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.

 

[coldseat]

Maybe, but I think there's a way to get around using race based criteria. That would be by using income based criteria similar to how Pell grants are awarded. Considering the demographics of low income families, I'm not sure how much college demographics would change if affirmative action is eliminated.

I support keeping it in place, but we're it to go away, that doesn't mean there aren't other tools available to keep the existing demographics from changing too much.

I don't know that that's true. They do that in California currently. It's been shown that Black and Hispanic student body numbers dropped after they passed that law. Colleges have tried different ways to compensate, but the result has been the same and predictable.

We're not there yet.

California banned affirmative action in 1996. Inside the UC struggle for diversity

As the Supreme Court weighs affirmative action, the University of California's struggle with diversity since a 1996 ban offers lessons.

www.google.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Brakeen v. Haalend, a case engineered to hobble the federal government’s power to protect Native communities from exploitation.

The plaintiffs are asking the justices to invalidate the 44-year-old Indian Child Welfare Act, which prioritizes the placement of Native children in custody proceedings with Native families.

But they’re also contesting a constitutional foundation of Indian law itself. Allying with Republican legal groups and lawmakers, the plaintiffs want to kneecap congressional authority to regulate tribes for the benefit of their own members.

After greenlighting countless laws diminishing tribal sovereignty, the Supreme Court could soon strike down a law attempting to enhance it.

And the court may do so on the basis of history that is not just dubious but objectively false, rooted in a mistaken theory about the Founders’ vision for relations with Native tribes that has been conclusively debunked..............

MSN

www.msn.com

 

[bird]

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Brakeen v. Haalend, a case engineered to hobble the federal government’s power to protect Native communities from exploitation.

The plaintiffs are asking the justices to invalidate the 44-year-old Indian Child Welfare Act, which prioritizes the placement of Native children in custody proceedings with Native families.

But they’re also contesting a constitutional foundation of Indian law itself. Allying with Republican legal groups and lawmakers, the plaintiffs want to kneecap congressional authority to regulate tribes for the benefit of their own members.

After greenlighting countless laws diminishing tribal sovereignty, the Supreme Court could soon strike down a law attempting to enhance it.

And the court may do so on the basis of history that is not just dubious but objectively false, rooted in a mistaken theory about the Founders’ vision for relations with Native tribes that has been conclusively debunked..............

MSN

www.msn.com

Clarence Thomas is an idiot.

 

[superchuck500]

The Senate has passed the Respect for Marriage Act, codifying protection for same-sex marriage.

It will now be passed in the House and become law.

 

[MT15]

As foretold judges are coming for contraception next. Starting with minors for now, but all contraception rights depend on the same privacy rights that the current SC has abandoned.

“Last week, Kacsmaryk issued an opinion in Deanda v. Becerra that attacks Title X, a federal program that offers grants to health providers that fund voluntary and confidential family planning services to patients. Federal law requires the Title X program to include “services for adolescents,”


The plaintiff in Deanda is a father who says he is “raising each of his daughters in accordance with Christian teaching on matters of sexuality, which requires unmarried children to practice abstinence and refrain from sexual intercourse until marriage.” He claims that the program must cease all grants to health providers who do not require patients under age 18 to “obtain parental consent” before receiving Title X-funded medical care.”

A notorious Trump judge just fired the first shot against birth control — Vox

In retrospect, it was inevitable that this particular judge would come for contraception.

apple.news

 

[superchuck500]

As foretold judges are coming for contraception next. Starting with minors for now, but all contraception rights depend on the same privacy rights that the current SC has abandoned.

“Last week, Kacsmaryk issued an opinion in Deanda v. Becerra that attacks Title X, a federal program that offers grants to health providers that fund voluntary and confidential family planning services to patients. Federal law requires the Title X program to include “services for adolescents,”


The plaintiff in Deanda is a father who says he is “raising each of his daughters in accordance with Christian teaching on matters of sexuality, which requires unmarried children to practice abstinence and refrain from sexual intercourse until marriage.” He claims that the program must cease all grants to health providers who do not require patients under age 18 to “obtain parental consent” before receiving Title X-funded medical care.”

