It's not like these breaches of ethics are going to stop occurring. The whole court has been gamed to give partisan advantage to the GOP. They can't effect the policies they want through democracy, so they have abandoned democracy and created a court that undemocratically has resorted to creating and changing laws and policies that are outside its purview. The court keeps accruing to itself power it should never have and making decisions that aren't just or well-reasoned but purely partisan in nature. it is a rightwing attempt to end-run around democracy and seize power.

'This defines the Roberts Court': Chief justice's wife earns millions placing lawyers at firms that argue cases - Alternet.org https://www.alternet.org/this-defines-the-roberts-court/

#PartisanCaptureOfJudiciary
#PartisanSupremeCourt
#SupremeCourtEthics
#JudiciaryEndRunAroundDemocracy
#GOPLovesPower
#GOPHatesDemocracy

"The highly controversial and highly unpopular U.S. Supreme Court isn’t just facing a historic loss of confidence, it’s now facing yet another ethics scandal that is likely to lower even further public opinion of the far-right institution that in under two decades has seen its approval rating slashed.

Although it will not hear arguments, the issue before the Supreme Court and the American people’s view of it, is, should a justice’s spouse – in this case the spouse of Chief Justice John Roberts – be able to make millions of dollars recruiting attorneys who are placed into top law firms that argue cases before it?

That’s the latest allegation, and already a spokesperson for the Court has issued a statement denying any ethical violations.

The New York Times reports that “a former colleague of Mrs. Roberts has raised concerns that her recruiting work poses potential ethics issues for the chief justice. Seeking an inquiry, the ex-colleague has provided records to the Justice Department and Congress indicating Mrs. Roberts has been paid millions of dollars in commissions for placing lawyers at firms — some of which have business before the Supreme Court, according to a letter obtained by The New York Times.”

Good overview of why the GOP hates the 14th Amendment

How the 14th Amendment Is Democracy's Leg-Shaped Lamp https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a42310922/14th-amendment-democracy/
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#PartisanSupremeCourt

"The 14th Amendment to the Constitution has been treated like the leg-shaped lamp in A Christmas Story, if the leg-shaped lamp were a motion-sensitive high-intensity laser that would vaporize you if you got too close. Certainly, it has its uses. If it hadn't had its uses, conservatives would not have been so dedicated to dodging its requirements, minimizing its importance, and otherwise stashing it in the old constitutional attic in the hopes that nobody notices it still works if you turn it on. As my friend, the constitutional scholar Garrett Epps put it in Democracy Reborn, his exemplary history of the 14th:

By the first decade of the Twentieth Century, white Southerners had found dozens of ways to lock black Southerners, and their white allies out of political power. They had begun to rebuild the "intellectual blockade," enforcing ideological unity on the region[...]
...
It's indeed a whopper, passed in the wake of the Civil War and aimed at eliminating all of the proximate and long-standing causes of that war, particularly slavery and white supremacy. To wit: That is some serious constitutionalizing there. No wonder it scared the galluses off of hayshaker racist politicians and Gilded Age plutocrats the way it did. No wonder they rigged things so that the 14th didn't mean what its authors plainly meant.

But damned if the 14th didn't fight back. It was central to the winning arguments in important civil rights and civil liberties cases, including Brown v. Board of Education and Roe v. Wade. Its guarantees of due process have been central to every decision concerning a right to privacy, even though there is no specific right to privacy mentioned in the Constitution, which drives conservatives batty.
...
And as Michael Meltsner, of Northeastern University's school of law, writes inThe American Prospect, Section 2 pretty plainly empowers the federal government to knuckle states that engage in voter suppression:

Though few even know of its existence, Section 2 of the 14th Amendment is perfectly clear. It provides that, if any state abridges the franchise of males over 21, “except for participation in rebellion, or other crime,” that state loses the equivalent population numbers counted to determine representatives in Congress...But in 1868, the members of the then-dominant Republican Party were far more concerned that the 13th Amendment, by abolishing slavery, had excised the infamous three-fifths clause of the original document. If no further action was taken, former slaves who were still blocked from voting by state policies and multiple forms of intimidation, would nevertheless be counted in the population of the rebel states, threatening to increase their representation in Congress.
...
As Meltsner observes, there is currently a case, Citizens for Constitutional Integrity v. Census Bureau, that seeks to rectify what he calls "155 years of indifference."

It is alleged in the suit that Wisconsin’s strict photo ID law, which former GOP staffers have acknowledged was intended to disenfranchise Democrats, results in abridging the votes of some 300,000 voters, approximately 9 percent of the state’s registrants. If Section 2 were applied as intended, Pettinato argues that Wisconsin would lose a congressional district due to this disenfranchisement, a seat that New York, for example, would gain.
This long-shot suit, of course, would be a valuable weapon in cracking the death grip on democracy that unfettered gerrymandering has placed upon it.
...
The same goes to the more celebrated references to Section 3, which clearly states that any elected official hallowed by oath to defend the Constitution who then attempts to obstruct or overthrow constitutional government doesn't get a second chance at federal office. As Rep. Jamie Raskin explained to The New York Times, "We have to dust it off."

Not Being Able To Run For Office is a pretty light punishment for attempting a coup, especially relative to what happens to leaders of unsuccessful coups elsewhere...saying that former elected federal officials who had gone over to the Confederacy, should consider themselves lucky that they only would be disqualified from office. They were lucky not to be hanged.
...
The 14th Amendment has always been scary because it calls every bluff in American politics from the Declaration of Independence forward. It demands aggressive engagement not only by elected politicians, but also by the people who elected them. Far better to leave it up there in the attic, where the children can't find it and hurt themselves."

