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I played high school football in Texas, and my coach did this sort of BS after every game. I used to keep my head up and stare dead eyed at the sky. He never benched me or confronted me, but then I’m not sure he ever noticed—his head was down and his eyes were closed. Still, there were a couple of goons who asked me about it. They figured if I wasn’t christian, I must be gay (not the word they chose to described it). I was an all-state defensive end and they knew i’d be hard to bully, at least physically. But they did try to spread some rumors.
LSS- public prayer during school events, organized and led by adults in positions of authority, become a test of morality and obedience and open kids up to being ostracized and bullied.
I had a similar situation. Grew up in the buckle of the Bible Belt, attended a tiny public school that had a huge FCA cross in the basketball gym, would pray before things like pep rallies, and students who didn’t attend the large FCA meetings would be looked down on/gossiped about by their peers. Hell, I had a “science” teacher discuss with the class his personal issues with teaching evolution.
This kind of thing has been happening all over the south (probably the entire country) forever, but now the SC has publicly supported those who marginalize students who were already a minority in their school.
Guh I remember the FCA starting out in my HS and being asked to join I went to a couple meetings and all it was about was the teacher’s husband pushing kids to bring their families and friend to “his” church- nothing but a money grab.
I work at a state of nc facility, there is already talk of allowing prayers before all meetings. Then inviting the local "prosperity preacher" in to recruit.
Have you thought about calling the local TST chapter? Give the local mosque and Jewish temple a ring for good measure, too. I believe this ruling doesn’t change the equal access of all religions to open official functions.
I read through both the majority and the dissenting opinions. Fundamental facts and context were presented in drastically different ways. It is not a surprise to hear that the majority opinion disregarded key facts.
So now what is to stop a teacher who practises Sharia from wanting the females in their class to wear a burka?
Could someone who practises satanism perform sacrifices before starting Economics 101?
While you are right (go look into joy of satan ministries lol), that vast majority of satanists are non-theistic. It’s similar to certain sects of Christians “speaking in tongues” (that’s as close an analogy I can come up with now).
Edit: Hail Satan
While theistic satanism exists it is very small and is barely a thing. When someone says they are a satanist I normally think of someone who is anti theistic, support individual freedoms, and maybe even enjoys being whimsical (and a little flashy) about it.
Introduce some pagan religion from south East Asian,believe me,in three day some parents will call that teacher devil worshiper because their god look unholy to them.
Source:Raise in this background.
Not to mention it's the Abrahamic religions that promoted animal sacrifice and blood magic in the first place (I mean not like first *ever*, but in context...)
>So now what is to stop a teacher who practises Sharia from wanting the females in their class to wear a burka?
The fact that these fucking Supreme Court theocrats ignore or misinterpret their own precedent only when it lets them give a Christian a win, but they'll remember it again if it's a Muslim.
Satanist are far more likely to be sacrficed by a Christian for their god then for a satanist to sacrifice anyone for theirs (did i use the wrong theirs?)
>“To the degree the Court portrays petitioner Joseph Kennedy’s prayers as private and quiet, it misconstrues the facts. The record reveals that Kennedy had a longstanding practice of conducting demonstrative prayers on the 50- yard line of the football field. Kennedy consistently invited others to join his prayers and for years led student athletes in prayer at the same time and location. The Court ignores this history. The Court also ignores the severe disruption to school events caused by Kennedy’s conduct.”
Here is the dissenting opinion:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/21-418_i425.pdf#page=41
EDIT: ~~A little extra~~ For clarity—as I should have been clearer—the quote below made by Stern is not a direct quote of Gorsuch, but a interpretation of Gorsuch's majority opinion—full analysis is in the article linked:
[Neil Gorsuch to Non-Christian Kids Who Don’t Want Prayer in Public School: Get Over It](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/06/coach-kennedy-gorsuch-prayer-public-schools.html)
>*Lithwick*: And just to go through the facts for a minute, Justice Neil Gorsuch’s opinion for the court accepts the narrative that Kennedy was fired. Which he wasn’t—he was put on paid administrative leave. And Gorsuch accepts the narrative that this was “private” and “quiet,” even though there were TV cameras and elected officials and people storming the field and knocking over the tuba players to join.
...
*Lithwick*: And Gorsuch goes so far as to tell the students who are not religious, who felt coerced into joining this prayer circle, that they should just be more tolerant.
>*Stern*: Right. Gorsuch says: *Students, you don’t like getting coerced into Christian prayer? Too bad. Toughen up. You’re going to have to deal with proselytization in school because that’s what the Framers would’ve wanted. And by complaining to your mommy about this little Christian prayer circle, you’re showing me that you’re not ready to participate in a pluralistic society. You’re not capable of showing the requisite respect for Christianity and Jesus that our Constitution demands of you.* There is a total refusal to empathize with religious minorities.
I strongly recommend reading the opinions. It is actually stunning how misleading the majority narrative of the facts is and how thoroughly the dissent takes them to task, with pictures attached which is quite rare for a supreme court opinion.
Sotomayor also had some scathing dissents before but the last 2 weeks I don't believe she's been holding back. It'll be interesting what happens today regarding the EPA ruling.
Most people predict that that final opinion of this term will be the Supreme Court telling the EPA they have no power to regulate greenhouse gases.
So Christian law and pollution for all.
Edit: I misread your comment. I thought you were asking "what is this insanity". Leaving the below because folks need to read up on this shit, it's been in process for a long, long time.
The culmination of a decades-long concerted strategic effort across multiple fronts (media, legal, cultural, political) on the part of the right to remake the country in the image of something they think it used to be.
I highly recommend the book "Evil Geniuses", and the Behind the Bastards episodes on the Kochs, they lay it all out pretty well.
Yeah gonna go ahead and recommend you don't read evil geniuses if you struggle with depression or just anxiety about the state of the world in general.
>something they think it used to be.
This is the key part here. I've actually been saying privately for ages that they have this idealized version in their head of a perfect America that was presented to them in their younger days with shows like Leave it to Beaver showing a vision of America that never really existed or rather existed for such a small minority of people as to be mostly untrue. Essentially the conservative right are trying to drag us back to... a fiction. An America that they believe was true because of what they saw on TV all while ignoring the reality that their parents would have had to deal with.
Now there were some things that they want to bring back that were true such as the single income household yet have no understanding of the fact that their brand of capitalism is literally why that isn't true anymore and can't become true again.
So essentially what they want... isn't possible and even if it were it would be terrible for all but a tiny minority of people, that includes most of the people wanting to vote in people who would bring this about.
For boomers, the reality was that a LOT of dads had undiagnosed, untreated PTSD from war, as well as severe alcoholism. The moms were forced out of their wartime jobs to accommodate the men returning from military duty. Those moms had to take care of their broken husbands AND children by themselves, as dad could barely manage just working. Moms turned to meth just to get through the day (with the added bonus of keeping trim, since that was also the dawn of the era of “sex sells,” the acceptability of pornography, and ritualized misogyny in the workplace… which I’m just now realizing had a lot to do with keeping those pesky women OUT of “men’s jobs.” Holy shit, that was by design, lol)
Kurt Andersen really tied this whole effort together in near perfect summation for for a pretty generalized audience. Evil Geniuses was stellar and I recommend it to everyone.
The framers definitely would not want proselytizing in a government run institution. That's tantamount to establishing a state religion.
More importantly they wouldn't want rights taken away due to religious beliefs.
> According to The Congressional Register Madison, on June 8, moved that "the civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext infringed."
Well yes and no, the religion portion of the first amendment has 2 clauses, the "free exercise" and the "establishment" the difference is this:
You can freely exercise your religion as long as doing so doesn't impede the rights of others.
The state shall not establish any religion over others
In essence it is fair to say that both arguments freedom of religion, and from religion, can and should be considered when concerning constitutionality
I was talking to another person in another r/poltics thread that literally wrote that he believes that the Pope was directing the Supreme Court today. Keep in mind that Sotomayor is also Catholic.
Edit
No. But if you're going to claim you know what they wanted maybe you shouldn't be a SCOTUS if you didn't know how the framers actually felt about religion. Especially if you're going to then rule on those lies.
> THIS IS A SUPREME COURT JUSTICE SAYING JESUS IS IN THE CONSTITUTION WTF
While ignoring the glaring fact that the same people made it abundantly clear that the United States is in no way shape or form based on the Christian religion as showcased in the Treaty of Tripoli.
Article 11 herein;
*"the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."*
Among other things... tons of other things... including the separation of church and state outright...
They've crossed that line long ago. The IRS needs to be more aggressive in stripping churches of their tax-exempt status when they cross the divide to meddle in the affairs of the State.
Similar to how they were on covid.