A notorious Trump judge just fired the first shot against birth control — Vox

In retrospect, it was inevitable that this particular judge would come for contraception.

apple.news

How much you wanna bet that father supports trying juveniles as adults in the criminal system?

 

[brandon]

How much you wanna bet that father supports trying black juveniles as adults in the criminal system?

Fixed it for you.

 

[MT15]

How much you wanna bet that father supports trying juveniles as adults in the criminal system?

It is pretty telling that nobody is objecting to providing birth control to their minor sons. Funny thing, that.

 

[superchuck500]

 

[bird]

As foretold judges are coming for contraception next. Starting with minors for now, but all contraception rights depend on the same privacy rights that the current SC has abandoned.

“Last week, Kacsmaryk issued an opinion in Deanda v. Becerra that attacks Title X, a federal program that offers grants to health providers that fund voluntary and confidential family planning services to patients. Federal law requires the Title X program to include “services for adolescents,”


The plaintiff in Deanda is a father who says he is “raising each of his daughters in accordance with Christian teaching on matters of sexuality, which requires unmarried children to practice abstinence and refrain from sexual intercourse until marriage.” He claims that the program must cease all grants to health providers who do not require patients under age 18 to “obtain parental consent” before receiving Title X-funded medical care.”

A notorious Trump judge just fired the first shot against birth control — Vox

In retrospect, it was inevitable that this particular judge would come for contraception.

apple.news

The man has no standing. The judge that took the case is a religionist zealot.

 

[Optimus Prime]

On Monday, the US supreme court issued an order in the pending execution of Robert Fratta, a former police officer from Houston who was sentenced to death for the 1994 murder-for-hire of his estranged wife.

Lawyers for the condemned man had petitioned the court in a last-ditch effort to save his life. They argued that critical evidence at his trial given by a key witness had been tainted, as she had been encouraged under hypnosis to change her testimony.

The supreme court’s order was brief and blunt, eviscerating in 23 words any hope of a reprieve: “The application for stay of execution of sentence of death presented to Justice Alito and by him referred to the court is denied.”

No explanation. No ambiguity. No way back.

On Tuesday, Fratta, 65, who had long claimed he was innocent, was injected with lethal drugs in Huntsville, Texas, and pronounced dead at 7.49pm.

The supreme court’s refusal to engage with Fratta’s last petition was more than a one-off. Since the court moved sharply to the right with Donald Trump’s appointment of three new justices, its default position has been to allow executions to proceed even in cases where serious constitutional issues are at stake.

While the new conservative super-majority has attracted outrage for its extreme decisions on abortion, the climate crisis and guns, its increasingly controversial stance on capital punishment has flown largely under the radar.

Yet death row prisoners and their lawyers are having to contend with a grim new reality – the nation’s highest court, which used to offer death row inmates the hope of a final review, has all but closed its doors to their petitions.

“It’s incredible what has become of the court,” said Bernard Harcourt, a death penalty lawyer and law professor at Columbia University. “It’s almost as if the conservative justices have become the nation’s executioners.”………

‘The nation’s executioners’: the US supreme court’s shift towards capital punishment

Conservative super-majority especially unwilling to consider appeals, in stance that has flown under the radar

www.theguardian.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

 

[bird]

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

Ah, religionist whack-jobs. What could possibly go wrong?

 

[MT15]

Yep, this is who they are:

 

[coldseat]

Yep, this is who they are:

fork Ken Paxton

 

[Booker]

“Party of Small Government”

 

[BullSheetBuddha]

Yep, this is who they are:

Lol, they're clearly mentally challenged.

 

[bird]

Yep, this is who they are:

Why isn’t Ken Paxton in jail or at the very least being tried since he was indicted?