The right-wing partisans on the supreme court are attempting to steal the power to control the direction of the country. The least we can do is use the few actions at our disposal that could help illuminate the partisan corruption that underlies their actions!!

'Let’s do that!' Internet cheers Republican warning that Supreme Court Justices' tax returns could go public - Raw Story - Celebrating 18 Years of Independent Journalism https://www.rawstory.com/lets-do-that-internet-cheers-republican-warning-that-supreme-court-justices-tax-returns-could-go-public-2658992856/

#PartisanCaptureOfJudiciary
#PartisanSupremeCourt
#GOPLovesPower #GOPHatesDemocracy

"On social media, given the historic unpopularity of this Supreme Court, many applauded the idea of its justices having their tax returns made public – something that likely would never happen

“Yes!” declared Carnegie Mellon University professor Uju Anya. “Tell us who bought and paid for the Supreme Court Justices. Please and thank you.”

“Great!” exclaimed Mother Jones editor-in-chief Clara Jeffery. “Let’s do that!”

READ MORE: ‘It’s the Transgender, LGBTQ’: Secret Recording Reveals Superintendent Telling School Librarians ‘Pull Books Off Shelves’

Swedish economist and former Atlantic Council Senior Fellow Anders Åslund criticized Brady.

“Shameful! What the US lacks most of all is transparency. It should start with tax returns and be followed by campaign financing, now often dark money. Politicians who advocate financial secrecy effectively advocate corruption.”

Georgetown Law professor Josh Chafetz said, “Hadn’t even thought of this — that would be great!”

“Congress has had this authority for a long time,” noted retired journalist Dan Murphy. “If legitimate concerns arise that a member of the Supreme Court is abusing the office to enrich him or herself, as there are in the case of Trump, getting those returns would also be a good thing.”

“And that’s a bad thing?” mocked U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA).

“Don’t tempt me with a good time…” mocked journalist Walker Bragman, a theme repeated by dozens of other Twitter users"

Part 2: This is all part of the wealthy/corporate plot to control the government so they can't be restrained, regulated, fined, taxed, etc.. Oh, and they definitely want their serfs back!!

'Judicial supremacy': How the Supreme Court usurped the other two branches of government - Alternet.org https://www.alternet.org/judicial-supremacy-supreme-court-usurped/

#PartisanCaptureOfJudiciary
#PartisanSupremeCourt
#PartisanJudges
#WantTheirSerfsBack

"Another current Supreme Court case that worries Wehle is Moore v. Harper, which deals with partisan gerrymandering in North Carolina and a far-right legal idea known as the independent state legislature (ISL) theory. The ISL, in its most severe form, argues that only state legislatures have a right govern elections at the state level — not governors, not state supreme courts, not judges.

“The implications of Moore are even graver than those in Milligan,” Wehle warns. “The legislators are arguing that under the U.S. Constitution, only state legislatures or Congress can decide the rules governing federal elections — state courts and state constitutions are meaningless. This independent state legislature theory was repeatedly raised with no success by Trump and his supporters seeking to overturn the election in 2020.”

Wehle continues, “But what was unthinkable then — a ruling that takes elections away from voters by mandating as a matter of constitutional law that state legislatures have unfettered power to ultimately decide them — is very real now…. If the independent state legislature theory nonetheless carries the day, it would mean that a state legislature could violate the very state constitution that created it. Voters would, once again, be the losers at the Supreme Court — despite multiple laws designed to protect them.”

Wehle wraps up her article by arguing that today’s Supreme Court is more radical than conservative.

“Alas, the conservative justices on this Court have already shown their hand,” Wehle writes. “They don’t care about precedent, let alone intellectual integrity. As a result, Americans may be in for a rude awakening. Indeed, perhaps it’s time to retire the label ‘conservative’ when referring to the majority of this Court. Each term gives further evidence of its decidedly unconstrained unconservatism. And the future of our precious Constitution is in their hands.”"

Part 1 This is all part of the wealthy/corporate plot to control the government so they can't be restrained, regulated, fined, taxed, etc.. Oh, and they definitely want their serfs back!!

'Judicial supremacy': How the Supreme Court usurped the other two branches of government - Alternet.org https://www.alternet.org/judicial-supremacy-supreme-court-usurped/

#PartisanCaptureOfJudiciary
#PartisanSupremeCourt
#PartisanJudges
#WantTheirSerfsBack

"In 2023, there will be a lot of gridlock in Washington, D.C., with Republicans having a small majority in the U.S. House of Representatives while Democrats will still control the White House and the U.S. Senate. Democrats performed much better than expected in the 2022 midterms, losing the House but slightly increasing their narrow majority in the Senate and winning key gubernatorial races in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona and other swing states.

But even if the United States had taken a hard-left turn in 2020 and 2022 — even if Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont were president and Democrats had large majorities in both branches of Congress going in 2023 — the country would still have its most radical-right Supreme Court in generations. And the High Court won’t be moving to the center, let alone the left, anyone soon. It’s entirely possible that all three of the Gen-X justices President Donald Trump appointed (Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch) will still be on the Court 30 years from now.

The Court’s far-right turn is the focus of articles published by the New York Times and the conservative website The Bulwark on December 19. In the Times piece, journalist Adam Liptak emphasizes that today’s Supreme Court wields more power than other branches of the federal government.

“The conventional critique of the Supreme Court these days is that it has lurched to the right and is out of step with the public on many issues,” Liptak explains. “That is true so far as it goes. But a burst of recent legal scholarship makes a deeper point, saying the current Court is distinctive in a different way: It has rapidly been accumulating power at the expense of every other part of the government.”

