With the stroke of a pen, six conservative justices Supreme Court justices legally endorse discrimination against all races, women, disabled, LGBTQ+ people, and other minorities. Although former Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) brags about appointing three of justices who joined for another three for decisions on June 29 and 30), former Senate Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was the architect for the right-wing two-thirds majority on the high court. He blocked President Barack Obama’s right to replace Antonin Scalia, replaced by DDT’s Neil Gorsuch, and then pushed through Amy Coney Barrett replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg just ten days before President Joe Biden’s election.
These six Supreme Court unethical justices used plaintiffs’ lies to justify their three major rulings reversing rights to education, available of businesses, and improved financial circumstances, pivoting life back to the 19th century:
Affirmative action: Since the 1960s, affirmative action, recognizing race as one of several considerations for college enrollment supporting U.S. democracy, was most recently affirmed only seven years ago when Justice Anthony Kennedy was the swing vote in helping racial equality in higher education. On June 29, six conservative justices overturned precedents by declaring that racism is over and the “colorblind” country now must forge ahead. The two cases were about Harvard and the University of North Carolina.
Plaintiffs representing Harvard complained that Asian Americans faced discrimination from not being admitted although no Asian American witnesses testified about discrimination and the school is 30 percent Asian American. The University of Texas rejected the white plaintiff in the North Carolina case because of mediocre grades, and her father is on the board of the conservative group opposed to affirmative action. No one was hurt from using race as one part of enrollment
LGBTQ+ Rights: Businesses may now discriminate against queer people by declaring “religion” and “expression” because of a Colorado web designer, Lorie Smith, lied about being forced to work for a same-gender couple. Colorado law requires businesses offered to some people be offered to all. The six-justice ruling makes LGBTQ+ people second-class citizens without equal freedoms, denying them services in they live in an area where no other business provides those services. Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out that the ruling gives “a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class,” including race, religion, sex, national origin, and disability.
Smith and her attorneys from the right-wing Christian group Alliance Defending Freedom claimed a prospective client named Stewart wanted a website about his wedding to Mike “early next year” that might even use a website. When asked, Stewart said he didn’t make any request, that he is a straight man, married with a child. Smith also brought the case before she opened her business with no requests from same-gender couples, and her website had no Christian messaging for six months after she filed her suit. Her initial lawsuit didn’t mention “Stewart”; it wasn’t added until six months later. The lie, however, is embedded in the anti-LGBTQ+ rights case.
Student Loan Relief: The Biden administration cannot cancel or reduce student loan debt because it can’t be called a “waiver,” according to the June 30 Supreme Court decision on the same day that the same six justices removed LGBTQ+ rights. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that Congress needs to provide that authorization. The plan would have allowed borrowers making under $125,000 a year to forgive up to $10,000 debt in federal loans or up to $20,000 of debt for borrowers who received Pell Grants. SCOTUS used the “major questions doctrine” to strike down executive power which permits federal judges to repeal federal policies of “economic or political significance” if Congress didn’t clearly authorize them.
Two cases went to SCOTUS, one by GOP state AGs led by Nebraska and Missouri and the other by two Texas borrowers claiming injury because they couldn’t make comments on Biden’s plan to say relief should apply to them. The states falsely declared standing because of the harm to Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority (MOHELA), a Missouri contracted private loan servicer facing a reduction in borrower accounts. MOHELA’s internal documents, however, indicate that Missouri’s AG was lying, that the company would lose money if he won the case. In fact, MOHELA would make more money with Biden’s plan than without it.
Realizing that the high court would like to strike down student loan relief, President Joe Biden has a Plan B; hours after the decision’s announcement, he spoke explained he would use the Higher Education Act, a 1965 law that governs most federal student loan programs, to provide the relief that the Court blocked. He would also give an alternative to the payments’ pause, ending in October: a temporary 12-month “on-ramp” for repayment from October 1, 2023 to September 30, 2024. During that time, missed loan payments would not harm credit and the threat of default will be temporarily removed. Biden said:
“This new path is legally sound. It’s gonna take longer, and in my view it’s the best path that remains.”
The government used this power to forgive debt through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program for borrowers who work for a nonprofit or in public service in federal, state, tribal, or local government and other income-based programs. The Education Department already notified 16 million people they were eligible and approved for debt cancellation, legally changing the contract terms. Using the Higher Education Act requires either a regulation, subject to a 30- to 60-day public comment and congressional review period or a an “order.” Congress could still overturn a regulation; an order could face legal challenges but be faster than a regulation.
Forty years ago, Justice Clarence Thomas, then chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), told his staffers, “God only knows where I would be today” if not for the legal principles of equal employment opportunity measures such as affirmative action that are “critical to minorities and women in this society.” He added, “These laws and their proper application are all that stand between the first 17 years of my life and the second 17 years.” In the ruling against affirmative action, he basically said, “I’ve got mine; too bad for you.” Crushed by any belief that his progress came from affirmative action, the Black justice tried to change his history by voting against every affirmative action case before SCOTUS.
Ironically, the Supreme Court protected race in its ruling for the Voting Rights Act, confirming race-based remedies in policies, while objecting to race in the affirmative action ruling. Point man for Ronald Reagan opposing Section 2’s expansion, Roberts also destroyed part of the 1985 Voting Act supporting racial voting equality in the South with the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder.
Legacy students, however, may be at risk after this ruling if Democrats decide to sue. Children of alumni are so favored to attend colleges and universities that one in seven students at Harvard are all or part of a legacy. Until June 30, Harvard used approved students on four criteria: legacy status, recruited athlete status, financial aid eligibility, and race. The U.S. Constitution doesn’t provide for equality of legacies to higher education institutions.
Change in racial enrollment practices will leave student bodies with much less diversity. The Association of American Medical Colleges and the American Medical Association said that “states that have banned race-conscious admissions have seen the number of minority medical-school students drop by roughly 37 percent,” reducing the pipeline of doctors from those groups.
Of concern to colleges, however, are the increased possibility of expensive lawsuits, particularly from conservative legal activists, promising to challenge admissions practices that are simply proxies for race-based admissions. Pacific Legal Foundation, a libertarian legal activist group, has helped parents file a lawsuit against Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a magnet school in Alexandria (VA), accusing the schools of using proxies for race, including ZIP codes, to boost the admissions of Black and Latino students at the expense of Asian American students.
Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion against LGBTQ+ rights uses the fake excuse of freedom of speech and of religion that can be used to discriminate against Muslims, Blacks, women, etc. because they, too are protected categories. Robert Kuttner suggests that religious principals can “view Muslims as agents of Satan, or Jews as Christ-killers.” Interracial marriage was already blocked because the Bible is opposed to Blacks; now being “uncomfortable” can ban people, service, and education.
The year 2023 marks the twentieth anniversary of Lawrence v. Texas, striking down a criminal ban on sexual intimacy between two people of the same gender. In 2015, the court legalized marriage equality, and in 2020, justices extended the employee protections in the 1964 Civil Rights Act to LGBTQ+ people. The current court could overturn all those rights and more.
Asked if SCOTUS is a “rogue court,” Biden said yesterday, “This is not a normal court.” Biden added that the current Supreme Court has done “more to unravel basic rights and basic decisions than any court in recent history.” After the rulings against student loan relief and removal of LGBTQ+ rights, he certainly didn’t change his mind about the 2023 SCOTUS session.
Missing from above are dissents from Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor. Another day.
Nel's New Day 
Leave a comment