"Joy and pleasure are as real as pain and sorrow and one must learn what they have to teach. . . ." -- Sean Russell, from Gatherer of Clouds

"If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right." -- Helyn D. Goldenberg

"I love you and I'm not afraid." -- Evanescence, "My Last Breath"

“If I hear ‘not allowed’ much oftener,” said Sam, “I’m going to get angry.” -- J.R.R. Tolkien, from Lord of the Rings

Thursday, July 03, 2014

More Hobby Lobby

I'm going to have to take the time to read the decision, which I admit I haven't done yet, but the quotes from Alito's majority opinion are appalling, when they make sense at all. Dahlia Lithwick notes:

Having read the opinion only briefly I am not at all clear on why Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, is so certain that he can hold the line here to closely held corporations and that the parade of “me too” litigants promised by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing in dissent, won’t show up on the court steps in the coming months and years.

Short answer: Neither Alito nor anyone else is going to hold the line, because they (the conservative wing of the court) have no interest in denying corporations anything. As for the "me toos," they've already started -- although not in court -- yet.

It's even worse than that. Lithwick notes:

For one thing we are—going forward—no longer allowed to argue the science. “It is not for us to say that their religious beliefs are mistaken or insubstantial,” writes Alito.

If we're not allowed to argue the science -- Alito did hold that belief trumps reality, after all -- we're screwed on all sorts of fronts. (Anyone want to guess how long it's going to take for Liberty Counsel to file a suit against laws banning "reparative therapy" on the grounds that they violate someone religious belief that sexual orientation is changeable?)

We might as well kiss anti-discrimination laws good-bye, unless the Court at some point backpedals on this one. After all, it only took seventeen years to overturn Bowers v. Hardwick.

Via Mahablog.

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