Liptak notes what Stanford University law professor Mark A. Lemley had to say about the High Court in an article published by the Harvard Law Review on November 20.

Lemley wrote, “The Court has not been favoring one branch of government over another, or favoring states over the federal government, or the rights of people over governments. Rather, it is withdrawing power from all of them at once…. It is a Court that is consolidating its power, systematically undercutting any branch of government, federal or state, that might threaten that power, while at the same time undercutting individual rights.”

Lemley’s article was headlined “The Imperial Supreme Court” — a characterization that Liptak doesn’t disagree with. And Liptak points out that according to Rebecca L. Brown and Lee Epstein of the University of Southern California (USC), the High Court “is establishing a position of judicial supremacy over the president and Congress.”

Liptak also quotes University of California, Berkeley law professor Tejas N. Narechania, who wrote, “The Roberts Court, more than any other Court in history, uses its docket-setting discretion to select cases that allow it to revisit and overrule precedent.”

In an article she wrote for The Bulwark, University of Baltimore law professor Kimberly Wehle stresses that the Roberts Court has been showing a total disregard for precedent. Discussing the case Merrill v. Milligan, Wehle points out that how the Court ruled in the past isn’t a major concern for this edition of the Court.

“After the Dobbs ruling overturning Roe v. Wade last term,” Wehle writes, “it’s clear that the Court’s majority is not shy about overturning precedent, however entrenched it may be…. At issue in Merrill, which was argued on October 4, is whether Alabama’s newly redrawn congressional map illegally discriminates against Black voters under the Voting Rights Act (VRA). A three-judge lower-court panel, including two Trump appointees, agreed with the plaintiffs, deeming the Alabama map illegal and mandating the creation of a new one. If the Supreme Court sides with Alabama, it would mean another reversal of established precedent interpreting Section 2 of the VRA in a 1986 case called Thornburg v. Gingles. Even worse, it would be another serious gut-punch to Congress’ ability to pass laws remedying systemic discrimination, this time in voting.”

Reforming the Courts — Jeffrey K. Walker https://jeffreykwalker.com/reforming-the-court/

https://climatejustice.social/@jwalk1230@toot.community

Interesting, and in my opinion, very viable take on reforming the Supreme Court!!

Reforming the Courts — Jeffrey K. Walker

#ReformSupremeCout
#PartisanCaptureOfJudiciary
#PartisanSupremeCourt

"There are a lot of models to choose from if—as I am—you believe our Supreme Court needs some serious refurbishment to drag it into the 21st century. So as Emperor of My Blog, here’s what I’ll do about reforming the courts, starting with the Supremes.

First, I’ll expand the bench to fifteen justices with fixed fifteen-year terms. Every president would get four appointments per four-year term.

Riffing on Mexico, I’ll give the Senate 45 days to act on a nomination—if not, the nominee goes onto the Court. Since Mexico steadfastly refuses to Pay for That Wall, the least they can do is lend us a judicial appointment process. (By the way, I’ll extend this to all federal judicial appointments.)

Results That Matter
Taken together, these changes will immediately depressurize vacancies on the Court and eliminate the horrid death watches that life tenure produces. RBG was not the first—William O. Douglas, for example, refused to resign for almost a year after a debilitating stroke left him half-paralyzed and unable to carry out his duties. Fixed terms will also make the Supreme Court a bit more responsive to changing social, cultural, and political norms. Which is a good thing.

Then I’ll divide Court into three five-justice panels, established by lot each October when the Court starts a new session. I’ll only allow the Court to sit en banc in limited circumstances. This will immediately increase efficiency and allow tripling the number of decisions issued each year.

The only parts of my reform requiring constitutional amendment will be limiting the Senate’s ability to delay confirmation to a maximum of 45 days and instituting fifteen-year terms. And the second of these isn’t entirely settled, as at least one member of Congress publicly asserted recently. Every other reform could be implemented by regular legislative order and a presidential signature."

The Supreme Court has been perverted by the GOP to undemocratically enact right-wing policies outside of the elected branches. It's a right-wing end-run around democracy!

There is a path to save the Supreme Court from itself
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/11/supreme-court-reform-expansion-term-limits-ethics/

#PartisanCaptureOfJudiciary
#PartisanSupremeCourt
#ReformSupremeCourt
#GOPHatesDemocracy

"The Supreme Court’s right-wing majority has been on a tear lately...several right-wing justices seriously considered adopting a once-fringe legal theory that could upend how state courts oversee elections.
...
Fortunately, there is no shortage of ideas to return sanity to the court. And there has never been a better time to advance them to the public.

As Maya Wiley, head of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, explains, “The Supreme Court is now far out of step with the American mainstream and has, as a result, become the best organizer of its own court reform campaign.” Given the many ongoing scandals, such as leaked opinions and Justice Clarence Thomas’s refusal to recuse himself in cases involving his wife’s activism after the 2020 election, Wiley notes, “More Americans believe term limits, transparency and ethics reform are good ideas.”

The stakes couldn’t be higher. The court’s pattern of self-inflicted wounds erodes its credibility and undermines its stature. As the progressive Brennan Center for Justice put it, “The lack of structural democratic accountability is much of the reason why we ended up with a Court so out of step with the public and with mainstream legal thought. But it could also spell a crisis for the Court’s own legitimacy, spurring new attention to the broken system that gave us today’s radical supermajority and garnering momentum for efforts at Court reform."
...
Eliminate lifetime tenure for justices
...
Ian Bassin of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan pro-democracy group, tells me that Supreme Court term limits have gained wide support.
...
Expand the court
A recent Marquette University Law School national poll showed that 51 percent of Americans (including 72 percent of Democrats) favored expanding the number of justices on the Supreme Court. And unlike term limits, which might require a constitutional amendment to achieve, there is no dispute that Congress has the power to enlarge the court.