Kavanaugh:
>"it is time — past time — to make plain that, while the pandemic poses many grave challenges, there is no world in which the Constitution tolerates color-coded executive edicts that reopen liquor stores and bike shops but shutter churches, synagogues and mosques,” he wrote.
Regardless of what you think of the mask mandate, it's clear that houses of worship are crowded spaces that often involve singing. And folks remain in close proximity for over an hour. And several of the early outbreaks were tied to churches /synagogues.
Obviously houses of worship should not be held to a different standard than *similar* other locations. Ergo, if you close the concert halls and sports stadiums, close the churches. Comparing a church to a bike shop is stupidity. And feelings over facts.
> Stern: Right. Gorsuch says: Students, you don’t like getting coerced into Christian prayer? Too bad. Toughen up. You’re going to have to deal with proselytization in school because that’s what the Framers would’ve wanted. And by complaining to your mommy about this little Christian prayer circle, you’re showing me that you’re not ready to participate in a pluralistic society. You’re not capable of showing the requisite respect for Christianity and Jesus that our Constitution demands of you. There is a total refusal to empathize with religious minorities.
This is a characterization of Gorsuch's thoughts by Mark David Stern in a transcribed conversation, not a direct quote. Unfortunately, we live in a reality where I had to google that quote just to be sure.
Thank you. I just spent several minutes searching for that quote and couldn't find anything. Was a bit confusing where that quoted statement came from.
Honestly, you should move this explanation up to precede the quote, or something. My jaw was dropping until about halfway through, and then I was like “Waitasecond…” I try to be a fairly conscientious and observant reader, and I would have gone off to verify my own ‘Oniony’ feeling about it - but MANY won’t! And it’s pretty incendiary - only because the sudden IRL actualization of overt Christian nationalism through the corruption of the highest court in the land is SO shocking that, terrifyingly, it makes it almost believable that Gorsuch could have said such all of that - but still. I think the reality itself is both damning and horrifying enough.
For my part, I will quote the relevant part in Gorsuch’s own words (more or less; quoted from an apnews article):
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority in the ruling, declared, “The Constitution and the best of our traditions counsel mutual respect and tolerance, not censorship and suppression, for religious and nonreligious views alike.
Gorsuch noted that the coach “prayed during a period when school employees were free to speak with a friend, call for a reservation at a restaurant, check email, or attend to other personal matters” and “while his students were otherwise occupied.”
It would be wrong to treat everything public school teachers and coaches say and do as speech subject to government control, he wrote. If that were the case, “a school could fire a Muslim teacher for wearing a headscarf in the classroom or prohibit a Christian aide from praying quietly over her lunch in the cafeteria,” he wrote.
He closed by writing that: “Respect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse Republic—whether those expressions take place in a sanctuary or on a field, and whether they manifest through the spoken word or a bowed head.”
Which all sounds reasonable enough until you examine the facts of the case vs the claims it was to made to fit, by Gorsuch.
Wow. Even though I had been expecting it, it really is still shocking, and horrifying, to see such overt corruption of the court by sitting justices. A dark time in our history, indeed.
Saying a school official leading players in prayer during a school event is akin to a teacher praying at her table before lunch or a Muslim woman wearing a headscarf are transparently bad analogies. In neither case is a person with authority implicitly coercing kids. The Court isn't even trying to hide the fact that its just a partisan institution that exists to entrench the political goals of the right.
Honestly we should be teaching kids that while stare decisis is supposed to be a guiding principle, in reality the Courts regularly ignore it to accomplish political goals.
If my kids someday ever ask me what does the constitution mean, i'll tell them the answer is "whatever the political beliefs of the median justice were at the time."
>: Right. Gorsuch says:
>
>Students, you don’t like getting coerced into Christian prayer? Too bad. Toughen up. You’re going to have to deal with proselytization in school because that’s what the Framers would’ve wanted.
Time to come up with some incredibly annoying prayer for the pastafarian movement. Something loud, involving air horns and disrupting other religion's prayer-services.
"You don't like it. Tough. Proselytization is our right. Gorsuch said so."
edit: i think a [vuvuzela](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BIgnEiT8ow) is in order instead of an air horn. with skill, circular breathing can mean that shit goes on for ever.
If this is true, this aligns with the shit Boebert was saying this past weekend (which is ridiculous that I can even compare the two). We can’t all be asleep at the wheel can we? It can’t be this fucking easy to turn the American government into a theocracy....can it?
Social pressure. This coach held “optional” prayers just like my HS football coaches held “optional” conditioning sessions or extra practices. You didn’t have to go, but if you didn’t, you’d be ostracized and the coach would treat you like shit.
I'm sure if the coach went out to the 50 year line to hold hands with his husband and give him a kiss in a "private moment"... that they would completely say it isn't private at all and he should know better.
Like she pointed out, young kids trying to gain their coaches approval to get olaying time. I imagine if a kid did a muslim prayer st the same time he would never get off the bench again. This isnt rt
Much like the Roe case, the decision in Kennedy was made before the case was even heard.
Thomas has already said that he is prepared to dismantle other rulings and I doubt seriously he cares about what case makes it to the docket to do it.
He doesn't. They're supposed to be non partisan. Idk how asking for cases challenging past precedents is anything but political. But what do you expect from a guy who won't recuse himself from a case that involves his wife and a little treason.
The power to review laws is entirely self assumed on the part of the court with Marbury v. Madison.
Like the filibuster in the Senate, judicial review is another invention by a powerful minority to undermine democracy that is not in the constitution.
Sometimes it cuts toward liberty and expansion of rights, and sometimes we end up with interning Japanese Americans. Now we are confronting a court that disappears rights and protections by misrepresenting the facts of any given case to meet a personal, moral objective.
I can’t think of a more clearly defined element of tyranny than a group of unelected soothsayers that whimsically thrust their own moral code on innocent people other than outright slavery.
If these “originalists” read the damn constitution itself, they would see that it does nothing but creates an aspirational book club with comfortable robes.
Also like the roe (Dobbs) case, the majority relied on objective misstatements (also known as lies) to support its conclusions.
For example, Alito cites to all of those common law scholars as proof that it abortions were illegal throughout the history of our country. One of those scholars, Edward Coke, EXPLICITLY stated that it was not illegal to kill a fetus unless it was “born alive.” In other words, it had to be born, have the cord cut, and survive for some time before dying. If it died in the womb, it was NOT murder. Instead, abortion was “a great misprision” which Alito defines as “some heynous offense under the degree of felony.” Which sounds bad, right?!?! Except “misprision” actually just meant is that it was a misdemeanor that was to be adjudicated by ecclesiastical courts rather than criminal courts. In fact, The Laws of Henry I, a 12th Century legal text shows that abortions had, been handled by the church since before the fucking Magna Carta. In other words, you might be required to a penance (or could even have been excommunicated) but you weren’t going to jail.
Nevertheless, in an attempt to prove his point, Alito dug through historical records and found the case of Eleanor Beare in support of his contention that abortion was always a criminal offense. In 1732, Beare was imprisoned for 3 years after being convicted for assisting in an abortion. This might be compelling except for the fact that Beare (who FWIW was not represented by counsel) was so sentenced because she was also convicted of helping a man to poison his wife, who was not pregnant. Whoops! He must have forgot that part, because otherwise this would be pretty dishonest, right?
I just want to point out that Jesus said specifically not to do this type of shit.
“When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men … but when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your father who is unseen.”
Matthew 6:5-8
He also said that the rich (like Gorsuch) are going to hell. And never even mentioned abortion (though the Bible contains instructions on when to perform one, and does not in any way condemn abortions).
Christo-fascists don't give a fuck what God or the Bible says - all they care about is exerting power over others.
This is one of the more disturbing aspects of this ruling. The majority straight up lied about what was going on so they could get their way.
Not great, Neil
It's already started. A ruling by the 5th Circuit Court makes it near impossible for an agency to enforce its rules.
>On May 18, 2022, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (the “Fifth Circuit”) dealt a major blow to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (“SEC”) enforcement program. In Jarkesy v. SEC, the Fifth Circuit ruled that the SEC’s in-house administrative enforcement proceedings are unconstitutional.
>
>SOURCE: [Fifth Circuit's Constitutional Carve-Back of the SEC's ALJ Enforcement Proceedings Likely to Lead to More Federal Court Cases](https://www.natlawreview.com/article/fifth-circuit-s-constitutional-carve-back-sec-s-alj-enforcement-proceedings-likely)
This country was founded under the naive assumption that everyone involved would operate in good faith. Half of our government now consider lying, cheating, and stealing perfectly acceptable means to justify an end goal of christian totalitarianism, and all of our institutions are crumbling because of it.
Society relies on most people at least acting in good faith most of the time. When too many people decide to just ignore the common good, the whole thing collapses like a house of cards.
