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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 10 months

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On Thursday, Justice Neil Gorsuch released a 26-page opinion venting outrage about a legal dispute that does not exist, involving websites that do not exist. Yet this case, built on imaginary grounds, will have very real consequences for LGBTQ consumers, and for anti-discrimination laws more broadly. All of the Court’s Republican appointees joined Gorsuch’s opinion in 303 Creative v. Elenis.

That said, the fake dispute that Gorsuch imagines in his 303 Creative opinion involves a reasonably narrow legal question.

In the past, Christian right advocates have sought sweeping exemptions from state and federal civil rights laws, rooted in their expansive notion of “religious liberty.” Often, these lawsuits claimed that the Constitution’s safeguards for people of faith allow anyone who objects to LGBTQ people on religious grounds to defy any law prohibiting anti-LGBTQ discrimination.

303 Creative involves a much narrower dispute. The case centers on Lorie Smith, a website designer who wishes to expand her business into designing wedding websites — something she has never done before. She says she’s reluctant to do so, however, because she fears that if she designs such a website for an opposite-sex couple, Colorado’s anti-discrimination law will compel her to also design wedding websites for same-sex couples. And Smith objects to same-sex marriages.

As Gorsuch summarizes her claim, Smith “worries that, if she [starts designing wedding websites,] Colorado will force her to express views with which she disagrees.”

This is not a religious liberty claim, it is a free speech claim, rooted in well-established law, which says that the First Amendment forbids the government from compelling people to say something that they would rather not say. In ruling in Smith’s favor, the Court does not say that any religious conservative can defy any anti-discrimination law. It simply holds that someone like Smith, who publishes words for a living, may refuse to say something they don’t want to say.

The full implications of Gorsuch’s opinion are not entirely clear. In the past, religious conservatives have argued that artists and artisans of all kinds — including bakers, photographers, and floral arrangement designers — should also be allowed to discriminate under the First Amendment, because all artistic work necessarily entails some kind of expression. Gorsuch punts on this question, writing that “hypotheticals about photographers, stationers, and others, asking if they too provide expressive services covered by the First Amendment,” are not present in the 303 Creative case.

And it is worth emphasizing that the particular kind of work that Smith does, writing words on a publicly available website, fits more snugly within the First Amendment than a similar claim brought by a wedding cake designer or a florist.

Before this case was argued, I wrote that if Lorie Smith had been approached by a same-sex couple and refused to design a wedding website for them, and if she had then been sued for refusing to do so, then she would have a very strong First Amendment defense against such a suit. As the Supreme Court said in Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights (2006), “freedom of speech prohibits the government from telling people what they must say.” And that includes the right of a web designer to refuse to write words on a website that they do not wish to write.

But none of these events have actually happened. And, for that reason, the Supreme Court should have dismissed the case.

THIS CASE SHOULD HAVE NEVER MADE IT THIS FAR

The frustrating thing about this case is that it involves an entirely fabricated legal dispute. Again, Lorie Smith has never actually made a wedding website for a paying customer. Nor has Colorado ever attempted to enforce its civil rights law against Ms. Smith. Indeed, in its brief to the Supreme Court, Colorado expressed doubt that its anti-discrimination law would even apply to Smith.

Yet Gorsuch’s majority opinion repeatedly paints Smith as a hapless victim, oppressed by wicked state officials who insist that she must proclaim a dogma that she denies. As he writes in the very first paragraph of his opinion, “Colorado does not just seek to ensure the sale of goods or services on equal terms. It seeks to use its law to compel an individual to create speech she does not believe.”

This claim is simply untrue. Colorado has not brought any enforcement action against Smith, or taken any other step to compel her to say anything at all — or to design any website that she does not want to design. Nor has anyone ever sued Smith for allegedly violating Colorado’s anti-discrimination law.

Indeed, in one particularly amusing turn, Smith alleged during an early stage of this litigation that she was approached by a man about doing some design work for his wedding to another man. Yet, after the New Republic’s Melissa Gira Grant contacted this man, she learned that he never reached out to Smith — and that he was married to a woman.

