One of those is Sotomayor, right?
It was the very person you were replying to.
This case is especially illuminating because the justices donāt actually give a shit about the result, they just want to own the libs. We have 5 straight up deplorables on the highest court in the land. No longer will they pretend to be normal humans while eviscerating environmental protections and voting rights, theyāre now going to be straight up Mark Levin level reactionaries.
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I donāt know if itās owning the libs broadly, itās a middle finger to the secularization of America in particular. Gorsuch is not hiding it there with that dig at āsecular convenienceā. The sensibilities of these guys are a bit more aristocratic than MAGA chud deplorables. Tilting the country towards theocracy is in accordance with owning the libs here, but we had that ruling from Gorsuch regarding Native Americans in Oklahoma, for example, which is the opposite of an owning the libs ruling.
Rule #1 of Unstuck: We never overestimate anyone. They rarely surprise us.
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Gorsuch has always ruled exactly that way on Native American issues. His ruling on that was exactly as anticipated.
I feel like thereās some formula with every conservative SCOTUS judge except Roberts:
if (hotButtonPoliticalIssue) then rule to the right
else rule however you want
Roberts seems to see it incumbent on himself to save Rs from their own stupidity - in cases where he thinks the blowback will be swift and significant. IE - Obamacare.
I always wonder if there are back room conversations from R senators to Roberts along the lines of, āOk John, we need to make a show of trying to repeal Obamacare for our donors, who hate taxes. But we know this is a you break it, you buy it situation. So it would be great if you could shoot this one down.ā
I guess as a better example of how the two can vary independently, deplorable orthodoxy is now America First protectionism, but I donāt expect any SCOTUS rulings to jeopardize things like offshoring and labor arbitrage anytime soon.
Hereās a Cato guy on this decision
I have now had some time to digest Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo. Upon some reflection, the weakest part of the opinion is perhaps the most significant: why was New Yorkās COVID-19 regime not āneutralā? This analysis very, very thin. And the majority does not really explain what it is doing. Much is left to implication. I am happy to draw these implications. But I suspect lower courts will decline to draw these implications, and stick with South Bay . And all they have to do is cite the critical sentence: āBecause of the need to issue an order promptly, we provide only a brief summary of the reasons why immediate relief is essential.ā
Iād jump in here and say, huh? The plaintiffs arenāt even under the state order anymore and itās not like an execution, where these guys sit on their thumbs, the harm isnāt irrevocable. But anyways
The next couple of points are that the SC opinion just assumes a lot of things to be true without any evidence
Fourth, the majorityāto be frankāadopted Justice Kavanaughās āmost favoredā right approach. Kavanaugh describes this approach in his concurrence:
The State argues that it has not impermissibly discriminated against religion because some secular businesses such as movie theaters must remain closed and are thus treated less favorably than houses of worship. But under this Courtās precedents, it does not suffice for a State to point out that, as compared to houses of worship, some secular businesses are subject to similarly severe or even more severe restrictions. See Lukumi, 508 U. S., at 537ā538; Smith, 494 U. S., at 884; see also Calvary, 591 U. S., at ___ (KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting from denial of application for injunctive relief ) (slip op., at 7). Rather, once a State creates a favored class of businesses, as New York has done in this case, the State must justify why houses of worship are excluded from that favored class. Here, therefore, the State must justify imposing a 10-person or 25-person limit on houses of worship but not on favored secular businesses. See Lukumi, 508 U. S., at 537ā538; Smith, 494 U. S., at 884. The State has not done so.
I see very little daylight between actual operation of the per curiam opinion and the Kavanaugh concurrence. At least Kavanaugh had the temerity to say what he was doing. And Justice Sotomayor reamed him or it. She wrote, that Smith and Lukumi do not stand āfor the proposition that states must justify treating even noncomparable secular institutions more favorably than houses of worship.ā Sotomayor was correct. But I donāt think the current interpretation fo Smith will stand for long
I thought Roberts decision in the Nevada case was fair. You canāt arbitrarily target religious gatherings, you need need to put them on the same grounds as other comparable gatherings. But this decision says that religious gatherings are so important that if you have any business open you have to explain why youāre not letting evangelicals cough on each other like pandemic snake handlers.
And this is a Cato guy. If anyoneās going to give them the benefit of the doubt itād be them
The knock at bicycle repair shops is just a huge fuck you to poor people in cities.
Ok, lawbros, I canāt be arsed up to actually read the decision, but my interpretation is that if the NY law had been, āYou canāt have more than X number of people per square foot no matter what kind of businessā, then the majorityās reasoning doesnāt apply. Is that right?
There is zero point dissecting the opinion looking for any kind of intellectual underpinning. How do smart people still think like this when evaluating right wing judges? Itās all politics, end of story.
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Isnāt a huge issue that SC judges live sheltered lives? Has any of them gone to public schools or universities? Arenāt they surrounded by ass kissers which in turn dilutes their grip on reality? They are always gonna rule in favor for religion unless itās a brown one. I donāt think this whole NYC church ruling was to own the libs. They were genuinely shocked that people couldnāt go to church and my God, thatās wrong! Why, itās in the constitution itself.
Fainting Couch here I come
Yeah, I get that. I was just doing it for my own personal amusement.
I realize that if the law was written as I had suggested, they would just find another way to the same outcome.
Iām sure Iāve posted on here on more than one occasion that all of the SC justices basically just figure out what outcome they want and work backwards. The liberals too. There is the occasional exception, I suppose.
I mean, Cuomo should institute a new shutdown based on people per square foot for everything other than food/medicine and make them contort themselves even farther to allow full churches. The more we can chip away at their credibility, the better.
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I was hoping one of the far right judges would realize this ruling was going to lead to tons of death and work backwards to prevent it, citing precedent from 1918 and building up goodwill for when they nuke Roe but lol me. I mean I thought there was like a 25% chance, not like it was super likely.
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How about based on people being in the same place for an hour, singing?
JFC - SCOTUS maybe a tiny bit of common sense?
Iām 99% sure it was @Riverman posting about a class that he was in in law school. (I donāt doubt that you posted those tweets also).
I guess he can confirm or deny.
Another way of putting it:
Roberts wants to keep the court within spitting distance of the Overton Window of the country, and depoliticize it to play the long game. Theyāve got a 6-3 majority AND an age advantage, so he doesnāt want to give the Dems good reasons to pack the court. The only way the court will ever be moderate in any of our lifetimes, let alone liberal, is if it gets packed. Otherwise itās a slow march toward inevitability.
Gorsuch, meanwhile, is letting his freak flag fly. Fuck off, Chief Justice. Weāve got the numbers, weāve got the Senate, and there aināt shit you or Joe Biden or anyone can do about it anytime soon. Buckle up, motherfucker, weāre going for a ride.
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