Religion’s Winning Streak At SCOTUS | Justices Open The Door To Even More Robocalls

April 5, 2021

Though it’s not happening at 1 First Street, the biggest case of the moment is taking place in a Minneapolis courtroom where DEREK CHAUVIN is on trial for the murder of GEORGE FLOYD — whose death was captured on video for the world to see and helped spur protests across the country that ultimately led to Black Lives Matter becoming the largest movement in American history. Although Floyd died under the knee of Chauvin, Mark Berman with The Washington Post reports, “Prosecutors face a steep legal challenge in winning a conviction against a police officer. Despite nationwide protests, police are rarely charged when they kill someone on duty. And even when they are, winning convictions is often difficult…A key element that experts say factors into many of the cases is the Supreme Court’s 1989 Graham v. Connor decision, which found that an officer’s actions must be judged against what a reasonable officer would do in the same situation.”

Remember when JUSTICE SAMUEL ALITO said in a speech before the Federalist Society, “It pains me to say this, but, in certain quarters, religious liberty is fast becoming a disfavored right”? It was in November of last year when the justice made those remarks (and earned some criticism afterward). But as Adam Liptak with The New York Times points out, those “certain quarters” Alito mentioned don’t include the Supreme Court. According to a new study that considered 70 years of data, SCOTUS has become far more likely to rule in favor of religious rights in recent years. In fact, rulings in favor of religion have received an 81 percent success rate at the Supreme Court under the leadership of CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS. The study’s authors wrote, “Plainly, the Roberts court has ruled in favor of religious organizations, including mainstream Christian organizations, more frequently than its predecessors…With the replacement of RUTH BADER GINSBURG with AMY CONEY BARRETT, this trend will not end soon and may accelerate.”

The Supreme Court last week could make it easier for Americans to receive more robocalls going forward. Oh goody. The justices unanimously ruled in favor of Facebook in a dispute over the tech giant texting customers automated security alerts. Facebook got a victory in this instance because it doesn’t send those texts using an autodialer. Chauncey Alcorn with CNN explains the case and notes, “Robocalls were already on the rise before the court’s Thursday ruling, according to recent data from YouMail, a robocall-prevention service that tracks nationwide robocall traffic. In February, Americans received more than 4.6 billion robocalls, a 15% increase from January, according to YouMail researchers.”

For Bloomberg Tax, Gabe Roth with Fix the Court considers what can be done when a judge uses a judicial opinion to express their political grievances. Last month, a judge released an opinion in which he “went far beyond the facts of the case to rail against purported left-wing media bias and call for the reversal of a landmark U.S. Supreme Court precedent on press freedom,” Roth writes. But there’s not much anyone can do about this opinion or any other in which a judge “shamelessly shoehorn[s] partisan talking points into our body of case law.” Not much, but not nothing. And so Roth explores some potential solutions.

Devin Dwyer and Jacqueline Yoo with ABC News cover the Supreme Court case that stems from one high school cheerleader’s Snapchat where she posted a message to her friends that included some vulgar language after she didn’t make the varsity cheer squad. When her school found out about the post, she was suspended from cheerleading for an entire year. “Levy’s Snapchat post and the punishment that followed are now at the center of a major U.S. Supreme Court case that tests the boundaries of school discipline and the rights of students to free speech…The court in a famous 1969 decision said that students don’t surrender their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse gate, but that educators can limit speech on school property when it’s materially disruptive. It has not addressed how school-related speech expressed off-campus can be handled.”