The Supreme Court Teaches Us How to Legally Ignore the Constitution

 

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. 

Section 1, Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States

Once you have read the above, a post-Civil War enabling constitutional amendment, you can join the Supreme Court in simply ignoring it as if it did not exist. It’s not as if that Court remains the noble institution we once thought it should be. Even the moral caliber of several of the Associate Justices remains questionable at best. With substantial supporting evidence, two Justices (Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh) may well be guilty of sexual assault/rape, each able to marginalize or even avoid admitting evidence from most of the witnesses who were otherwise willing to speak to the FBI but were miraculously never contacted. Neither is Kavanaugh a bastion of standing by his word: during his 2018 confirmation hearings, for example, when asked how he would address Roe vs Wade, Kavanaugh suggested that it was “settled law” that he would respect. 

In her 2020 Senate confirmation hearing, Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett initially failed to disclose a material preexisting bias, reflected in two talks she gave in 2013 hosted by two anti-abortion student “right to life” groups in paperwork provided to the Senate, an omission that was only corrected after the fact. During recent hearings in the abortion cases before the Court, Coney Barrett seemed to hold the Roman Catholic biblical interpretation against abortion as superior to that “settled law” – 48 years of unbroken support of free choice by that Court. And while the Justice is generally a good human being, well-liked by her former law students, it seems that precedent and that “equal protection” clause cited above, the very basis for Roe vs Wade, inconveniently conflict with Coney Barrett’s deeply felt belief in Catholicism. There is no “good human being” waiver against bad judicial decisions made by such an openly biased judge.

In the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, this Court will rule on whether Mississippi’s heartbeat law – the Gestational Age Act, passed in March 2018 and which effectively makes abortions illegal after 15 weeks – is legal… and whether the 1973, 7-2 Roe vs Wade decision should be reversed in toto. It would take a radical activist court to overrule such a clear and abiding legal decision, unblemished by the gross inequities and clearly wrongful statements of law in truly horrible Supreme Court decisions (Dredd Scott, Plessy vs Ferguson, Heller, Citizens United and Brnovich v. DNC). The Court is expected to issue its decision in June.

But even before the Supreme Court addresses the merits of Roe vs Wade as noted above, an interim 5-4 decision (a so-called “slip opinion” on December 10th) in Whole Woman’s Health vs Jackson, Judge, District Court of Texas, 114th District, left in place, subject to possible lower court rulings that were severely limited by the Court, a Texas vigilante statute allowing private citizens to sue abortion providers (and those who assist) for statutory damages (minimum of $10,000) against abortions provided after six weeks from conception. Radical activist Associate Justices – Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – failed to heed the warnings of George W Bush-appointee, Chief Justice John Roberts who noted that this vigilante approach, apparently now sanctified by the majority at least on an interim basis, would allow states to ignore Supreme Court rulings that they did not like. 

Shocked that the Court would permit this simple circumvention of Court rulings to exist, Roberts said in his dissent: “Texas has employed an array of stratagems designed to shield its unconstitutional law from judicial review.” Minority liberal Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent added that the ruling constituted a betrayal of “not only the citizens of Texas, but also our constitutional system of government.” The U.S. Supreme Court has become the super-partisan branch of the evangelical-driven Republican Party, devoid of any claimed neutrality.

In a controversial rejoinder to the Court’s ruling, California Governor Gavin Newsom is pushing his legislature to pass a bill to allow private citizens in California to sue gunmakers and dealers who sell, distribute, trade in or enable assault weapons and ghost guns for statutory damages (not surprisingly, with that familiar $10,000 minimum award) as well. This law would effectively reverse a federal district court ruling holding California’s assault weapon ban to be unconstitutional… in which the judge compared the weapons to a Swiss Army knife. “If the most efficient way to keep these devastating weapons off our streets is to add the threat of private lawsuits, we should do just that,” said Newsom.

Is this controversial move by California a “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander” or “two wrongs don’t make a right” stance? As the Editorial Board of the Los Angeles Times said on December 12th of the Court’s slip opinion on Texas law: “There have been numerous references in court arguments, filings and rulings about the chilling effects of this law on providers of legal abortion. But what the Supreme Court has done in its laissez-faire decision on this toxic law ultimately is the most chilling of all — it has shown that it is willing to turn its back on protecting constitutionally guaranteed rights.” Tell that to the hundreds, maybe thousands of Texas women who have traveled to neighboring states to exercise their constitutional rights to an abortion. Coat hangers anyone? Ready for the new applicants for welfare support?

I’m Peter Dekom, and the raw hypocrisy of “right to life” advocates – those who still support the death penalty as well as the primacy of wide-open gun ownership above the lives of their own children – speaks more of the tyranny of this vocal and GOP-empowered minority over any notion of respect for human life.