The number of seats on the high court is not set in stone. It was set at nine when the nation had nine circuits (there are now 13). And Republicans effectively reduced the number to eight when they refused to consider President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the court in March 2016.

Members of the presidential commission on the Supreme Court were candid about this reform: Court expansion would be the most effective means to dilute the influence of the current right-wing majority.
...
Democracy itself has been threatened by politically compromised justices acting far outside the bounds of neutral referees. The commission reports:

"[Critics] maintain that the Supreme Court has been complicit in and partially responsible for the “degradation of American democracy” writ large. On this view, the Court has whittled away the Voting Rights Act and other cornerstones of democracy, and affirmed state laws and practices that restrict voting and disenfranchise certain constituencies, such as people of color, the poor, and the young. This has contributed to circumstances that threaten to give outsize power over the future of the presidency and therefore the Court to entrench that power. . . .
Antidemocratic developments risk entrenching the judicial philosophy of the current Court majority for generations, while advantaging one political party.
For those who say expansion would politicize the court, remember that the court has already been politicized.
...
Implement ethics rules for justices
Ethical guardrails already exist for federal courts in the form of the Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges, as Glenn Fine explains in the Atlantic. This includes “conduct both on and off the bench, including requirements that judges act at all times to promote public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.” But the Supreme Court’s adherence to the code has no means of oversight or enforcement.

Here is where the Supreme Court’s cry for “independence” is most self-serving. Congress is “independent," but it has ethics rules and an enforcement mechanism. Same goes for the executive branch
...
Consider Fine’s ingenious suggestion: “The judiciary as a whole should be subject to inspector-general oversight
...
The path forward
None of these reforms is radical. The Brennan Center observes: “The U.S. Supreme Court is an international outlier in many respects when compared to the high courts of other countries, including how much authority justices wield — and for how long.” Moreover, the public has never been so engaged on the issue, as the reaction to the court’s decision to overturn abortion rights has shown...."

As if this supreme court was "crafted" to be anything but a partisan power grab and attempt to control the country by rightwing nutjobs who hate democracy!

'A political power grab': NY Times slams Supreme Court for even considering 'dangerously radical' ISL theory - Alternet.org https://www.alternet.org/media/no-basis-in-law-ny-times-editorial-board-slams-supreme-court-for-even-considering-a-dangerously-radical-legal-theory/?utm_medium=email&recip_id=462208&list_id=2

#PartisanCaptureOfJudiciary
#PartisanSupremeCourt

"In the case Moore v. Harper, the U.S. Supreme Court is taking a look at partisan gerrymandering in North Carolina and is weighing the merits of a far-right legal idea known as the independent state legislature (ISL) theory. The ISL, in its most extreme form, argues that only state legislatures should play a role in governing elections in individual states — not governors, not judges, not state supreme courts.

The ISL has been lambasted by a wide range of legal experts and constitutional scholars as anti-democracy, from liberals and progressive to right-wing Never Trump conservatives. But the New York Times’ editorial board, in a scathing editorial published on December 9, goes beyond slamming the ISL — it also slams the Supreme Court for even agreeing to consider Moore v. Harper and the ISL in the first place.

The board explains that in Moore v. Harper, North Carolina Republicans “are relying on an untested theory that asserts that state legislatures enjoy nearly unlimited power to set and change rules for federal elections.”

“In 2000, the chief justice at the time, William H. Rehnquist, proposed the idea in his concurring opinion on Bush v. Gore, and the independent state legislature theory has been floating around the fringes of right-wing legal circles ever since,” the Times’ editorial board explains. “To be clear, this is a political power grab in the guise of a legal theory. Republicans are trying to see if they can turn state legislatures — 30 of which are controlled by Republicans — into omnipotent, unaccountable election bosses with the help of the conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court. The theory has no basis in law, history or precedent.”

The board continues, “The idea that state lawmakers exist free of any constraints imposed by their constitution and state courts makes a mockery of the separation of powers, which is foundational to the American system of government. By the North Carolina lawmakers’ logic, they possess infinite power to gerrymander districts and otherwise control federal elections. It is a Constitution-free zone where no one else in the state — not the governor, not the courts, not the voters through ballot initiatives — has any say.”

The Times’ editorial board notes that when the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Moore v. Harper on December 7, Justice Elena Kagan “rejected the theory out of hand.”

“That so many justices would take the theory seriously is bad enough,” the board laments. “Three of them — Justices Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas — appear to favor the independent state legislature theory, as they suggested in an opinion in an earlier stage of the case. Justice Brett Kavanaugh has also indicated his openness to it. It’s worse when the public trust in and approval of the Court have fallen to historic lows, thanks largely to aggressively partisan recent opinions, as this board has argued.”

The board continues, “There’s an old saying that only close cases make it to the Supreme Court. If they weren’t close, they would have been resolved in the lower courts. But Moore v. Harper isn’t a remotely close case. A ruling for the North Carolina lawmakers would flood the federal courts with election litigation that normally plays out in the states, upending the balance of federalism that defines American government. That’s not a conservative result; it’s a dangerously radical one.”"

They get triggered/melt in the face of any diversity--gay, black, transsexual, "woke," not Christian. It really bothers them. Who are the real snowflakes here?

