Supreme Court Reveals Cracks In Its Conservative Majority | Gorsuch Follows Plain Text Of Law, Disappoints Conservative Judicial Activists
June 16, 2020
A WATERSHED MOMENT
|In case you somehow missed it, PRESIDENT TRUMP’S first nominee to the Supreme Court, JUSTICE NEIL GORSUCH, delivered a landmark ruling for LGBTQ rights yesterday. CNN’s Ariane de Vogue writes, “It is a watershed moment from an unlikely author that means gay, lesbian and transgender workers are protected by federal civil rights law. It is a stunning defeat for judicial conservatives who worked to ensure Gorsuch’s nomination and Republicans, including Donald Trump, who stymied PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA’S nominee for the Supreme Court, liberal MERRICK GARLAND in 2016.” She says the ruling enshrines Gorsuch’s legacy in the history books. And though it infuriated those who worked on his confirmation, close observers say Gorsuch was simply relying on the plain text of the law in barring workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
CRACKS IN CONSERVATIVE MAJORITY
|Richard Wolf with USA Today reports yesterday’s 6-3 decision giving LGBTQ workers protection under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 reveals the precarious nature of the high court’s conservative majority. “ROBERTS, who could have kept the writing of the opinion for himself, instead assigned it to GORSUCH, the most junior of the six justices in the majority. KAVANAUGH, who most frequently sides with the chief justice, often against the court’s other three conservatives, penned one of two vehement dissents. The result left Trump somewhat surprised but accepting of the court’s – and his nominees’ – verdict. ‘They ruled, and we live with their decision,’ the president said, adding it was a ‘very powerful decision, actually.'”
QUESTIONS FOR FUTURE CASES
|Elizabeth Dias with The New York Times notes that the SCOTUS decision in favor of protecting LGBTQ workers has made clear to conservative Christian groups that they’re losing the culture wars over sexuality. Franklin Graham, who leads a large evangelical relief group, told Dias: “No question it is going to make it harder to defend our religious freedom, as far as an organization being able to hire people of like mind…I find this to be a very sad day.” Dias writes, “In his opinion, JUSTICE GORSUCH recognized the existence of several religious freedom protections, including the First Amendment, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 and a 2012 Supreme Court ruling that recognized a ‘ministerial exception’ in employment discrimination laws. But he signaled that Monday’s decision could lead to a fight over the validity over those protections. ‘How these doctrines protecting religious liberty interact with Title VII are questions for future cases too,’ he wrote.”
WHO'S IN CHARGE HERE
|The Supreme Court also handed down an important decision yesterday approving a new natural gas pipeline to cross underneath the Appalachian Trail on federal land. Becky Sullivan and Laurel Wamsley with NPR report, “At the heart of the case was a technical legal question about which federal agency, if any, had the authority to grant the permit for the pipeline.” SCOTUS concluded in its decision — with justices voting 7-2 — that the Forest Service had the legal authority to grant the permit and compared the situation to a landowner granting a right-of-way or easement to a neighbor.
POLL DU JOUR
|NYT’s The Daily podcast hosted by Michael Barbaro focuses on the surprise SCOTUS ruling yesterday protecting gay and transgender workers from workplace discrimination. The description for the pod notes, “We examine the three words the case hung on; what the written opinions had to say about bathrooms, locker rooms, sports, pronouns and religious objections to same-sex marriage; and the implications for the ruling.”