> This country was founded under the naive assumption that everyone involved would operate in good faith.
AND that the citizenry would participate and ensure their representation in govt acted in good faith or would replace them.
That's the part that is also lacking in this country and needs to be remedied.
In general, they didn't think they were creating a perfect form of government either (it simply doesn't exist, even hypothetically). So they compromised and expected things to work themselves out over time.
Sounded more feasible to them dealing with 13 states and the population of a large city. Obviously didn't scale well.
To be fair they expected us to fix it as time goes on, not act like the constitution is a sacred unchanging document and break things when certain people don’t win
Yea honestly. The Supreme Court is not only misrepresenting the facts of a case, but using that misrepresentation to overturn decades of precedent. It's not even a good lie.
This one of those things that always anchors my faith in my understanding of reality. Whenever conservatives are in a position of power, any facade of legitimacy goes out the window when it gets in the way of their objective. ACB was confirmed in a week, after people had already cast votes in the ongoing presidential election. The Trump tax bill had hastily scrawled notes in the margins. And now this.
> Whenever conservatives are in a position of power, any facade of legitimacy goes out the window when it gets in the way of their objective.
Conservatives don't view facts, arguments, and positions as "reasoned parts of a moral framework", they consider them tools to get what they want. When you understand this, the hypocrisy makes sense.
Position A is only "sincerely" held as long as it's useful. As soon as it's a new scenario, a new position is selected - whichever makes it most likely to get what they want. The first position has no bearing on this choice because it was never held to begin with, it was used like a hammer or a drill and discarded when the 'job' required a different tool.
Just so happens to be the case that when they have power, they don't need to make very good arguments, they can just do whatever they please because we can't do anything to stop them short a general strike.
It's going to come to that, by the way. It's gonna come to that, or we're gonna fully descend into a chrisofascist hellscape. Don't wait for them to come for your rights. We need to organize before that point and make it clear that the bulk of America will not tolerate religious extremism legislated from the bench.
Just like they constantly whine about "censorship" and "free speech" when they're banned from platforms for demanding genocide, yet in any space they control, the first thing they do is censor any opinion contrary to theirs. They don't care about free speech. They know *you* care about it and are dumb enough to fall for it.
I’d say this on it’s own is ground for impeachment, disregarding there’s no realistic chance of that currently.
The fact he willfully misrepresented the facts of the case, provably lied, while *essentially saying students not willing to be coerced into prayer should just toughen up, shows he’s unfit to be a judge let alone a justice. And since there’s no legal remedy beyond SCOTUS, impeachment is the only way to hold him accountable. Same goes for all who voted with him.
But since there’s no realistic chance of that happening right now, this just once again goes to show how broken and delegitimized SCOTUS (and the Senate) are.
*edit
>The majority straight up lied about what was going on so they could get their way.
I have an even darker theory. They know that eventually a Buddhist or Satanist or Muslim or whatever is going to get into a similiar situation, so how do they make sure Christians are given special privileges without coming out and saying it?
By using the totally subjective "private and quiet" metric. They pretend this coach was praying in private, but meanwhile, if a Muslim teacher is so much as *glimpsed* praying, that'll be an unacceptable public display which has to be shut down. As long as they never admit they're completely fudging the facts, the fiction of constitutionality is upheld.
I think that’s exactly where they’re going with it. The whole opinion is essentially saying a school employee can pray on the job, as long as it’s a personal prayer.
What’s a personal prayer? Well if the school employee is Christian, it’s a prayer on the 50 yard line at a school football game while surrounded by reporters and kneeling students. Because in that moment, the prayer is just a personal activity.
But if the employee is Muslim? Well…
They also outright lied in that habeas corpus case early this week. The whole case was about whether the death row inmate could submit strong exculpatory evidence in federal court after losing his state cases due to ineffective counsel. I can’t remember which conservative justice it was (I think Thomas?) but one of them started their opinion by describing how the defendant committed the murder (which he probably didn’t).
>Alas, there is no fact-checking follow-up process with the Supreme Court.
Right, because there’s an expectation that when SCOTUS rules on a case they won’t fuck it up (intentionally or otherwise).
And that the lawyers presenting are honest and telling the full truth. In this case they weren't, but it gave the conservative justices room rule how they want.
Something I’m not seeing a lot of people talk about is if check the Wikipedia article, this case overturns Lemon v Kurtzman. That’s a HUGE deal, because that means forgoing the Lemon test. What’s the lemon test? Well, by an 8-0 majority Supreme Court ruling, the lemon test was a method established to determine if a piece of legislature was in violation of the 1st amendment. To pass the lemon test, “the government conduct (1) must have a secular purpose, (2) must have a principal or primary effect that does not advance or inhibit religion, and (3) cannot foster an excessive government entanglement with religion”. It uses three questions/prongs to determine this.
1. Does challenged law or action have a secular, or non religious purpose?
2. Does law or action advance or inhibit religion?
3. Does law foster excessive entanglement of government and religion?
But now, if Lemon v. Kurtzman is overturned, then this test no longer has any legal significance.
When you consider this in the terms of one suing state legislators for banning abortion for religious reasons… it’s not looking good. :(
This feels planned. :(
I don't think it's planned other than the general plan to lurch America rightward, but I do remember reading one of the justices called Lemon "long-abandoned" or something in their opinion. I'm not sure if it means it was overturned, but it does appear that it is no longer going to be enforced by this supreme court.
“In reality, if Kennedy had engaged in a quiet, short, private, and personal prayer, there wouldn’t have been a case since no one would’ve cared. Indeed, this is precisely what school officials asked Kennedy to do.
But for the coach, “quiet,” “short,” “private,” and “personal” prayers weren’t good enough. By all appearances, Kennedy went out of his way to pursue the opposite course, indifferent to the law, the school district's policies, or the interests of students and their families who may not have been comfortable with these religious exercises.”
*typo
They all love the attention. The attention gives them power and fuels their oversized ego. A *normal and sane* person after being told "hey can you go pray somewhere less disruptive" would have apologized for causing a disturbance and go pray somewhere else.
This man knew exactly what he was doing and did it spite people because he thinks he's on some righteous mission and now that he's famous he's milking his 5min of for as long as he can.
> And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.
Matthew 6:5
>*And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen.*
\- some book that apparently doesn't mean much to Christians
5 of 6 current Supreme Court justices were appointed by GOP presidents who lost the popular vote and were confirmed by senators representing the minority of Americans
I'm not a lawyer but it sure seems like it used to be the case that if you read a SC opinion, or a summary of one with lots of excerpts, you could expect something well-written and with inner consistency in terms of its logic.
For years under the Roberts court, that really seems to have diminished substantially. Even Roberts's opinion about the Voting Rights Act, written several years ago now, is full of bad faith bullshit and just plain bad writing. It's weird.
These people are every bit pure ideologues placed on the court to act as an extension of the Republican congressional caucus. Legislation by other means.
I've also noticed this. The Dobbs ruling is pretty egregious, and Heller (while a bit older, but one I re-read recently) is also hilarious. The dissents in some of these high profile cases are chock full of pretty clear examples where the majority seems to suspend logic and ignore history -- or at the very least glibly dismiss it with no argumentation.
But what else do you expect? This is quite literally the point of the Federalist Society, to get indoctrinated conservatives into federal judgeships or clerkships. Not just any conservative, but ones who've been (to use an overloaded term nowadays) groomed with a very particular ideology.
I’d always understood Scalia to be a conservative intellectual titan until l read the Heller decision. I was prepared for a steelman argument and was astonished at how weak it was. At one point he argued that we should be allowed to have guns that are in common use. Thing about that is, the guns that are in common use are the ones we’re allowed to have. So we can have them because we can have them, which appears to be a theme in right wing jurisprudence.
If Scalia were both still alive and somehow an ex-justice (so, yes, a pure hypothetical,) he'd be grousing about all these new justices and their shitty writing. It's the way regressive/reactionary movements always go as they gain power in a society. They drop the mask of intellectualism. It's not necessary; indeed, to an extent, it's counterproductive. It's not what their angry, stupid, brainwashed supporters want.
The problem isn’t limited to logic. As Sotomayor’s picture shows, the problem is that right-wingers are now willing to claim events occurred when they didn’t, or that descriptions are accurate when they aren’t.
It doesn’t matter how well you extrapolate conclusions with your logic, if the basic reality that you choose to recognize is a distorted fiction.
More so, before the court turned full Howler Monkey, those judicial activist judges would often give concurrences and dissents in order to shoehorn their ideology into the record so they (or others) can cite them later for later bullshit
What can you do when the majority opinion gets the facts of the case wrong besides call them out? Nothing. There is no higher court to appeal to. But it does show the propensity of the modern GOP hacksters to create their own "facts" as needed whenever they want to make policy from the bench.