These facts matter because federal courts, including the Supreme Court, do not have jurisdiction to decide hypothetical cases. As a unanimous Supreme Court held in Texas v. United States (1998), “a claim is not ripe for adjudication if it rests upon ‘contingent future events that may not occur as anticipated, or indeed may not occur at all.’” So the Court should have told Smith to go away and come back when she had a real dispute with the state of Colorado.

303 Creative, moreover, is the second time Gorsuch has taken such liberties with the truth in order to rule in favor of a religious conservative. Almost exactly one year ago, Gorsuch handed down the Court’s decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022), a case about a public school football coach who, after games, would walk to the center of the 50-yard line and ostentatiously kneel down and pray before students and spectators — often while surrounded by players, community members, and even members of the press.

Indeed, in her dissent in Bremerton, Justice Sonia Sotomayor included a photo of Coach Kennedy holding such a prayer session, as a throng of uniformed football players and other individuals kneel with him, and as people holding video cameras look on.

And yet, Gorsuch’s opinion in Bremerton claimed that Kennedy merely wanted to offer a “short, private, personal prayer,” and then Gorsuch ruled in favor of Kennedy based on this fabricated version of Kennedy’s actual conduct.

Needless to say, this is aberrant behavior by a Supreme Court Justice — and really by six Supreme Court justices, since all of the Court’s Republican appointees joined Gorsuch’s decisions in 303 Creative and Kennedy.

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dontmean2bepoliticalbut · 2 years

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#us politics #the onion #us supreme court #scotus #news #fuck republicans #justice stephen breyer #justice brett kavanaugh #justice clarence thomas #justice amy coney barrett #justice antonin scalia #justice sonia soromayor #justice elena kagan #justice neil gorsuch #chief justice john roberts #justice john roberts #scotus be like

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cyarskj1899 · 8 months

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trutown-the-bard · 2 years

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You guys should read Gorsuch’s decent. It’s great. The fact that it is the decent is not good though. The Supreme Court just violated Denezpi’s right to be protected from Double Jeopardy.

#justice neil gorsuch #supreme court #SCOTUS #denezpi v united states

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odinsblog · 2 years

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They all lied, and contrary to what they are now claiming, Susan Collins and Joe Manchin were not “fooled” by their lies. They knew. We all knew.

The John Roberts Court will go down in history as one of thee most corrupt, regressive, depraved, illegitimate, Christofascist courts in American history, and that’s no easy feat.

👉🏿 https://www.thedailybeast.com/on-roe-are-joe-manchin-and-susan-collins-stupid-or-do-they-just-think-we-are

👉🏿 https://www.npr.org/2022/05/03/1096108319/roe-v-wade-alito-conservative-justices-confirmation-hearings

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gudguy1a · 5 months

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Women AND Men, Unite, Abortion Rights-in EACH State

Well folks, it appears that since a few of the Supreme Court Justices lied about their stance on Roe v Wade and ended up causing the court to throw away that HARD-FOUGHT battle to have Abortion Rights – UNIVERSALLY, across the country. No variation in separate states – all states followed Roe v Wade, whether they liked it or not Women, it now seems that you have to unite in each of the 50…

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#abortion #abortion rights #Brett Kavanaugh #Neil Gorsuch #roe v wade #supreme court #supreme court justices

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mylionheart2 · 1 year

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#cheif justice roberts #congress #john roberts #scotus #supreme court #scotus is compromised #corruption #neil gorsuch #clarence thomas #brett kavanaugh #vote blue #vote blue to save democracy

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seagull-astrology · 2 years

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Neil Gorsuch and the Supremes

Who is he? Judge Gorsuch is a rara avis — he is a Westerner appointed to the Supreme Court and an Episcopalian. All the judges nominated in the past thirty years, indeed since Justice Stephen Breyer, who hails from have been from the East Coast and either Roman Catholic or Jewish. He originally clerked for the first Coloradan Justice,.Byron Raymond White. That said, the Judge has Eastern based…