They want the freedom to impose their religion on everyone else. Freedom of religion for me, but not thee!

Opinion | US Supreme Court Wants to Make America More Bigoted Again | Thom Hartmann https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/12/07/us-supreme-court-wants-make-america-more-bigoted-again

#TheRightHatesDiversity
#GOPTheRealSnowflakes
#PartisanSupremeCourt
#RightWingSnowflakes
#Freedom4MeNotThee
#ChristianNationalism

"Bigots are switching to "creative expression" instead of religion as the club they'll use to beat down public accommodation laws.

THOM HARTMANN

December 7, 2022
The Supreme Court appears hell-bent on making America bigoted again. Step-by-step, they're undoing every bit of progressive legislation from the past 80 years that they can find.

Now they're going after the right of gays and lesbians who want to get married to shop for a website, or pretty much anything else that requires "creative" effort.

There was a time in America when any retail business could, as the old sign said, "reserve the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason." Often such proclamations were just slightly more subtle than the "No Negros," "No Jews," or "No Irishmen" signs they replaced, although they still pepper retail establishments across the nation.

And it's true that if you run a "public accommodation," you're welcome to toss out drunk, belligerent, naked, high, or otherwise offensive customers. Bars and airlines—clearly public accommodations—do it daily.

But, particularly since passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, there are boundaries around who you can and can't refuse to serve. Under federal law, you can toss out somebody because they're wearing a tee-shirt that has offensive language printed on it, but you can't toss out somebody because they're Black or wearing a yarmulke.

Title II of the Civil Rights Act specifically says a company doing business with the public can't discriminate based on "race, color, religion, or national origin."

And in 23 states plus Washington, DC you can't refuse service to somebody because of sexual orientation. (The Equality Act, which would put that protection into federal law, has passed the House twice, last year and in 2019, but died both times in the Senate because of Republican filibusters.)

Now the Supreme Court has those state laws protecting gay people in its cross-hairs in the 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis case they heard argued yesterday: specifically Colorado's law that bans discrimination based on "disability, race, creed, color, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, or ancestry."

In a twist, the Republicans on the Court chose not to hear Lorie Smith's original argument that, through her company 303 Creative, she shouldn't have to make a website for a gay wedding because it offends her "deeply held Christian faith."

(Although no gay couple has ever asked her to make a wedding website—in fact, no couple of any sort has ever asked her to make any website for their wedding—she's apparently worried that it may happen and so, with big bucks from rightwingers behind her, took her case to the Supreme Court.)

Instead, Republicans on the Court used their majority status to decide, from among her various arguments, to shift the frame toward "creative expression," choosing to decide:
...
Tearing down Colorado's law in the name of "creative expression" is the new strategy for "Christian" fundamentalists to attack public accommodation laws; this is in large part a repeat of their failed effort to strike down Colorado's public accommodation law in the infamous 2018 Masterpiece Cakeshop gay wedding cake case.
...
Bigots using religion as their excuse have chafed at these laws ever since Bobby Kennedy used them to forcefully integrate lunch counters in the South and his federal prosecutors used them to end racial and religious discrimination in hotels, theaters, and bars.

Now they're switching to "creative expression" instead of religion as the club they'll use to beat down public accommodation laws.
...
Is the guy painting my gay friend's house "creative" because he's helping choose colors and paint the house? How about a barber? Or the chef who owns his own restaurant or lunch counter? A bartender who custom-mixes cocktails?

If this decision is handed down in Smith's favor and knocks down the Colorado law (and 22 other states'), expect a whole spectrum of businesses run by bigots and religious freaks to begin discriminating against people not protected by the federal Civil Rights Act, with queer people at the top of that list.

If SCOTUS goes the whole distance and guts the Civil Rights Act—like Republicans on the Court did with the Voting Rights Act in 2013—discrimination against women, Blacks, Jews, Muslims, and the disabled will again become part of the American landscape."

They don't want freedom of religion, they want their religion privileged!

Opinion | The Supreme Court keeps coddling the religious right. It shouldn’t. - The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/07/supreme-court-lgbtq-discrimination-first-amendment-colorado-web-designer/
#PartisanSupremeCourt
#ChristianNationalism
#Freedom4MeNotThee

"In its ongoing project to widen the privileges accorded to religious people — especially conservative Christians — the Supreme Court’s conservative majority is poised to undermine a critical distinction: the one between rules we obey in our personal lives and how that changes when we enter the commercial marketplace.

Sign up for a weekly roundup of thought-provoking ideas and debates
That was the implication of the oral argument at the Supreme Court on Monday in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis. This case is about whether a website designer in Colorado can refuse to make sites for same-sex weddings, despite a state law that protects people from discrimination in public accommodations (i.e., businesses open to the public) by virtue of race, religion, sex, disability and sexual orientation, among other things.

The case was brought by designer Lorie Smith, who arrived at the court bearing a purely hypothetical injury at Colorado’s hands. While Smith has not actually been penalized by the state for violating that law, she worries that one day she might be, if she decides to design websites for weddings (she hasn’t yet), and if a same-sex couple asks her to design one for them, and if she turns them away, and if they report her to the state, and if the state takes action against her.

Given that, it might sound odd that Smith is the face of this case. But as law professor Hila Keren observes, it was precisely because Smith has not actually turned away any potential gay clients that she was chosen by the religious right’s legal apparatus — represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, the lavishly funded organization representing Smith — to be the plaintiff in this suit. She can be the sole actor in the story, a living person whose (even hypothetical) injury can garner sympathy from the justices, even as there is no victim of her discrimination with a name and a face.