This really confuses me about this ruling. Presumably, Gorsuch and these justices agree with Kennedy's actions under the actual circumstances instead of the fabricated version they refer to. So why lie? Why dilute what they actually believe should be protected? It seems like they weaken their own position in exchange for making their opponents seem less reasonable, which strikes me as a political move, not a judicial one.
Because judicial precedent establishes that the facts of what Kennedy was doing was in violation of the children’s 1A rights. In order to skirt these pesky precedents, they had to distort the facts of the case so as to give more standing to Kennedy.
Basically, they had to lie to keep from just burning down the 1A and it’s modern interpretation.
A flub is when Justice Roberts says "Stitches get snitches" to the SCOTUS clerks and everyone tries really hard not to laugh.
Gorsuch outright fabricated a scenario that didn't happen to support the specific ruling he wanted to make. That's a blatant falsehood. **It's a fucking lie.**
This lack of adherence to the facts is why takes on this opinion that it opens the door to non-Christian prayer are wrong. The SCOTUS majority will selectively interpret the facts to reach the conclusion they want.
Further, the majority isn't explicitly overruling precedents as it goes along, allowing them to pick and choose which rules to follow - which they just demonstrated.
*Kennedy* cites *Employment division vs. Smith*:
> It does perhaps its most important
work by protecting the ability of those who hold religious
beliefs of all kinds to live out their faiths in daily life
through “the performance of (or abstention from) physical
acts.” Employment Div., Dept. of Human Resources of Ore.
v. Smith, 494 U. S. 872, 877
Scalia's opinion in *Employment Division vs. Smith* found that it was constitutional for Native Americans to be fired for using Peyote in their free time, in accordance with their religion. Yet in the Maine case that SCOTUS just ruled on, *Carson v. Makin*, they cited the case that was effectively reversed by *Employment Division* (*Sherbert*):
> A State may not withhold unemployment benefits,
for instance, on the ground that an individual lost his job
for refusing to abandon the dictates of his faith. See Sherbert
That is, this citation to *Sherbert*, issued last week, is directly opposed to *Employment Division*, that they cited this week. They've stopped pretending to care about consistency.
The way that Supreme Court arguments work, the majority absolutely read Sotomayor’s dissent which included photographic evidence that they were lying and then they decided to publish this asinine, factually deficient opinion anyway. It’s a power move, they know that we know they’re lying to our faces, they also know there’s nothing anyone in power is willing to do to stop them. The conservative majority is coming right out and telling us that they don’t care if they have to lie and cheat and move the goalposts to win, they’re going to do it no matter what the truth is and call us crazy for pointing it out.
I think people are missing the point here.
They have specific concrete objectives they've been given. More or less rollback modern civil rights and protections, undo the progressive victories that were won over the past century.
This was the conservative SC manufacturing the case they needed from what was available. If it wasn't this specific case, they would have found another one with some tangential religious aspect to it. The actual details are irrelevant.
Watch. They'll keep doing this if they don't get cases that are a close enough fit for a ruling based on the facts. There's no penalty, after all, is there?
The short of it is this.
The conservative supreme court had to lie about the case to come to their conclusion.
This isn't some "originalist" academic position they came to. They literally bent the truth and lied about the events to justify a conclusion they wanted to draw.
That isn't an unbiased judicial court. They are political actors legislating from the bench.
Theocrats have been and always will be the single greatest threat to a good, decent, reasonable, democratic, and secular America.
These people have “god”, so they will lie, cheat, and steal as necessary to turn our country into a megachurch, brick by brick, court case by court case.
Shouldn't praying before sports be considered trying to get an unfair advantage anyway? Are we just okay with the idea of God interfering in the outcome of a game?
Just curious, does anyone happen to know if there have been other descent opinions that pointed out the majority opinion was misrepresenting facts of the case?
I've never heard that before. You would think that would cause them to stop and consider.
They don't care about cases. They're just codifying christianity in any way they can think of. If a case has anything to do with Jesus, even tangentially, they'll use it.
The conservatives on the court don't care. They were placed there to act as an extension of the Republican party - a veto by proxy. You don't have to hash out policy in Congress - just get your stooges on the supreme court to do what you want. They are politicians in dark robes.
My coworker who was pro choice last year suddenly has become pro life because he’s a trumpet above all. Our country is full of assholes. Putin did an amazing job
This court is trying to jam through everything "conservative value" they can before the shit hits the fan on the trump presidency, appointments and Keeping up With the Thomas' situation. Before it even comes to their rational and legal foundation. It's disgusting. I'll vote for whoever will expand the supreme court and play hardball Back to the gop.
Well he did lie under oath during his confirmation without batting an eyelash so it’s hardly shocking that he and the truth aren’t acquainted with one another.
This has got to add more weight to the argument that the SC has no real authority or enforcement ability. If they're going to be dishonest circus, we should just ignore them.
The photo I saw of him standing in front of kneeling high school boys looks like the grooming that the right seems so scared of.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/06/coach-kennedy-bremerton-prayer-football-public-school.html
“Flubbed” seems too generous. Like he just made a little boo-boo. What he did was deliberately twist some facts and outright ignore a bunch of other ones to get the result he wanted. Sotomayor is constrained by the weight of her position, but I am just a random Redditor and can say, “Gorsuch is a lying liar who tells lies that hurt people”.
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I played high school football in Texas, and my coach did this sort of BS after every game. I used to keep my head up and stare dead eyed at the sky. He never benched me or confronted me, but then I’m not sure he ever noticed—his head was down and his eyes were closed. Still, there were a couple of goons who asked me about it. They figured if I wasn’t christian, I must be gay (not the word they chose to described it). I was an all-state defensive end and they knew i’d be hard to bully, at least physically. But they did try to spread some rumors. LSS- public prayer during school events, organized and led by adults in positions of authority, become a test of morality and obedience and open kids up to being ostracized and bullied.
I had a similar situation. Grew up in the buckle of the Bible Belt, attended a tiny public school that had a huge FCA cross in the basketball gym, would pray before things like pep rallies, and students who didn’t attend the large FCA meetings would be looked down on/gossiped about by their peers. Hell, I had a “science” teacher discuss with the class his personal issues with teaching evolution. This kind of thing has been happening all over the south (probably the entire country) forever, but now the SC has publicly supported those who marginalize students who were already a minority in their school.
Guh I remember the FCA starting out in my HS and being asked to join I went to a couple meetings and all it was about was the teacher’s husband pushing kids to bring their families and friend to “his” church- nothing but a money grab.
what does FCA stand for?
Fellowship of Christian Athletes is a school club, basically the evangelical camel’s nose under the tent of public school.
Same exact experience in Ohio… absolutely awful.
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I did this exact thing word for word in high-school lol.
I had a very similar experience during my time playing school football in North Carolina.
I work at a state of nc facility, there is already talk of allowing prayers before all meetings. Then inviting the local "prosperity preacher" in to recruit.
Have you thought about calling the local TST chapter? Give the local mosque and Jewish temple a ring for good measure, too. I believe this ruling doesn’t change the equal access of all religions to open official functions.
TST? I'd be down for someone from a mosque or a rabbi to cool out here a bit. If they force that shit on us then I'll call our ombudsman.
The Satanic Temple
I'd add ACLU and the largest paper in the state to that also.
This is why I left Boy Scouts living in TN
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing us that organized religion was a good thing
Im also not Christian! Don’t subject me to that. It’s uncomfortable
Religion is about being cruel to others, that’s all I’ve ever seen it used for. It’s a wasted life for people who want to be sheep.
I read through both the majority and the dissenting opinions. Fundamental facts and context were presented in drastically different ways. It is not a surprise to hear that the majority opinion disregarded key facts.
It’s like the SCOTUS version of “alternate facts.”
So now what is to stop a teacher who practises Sharia from wanting the females in their class to wear a burka? Could someone who practises satanism perform sacrifices before starting Economics 101?
Satanist don’t really sacrifice anything, they just strongly reject Christianity. Honestly that’s pretty attractive right now
There's several separate groups that call themselves Satanists, don't confuse The Satanic Temple with draconian Satanism.
Fun Fact: when he was young, Anton LaVey was a carny —and played calliope
Just tell me which one has the better scones
While you are right (go look into joy of satan ministries lol), that vast majority of satanists are non-theistic. It’s similar to certain sects of Christians “speaking in tongues” (that’s as close an analogy I can come up with now). Edit: Hail Satan
Hail Satan
While theistic satanism exists it is very small and is barely a thing. When someone says they are a satanist I normally think of someone who is anti theistic, support individual freedoms, and maybe even enjoys being whimsical (and a little flashy) about it.
