Radish posted:

You don't even need hypotheticals.

http://thinkprogress.org/progress-report/the-clarence-thomas-scandal/

mdemone posted:

Every day I grow more befuddled at Roberts having joined the majority in the PPACA decision, given that he's obviously a loving animal.

MisterBibs posted:

Isn't that what the courts did, though? The majority opinion dealt with the actual case, whereas the dissent focused on the extraneous racial aspects.

The Warszawa posted:

Abigail Fisher singlehandedly won affirmative action a stay of execution by being the worst plaintiff possible.

UberJew posted:

next up on the docket let's continue to repeal everything the Civil Rights Movement accomplished.

John Roberts posted:

Ah so you admit that the Civil Rights Movement accomplished its goal. Civil rights achieved, therefore Civil Rights Act no longer necessary QED.

Kalman posted:

Or, to put it differently, if it had been McCain we'd be seeing a bunch of 7-2s.

evilweasel posted:

Scalia is absolutely the best person to have replaced by a Democrat: Kennedy leans conservative, but he's not a sure conservative vote. Scalia is. You get much more milage out of replacing Scalia: you have a solid 6-3 majority for abortion rights and gay rights, for example.

evilweasel posted:

That already happened in his Lawrence dissent, when the nationwide gay marriage legalization case comes up his opinion will just be a bitter "told you all they were lying in the prop 8 case and in windsor that they weren't making a decision on gay marriage yet".

Ron Jeremy posted:

Redux Taft. Put Bill Clinton on the court.

esquilax posted:

SedanChair posted:

John Roberts will live for a hundred years.

Green Crayons posted:

1) Assumption: remaining seated or participating are the only two options (standing but not participating is an option, unless if you have a broad understanding of "participating")

Green Crayons posted:

My point is that not everyone thinks the same way about what constitutes participation, including the fact that people do actually think merely standing is not indicative of participation. So, no, not everyone thinks like you.

Green Crayons posted:

You appear to not be reading what I'm typing. The "tough poo poo" doctrine is different from "not everyone thinks like you" because, amazingly, not everyone thinks like you -- and not everyone thinks simply standing up constitutes "participating" in a prayer.


The "tough poo poo" doctrine comes into play when someone does think that standing equals participation, they chose not to participate, and then they simply feel bad about having to not participate even though no negative government action comes of it. In that instance: tough poo poo. If negative government action occurs, they can file suit and claim religious discrimination.

Green Crayons posted:

I'm atheist, so maybe recalibrate the tenor of your personal attacks?

Green Crayons posted:

This point is undermined by the fact that speakers from other than the majority faith have been previously invited to speak, and are presumably welcomed to return.

Elena Kagan posted:

if the Board preferred, it might have invited clergy of many faiths to serve as chaplains, as the majority notes that Congress does. When one month a clergy member refers to Jesus, and the next to Allah or Jehovah-as the majority hopefully though counterfactually suggests happened here, the government does not identify itself with one religion or align itself with that faith's citizens, and the effect of even sectarian prayer is transformed
...
as I have shown...in Greece only Christian clergy members speak, and then mostly in the voice of their own religion; no Allah or Jehovah ever is mentioned.

Green Crayons posted:

The point is that speakers from different faiths were invited (it just happened to be set off, in this case, by the fact that someone complained), and gave a pregame speech.

TOWN OF GREECE v. GALLOWAY posted:

The inclusivity of the 2008 meetings, which contrasts starrkly with the exclusively single-denomination prayers every year before and after, is commendable. But the Court of Appeals reasonably decided not to give controlling weight to that inclusivity, for it arose only in response to the complaints that presaged this litigation, and it did not continue into the following years.

Green Crayons posted:

In each case, the government is inviting non-government individuals to engage in actions that are considered speech in the public forum.

Daremyth posted:

(yes, bowing your head and standing are forms of participation)

Shbobdb posted:

All you need to do is look at the majority opinion to see that it is bullshit. It clearly fails the Lemon Test but in the opinion they said they weren't going to apply that because ~*~history and tradition~*~. That's fine but isn't that a big reason to have courts? For when "how things have always been done" goes against the law of the land so things can get corrected?

KernelSlanders posted:

Is it ad hominem to point out that all three of the non-Christians on the court dissented from an opinion that said non-Christians shouldn't feel coerced into participating in or would be reasonable to be feel disparaged by the overtly Christian prayers?

UberJew posted:

Much as merely implicit corruption is not actually corruption the merely implicit role of expanding surveillance in stifling dissent means it doesn't exist to stifle dissent.

:robertssay:

Kiwi Ghost Chips posted:

That wasn't in the final opinion.

Discendo Vox posted:

1. Jones' opinion is so freaking flowery that it's going to be more vulnerable to attack in this particular case

blackmongoose posted:

the only way to make progress on this is to convince an old white dude that he's not changing things too much

Doctor Butts posted:

My opinion is that the government hasn't nationalized 'everything' because it never felt it needed to, not that it would be unconstitutional to do so. It's pretty obvious they're going to defer to private industry for whatever, but whether or not a private industry serves a function or not shouldn't have a bearing on whether or not a law is constitutional or not.

Discendo Vox posted:

You make some good points, but it's still a problem for me as a matter of legal practice, despite the lack of appeal and reduced odds of citation. For the lay audience (Hi Vitalsigns!), too many people are thinking that decisions like this one are what judicial opinions should be.