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#Neil Gorsuch #Supreme Court Justice

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 8 months

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By Chris Williams

New Yorkers are known for having a temper. Some blame it on the traffic and dirty water hog dogs. Personally? I blame it on the cost of living. If you compare the value of $20 in 1970 New York to $20 in the Big Apple now, the cost of living has gone up a whopping 677.46%. A big part of that increase has been housing. Back in 2012, a man ran an entire campaign premised on the rent being too damned high. But, man, if you thought New Yorkers were pissed about rent prices back then… wait until they really can’t afford rent.

Before we even get to the obvious ethical issues involved with Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito sitting on this case despite receiving lavish gifts from landowners with a vested interest in this matter, it is worth taking a second to reflect on the Supreme Court’s drift from just a decade ago.

It would still be newsworthy if the Court decides to even hear the case. A little over a decade ago, James Harmon tried to bring a very similar case to the Supreme Court, arguing that the New York’s rent stabilization law constituted a taking. The Court ultimately decided against hearing Harmon’s case. With that in mind, read an assessment given based on that case a decade ago in The Tenant:

“If the Supreme Court chooses to consider the Harmons’ lawsuit, it would mean that four Justices—presumably Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito—believe there is a valid argument for a radical expansion of property rights, that destroying legal protections for tenants is as much an idea whose time has come as abolishing racial segregation was in 1954.”

It can be startling to see how quickly opinions on the judiciary can change. In framing the above quote, the author brought up the importance of precedent, citing cases like Roe, Brown, and Lawrence v. Texas. The thinking at the time was that even if the Court wasn’t the biggest fan of a given outcome, it’d respect the decisions of the jurists before them. Clearly written before Dobbs and Sackett, but the rest ages pretty well.

Now we’ve subbed Gorsuch into that foursome that couldn’t come together… and added Kavanaugh and Barrett.

The YOLO Court era has arrived. Because who’s to stop them?

If the Court gets rid of rent control, it is hard to understate the significance it would have on the lives of New Yorkers. From Lever News:

“Samuel Stein, a housing policy analyst at the Community Service Society, an anti-poverty organization in New York, said if the Supreme Court were to overturn the rent stabilization law, ‘It’s the end of New York City.’

‘Rents would go up significantly around the city,’ he continued. ‘There will be a tremendous amount of displacement. You will have a lot of people leaving New York City, you will have a lot of homelessness, you’ll have a lot of overcrowding.’”

There was a point in time you could rely on the Court to respect stare decisis. Dobbs and Bruen show that’s no longer the case. If ever a Court was willing to get rid of the 50+ years of rent control, it would be the Roberts court.

We should find out if they will hear the case by the end of September.

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cyarskj1899 · 8 months

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notreallyimportant · 2 years

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I better not see not na’am person try to blame Kentanji Brown Jackson for what happen on June 24th.

She will not be seated until June 30, 2022 after Justice Breyer retires.

Blame is solely on the following Justices that are still seated:

Amy Coney Barrett

Brett Kavanaugh

Clarence Thomas

Neil Gorsuch

Samuel Alito, Jr.

May Justice Brown Jackson have a blessed day and the five listed forever step in pushpins.

#roe vs. wade #justice kentanji brown jackson #amy coney barrett #brett kavanaugh #samuel alito #neil gorsuch

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wilwheaton · 11 days

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Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch used a range of hypotheticals — pointedly including recognizable conduct by liberals — to demonstrate the supposed breadth of the obstruction statute, and to downplay an argument deployed by the government: the insurrection was a singular moment in American history that does not invite easy comparisons. “What happened on January 6 was very, very serious, and I’m not equating this with that,” Alito said, before citing Monday’s pro-Gaza protest on the Golden Gate bridge and stringing together a hypothetical where a similar protest blocks members of Congress from getting to a vote. “Would pulling a fire alarm before a vote qualify for 20 years in federal prison?” Gorsuch asked incredulously, clearly alluding to Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY).