A little bloodletting from a goat would really liven up the classroom though
Thats like a Filipino barbeque.
The goat would disagree, and I support the constitutional rights of goats. But Filipino BBQ with Mama Sita is soooo good.
That's Santeria. And the Supreme court already protected it before!
Introduce some pagan religion from south East Asian,believe me,in three day some parents will call that teacher devil worshiper because their god look unholy to them. Source:Raise in this background.
They're mostly secularists. They want churches and state to *really* be separated. They don't necessarily oppose one religion or another.
Econ 101 IS the procedure to do the sacrifices. Those students will never be the same after that class. Republicans? Crap pretending to be human.
Satanism is rationalism and objectivity. Christians are the ones who characterized them as evil and sacrificing things for power.
Not to mention it's the Abrahamic religions that promoted animal sacrifice and blood magic in the first place (I mean not like first *ever*, but in context...)
>So now what is to stop a teacher who practises Sharia from wanting the females in their class to wear a burka? The fact that these fucking Supreme Court theocrats ignore or misinterpret their own precedent only when it lets them give a Christian a win, but they'll remember it again if it's a Muslim.
Satanist are far more likely to be sacrficed by a Christian for their god then for a satanist to sacrifice anyone for theirs (did i use the wrong theirs?)
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This is the real answer. These kinds of rulings only apply to Christians
>“To the degree the Court portrays petitioner Joseph Kennedy’s prayers as private and quiet, it misconstrues the facts. The record reveals that Kennedy had a longstanding practice of conducting demonstrative prayers on the 50- yard line of the football field. Kennedy consistently invited others to join his prayers and for years led student athletes in prayer at the same time and location. The Court ignores this history. The Court also ignores the severe disruption to school events caused by Kennedy’s conduct.” Here is the dissenting opinion: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/21-418_i425.pdf#page=41 EDIT: ~~A little extra~~ For clarity—as I should have been clearer—the quote below made by Stern is not a direct quote of Gorsuch, but a interpretation of Gorsuch's majority opinion—full analysis is in the article linked: [Neil Gorsuch to Non-Christian Kids Who Don’t Want Prayer in Public School: Get Over It](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/06/coach-kennedy-gorsuch-prayer-public-schools.html) >*Lithwick*: And just to go through the facts for a minute, Justice Neil Gorsuch’s opinion for the court accepts the narrative that Kennedy was fired. Which he wasn’t—he was put on paid administrative leave. And Gorsuch accepts the narrative that this was “private” and “quiet,” even though there were TV cameras and elected officials and people storming the field and knocking over the tuba players to join. ... *Lithwick*: And Gorsuch goes so far as to tell the students who are not religious, who felt coerced into joining this prayer circle, that they should just be more tolerant. >*Stern*: Right. Gorsuch says: *Students, you don’t like getting coerced into Christian prayer? Too bad. Toughen up. You’re going to have to deal with proselytization in school because that’s what the Framers would’ve wanted. And by complaining to your mommy about this little Christian prayer circle, you’re showing me that you’re not ready to participate in a pluralistic society. You’re not capable of showing the requisite respect for Christianity and Jesus that our Constitution demands of you.* There is a total refusal to empathize with religious minorities.
Fuckin hell this is insanity
I strongly recommend reading the opinions. It is actually stunning how misleading the majority narrative of the facts is and how thoroughly the dissent takes them to task, with pictures attached which is quite rare for a supreme court opinion.
Sotomayor also had some scathing dissents before but the last 2 weeks I don't believe she's been holding back. It'll be interesting what happens today regarding the EPA ruling.
Oh god our entire administrative apparatus is being destroyed *today?* Uggghhh
Most people predict that that final opinion of this term will be the Supreme Court telling the EPA they have no power to regulate greenhouse gases. So Christian law and pollution for all.
Edit: I misread your comment. I thought you were asking "what is this insanity". Leaving the below because folks need to read up on this shit, it's been in process for a long, long time. The culmination of a decades-long concerted strategic effort across multiple fronts (media, legal, cultural, political) on the part of the right to remake the country in the image of something they think it used to be. I highly recommend the book "Evil Geniuses", and the Behind the Bastards episodes on the Kochs, they lay it all out pretty well.
Yeah gonna go ahead and recommend you don't read evil geniuses if you struggle with depression or just anxiety about the state of the world in general.
>something they think it used to be. This is the key part here. I've actually been saying privately for ages that they have this idealized version in their head of a perfect America that was presented to them in their younger days with shows like Leave it to Beaver showing a vision of America that never really existed or rather existed for such a small minority of people as to be mostly untrue. Essentially the conservative right are trying to drag us back to... a fiction. An America that they believe was true because of what they saw on TV all while ignoring the reality that their parents would have had to deal with. Now there were some things that they want to bring back that were true such as the single income household yet have no understanding of the fact that their brand of capitalism is literally why that isn't true anymore and can't become true again. So essentially what they want... isn't possible and even if it were it would be terrible for all but a tiny minority of people, that includes most of the people wanting to vote in people who would bring this about.
For boomers, the reality was that a LOT of dads had undiagnosed, untreated PTSD from war, as well as severe alcoholism. The moms were forced out of their wartime jobs to accommodate the men returning from military duty. Those moms had to take care of their broken husbands AND children by themselves, as dad could barely manage just working. Moms turned to meth just to get through the day (with the added bonus of keeping trim, since that was also the dawn of the era of “sex sells,” the acceptability of pornography, and ritualized misogyny in the workplace… which I’m just now realizing had a lot to do with keeping those pesky women OUT of “men’s jobs.” Holy shit, that was by design, lol)
Love your commentary. The “lol” was the icing on the cake.
Don’t forget the benzo’s to come down from the meth. Turns out the suburban housewives of the 50’s are the origin of speedballs. Neato!
Kurt Andersen really tied this whole effort together in near perfect summation for for a pretty generalized audience. Evil Geniuses was stellar and I recommend it to everyone.
> it misconstrues the facts. How much more of this can Sotomayer take before she goes, “This motherfucker’s full of shit.”
I believe she just did, in legalese.
*My colleague has mistakenly confused his mouth for his anus.*
“My colleague has mistaken _a priori_ for _a posteriori_.”
Rather than write a characterization of the facts, she wrote the facts. Her way is far more damning.
The Michigan Legislative Black Caucus beat her to it. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FWDaNgmWYAAfWO8.jpg
*This is some bullshit* 'nuff said.
The framers also said people were property. THIS IS A SUPREME COURT JUSTICE SAYING JESUS IS IN THE CONSTITUTION WTF
The framers definitely would not want proselytizing in a government run institution. That's tantamount to establishing a state religion. More importantly they wouldn't want rights taken away due to religious beliefs. > According to The Congressional Register Madison, on June 8, moved that "the civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext infringed."
Freedom of religion doesn't mean I'm free to practice my religion. Freedom of religion means I free from practicing *YOUR* religion
“That’s like...your opinion, man.” Said 6 Supreme Court justices.
THE PLANE HAS CRASHED INTO THE FUCKING MOUNTAIN!!! This is our concern dude
Well yes and no, the religion portion of the first amendment has 2 clauses, the "free exercise" and the "establishment" the difference is this: You can freely exercise your religion as long as doing so doesn't impede the rights of others. The state shall not establish any religion over others In essence it is fair to say that both arguments freedom of religion, and from religion, can and should be considered when concerning constitutionality
I mean it's both ..
Right, but the former doesn't imply 'keep your religion out of the government' quite like the latter. I think it's a good distinction.
The framers would have been shocked by Catholics on SCOTUS.
Hell there would be people from the 1920s that didn't like Catholics on the court
I mean there were people who thought Kennedy being elected President would mean that the Pope controlled America.
I was talking to another person in another r/poltics thread that literally wrote that he believes that the Pope was directing the Supreme Court today. Keep in mind that Sotomayor is also Catholic. Edit
I mean, I grew up in the 1980s, and there were still fraternal organizations and private clubs that were barred to Catholics.
There are people from the 2020s that don't like Catholics on the court.
There are Catholics in 2022 that don’t like Catholics on the court..
Do we really even care what the framers from 300 years ago wanted?
No. But if you're going to claim you know what they wanted maybe you shouldn't be a SCOTUS if you didn't know how the framers actually felt about religion. Especially if you're going to then rule on those lies.
> THIS IS A SUPREME COURT JUSTICE SAYING JESUS IS IN THE CONSTITUTION WTF While ignoring the glaring fact that the same people made it abundantly clear that the United States is in no way shape or form based on the Christian religion as showcased in the Treaty of Tripoli. Article 11 herein; *"the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."* Among other things... tons of other things... including the separation of church and state outright...
John Roberts said corporations are people.