Image without a caption
Follow Paul Waldman's opinions
Follow
As always, the conservatives on the court have seemingly bottomless sympathy for Christian plaintiffs who say their right to the fullest expression of their religious beliefs is being hindered. Yet we used to have both a common and legal understanding that the commercial space is one where you may have to adjust your personal preferences and abide by rules in ways you don’t elsewhere.
...
For the conservatives on the court, however, religion — in particular, conservative versions of Christianity — changes everything, even how we should think about commerce. They’ve been steadily carving out more and more spaces where religious claims under the First Amendment trump every other right or law, whether it has to do with health-insurance regulations or Christian prayer in schools.

When it comes to the commercial right to discriminate, we had this debate in the middle of the 20th century. As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson pointed out in oral arguments, “opposition to interracial marriages and to integration, in many instances, was on religious grounds.” But we as a society, in both law and practice, rejected those who said discrimination should be allowed if it’s based on a religious belief. We said you have a right to refuse to have friends of a different race, or write racist screeds and hand them out on a street corner. But if you open a restaurant or a bookstore or a car dealership, you have to serve everyone.

The fact that website design is expressive in some ways shouldn’t change that. Colorado isn’t telling Lorie Smith how to do her job, just that she can’t turn away customers based solely on their membership in one of the classes the state’s law protects. And the truth is, there would likely be little or no difference between a website she created for a straight couple and one she created for a gay couple. She just wants to effectively put a “No Gays Allowed” sign on her business.

If your state prohibits discrimination against LGBTQ people, you have to obey that law when you do business, even if you don’t like it. Or, at least you will until the court hands down its likely decision in this case."

The GOP wants power and control, not democracy!!! Their real base is the obscenely wealthy who buy media outlets so they can poison discourse and slant perspectives so they can have their way. Fox News and Sinclair anyone?! Good article!

How can we protect our democracy when the media doesn't let us know how it's being threatened?
The connection between "Moore v. Harper" and the Electoral Reform Act

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/how-can-we-protect-our-democracy#details

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#PartisanCaptureOfJudiciary
#PartisanSupremeCourt

"Sometimes I feel like screaming at the mainstream media for failing to alert people to crucial (although complicated) issues affecting our democracy coming from different parts of government simultaneously.

Case in point: Moore vs. Harper, argued yesterday before the Supreme Court, and the Electoral Reform Act, which must be enacted before the end of this Congress because Republicans won’t touch it once they control the House.

The two are intimately connected but you wouldn’t know that from the mainstream media, which is treating them as two separate stories. Let me make the connection.

In Moore, North Carolina Republicans aim to restore a redistricting map drawn by the GOP-led legislature but rejected as violating the state constitution by North Carolina’s supreme court.

North Carolina bases its argument on the bonkers “independent state legislature” theory, which interprets Article I Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution (authorizing state legislatures to prescribe “the times, places and manner of holding elections") to give state legislatures sole authority over elections, without interference from state courts.

The theory sprang from the head of Justice William Rehnquist in 2000, who wrote (in a concurring opinion in Bush v. Gore) that “the text of the election law itself, and not just its interpretation by the courts of the States, takes on independent significance.”

Since then, Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch have all endorsed aspects of the theory. Notably, they didn’t disavow it in yesterday’s oral argument.

Not only would the theory open the door to extreme gerrymandering, allowing one party to virtually entrench itself in a state. It could also allow state legislatures to reject the results of a presidential election.

Which is where the Electoral Reform Act, now before Congress, comes in.

Article II of the Constitution requires states to appoint presidential electors “in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” And the Electoral Count Act of 1845 allows state legislatures to choose a new manner of appointing the state's electors if the vote for the presidency has “failed” in the state.

But what does “failed” mean and who has the authority to declare a failure?

This wasn’t an issue until the 2020 election, when Donald Trump exploited the Act's vagueness to claim he could overturn the will of the voters.

He pushed state legislatures to appoint electors for him regardless of the popular vote. (Fortunately, they refused.) He pressured congressional Republicans to object to Joe Biden’s electors. (Trump partly succeeded, but not by enough to throw the election his way.) And he pushed Vice President Pence to illegally delay the electoral count so Trump could continue pressuring states. (Thankfully, Pence refused.)

American democracy survived by a whisker. But add in a Supreme Court ruling affirming the independent state legislature theory, and what do you get if Trump (or any other anti-democracy candidate) tries the same thing again? A democratic disaster...."

The Federalist Society's Lackeys on the Supreme Court Aren't Hiding their Stripes
The pretense of nonpartisanship should be well and truly shattered for everyone.
Federalist Society Hosts 4 Supreme Court Justices to Celebrate Right-Wing Capture https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a41936985/federalist-society-supreme-court/
#PartisanCaptureOfJudiciary
#PartisanSupremeCourt SupremeCourt

"...If the hoary old pretense of non-partisanship at the Supreme Court were actually true, then this kind of thing wouldn’t happen: This week, the Federalist Society, the legal terrarium that has produced the carefully engineered conservative majority on the Supreme Court, as well as all manner of exotic fauna at the lower levels of the federal judiciary, held its annual gala hootenanny in Washington. From Reuters:

U.S. Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett received standing ovations from members of the conservative Federalist Society on Thursday at its first annual convention since the court overturned a nationwide right to abortion. Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch also received applause at the event of the legal group, which is one of the most influential in the country and whose members have long criticized the 1973 Roe v Wade decision that the court overturned in June.

