On the heels of Roe - same-sex marriage and contraception (1 Viewer)

[Bleu Raeder]

As Supreme Court overturns abortion rights, could same-sex marriage be next to go?

Justice Thomas suggests the court should also reconsider past rulings establishing rights to contraception, same-sex relationships and gay marriage.

www.houstonchronicle.com

"Justice" Thomas wants to burn it all down...except for interracial marriage.

WASHINGTON — As the Supreme Court on Friday declared the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion, Justice Clarence Thomas suggested the court should also reconsider past rulings establishing rights to contraception, same-sex relationships and gay marriage, as well.

“We have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents,” Thomas wrote in a concurring opinion, pointing to landmark decisions that protected the right to obtain contraception, the right to engage in private, consensual sexual acts, and the right to same-sex marriage.

 

[BullSheetBuddha]

Yep, this is who they are:

"Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) said he is “willing and able” to defend a Texas law that bans gay people from having sex in their own homes........"

I never thought I'd hear this kind of thing again. I thought we were decades past this kind of thinking. I'm stunned. smh

 

[coldseat]

"Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) said he is “willing and able” to defend a Texas law that bans gay people from having sex in their own homes........"

I never thought I'd hear this kind of thing again. I thought we were decades past this kind of thinking. I'm stunned. smh

I'm not. This is there ultimate goal, to control "other" people.

 

[Optimus Prime]

By its own maneuvering, the modern Supreme Court has made itself the most powerful branch of government. Superior to Congress. Superior to the president. Superior to the states. Superior to precedent, procedure, and norms. In effect, superior to the people.

Most talked about in this regard, of course, is the Court’s ending of long-established reproductive rights in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. But the assertion of extreme power extends well beyond the issue of abortion.

For example, in a case called TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, the conservative majority in 2021 narrowed Congress’s Article I power to give consumers the right to sue over data deliberately mishandled by credit-reporting agencies, reasoning that the legislature can only recognize theories of harm analogous to ones that existed as a matter of “American history and tradition.”

And this year, the Court is considering a handful of lawsuits by states challenging the exercise of discretion by the executive branch on the theory that federal policy affects state budgets, which could effectively enable states—and thus the Court—to function as the ultimate overseers of federal policy.

One of those, Haaland v. Brackeen, is poised to possibly upend roughly two centuries of Supreme Court precedent that recognizes American Indian tribes as political sovereigns, as well as Congress’s plenary power over American Indian affairs.

The outcome of the case, which involves a decades-old federal statute that sets child-welfare standards for American Indian children, could put hundreds of U.S. tribal treaties at risk as well.

The mere fact that the Court agreed to consider these and other extraordinary claims this term exposes the right-wing majority’s appetite for asserting massive power under the auspices of judicial review.

In a November essay for the Harvard Law Review, the Stanford Law School professor Mark A. Lemley describes this Court as an “imperial” one that has embarked on “a radical restructuring of American law across a range of fields and disciplines.”

The means run along two lines: substantive changes to the Constitution made under the guise of interpretation, and procedural power grabs executed despite traditions of deference. This has pushed our constitutional system dangerously off balance, with little opportunity for correction.

Ironically, the danger comes from the “conservative” wing of the Court, born in part out of a purported rejection of “activist” court decisions, which it criticizes as policy making—territory that belongs to the elected branches of government.

All six of the purportedly conservative justices—Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—have professed a commitment to textualism and originalism, methods of constitutional interpretation that theoretically should constrain judges’ discretion to the “plain” language of the text, with occasional reference to historical understandings of the Framers’ contemporaneous intent.

Many folks blithely assume that the right-wing justices are more restrained than their progressive counterparts as a result. The precise opposite is the case.............

What will constrain this Court? Not its constitutional philosophy, and not respect for precedent either. The decision in Dobbs was stunning not just because it gutted a constitutional right many counted on. It was also a snub to the vitality of judicial precedent itself, which has long operated as a check on the power of the Supreme Court.