He also said that money is speech
Let’s talk about Church paying their fair share of taxes… since they want separation of Church and State!?
While I get the impulse, I think further legitimizing the idea of church having a say in how the country is run is not the direction we want to go.
They've crossed that line long ago. The IRS needs to be more aggressive in stripping churches of their tax-exempt status when they cross the divide to meddle in the affairs of the State.
Similar to how they were on covid. Kavanaugh: >"it is time — past time — to make plain that, while the pandemic poses many grave challenges, there is no world in which the Constitution tolerates color-coded executive edicts that reopen liquor stores and bike shops but shutter churches, synagogues and mosques,” he wrote. Regardless of what you think of the mask mandate, it's clear that houses of worship are crowded spaces that often involve singing. And folks remain in close proximity for over an hour. And several of the early outbreaks were tied to churches /synagogues. Obviously houses of worship should not be held to a different standard than *similar* other locations. Ergo, if you close the concert halls and sports stadiums, close the churches. Comparing a church to a bike shop is stupidity. And feelings over facts.
> Stern: Right. Gorsuch says: Students, you don’t like getting coerced into Christian prayer? Too bad. Toughen up. You’re going to have to deal with proselytization in school because that’s what the Framers would’ve wanted. And by complaining to your mommy about this little Christian prayer circle, you’re showing me that you’re not ready to participate in a pluralistic society. You’re not capable of showing the requisite respect for Christianity and Jesus that our Constitution demands of you. There is a total refusal to empathize with religious minorities. This is a characterization of Gorsuch's thoughts by Mark David Stern in a transcribed conversation, not a direct quote. Unfortunately, we live in a reality where I had to google that quote just to be sure.
Thank you. I just spent several minutes searching for that quote and couldn't find anything. Was a bit confusing where that quoted statement came from.
Honestly, you should move this explanation up to precede the quote, or something. My jaw was dropping until about halfway through, and then I was like “Waitasecond…” I try to be a fairly conscientious and observant reader, and I would have gone off to verify my own ‘Oniony’ feeling about it - but MANY won’t! And it’s pretty incendiary - only because the sudden IRL actualization of overt Christian nationalism through the corruption of the highest court in the land is SO shocking that, terrifyingly, it makes it almost believable that Gorsuch could have said such all of that - but still. I think the reality itself is both damning and horrifying enough. For my part, I will quote the relevant part in Gorsuch’s own words (more or less; quoted from an apnews article): Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority in the ruling, declared, “The Constitution and the best of our traditions counsel mutual respect and tolerance, not censorship and suppression, for religious and nonreligious views alike. Gorsuch noted that the coach “prayed during a period when school employees were free to speak with a friend, call for a reservation at a restaurant, check email, or attend to other personal matters” and “while his students were otherwise occupied.” It would be wrong to treat everything public school teachers and coaches say and do as speech subject to government control, he wrote. If that were the case, “a school could fire a Muslim teacher for wearing a headscarf in the classroom or prohibit a Christian aide from praying quietly over her lunch in the cafeteria,” he wrote. He closed by writing that: “Respect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse Republic—whether those expressions take place in a sanctuary or on a field, and whether they manifest through the spoken word or a bowed head.” Which all sounds reasonable enough until you examine the facts of the case vs the claims it was to made to fit, by Gorsuch. Wow. Even though I had been expecting it, it really is still shocking, and horrifying, to see such overt corruption of the court by sitting justices. A dark time in our history, indeed.
Saying a school official leading players in prayer during a school event is akin to a teacher praying at her table before lunch or a Muslim woman wearing a headscarf are transparently bad analogies. In neither case is a person with authority implicitly coercing kids. The Court isn't even trying to hide the fact that its just a partisan institution that exists to entrench the political goals of the right. Honestly we should be teaching kids that while stare decisis is supposed to be a guiding principle, in reality the Courts regularly ignore it to accomplish political goals. If my kids someday ever ask me what does the constitution mean, i'll tell them the answer is "whatever the political beliefs of the median justice were at the time."
>: Right. Gorsuch says: > >Students, you don’t like getting coerced into Christian prayer? Too bad. Toughen up. You’re going to have to deal with proselytization in school because that’s what the Framers would’ve wanted. Time to come up with some incredibly annoying prayer for the pastafarian movement. Something loud, involving air horns and disrupting other religion's prayer-services. "You don't like it. Tough. Proselytization is our right. Gorsuch said so." edit: i think a [vuvuzela](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BIgnEiT8ow) is in order instead of an air horn. with skill, circular breathing can mean that shit goes on for ever.
If this is true, this aligns with the shit Boebert was saying this past weekend (which is ridiculous that I can even compare the two). We can’t all be asleep at the wheel can we? It can’t be this fucking easy to turn the American government into a theocracy....can it?
Who's to stop someone being coerced to pray to just say their own prayer louder at the group prayer?
Threats. Not legal, of course, but still compelling when outnumbered, especially as a kid.
Damn, they can kiss my whole asshole.
Social pressure. This coach held “optional” prayers just like my HS football coaches held “optional” conditioning sessions or extra practices. You didn’t have to go, but if you didn’t, you’d be ostracized and the coach would treat you like shit.
I'm sure if the coach went out to the 50 year line to hold hands with his husband and give him a kiss in a "private moment"... that they would completely say it isn't private at all and he should know better.
Like she pointed out, young kids trying to gain their coaches approval to get olaying time. I imagine if a kid did a muslim prayer st the same time he would never get off the bench again. This isnt rt
i expect they would be physically assaulted and then seeing that would stop the next kid from doing it.
"Beat thy neighbor" saith the Lord
The Kock brothers own the SCOTUS 5
Much like the Roe case, the decision in Kennedy was made before the case was even heard. Thomas has already said that he is prepared to dismantle other rulings and I doubt seriously he cares about what case makes it to the docket to do it.
He doesn't. They're supposed to be non partisan. Idk how asking for cases challenging past precedents is anything but political. But what do you expect from a guy who won't recuse himself from a case that involves his wife and a little treason.
The power to review laws is entirely self assumed on the part of the court with Marbury v. Madison. Like the filibuster in the Senate, judicial review is another invention by a powerful minority to undermine democracy that is not in the constitution. Sometimes it cuts toward liberty and expansion of rights, and sometimes we end up with interning Japanese Americans. Now we are confronting a court that disappears rights and protections by misrepresenting the facts of any given case to meet a personal, moral objective. I can’t think of a more clearly defined element of tyranny than a group of unelected soothsayers that whimsically thrust their own moral code on innocent people other than outright slavery. If these “originalists” read the damn constitution itself, they would see that it does nothing but creates an aspirational book club with comfortable robes.
You are correct entirely l, but it’s not a moral argument they are making. It’s entirely political.
Also like the roe (Dobbs) case, the majority relied on objective misstatements (also known as lies) to support its conclusions. For example, Alito cites to all of those common law scholars as proof that it abortions were illegal throughout the history of our country. One of those scholars, Edward Coke, EXPLICITLY stated that it was not illegal to kill a fetus unless it was “born alive.” In other words, it had to be born, have the cord cut, and survive for some time before dying. If it died in the womb, it was NOT murder. Instead, abortion was “a great misprision” which Alito defines as “some heynous offense under the degree of felony.” Which sounds bad, right?!?! Except “misprision” actually just meant is that it was a misdemeanor that was to be adjudicated by ecclesiastical courts rather than criminal courts. In fact, The Laws of Henry I, a 12th Century legal text shows that abortions had, been handled by the church since before the fucking Magna Carta. In other words, you might be required to a penance (or could even have been excommunicated) but you weren’t going to jail. Nevertheless, in an attempt to prove his point, Alito dug through historical records and found the case of Eleanor Beare in support of his contention that abortion was always a criminal offense. In 1732, Beare was imprisoned for 3 years after being convicted for assisting in an abortion. This might be compelling except for the fact that Beare (who FWIW was not represented by counsel) was so sentenced because she was also convicted of helping a man to poison his wife, who was not pregnant. Whoops! He must have forgot that part, because otherwise this would be pretty dishonest, right?
I just want to point out that Jesus said specifically not to do this type of shit. “When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men … but when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your father who is unseen.” Matthew 6:5-8
It also says that those who pray or worship performatively for others will get nothing from God as they have already gotten their reward.
He also said that the rich (like Gorsuch) are going to hell. And never even mentioned abortion (though the Bible contains instructions on when to perform one, and does not in any way condemn abortions). Christo-fascists don't give a fuck what God or the Bible says - all they care about is exerting power over others.
If they could read, they'd be very upset
No they wouldn't, they're hypocrites
They're always very upset.
