Well, you are sort of wrong. I’m guessing maybe you live in a place with a multitude of religious traditions, such that a school is likely to have Hindu, Muslim, atheist, or “neo-pagan” teachers? In large swathes of the country that simply is not reality. 80+% of the people are evangelical Christians, and all of the teachers will be.
So if school prayer and religious education are found to be protected in public schools, the minority religious families will have no recourse. Their children will be taught what the local school board approves. If parents want to “correct” that teaching, they will have to do so at home against the weight of the formal education system.
Now, of course, you could argue the reverse is true now. If you strongly believe in YEC, then you are probably apoplectic that public school science class teaches things that are against your belief. The difference, of course, is that one is science and the other is religion. But that distinction relies on a collective agreement that educating our children in science is more important than educating them in religion (at least in public schools). That is not a universal belief.
I could see that being overturned by a court with ACB in the majority. As well as anything else that prohibits discrimination.
I would also be surprised to see any sort of gun control measure stand up to her scrutiny, even ones that seem the most obvious and useful, like keeping them out of the hands of violent felons.
It might sound strange, but since I don’t plan on getting married, my main concern is anti discrimination laws. And with Gorsuch and Roberts supporting that, a bare majority might still hold. Then when Biden (hopefully) gets in, who knows what will happen. Court packing or even term limits. Who knows?
Also, speaking of articles and ACB, I was recently reading an article on the porn industry. They are apparently really scared by her appointment. Are they really in trouble? I thought First Amendment rulings were more widely accepted. But I could be wrong.
Right, but surely you have gay friends who are married, or who want to – what about them? And, I wouldn’t rely on Roberts or Gorsuch to uphold anti-discrimination laws.
First Amendment rulings in the general sense are widely accepted, but ‘Is this obscenity’ isn’t as far as I know - and the long-standing court ruling is that ‘obscene’ material isn’t protected by the first amendment. It’s certainly possible that a conservative court would decide that, while basic porn involving penises, mouths, and vaginas doing things is not ‘obscene’, some of the less ‘standard’ stuff in mainstream porn and whole categories of fetish porn that are OK now would be considered obscene. What I think is especially scary to porn producers is that while ex-post-facto laws are prohibited, this doesn’t apply to court rulings. So if the definition of obscenity were expanded to include things like spitting or anal sex (both of which are really common in mainstream porn now), they could be subject to prosecution based on movies they’ve already produced.
I haven’t researched this much, but I don’t have the impression that conservatives in the court actually want to do much overturning of gun law. The rallying cry is that all Republicans are super-second-amendment, but that seems to be more propaganda than reality. I would bet money that they don’t decide that the 1968 GCA or that things like New York’s pistol licensing violate the constitution. The ‘Gun-Free Schools Act’ originally from 1990 might get struck down, but it wouldn’t be on second amendment grounds, but because it’s an example of absurd overreach on the commerce clause.
With Barrett on the Court, Roberts no longer gets to play the role of swing justice as he did after Kennedy left. The new swing justice may be Kavanaugh or Gorsuch.
In a certain sense, Barrett frees up Roberts. Roberts is now free to write or rule however he really pleases, now that the burden of “keeping the Court objective and neutral” is out of his hands. If he wants to rule conservative, he won’t be attacked by liberals as much for doing so since a 6-3 conservative majority means he wasn’t the linchpin vote. If he wants to rule liberal, conservatives won’t attack him as much as long as he’s in the 5-4 minority.
We’ll see, I hope you are right. It’s hard to say how such well entrenched laws would be ruled upon. Things that we really haven’t brought up as controversial in decades.
Ah, now that SCOTUS no longer needs to pretend that it’s not a partisan arm of the Republican party. Roberts may be a conservative, but at least he wasn’t a partisan hack like the rest of his colleagues on the right are now.
The ultra-pro-gun wing of the Republican party is a fringe element. The NRA did a lot of work painting things as ‘Democrats will take your guns, Republicans will protect them!’ but it doesn’t seem to match reality. In a recent thread I went into this and, before its inevitable decline into a gun control debate, no one came up with any counters what I was saying. The quick summary: Reagan and Bush I favored and supported the 1994 Assault Weapon ban, and Bush II supported extending it. Bush I and Trump have issued anti-gun executive orders, Democratic presidents haven’t. Bush I even resigned from the NRA because he found their rhetoric inflammatory and distasteful. The only significant legislation that is pro-gun for individuals in the 21st century came from Obama’s time when the house and senate were controlled by Democrats, even with House, Senate, and White house the Republicans haven’t passed any pro-individual gun rights legislation.
Sexism, racism, and anti-LGBT are deeply twined into the Republican power structure, but ‘gun rights for individuals’ doesn’t have that history. Some of the ‘commerce clause overreach’ stuff (like the gun-free school zone law) is bound to get struck down, but I don’t see that happening to state laws unless they do bans like Chicago and DC, and I don’t see them trying to strike down a repeat of the 1994 assault weapon ban. There are certainly people who will shout loudly that they are going to do that, but I don’t expect it - while radical-right in some ways, they’re also conservative in the traditional sense on a lot of issues.
Better turn loose of those pearls, or they’re going to turn to dust.
Every single one of those things would have to have a Federal court case that gets appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, which implies a logically sound argument, AND the Supreme Court would have to agree to hear it (i.e. grant certiorari).
The fundamental flaw in a lot of reasoning around here is assuming that the Justices have an agenda, or that their strings are being pulled by politicians. AFAIK, neither of those is actually true. They do have ideological biases for sure, but they’re not very concerned with what the politicians do or want.
This is hardly a difficult barrier - cases on these topics routinely get appealed to the Supreme Court, there are generally cases about antidiscrimination laws, abortion, and voting rights in the queue, and certainly cases on these topics come up at least yearly. There is already a challenge to the ACA scheduled to be heard by the SC in just over a week. Multiple voting rights cases have just been heard, and there will be more (and the partisan bias on those cases is extremely obvious).
Putting the AND in caps is really absurd - of course the justices that want to overturn things like gay marriage will agree to hear the case when one comes up and they have a safe majority.
I don’t think it’s a fundamental flaw to look at actual facts. For example:
These are the type of rulings we have to watch out for. With issues of taxation conservative judges don’t need to think up excuses to apply their religious bias to the law.
ACB could end up being the reason that carry laws in NY are overturned:
In June, however, the court turned down some 10 appeals in Second Amendment cases. Since it takes only four votes to grant review, there is good reason to think that the court’s conservative wing, which at the time had five members, was unsure it could secure Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s vote.
Justice Barrett’s arrival changes that calculus.
I’m sure that’s because they’re all just calling balls and strikes.