What about states? No, their power won’t constrain the Court either, despite the traditional conservative concern for states’ rights. To be sure, in Dobbs, the Court gave state legislatures the power to regulate abortion, but in Bruen, the same Court struck down a more-than-100-year-old New York State handgun-licensing law that regulated the carrying of concealed weapons in public. Dobbs enhanced state legislatures’ control over abortion. Bruen took it away over guns and public safety..............

The Supreme Court Just Keeps Deciding It Should Be Even More Powerful

Whatever conservative ethos of restraint there once was has vanished.

www.theatlantic.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it will hear Groff v. DeJoy, a case that could give religious conservatives an unprecedented new ability to dictate how their workplaces operate, and which workplace rules they will refuse to follow.

Yet Groff is also likely to overrule a previous Supreme Court decision that treated the interests of religious employees far more dismissively than federal law suggests that these workers should be treated.

The case, in other words, presents genuinely tricky questions about the limits of accommodating an employee’s religious beliefs. But those questions will be resolved by a Supreme Court that has shown an extraordinary willingness to bend the law in ways that benefit Christian-identified conservatives.

That could lead to a scenario in which the Court announces a new legal rule that disrupts the workplace — and that potentially places far too many burdens on non-religious employees.

Plaintiff Gerald Groff is a former postal worker who wanted to be exempted from working on Sundays because of his religious beliefs. He asks the Court to abandon a nearly half-century-old rule, first announced in Trans World Airlines v. Hardison (1977), which imposes strict limits on an employee’s ability to seek religious accommodations from their employer.

A federal law requires employers to “reasonably accommodate” their workers’ religious beliefs and practices unless doing so would lead to “undue hardship on the conduct of the employer’s business.” But Hardison established that this law does not require employers to “bear more than a de minimis cost” when it provides religious accommodations (the Latin phrase “de minimis” refers to a burden that is so small or trifling as to be unworthy of consideration).

As Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote in his Hardison dissent, this decision “makes a mockery of the statute” at issue in the case, which clearly was supposed to protect workers from more-than-trifling incursions on their religious faith.

But, if Hardison did too little to protect religious employees, Groff could easily err in the other direction.

In cases brought by business owners seeking exemptions from federal and state laws, for example, the Court has permitted those owners to discriminate against LGBTQ people and to deny certain health benefits to their employees. If the Court applies a similar standard to employees seeking religious accommodation, in the worst-case scenario, it could give a manager the right to refuse to hire any LGBTQ employees or to treat women subordinates differently than men.

All of which is a long way of saying that Groff involves an extraordinarily messy area of the law. Judges acting in good faith would struggle to draw an appropriate line governing which requests for religious accommodations should be honored, and which should be denied. And, in cases involving religion, this Court can’t be counted on to operate in good faith.............

MSN

The Supreme Court justices heard a case on Tuesday that may sound like another slam-dunk for Christian religious liberty that will bolster its reputation as a friend to the religious right.

In Groff v. DeJoy, a Christian mail carrier, Gerald Groff, said the U.S. Postal Service’s requirement that he work on Sunday violates his deeply held belief that Sunday is his day of rest. (U.S. mail is not usually delivered Sundays, but in 2013, the USPS signed a contract with Amazon to deliver the company’s packages, including on Sundays.)

In Groff v. DeJoy, a Christian mail carrier, Gerald Groff, said the U.S. Postal Service’s requirement that he work on Sunday violates his deeply held belief that Sunday is his day of rest. (U.S. mail is not usually delivered Sundays, but in 2013, the USPS signed a contract with Amazon to deliver the company’s packages, including on Sundays.)

Over the past decade, the U.S. Supreme Court has sided with a football coach in Washington state who sued after being suspended from his public high school for refusing to stop leading Christian prayers with players on the field after games.

It ruled in favor of two Christian families who challenged a Maine tuition assistance program that excluded private religious schools.

It sided with a Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple based on his religious beliefs.

