (Lawrence v. Texas), and same-sex marriage rights (Obergefell v. Hodges). From the lofty heights of his bench, presuming protection for his own interracial marriage (Loving v. Virginia), Thomas conspicuously left out of his concurring statement the ruling striking down anti-miscegenation bans.

Many constitutional rights that Americans now possess cannot be said to be any more deeply rooted in American history and tradition than abortion can. These rights include protection from involuntary sterilization, which the court upheld in 1927 during the eugenics movement; the freedom to access and use contraceptives, which was widely banned in the late 19th century and which the court did not begin to protect until 1965; the right of a nonwhite American to marry a white American, which was prohibited going back to the days of slavery and which the court did not safeguard as part of the fundamental right to marry until 1967; sexual intimacy between consenting adults in private, including same-sex intimacy, which was long regulated in American law and which the court did not protect until 2003; and the right to marry someone of the same sex, which existed as a matter of positive law in the United States beginning in 2003 and which the court did not vindicate until 2015. [Slate]

Following close on the heels of overturning Roe, surely based on their religious dogma, the SCOTUS went on to side with a coach leading prayer — Christian prayer — on the public school playing field. They further undercut our nation’s foundational precedent of separation of church and state and the Establishment Clause, ruling in Carson v. Makin that Maine will now be required to allow religious schools to participate in programs with taxpayer-funded school vouchers. In other words, taxpayers will now be compelled to pay tuition to religious schools expressly dedicated to a specific religious indoctrination.

…in Maine alone, it means that taxpayers of all faiths and belief systems will be compelled to fund a Christian school whose “educational objectives” include “‘lead(ing) each unsaved student to trust Christ as his/her personal savior and then to follow Christ as Lord of his/her life.’”

Hindu, Jewish and atheist Mainers will pay for schooling that provides a “biblically integrated education,” where the Bible is used in every subject that is taught — including math and science. Mainers will also be funding schools that actively discriminate against the state’s own citizens, as some of the religious schools have policies denying enrollment to LGTBQ+ students. [RNS Religious News Service]

I’m so angry and heartsick over my country’s descent into the politics of cruelty. I can’t seem to help ranting these days. I’ve been warning for more than a decade that Dominionist theology is driving rightwing politics, repeatedly quoting myself: “They will stop at nothing less than subverting our constitutional democratic republic with their vision of a theocratic corporate feudal state where we are all required to just shut up and work until we die.” [~MomzillaNC]

This organized religion-thing we refer to as “The Church” is so far removed from the Christ it purports to represent, and has descended so far into the politics of cruelty, that it has become the antithesis of any teachings of Jesus Himself. “The Church” has become more about religion than faith, more about control than service, more about acquisition than love, more about power than justice… It has become more about authority than hope. It has become everything Jesus showed us to rail against when he drove the money lenders from the Temple, and when he repeatedly called out the Pharisees and Sadducees (arch-conservative religious leaders and lawmakers of the era).

There are five extremist conservatives (Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett) and one arch-conservative (John Roberts) on the SCOTUS. These six Justices have turned American governance — and American justice — into a Dominionist theocratic minority rule of six.

When can we expect the Spanish Inquisition — American-style, under the gun?

Addendum: “The Supreme Court limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, delivering a significant blow to the Biden administration’s efforts to fight climate change.” [CBS News]