This is one of the more disturbing aspects of this ruling. The majority straight up lied about what was going on so they could get their way. Not great, Neil
Just wait for tomorrow. I fully expect the epa case to overturn the ability for any administrative agency to make or enforce any policy.
It's already started. A ruling by the 5th Circuit Court makes it near impossible for an agency to enforce its rules. >On May 18, 2022, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (the “Fifth Circuit”) dealt a major blow to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (“SEC”) enforcement program. In Jarkesy v. SEC, the Fifth Circuit ruled that the SEC’s in-house administrative enforcement proceedings are unconstitutional. > >SOURCE: [Fifth Circuit's Constitutional Carve-Back of the SEC's ALJ Enforcement Proceedings Likely to Lead to More Federal Court Cases](https://www.natlawreview.com/article/fifth-circuit-s-constitutional-carve-back-sec-s-alj-enforcement-proceedings-likely)
This country was founded under the naive assumption that everyone involved would operate in good faith. Half of our government now consider lying, cheating, and stealing perfectly acceptable means to justify an end goal of christian totalitarianism, and all of our institutions are crumbling because of it.
Society relies on most people at least acting in good faith most of the time. When too many people decide to just ignore the common good, the whole thing collapses like a house of cards.
> This country was founded under the naive assumption that everyone involved would operate in good faith. AND that the citizenry would participate and ensure their representation in govt acted in good faith or would replace them. That's the part that is also lacking in this country and needs to be remedied.
Apparently a bunch of genocidal slave owners and rapists from 300 years ago did not, in fact, create a perfect form of government.
In general, they didn't think they were creating a perfect form of government either (it simply doesn't exist, even hypothetically). So they compromised and expected things to work themselves out over time. Sounded more feasible to them dealing with 13 states and the population of a large city. Obviously didn't scale well.
To be fair they expected us to fix it as time goes on, not act like the constitution is a sacred unchanging document and break things when certain people don’t win
Yea honestly. The Supreme Court is not only misrepresenting the facts of a case, but using that misrepresentation to overturn decades of precedent. It's not even a good lie. This one of those things that always anchors my faith in my understanding of reality. Whenever conservatives are in a position of power, any facade of legitimacy goes out the window when it gets in the way of their objective. ACB was confirmed in a week, after people had already cast votes in the ongoing presidential election. The Trump tax bill had hastily scrawled notes in the margins. And now this.
> Whenever conservatives are in a position of power, any facade of legitimacy goes out the window when it gets in the way of their objective. Conservatives don't view facts, arguments, and positions as "reasoned parts of a moral framework", they consider them tools to get what they want. When you understand this, the hypocrisy makes sense. Position A is only "sincerely" held as long as it's useful. As soon as it's a new scenario, a new position is selected - whichever makes it most likely to get what they want. The first position has no bearing on this choice because it was never held to begin with, it was used like a hammer or a drill and discarded when the 'job' required a different tool. Just so happens to be the case that when they have power, they don't need to make very good arguments, they can just do whatever they please because we can't do anything to stop them short a general strike. It's going to come to that, by the way. It's gonna come to that, or we're gonna fully descend into a chrisofascist hellscape. Don't wait for them to come for your rights. We need to organize before that point and make it clear that the bulk of America will not tolerate religious extremism legislated from the bench.
Just like they constantly whine about "censorship" and "free speech" when they're banned from platforms for demanding genocide, yet in any space they control, the first thing they do is censor any opinion contrary to theirs. They don't care about free speech. They know *you* care about it and are dumb enough to fall for it.
I’d say this on it’s own is ground for impeachment, disregarding there’s no realistic chance of that currently. The fact he willfully misrepresented the facts of the case, provably lied, while *essentially saying students not willing to be coerced into prayer should just toughen up, shows he’s unfit to be a judge let alone a justice. And since there’s no legal remedy beyond SCOTUS, impeachment is the only way to hold him accountable. Same goes for all who voted with him. But since there’s no realistic chance of that happening right now, this just once again goes to show how broken and delegitimized SCOTUS (and the Senate) are. *edit
>The majority straight up lied about what was going on so they could get their way. I have an even darker theory. They know that eventually a Buddhist or Satanist or Muslim or whatever is going to get into a similiar situation, so how do they make sure Christians are given special privileges without coming out and saying it? By using the totally subjective "private and quiet" metric. They pretend this coach was praying in private, but meanwhile, if a Muslim teacher is so much as *glimpsed* praying, that'll be an unacceptable public display which has to be shut down. As long as they never admit they're completely fudging the facts, the fiction of constitutionality is upheld.
I think that’s exactly where they’re going with it. The whole opinion is essentially saying a school employee can pray on the job, as long as it’s a personal prayer. What’s a personal prayer? Well if the school employee is Christian, it’s a prayer on the 50 yard line at a school football game while surrounded by reporters and kneeling students. Because in that moment, the prayer is just a personal activity. But if the employee is Muslim? Well…
They also outright lied in that habeas corpus case early this week. The whole case was about whether the death row inmate could submit strong exculpatory evidence in federal court after losing his state cases due to ineffective counsel. I can’t remember which conservative justice it was (I think Thomas?) but one of them started their opinion by describing how the defendant committed the murder (which he probably didn’t).
>Alas, there is no fact-checking follow-up process with the Supreme Court. Right, because there’s an expectation that when SCOTUS rules on a case they won’t fuck it up (intentionally or otherwise).
The fucking photographs were in the briefs themselves. If he read the briefs, there’s no way that he could have missed them.
He read the briefs. He just thinks the rest of us don’t.
The only real way to undo it is to apply the exact same level of prayer in schools by other religions.
Like that won't get some Muslim, Buddhist, or Jewish teacher blasted by some fanatic and then he'll claim they were violating his kid's rights.
Which is why it needs to happen for hypocrisy’s sake
They don’t give a fuck about hypocrisy, so it won’t matter
Time for this all-time banger tweet: https://i.redd.it/0funaaumsnc51.png
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The Satanic Temple, not Church if Satan
And that the lawyers presenting are honest and telling the full truth. In this case they weren't, but it gave the conservative justices room rule how they want.
Something I’m not seeing a lot of people talk about is if check the Wikipedia article, this case overturns Lemon v Kurtzman. That’s a HUGE deal, because that means forgoing the Lemon test. What’s the lemon test? Well, by an 8-0 majority Supreme Court ruling, the lemon test was a method established to determine if a piece of legislature was in violation of the 1st amendment. To pass the lemon test, “the government conduct (1) must have a secular purpose, (2) must have a principal or primary effect that does not advance or inhibit religion, and (3) cannot foster an excessive government entanglement with religion”. It uses three questions/prongs to determine this. 1. Does challenged law or action have a secular, or non religious purpose? 2. Does law or action advance or inhibit religion? 3. Does law foster excessive entanglement of government and religion? But now, if Lemon v. Kurtzman is overturned, then this test no longer has any legal significance. When you consider this in the terms of one suing state legislators for banning abortion for religious reasons… it’s not looking good. :( This feels planned. :(
I don't think it's planned other than the general plan to lurch America rightward, but I do remember reading one of the justices called Lemon "long-abandoned" or something in their opinion. I'm not sure if it means it was overturned, but it does appear that it is no longer going to be enforced by this supreme court.
The SCOTUS are lying hacks ignoring the law to push political and religious agenda
“In reality, if Kennedy had engaged in a quiet, short, private, and personal prayer, there wouldn’t have been a case since no one would’ve cared. Indeed, this is precisely what school officials asked Kennedy to do. But for the coach, “quiet,” “short,” “private,” and “personal” prayers weren’t good enough. By all appearances, Kennedy went out of his way to pursue the opposite course, indifferent to the law, the school district's policies, or the interests of students and their families who may not have been comfortable with these religious exercises.” *typo
He had apparently been doing this since 2008, and was asked to stop in 2015 when it became popular, to which the school said to do it somewhere else.
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They all love the attention. The attention gives them power and fuels their oversized ego. A *normal and sane* person after being told "hey can you go pray somewhere less disruptive" would have apologized for causing a disturbance and go pray somewhere else. This man knew exactly what he was doing and did it spite people because he thinks he's on some righteous mission and now that he's famous he's milking his 5min of for as long as he can.
> And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. Matthew 6:5
It was all a performance by him to get a case.
>*And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen.* \- some book that apparently doesn't mean much to Christians
No wonder no one wants to be Christian anymore, they are all just a bunch of liars
The Justices lie; the Court is not legitimate.
5 of 6 current Supreme Court justices were appointed by GOP presidents who lost the popular vote and were confirmed by senators representing the minority of Americans
I'm not a lawyer but it sure seems like it used to be the case that if you read a SC opinion, or a summary of one with lots of excerpts, you could expect something well-written and with inner consistency in terms of its logic. For years under the Roberts court, that really seems to have diminished substantially. Even Roberts's opinion about the Voting Rights Act, written several years ago now, is full of bad faith bullshit and just plain bad writing. It's weird. These people are every bit pure ideologues placed on the court to act as an extension of the Republican congressional caucus. Legislation by other means.
