SCOTUS says not all religions are equal

By Frank Moraes

Last week, with the unanimous decisions, I thought, "Oh God! That was probably done to make the coming highly controversial 5-4 decisions more acceptable." That looks like it is the case. I assume that it is John Roberts who decides when decisions are released. And it should dispel any idea that you may have that the Supreme Court is anything but an extremely political organization. The most upsetting decisions today was Burwell v Hobby Lobby.

In it, by a 5-4 majority, the Court found that "closely held" companies that are owned by religious people have a right to not provide birth control as part of their employee healthcare coverage.

If you look at the logic of the case, this really should be applied to everything. The Jehovah's Witnesses do not believe in blood transfusions. By the logic of this decision, a Jehovah's Witnesses employer ought to be able to withhold blood transfusions from the insurance coverage offered to their employees. But that's not what this decision (pdf) finds. Alito's decision even says, "This decision concerns only the contraceptive mandate and should not be understood to hold that all insurance-coverage mandates, eg, for vaccinations or blood transfusions, must necessarily fall if they conflict with an employer's religious beliefs." In Kennedy's concurrence, he begins, "At the outset it should be said that the Court's opinion does not have the breadth and sweep ascribed to it by the respectful and powerful dissent."

The question is, "Why?" There really is no reason. What seems to have been done is that the Supreme Court wanted to allow Christian conservatives to make their stand against birth control and so they worked back from that. It reminds me above all of Bush v Gore. In that case, the Court found that George W Bush's due process rights were being violated, but it was only George W Bush's rights who were being violated and if a similar case ever came up, Bush v Gore could not be used as a precedent. Just like in that case, in Burwell v Hobby Lobby, the Court majority is doing what can only be call judicial legislation. It just created a law that more or less says, "Closely held religious companies have the right to discriminate against their female employees with regard to the existing law that says that all insurance policies must include contraceptive coverage." This is not "judging"; this is not calling balls and strikes; this is legislating, pure and simple.

The conservatives on the bench are not idiots. They know that they can't just say, "If an employer is religious, he doesn't have to follow any law that goes against his conscience." That would allow religions they don't like to gain more power. Rastafarian employers might claim that all of their employees ingest cannabis. But even those Jehovah's Witnesses: they can't be allowed to sully the important legislative work being done by the conservative Christians on the Court: creating a special theocracy for their religion and their religion alone.

Ginsburg's dissent is kind of amazing. Alito spent most of his decision arguing that the finding was minor. He said it wasn't a broad decision. Kennedy backed him up. They were using a scalpel, for God's sake! She brooks no such fantasy. Ginsburg goes right at the blood transfusion issue. She notes that this case doesn't apply to blood transfusions and other silly religious complaints against modernity, but that it also doesn't rule them out. The courts, apparently, are just supposed to deal with them as they come up. The majority decision certainly makes a Jehovah's Witnesses employer's contention that he shouldn't have to provide coverage for blood transfusions reasonable, even if it doesn't state that such exceptions should be made.

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A blow for bigotry: The Supreme Court demolishes the Voting Rights Act

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As you may have heard by now, the Supreme Court -- or, rather, the Supreme Court's right-wing majority, issued a ruling today that significantly undermines the efficacy of the Voting Rights Act:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday effectively struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by a 5-to-4 vote, ruling that Congress had not provided adequate justification for subjecting nine states, mostly in the South, to federal oversight.

"In 1965, the states could be divided into two groups: those with a recent history of voting tests and low voter registration and turnout, and those without those characteristics," Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority. "Congress based its coverage formula on that distinction. Today the nation is no longer divided along those lines, yet the Voting Rights Act continues to treat it as if it were."

The court divided along ideological lines, and the two sides drew sharply different lessons from the history of the civil rights movement and gave very different accounts of whether racial minorities continue to face discrimination in voting. 

There was -- and remains -- good reason for such federal oversight.

What the Roberts-led majority is basically saying is that racial prejudice is a thing of the past ("the nation is no longer divided along those lines") and that the success in overcoming such prejudice means there's no longer a need for voting rights protections of the sort that were enacted back in the '60s as part of the broader civil rights movement.

Which is ridiculous.

Conservatives have been waging war on voting rights for a long time, by which I mean forever, and this is the blow they were waiting to strike.

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Craziest Republican of the Day: Jim Bunning

By Michael J.W. Stickings

For pulling a Bill Frist and diagnosing Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Gingsburg from afar. "Bad cancer. The kind that you don't get better," said the Republican senator from Kentucky over the weekend, addressing the Hardin County Republican Party's Lincoln Day Dinner. "Even though she was operated on, usually, nine months is the longest that anybody would live after (being diagnosed) with pancreatic cancer." The difference, though, is that at least Frist, who "diagnosed" Terri Schiavo from watching her on video, is a doctor, whereas Bunning is a former professional baseball player.

As Steve Benen points out -- and he's one of the best at identifying crazy Republicans -- Bunning "doesn't really know what he's talking about. Ginsburg's cancer was caught early and she had surgery to remove a small tumor that had not spread. It's obviously a serious, life-threatening matter, but the American Cancer Society notes that 'people diagnosed with Stage 1 pancreatic cancer have between a 21 and 37 percent chance of living for more than five years with the disease.'" Furthermore, "[p]redicting the death of a Supreme Court justice, in the context of judicial politics, doesn't exactly scream 'class.' Note to Bunning: better to remain silent and be thought a fool than speak and remove all doubt."

Some fools cannot help but prove themselves to be fools, however, and Bunning removed all doubt a long, long time ago.

BREAKING NEWS: Why this election was crucial

By Edward Copeland

It has just been announced that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg underwent surgery today for pancreatic cancer. The justice has had a previous bout of colorectal cancer. While we certainly wish her well, don't all moderates and liberals breathe a little easier knowing that if she should have to leave the court that it will be Barack Obama selecting her successor? Get well soon, Justice Ginsburg.