Right-Wing Justices Haggle Over Law Used To Nab January 6 Rioters

These corrupt, deeply dishonest, right wing activists cosplaying as Justices sure do love their hypotheticals, don’t they.

#expand scotus

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justsomeantifas · 2 years

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Just a reminder that 5 of the 9 supreme court justices were picked by presidents that didn't win the popular vote

One of these supreme court justices picked by donald trump, [neil gorsuch] was a seat meant to be picked by barack obama, as it opened up around january of 2016, Another one of these supreme court justices could have been picked by Joe Biden instead of the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett, All three were picked by a detested and very unpopular president the majority of americans do not like or agree with.

Both of these supreme court justices were picked by George W. Bush, who was very unpopular and detested as well, he also didn't win the majority vote for the presidency these justices were appointed.

So we really have the majority of our supreme court justices selected by presidents the majority of the population didn't even want.

#politics #abortion #the united states of america

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odinsblog · 1 year

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Justice Gorsuch sold property to a lawyer whose firm had numerous cases in front of the Court.

On April 16 of 2017, Greenberg’s Brian Duffy put under contract the 3,000-square foot log home on the Colorado River and nestled in the mountains northwest of Denver, according to real estate records.

He and his wife closed on the house a month later, paying $1.825 million, according to a deed in the county’s record system. Gorsuch, who held a 20 percent stake, reported making between $250,001 and $500,000 from the sale on his federal disclosure forms.

Gorsuch did not disclose the identity of the purchaser. That box was left blank.

Since then, Greenberg Traurig has been involved in at least 22 cases before or presented to the court, according to a POLITICO review of the court’s docket.

They include cases in which Greenberg either filed amicus briefs or represented parties. In the 12 cases where Gorsuch’s opinion is recorded, he sided with Greenberg Traurig clients eight times and against them four times.

In addition, a Denver-based lawyer for Greenberg represented North Dakota in what became one of the more highly publicized rulings in recent years, a multistate suit which reversed former President Barack Obama’s plan to fight climate change through the Clean Air Act.

Gorsuch joined the court’s other five conservative judges in agreeing with the plaintiffs — including Greenberg’s client — that the Environmental Protection Agency had overstepped its authority by regulating carbon emissions from power plants in the decision that makes it more difficult for the executive branch to regulate emissions without express authorization from Congress.

(continue reading)

#politics #neil gorsuch #scotus #republicans #clarence thomas #justice for sale #crony capitalism #john roberts court #federalist society #the federalist society

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collapsedsquid · 3 months

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Two things seemed clear after the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Trump v. Anderson, the case concerning whether Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment bars Donald Trump from the presidency as an insurrectionist. First, most of the justices want to rule in Trump’s favor. Second, they’re struggling to figure out how to do so. Maybe Section 3 doesn’t apply to the presidency per se, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Ketanji Brown Jackson said—and perhaps, along those same lines, it doesn’t prohibit oath-breaking former presidents from holding future office either? Or perhaps, Justice Samuel Alito pondered, the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits insurrectionists from holding office, but not from running for it? Justice Brett Kavanaugh seemed enamored of the idea that the amendment doesn’t allow states to disqualify candidates for federal office—as Colorado did here—without Congress first giving the go-ahead. In a related line of inquiry, which the justices seemed to coalesce around as arguments went on, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan suggested that perhaps there’s something inappropriate about allowing individual states to make decisions that could potentially determine a national election.

I do love the "something inappropriate about allowing individual states to make decisions that could potentially determine a national election." Perhaps there is something inappropriate about it but that is how the US election system works.

Gonna argue that our election system, like our immigration system, would be unacceptable to the vast majority of Americans for contradictory reasons if they understood how it worked so congressmen can campaign and judges rule based on totally imaginary ideas.

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