In all these cases, the court favored a Christian individual or organization, either Protestant or Catholic. Groff’s legal team includes First Liberty Institute and the Independence Law Center — groups that have successfully argued religious freedom cases before the court.

But Groff v. DeJoy presents a different case. Organizations representing several religious minorities — Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Seventh-day Adventists — have filed briefs in support of Groff, asking the court to overturn a 50-year-old ruling that gutted a civil rights statute’s protections for religious accommodation. If the court now rules to expand those religious workers’ rights, conservative Christians won’t be the only, or even main, beneficiaries.

At issue is Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits religious discrimination in the workplace and requires employers to reasonably accommodate the religious practices of their workers unless doing so would require an undue hardship.

In the 1977 case of Trans World Airlines v. Hardison, the Supreme Court defined that hardship as a minimal burden, using the Latin phrase “de minimis.” That set such a low bar that critics said any employer could deny religious accommodations for the most trivial of reasons.


“The way Title VII is interpreted is incredibly tilted toward employers,” said Harsimran Kaur, senior counsel for the Sikh Coalition, which filed an amicus friend of the court brief asking the court to correct the “undue hardship” standard.

“That standard negatively impacts religious minorities and anyone who has faith practices outside the majority faiths,” Kaur said.

During the coronavirus pandemic, Kaur said, her office has fielded about 30 inquiries from Sikh health-care workers who were being told they had to shave their religiously required beards to achieve a good seal for an N-95 mask. The Sikh Coalition argued that employers could purchase alternative respirators for bearded people, but many employers chose not to accommodate those workers.

Sabbath-observant Jews who cannot work on Saturdays have advocated rolling back the Hardison ruling for years. Since 1994, they have championed the Workplace Religious Freedom Act, a bill that would have required employers to make a “bona fide effort” to accommodate workers’ religious practices or observances. The bill, introduced by Democratic U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, received wide bipartisan support but never passed.

“This has been a steady and persistent problem,” said Nathan Diament, the Orthodox Union’s executive director for public policy, which represents Orthodox Jews. “Generally employers want to be accommodating. But whether they are or not, it should not depend on the whim of the employer.”..............

Others, such as Americans United for Separation of Church and State, argue a new rule could place too many burdens on nonreligious employees.

“Religious freedom does not mean we can shift the burden of practicing our faith onto other people,” Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United, said in a statement. “Religious freedom has never been a license to harm others, in employment or any other facet of life.”

What would happen if a Christian refused to work with a gay person and demanded an accommodation, or a male Christian nurse refused to work with a female nurse during an overnight shift, citing the “Billy Graham rule” in which Christian men avoid spending time with women to whom they are not married?

The Supreme Court, however, has been sympathetic to the concerns of religious plaintiffs, ruling in their favor far more frequently than not. Three justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil M. Gorsuch — have already said they believe the Hardison ruling was wrongly decided.

Many expect a court ruling to favor Groff..............

MSN

www.msn.com

 

[DaveXA]

The Supreme Court justices heard a case on Tuesday that may sound like another slam-dunk for Christian religious liberty that will bolster its reputation as a friend to the religious right.

In Groff v. DeJoy, a Christian mail carrier, Gerald Groff, said the U.S. Postal Service’s requirement that he work on Sunday violates his deeply held belief that Sunday is his day of rest. (U.S. mail is not usually delivered Sundays, but in 2013, the USPS signed a contract with Amazon to deliver the company’s packages, including on Sundays.)

In Groff v. DeJoy, a Christian mail carrier, Gerald Groff, said the U.S. Postal Service’s requirement that he work on Sunday violates his deeply held belief that Sunday is his day of rest. (U.S. mail is not usually delivered Sundays, but in 2013, the USPS signed a contract with Amazon to deliver the company’s packages, including on Sundays.)

Over the past decade, the U.S. Supreme Court has sided with a football coach in Washington state who sued after being suspended from his public high school for refusing to stop leading Christian prayers with players on the field after games.

It ruled in favor of two Christian families who challenged a Maine tuition assistance program that excluded private religious schools.