The loudest applause at the event in Washington, D.C. may have been not for the justices but for Alito's opinion in the June ruling. Other conservative members of the court backed the ruling. Alito did not mention the ruling or other aspects of the court's work during his brief remarks. But Stephen Markman, a former justice on the Michigan Supreme Court, said that if the ruling were forever associated with Alito, "I do not know of any decision on any court by any judge of which that judge could be more proud.” The comments were met by a standing ovation, with attendees turning to face toward Alito. Barrett also briefly spoke at the event, largely honoring the late Judge Laurence Silberman, who served on D.C.'s federal appeals court and died last month. As she took the stage, Barrett said: "It's really nice to have a lot of noise made not by protesters outside of my house.”
It was a celebration of conservative partisanship by the coddled products of a lushly financed campaign to render the federal judiciary a weapon with several purposes: to roll back the legal gains made by minorities; to enforce a plutocratic and theocratic order in the law; and frankly—mainly—to Own The Libs.

At another moment of the gathering, Judge William Pryor, chief judge of the 11th U.S. Circuit, went out of his way to ridicule legal journalists with whom he disagreed (including Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern of Slate), as well as Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who has dedicated a good portion of the past two years to tracing the dark money network that finances groups like the Federalist Society and the judges that emerge from it, linking that money to a lot of the conservative policy projects that judges have protected in a way that would have made Samuel Chase glow with pride.

Two things are different now from the days when Chase was on trial, and even from the days when Mr. Dooley shrewdly sized up the situation. First, unlike justices of the past, these new judges do not seem to feel free to evolve, which is part of the reason they have lifetime gigs in the first place. President Dwight Eisenhower thought he was getting a reliable voice for the status quo when he appointed Earl Warren to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 1953. Needless to say, Ike called that shot a little early. This doesn’t happen any more. Except for Gorsuch’s stand on Native American issues, the conservatives on the present court are as predictable as the tides.

The second, more corrosive difference is that these conservative judges aren’t even pretending they aren’t political animals anymore. Soaking up the cheers at a Federalist Society meeting marks you as a partisan. (At the end of his rocky confirmation process, Kavanaugh was feted by the society at Union Station in D.C. Opponents responded by setting up a Jumbotron across the street on which they played the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford on an endless loop as people walked into the party. This was bone politics at its most obvious.) Giving a speech like Pryor did marks you as a partisan. Nobody is spending a dime of dark money on camouflage anymore.

The Supreme Court has a savage credibility problem right now. Its approval rating never has been lower, and its trustworthiness is scraping bottom as well. (There is lively talk about expanding its membership, though there’s no credible path to do so at the moment.) And the conservative majority on the court could care less about whether people approve of it or even trust it very much.

The Constitution may follow the flag—to paraphrase Mr. Dooley— but the Supreme Court follows the money."

Part 2
Right-wing Partisans in Black Robes pretending to be impartial so they can sway decisions and the country!

Whistleblower Claims Alito Leaked the Hobby Lobby Decision https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a42027381/samuel-alito-hobby-lobby-leak/
#PartisanCaptureOfJudiciary
#PartisanSupremeCourt

...But Mr. Schenck said he visited Justices Scalia and Thomas in chambers, where he shaped his prayers as political messaging, using phrases like “the sanctity of human life” to plea for an end to abortion. (Peggy Nienaber, who worked with Mr. Schenck, was recently recorded saying that the group had prayed with justices at the court.) Mr. Schenck also asked Justice Scalia to meet privately with the Rev. Frank Pavone, an incendiary anti-abortion activist who ran Priests for Life, a nonprofit that has been involved in issues before the court, as have Mr. Schenck and Faith and Action. “As I am sure you will appreciate, my position does not permit me to assist in the work of Fr. Pavone’s organization,” Justice Scalia wrote in a letter, adding, “I will be happy to meet him, however, at a time he can arrange with my secretary.”
Holy Jesus (if you'll pardon the expression), but Pavone is a real nut. He should have been on a watchlist, not in a justice's chambers. Then came the Hobby Lobby business.

In June 2014, when Mrs. Wright told Mr. Schenck that she and her husband would be dining privately with the Alitos, she and the minister agreed she would try to learn the outcome of the Hobby Lobby case, he said. “She knew I had an interest in knowing,” Mr. Schenck wrote in his letter to the chief justice. On June 4, the day after the meal, Mrs. Wright sent Mr. Schenck her cryptic email saying she had news.
...
It is plain that the current, carefully engineered conservative majority on the court is made up of deeply corrupted individuals. Not financial corruption, mind you (at least as far as we know), but corrupted by Washington's true currency: access and ideology, combining to produce unaccountable power. Roberts has to know that the institution he leads is bleeding credibility by the bucketful. The Democrats in Congress are already talking about hearings; this is exactly the kind of thing that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse has been banging on about for over a year now. The only way for Roberts to repair his institution's reputation is to cooperate with whatever hearings Congress opens and to accept a Code of Ethics for the justices—something they do not have at present—even if it comes from Congress.

In other news about the theocrats in the woodpile, Justice Amy Coney Barrett is being asked to recuse herself from ruling on 303 Creative LLC v Elenis, a gay rights case by former members of a secretive faith-based network to which she still belongs. From the Guardian:

The former members are part of a network of “survivors” of the controversial charismatic group who say Barrett’s “lifelong and continued” membership in the People of Praise make her too biased to fairly adjudicate an upcoming case that will decide whether private business owners have a right to decline services to potential clients based on their sexual orientation. They point to Barrett’s former role on the board of Trinity Schools Inc, a private group of Christian schools that is affiliated with the People of Praise and, in effect, barred children of same-sex parents from attending the school. A faculty guide published in 2015, the year Barrett joined the board, said “blatant sexual immorality” – which the guide said included “homosexual acts” – had “no place in the culture of Trinity Schools”. The discriminatory policies were in place before and after Barrett joined. The schools’ attitude, the former People of Praise members said, reflect the Christian group’s staunchly anti-gay beliefs and adherence to traditional family values, including – they say – expelling or ostracizing members of the People of Praise “community” who came out as gay later in life or their gay children.
Incidentally...