Discendo Vox posted:

The bigots have arguments, you just don't agree with them. I think you're right, but this doesn't mean that those arguments don't have the opportunity to succeed again. To the extent that you want to take a victory lap, a judicial opinion is the wrong place to do it.

quote:

Ten minutes into oral arguments over whether or not homosexuals should be allowed to marry one another, a visibly confounded Supreme Court stopped legal proceedings Tuesday and ruled that gay marriage was “perfectly fine” and that the court could “care less who marries whom.”

“Yeah, of course gay men and women can get married. Who gives a poo poo?” said Chief Justice John Roberts, who interrupted attorney Charles Cooper’s opening statement defending Proposition 8, which rescinded same-sex couples’ right to marry in California. “Why are we even seriously discussing this?”
...
“I have to interject, Mr. Cooper,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said as the attorney argued that the government has legitimate reasons to discourage same-sex couples from getting married. “Do you honestly care this much about this issue? Because if you do, you’re a real goddamn idiot. Actually, you sound as dumb as dog poo poo, and you are wasting our time.”
...
Before adjourning the court, Roberts said there would be no official opinion on the case because it’s just “common goddamn sense,” and then addressed gay men and women directly.

“Get married, don’t get married, do whatever you want,” Roberts said. “It’s the opinion of this court that we don’t give two shits what you do.”

Kugyou no Tenshi posted:

I just have to say I worry about the precedent this sets in general. The idea that following the entire letter of mandatory disclosure and labeling laws is no longer a sufficient defense against deceptive practices...
what the gently caress is the point of regulation if you don't know how much farther you have to go to actually be OK?

StarMagician posted:

Exactly, I don't get why this is so complicated. It doesn't matter what the FDA's probably constantly-changing regulations say. If you don't want to be sued under Lanham, stop loving lying to your customers.

quote:

JUSTICE KENNEDY: Suppose the young person thinks that the State is squandering his heritage on unnecessary and excessive payments or benefits and wages. Is that not a political belief of the highest order? And, you know, we talk about free riders, which is an epithetical phrase. Maybe the objecting employee would say that the union is a speech distorter; it is taking views that are not his and making them mandatory subject to bargaining and charging him for it.

Amarkov posted:

e: Now that I've read the orals, though, your argument isn't actually what Kennedy's saying here. Some particular employee might heavily value pay over pension, to the extent that they'd prefer 1 more dollar in pay to a thousand more in pension money. (Perhaps they believe public pensions are inevitably doomed.) If a union trades $1 in pay for $100 in pensions, it's acted counter to her interests. So she can't be a free rider in this situation.

Barlow posted:

I will remind people that the RFRA was a creation of Ted Kennedy and was a bi-partisan effort. It's what prevents states from creating laws that businesses should be closed on Sundays and driving Jewish businesses out of business when they can't open any days on the weekend, it was intended to address the injustice of Native Americans being arrested for peyote use. Upholding the RFRA is something leftists should be dedicated to.

GaussianCopula posted:

They did not forbid woman to morning-after pills or IUDs, they only said that their employer, if he is a person or a small group of persons who believe that using said devices/pills is literally killing a human being, can not be forced to pay for it.

quote:

With those numbers and the fact that it's not something that you dont even need unless you have unprotected sex, I just don't get the uproar.

Radish posted:

This highlights why science can never beat religion in our current situation. The government has to admit that there is a non-zero chance that these methods can result in a fertilized egg not implanting even though it is not the actual way they prevent pregnancy because it is based on facts that can be proven or dis-proven. However religious people do not have to prove anything since it is all nebulous "belief." They don't even have to prove that they are being consistent within that belief. It's totally lopsided.

KernelSlanders posted:

HHS stipulated that IUDs sometimes work by preventing implantation, so for the purpose of this litigation they do work by causing abortions.

Harris v Floride posted:

MR. MESSENGER: It's -- Your Honor, it's the compelled speech, and the fact that the individuals haveother First Amendment rights is not exculpatory. So it's the -- it's the compulsion to support the SEIU's positions in petitioning the State. That is the First Amendment violation. And the fact that --­
JUSTICE SCALIA: I suppose -- I suppose the fact that you're entitled to speak against abortion would not justify the government in requiring you to give money to Planned Parenthood?
MR. MESSENGER: Exactly, Your Honor.

Bread Zeppelin posted:

Would paying employee wages that are used for IUDs and morning after pills make them just as complicit in abortion?

Captain Mog posted:

I am in 100% agreement with this post. I think Hobby Lobby's reasoning is obviously intellectually barren, restrictive to women and devoid of all common sense, so the solution I have is to never shop there again. However, I recognize it is their right to not pay for such a contraceptive if they don't wish. Women seeking an employer who will cover contraceptive use are free to seek out employment elsewhere. .

Captain Mog posted:

I was absolutely not making a lolbertarian free market argument. In not providing the Plan B contraceptive to its employees, Hobby Lobby is not abusing its employees. It is not forcing them into unsafe labor conditions. It is not withholding employee wages. It is not forcing them to work absurdly long hours. It is simply failing to provide a particular medication under the silly religious logic of its owners. I think this is dumb. Therefore, I won't shop or work there just as I refuse to shop or work at Chick-fil-A due to their owners' opinion of the LGBT community.