It sided with a Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple based on his religious beliefs.

In all these cases, the court favored a Christian individual or organization, either Protestant or Catholic. Groff’s legal team includes First Liberty Institute and the Independence Law Center — groups that have successfully argued religious freedom cases before the court.

But Groff v. DeJoy presents a different case. Organizations representing several religious minorities — Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Seventh-day Adventists — have filed briefs in support of Groff, asking the court to overturn a 50-year-old ruling that gutted a civil rights statute’s protections for religious accommodation. If the court now rules to expand those religious workers’ rights, conservative Christians won’t be the only, or even main, beneficiaries.

At issue is Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits religious discrimination in the workplace and requires employers to reasonably accommodate the religious practices of their workers unless doing so would require an undue hardship.

In the 1977 case of Trans World Airlines v. Hardison, the Supreme Court defined that hardship as a minimal burden, using the Latin phrase “de minimis.” That set such a low bar that critics said any employer could deny religious accommodations for the most trivial of reasons.


“The way Title VII is interpreted is incredibly tilted toward employers,” said Harsimran Kaur, senior counsel for the Sikh Coalition, which filed an amicus friend of the court brief asking the court to correct the “undue hardship” standard.

“That standard negatively impacts religious minorities and anyone who has faith practices outside the majority faiths,” Kaur said.

During the coronavirus pandemic, Kaur said, her office has fielded about 30 inquiries from Sikh health-care workers who were being told they had to shave their religiously required beards to achieve a good seal for an N-95 mask. The Sikh Coalition argued that employers could purchase alternative respirators for bearded people, but many employers chose not to accommodate those workers.

Sabbath-observant Jews who cannot work on Saturdays have advocated rolling back the Hardison ruling for years. Since 1994, they have championed the Workplace Religious Freedom Act, a bill that would have required employers to make a “bona fide effort” to accommodate workers’ religious practices or observances. The bill, introduced by Democratic U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, received wide bipartisan support but never passed.

“This has been a steady and persistent problem,” said Nathan Diament, the Orthodox Union’s executive director for public policy, which represents Orthodox Jews. “Generally employers want to be accommodating. But whether they are or not, it should not depend on the whim of the employer.”..............

Others, such as Americans United for Separation of Church and State, argue a new rule could place too many burdens on nonreligious employees.

“Religious freedom does not mean we can shift the burden of practicing our faith onto other people,” Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United, said in a statement. “Religious freedom has never been a license to harm others, in employment or any other facet of life.”

What would happen if a Christian refused to work with a gay person and demanded an accommodation, or a male Christian nurse refused to work with a female nurse during an overnight shift, citing the “Billy Graham rule” in which Christian men avoid spending time with women to whom they are not married?

The Supreme Court, however, has been sympathetic to the concerns of religious plaintiffs, ruling in their favor far more frequently than not. Three justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil M. Gorsuch — have already said they believe the Hardison ruling was wrongly decided.

Many expect a court ruling to favor Groff..............

MSN

www.msn.com

As long as everyone has to follow the same rules. I mean, I've never needed to worry about Sundays, but if someone's religious beliefs are such that they can't work that day, then the company should make that accommodation. I mean, they already do it in other ways. You can always hire someone else to cover Sundays or whatever.

But where to draw that line, idk. Balancing greater good vs individual and religious freedoms is a complicated challenge.

 

[bird]

As long as everyone has to follow the same rules. I mean, I've never needed to worry about Sundays, but if someone's religious beliefs are such that they can't work that day, then the company should make that accommodation. I mean, they already do it in other ways. You can always hire someone else to cover Sundays or whatever.

But where to draw that line, idk. Balancing greater good vs individual and religious freedoms is a complicated challenge.

Welp, this is interesting. Perhaps Groff should read the words attributed to the Christ regarding “working” on the sabbath. Geoff is simply acting as the Pharisees did.