Barrett has never publicly acknowledged her membership in the community since becoming a judge and did not disclose it during her 2020 confirmation. It was reported at the time that the People of Praise erased all mentions and photos of her from its website ahead of her meetings with lawmakers.
...
This is an easy one. Roberts should simply demand that Barrett take a walk on this case. He should also demand a public yes-or-no as to whether she belongs to the People of Praise. He can't make her do any of that, but simply by making the demand he can demonstrate to the public that he wants to get his own house in order before some Congress does it for him."

Part 1
Right-wing Partisans in Black Robes pretending to be impartial so they can sway decisions and the country!

Whistleblower Claims Alito Leaked the Hobby Lobby Decision https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a42027381/samuel-alito-hobby-lobby-leak/
#PartisanCaptureOfJudiciary
#PartisanSupremeCourt

"John Roberts needs to take things in hand or risk serious damage to the court's reputation.

What makes Sammy run? The New York Times. In a piece that obviously was edited down to its bones and lawyered to within an inch of its life, the NYT got a copy of a letter sent by a leading anti-choice activist to Chief Justice John Roberts in which he charges that Justice Samuel Alito leaked the court's notorious 2014 opinion in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby to his pals in the raving theocrats universe so they could use it pre-emptively to goose their membership rolls. The letter—and the piece—strongly implies that this violation of Supreme Court protocols might offer a possible precedent in the investigation into who leaked Alito's draft opinion in Dobbs, which took away reproductive choice from American women.

Both court decisions were triumphs for conservatives and the religious right. Both majority opinions were written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. But the leak of the draft opinion overturning the constitutional right to abortion was disclosed in the news media by Politico, setting off a national uproar. With Hobby Lobby, according to Mr. Schenck, the outcome was shared with only a handful of advocates. Mr. Schenck’s allegation creates an unusual, contentious situation: a minister who spent years at the center of the anti-abortion movement, now turned whistle-blower; a denial by a sitting justice; and an institution that shows little outward sign of getting to the bottom of the recent leak of the abortion ruling or of following up on Mr. Schenck’s allegation.
Denials have sprouted all around, from Alito himself to the couple whose casual dinner conversation Schenk maintains was one of the sources of his information about the Hobby Lobby leak. But it's clear from this starched and bleached NYT story that Schenck told his story to more than a few people, that Schenk was at the time a big swinging Schenk in the anti-choice movement, and that his particular project was infiltrating the federal judiciary.

In interviews and thousands of emails and other records he shared with The Times, Mr. Schenck provided details of the effort he called the "Ministry of Emboldenment." Mr. Schenck recruited wealthy donors like Mrs. Wright and her husband, Donald, encouraging them to invite some of the justices to meals, to their vacation homes or to private clubs. He advised allies to contribute money to the Supreme Court Historical Society and then mingle with justices at its functions. He ingratiated himself with court officials who could help give him access, records show. All the while, he leveraged his connections to raise money for his nonprofit, Faith and Action. Mr. Schenck said he pursued the Hobby Lobby information to cultivate the business’s president, Steve Green, as a donor.
I want a job in the Ministry of Emboldenment. Does it come with a plumed hat and a sword?

It is unclear if Mr. Schenck’s efforts had any impact on legal decisions, given that only Justices Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas proved amenable to the outreach, records show, and they were already inclined to overturn Roe v. Wade. That decision was only reversed this year after the addition of new conservative justices altered the court’s ideological makeup. But Mr. Schenck said his aim was not to change minds, but rather to stiffen the resolve of the court’s conservatives in taking uncompromising stances that could eventually lead to a reversal of Roe.
supreme court justices samuel alito and elena kagan testify before the house appropriations committee
The court will never be the Sam.
Chip Somodevilla//Getty Images
Nothing stiffens ol' Sam Alito's "resolve" like knuckling down on the already powerless. Nobody's resolve is ever stiffer than his.

Evidently, Schenk is in full sackcloth and ashes now, if you were looking for another nominee to the Day Late And A Dollar Short Club, Beltway Division. The Times goes deeply into his long history of anti-choice activism, including his attempt to ambush then-President Bill Clinton with an aborted fetus. (Safe, legal, and rare, right, Mr. President?) But he moved quite quickly away from street theater to top-rung Washington networking."

How The Midterm Elections Unleashed The Supreme Court's Radical Majority - National Memo https://www.nationalmemo.com/how-the-midterm-elections-unleashed-the-supreme-court-s-radical-majority
#PartisanJudges
#PartisanSupremeCourt
#GOPPartisansCaptureJudiciary

"So forget what you learned in civics about checks and balances. The midterm election did work out better for Democrats than the polls predicted, but for the next two years the power over major issues of national consequence will rest with a conservative majority on the Court that is unchecked itself and bent on reducing other checks on arbitrary power. At least with their decision to overturn Roe, the Court’s majority awakened the public to the danger. But, except for a possible reversal of Obergefell, it will be harder to arouse that kind of response to many of the other critical turns to the right the Court may take. This is going to be a major challenge for both journalism and Democratic politics in the coming years."