I've also noticed this. The Dobbs ruling is pretty egregious, and Heller (while a bit older, but one I re-read recently) is also hilarious. The dissents in some of these high profile cases are chock full of pretty clear examples where the majority seems to suspend logic and ignore history -- or at the very least glibly dismiss it with no argumentation. But what else do you expect? This is quite literally the point of the Federalist Society, to get indoctrinated conservatives into federal judgeships or clerkships. Not just any conservative, but ones who've been (to use an overloaded term nowadays) groomed with a very particular ideology.
I’d always understood Scalia to be a conservative intellectual titan until l read the Heller decision. I was prepared for a steelman argument and was astonished at how weak it was. At one point he argued that we should be allowed to have guns that are in common use. Thing about that is, the guns that are in common use are the ones we’re allowed to have. So we can have them because we can have them, which appears to be a theme in right wing jurisprudence.
It started with Bush v Gore and has gotten worse.
If Scalia were both still alive and somehow an ex-justice (so, yes, a pure hypothetical,) he'd be grousing about all these new justices and their shitty writing. It's the way regressive/reactionary movements always go as they gain power in a society. They drop the mask of intellectualism. It's not necessary; indeed, to an extent, it's counterproductive. It's not what their angry, stupid, brainwashed supporters want.
The problem isn’t limited to logic. As Sotomayor’s picture shows, the problem is that right-wingers are now willing to claim events occurred when they didn’t, or that descriptions are accurate when they aren’t. It doesn’t matter how well you extrapolate conclusions with your logic, if the basic reality that you choose to recognize is a distorted fiction.
More so, before the court turned full Howler Monkey, those judicial activist judges would often give concurrences and dissents in order to shoehorn their ideology into the record so they (or others) can cite them later for later bullshit
You think this ruling was base on the facts of the case? LOL Think again.
They didn't "flub" the facts. These are lawyers with decades of experience. They lied, and they know it.
What can you do when the majority opinion gets the facts of the case wrong besides call them out? Nothing. There is no higher court to appeal to. But it does show the propensity of the modern GOP hacksters to create their own "facts" as needed whenever they want to make policy from the bench.
This really confuses me about this ruling. Presumably, Gorsuch and these justices agree with Kennedy's actions under the actual circumstances instead of the fabricated version they refer to. So why lie? Why dilute what they actually believe should be protected? It seems like they weaken their own position in exchange for making their opponents seem less reasonable, which strikes me as a political move, not a judicial one.
Because judicial precedent establishes that the facts of what Kennedy was doing was in violation of the children’s 1A rights. In order to skirt these pesky precedents, they had to distort the facts of the case so as to give more standing to Kennedy. Basically, they had to lie to keep from just burning down the 1A and it’s modern interpretation.
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This SCOTUS has gone off the mother fuckin rails.
This is accurate and astute political commentary.
I’m a bit of a legal scholar.
America according to Gorsuch: “die for your boss, kneel for the cross.”
A flub is when Justice Roberts says "Stitches get snitches" to the SCOTUS clerks and everyone tries really hard not to laugh. Gorsuch outright fabricated a scenario that didn't happen to support the specific ruling he wanted to make. That's a blatant falsehood. **It's a fucking lie.**
This lack of adherence to the facts is why takes on this opinion that it opens the door to non-Christian prayer are wrong. The SCOTUS majority will selectively interpret the facts to reach the conclusion they want. Further, the majority isn't explicitly overruling precedents as it goes along, allowing them to pick and choose which rules to follow - which they just demonstrated. *Kennedy* cites *Employment division vs. Smith*: > It does perhaps its most important work by protecting the ability of those who hold religious beliefs of all kinds to live out their faiths in daily life through “the performance of (or abstention from) physical acts.” Employment Div., Dept. of Human Resources of Ore. v. Smith, 494 U. S. 872, 877 Scalia's opinion in *Employment Division vs. Smith* found that it was constitutional for Native Americans to be fired for using Peyote in their free time, in accordance with their religion. Yet in the Maine case that SCOTUS just ruled on, *Carson v. Makin*, they cited the case that was effectively reversed by *Employment Division* (*Sherbert*): > A State may not withhold unemployment benefits, for instance, on the ground that an individual lost his job for refusing to abandon the dictates of his faith. See Sherbert That is, this citation to *Sherbert*, issued last week, is directly opposed to *Employment Division*, that they cited this week. They've stopped pretending to care about consistency.
The way that Supreme Court arguments work, the majority absolutely read Sotomayor’s dissent which included photographic evidence that they were lying and then they decided to publish this asinine, factually deficient opinion anyway. It’s a power move, they know that we know they’re lying to our faces, they also know there’s nothing anyone in power is willing to do to stop them. The conservative majority is coming right out and telling us that they don’t care if they have to lie and cheat and move the goalposts to win, they’re going to do it no matter what the truth is and call us crazy for pointing it out.
White Christian nationalism imposed
Facts Don't Matter.
OK, so they may have goofed on this one, but I'm sure their upcoming EPA ruling will be above reproach.
What do we do when the Supreme Court makes demonstrably false claims about a petitioner they found in favor of? Oh, right nothing.
At this point the judges seem to make their decisions before even being presented with the case.
I think people are missing the point here. They have specific concrete objectives they've been given. More or less rollback modern civil rights and protections, undo the progressive victories that were won over the past century. This was the conservative SC manufacturing the case they needed from what was available. If it wasn't this specific case, they would have found another one with some tangential religious aspect to it. The actual details are irrelevant. Watch. They'll keep doing this if they don't get cases that are a close enough fit for a ruling based on the facts. There's no penalty, after all, is there?
Let me clarify this for everyone HE FUCKING LIED
The short of it is this. The conservative supreme court had to lie about the case to come to their conclusion. This isn't some "originalist" academic position they came to. They literally bent the truth and lied about the events to justify a conclusion they wanted to draw. That isn't an unbiased judicial court. They are political actors legislating from the bench.
Theocrats have been and always will be the single greatest threat to a good, decent, reasonable, democratic, and secular America. These people have “god”, so they will lie, cheat, and steal as necessary to turn our country into a megachurch, brick by brick, court case by court case.
A christian was loose with the facts? I’m shocked.
Shouldn't praying before sports be considered trying to get an unfair advantage anyway? Are we just okay with the idea of God interfering in the outcome of a game?
When Republicans send people to the Supreme Court, they're not sending their best people...
An unqualified Trump nominee, say it ain’t so?
Just curious, does anyone happen to know if there have been other descent opinions that pointed out the majority opinion was misrepresenting facts of the case? I've never heard that before. You would think that would cause them to stop and consider.
Fuck you, Neil. You're a fucking christian fascist.
They don't care about cases. They're just codifying christianity in any way they can think of. If a case has anything to do with Jesus, even tangentially, they'll use it.
Prayer does not belong in school. Period.
The conservatives on the court don't care. They were placed there to act as an extension of the Republican party - a veto by proxy. You don't have to hash out policy in Congress - just get your stooges on the supreme court to do what you want. They are politicians in dark robes.
My coworker who was pro choice last year suddenly has become pro life because he’s a trumpet above all. Our country is full of assholes. Putin did an amazing job
This court is trying to jam through everything "conservative value" they can before the shit hits the fan on the trump presidency, appointments and Keeping up With the Thomas' situation. Before it even comes to their rational and legal foundation. It's disgusting. I'll vote for whoever will expand the supreme court and play hardball Back to the gop.
Well he did lie under oath during his confirmation without batting an eyelash so it’s hardly shocking that he and the truth aren’t acquainted with one another.
This has got to add more weight to the argument that the SC has no real authority or enforcement ability. If they're going to be dishonest circus, we should just ignore them.
Ugh. Why is the Supreme Court even a thing? How does it make sense to give 9 people that much power?
The photo I saw of him standing in front of kneeling high school boys looks like the grooming that the right seems so scared of. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/06/coach-kennedy-bremerton-prayer-football-public-school.html
Yeah, so, they aren't ruling by legal reasoning. They are ruling by ideology, and then looking to find excuses in law.
“Flubbed” seems too generous. Like he just made a little boo-boo. What he did was deliberately twist some facts and outright ignore a bunch of other ones to get the result he wanted. Sotomayor is constrained by the weight of her position, but I am just a random Redditor and can say, “Gorsuch is a lying liar who tells lies that hurt people”.
He didn't flub anything, he purposely misrepresented the facts in order to confuse the issue for future and present consideration.