 

[Saintamaniac]

As long as everyone has to follow the same rules. I mean, I've never needed to worry about Sundays, but if someone's religious beliefs are such that they can't work that day, then the company should make that accommodation. I mean, they already do it in other ways. You can always hire someone else to cover Sundays or whatever.

But where to draw that line, idk. Balancing greater good vs individual and religious freedoms is a complicated challenge.

Dave,
Would a company be within their rights to hire a PI to catch someone who has demanded a religious accommodation based on their beliefs, to catch that person doing something that violates their religious beliefs as a means for terminating that worker's employment based on fraud?

It's been my position that the people shouldn't be granted religious exceptions based on the beliefs they pick and choose to practice rather than all of their stated beliefs. For example, the baker not making a cake for a gay couple but having no problem making a cake for someone's second marriage. If someone only practices a few of the tenants of their religion as opposed to all of them, IMO, their claim on religious beliefs is fraud.

 

[DaveXA]

Dave,
Would a company be within their rights to hire a PI to catch someone who has demanded a religious accommodation based on their beliefs, to catch that person doing something that violates their religious beliefs as a means for terminating that worker's employment based on fraud?

It's been my position that the people shouldn't be granted religious exceptions based on the beliefs they pick and choose to practice rather than all of their stated beliefs. For example, the baker not making a cake for a gay couple but having no problem making a cake for someone's second marriage. If someone only practices a few of the tenants of their religion as opposed to all of them, IMO, their claim on religious beliefs is fraud.

I don't necessarily disagree, but then you're talking about minders and following and watching people everywhere they go. That would be a weird, creepy dystopian world to live in. I'd rather just live and let live. If someone believes in the tooth fairy and thinks they should only work 2 days a week, so be it. They just will be paid accordingly and those willing to work 5 days will be the ones getting promoted and doing more work.

If someone only wants to serve a subset of people, so be it. There will always be others who will take up the slack. Just go somewhere else that isn't like that.

So would a company be within their rights to do what you suggested? Probably. They already do that to varying degrees. I'd argue it's a waste of corporate resources. But that's just me.

I simply don't care how people practice their faith. If it interferes with their job, they don't get to have the same opportunities as someone who isn't hindered by their belief system.

 

[DaveXA]

Welp, this is interesting. Perhaps Groff should read the words attributed to the Christ regarding “working” on the sabbath. Geoff is simply acting as the Pharisees did.

Agreed.

 

[Optimus Prime]

the "2" in 7-2- is exactly who you think they are
==============================

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a federal law, intended to rectify past government abuses, that gives preference to the foster care and adoption of Native American children by their relatives and tribes.

In a 7-2 decision, the court left in place the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), which was passed to remedy what Congress said was a disgraceful history in which hundreds of thousands of Native American children were removed from their homes by adoption agencies and placed with White families or in group settings.

“Congress’s power to legislate with respect to Indians is well established and broad," even when it impacts family law, an area that is primarily a state responsibility, Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the majority. “It is true that Congress lacks general power over domestic relations,” Barrett added. “But the Constitution does not erect a firewall around family law.”

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented, with Alito writing that the majority “decides one question after another in a way that disserves the rights and interests of these children and their parents, as well as our Constitution’s division of federal and state authority."

The law was challenged by three non-Indian couples and three states, led by Texas. The plaintiffs contended the law requires state officials to put aside the traditional standard of doing what is best for the child, and relies on racial discrimination in ways the Constitution does not allow. They argued that while Congress has vast power over issues relating to tribes in other areas, it went too far here.

The tribes and their supporters argued that the law is based on political distinctions, not racial ones, and that Congress had decided the law was necessary in part to ensure the tribes had a future. They said the law was meant to rectify a past in which, studies showed, about a third of Native children were removed from their parents for foster care or adoption. Upward of 85 percent of placements were in non-Native homes.............

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/06/15/supreme-court-icwa-native-adoption/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3a4fb00%2F648b342c2e7a825a07a1324e%2F5a0cb1ffade4e230f7038273%2F12%2F72%2F648b342c2e7a825a07a1324e