by Editor’s Note: Jill Filipovic is a New York-based journalist and author of OK Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind. follow him from twitter. The views expressed in this comment are solely his own. View more opinions on CNN.
CNN
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If there’s one thing that sums up the growing arrogance and incompetence of our now far-right Supreme Court, it’s this: the same Supreme Court judge who penned the ruling that stripped away a fundamental right of American women spent Monday on the bench joking about Black children. KKK clothing.
Roe v. Judge Samuel Alito, who signed the Dobbs-Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling that debunked Wade and hurled millions of American women into a dystopian misogynistic hell that has claimed the lives of nearly many of them, apparently decided to play. On Monday, the Court Joker made a series of inappropriate jokes during oral debates for a lawsuit that addressed whether a website designer could hypothetically refuse service to gay clients for their weddings. Here’s the basics: A graphic designer from Colorado who wants to create wedding websites says he won’t make them for same-sex couples getting married, but for opposite-sex couples.
Specifically, this woman does not yet run a wedding website business; he was also not sued by anyone or questioned in any way for violating Colorado’s anti-discrimination laws. Anyway, the case is in the Supreme Court. Their lawyers say that requiring same-sex couples to provide wedding websites if they provide wedding websites is tantamount to publicly sanctioning same-sex marriage, a violation of their rights to mandatory speech and First Amendment.
But opponents argue that the more fundamental question in this case is whether a publicly traded business can refuse to serve people under the guise of freedom of expression or freedom of religion in violation of state anti-discrimination laws – and I agree.
This is an important anti-discrimination case that has the potential to shape whether laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, gender, religion or sexuality continue to be in force. In the narrowest sense, same-sex marriage may make it a second tier and may not enjoy the same privileges and protections as the opposite sex.
But Alito considered it a big joke and apparently deliberately misunderstands and misrepresents the arguments in favor of enforcing anti-discrimination laws. When Judge Ketanji Jackson put forward a pertinent conjecture about a Santa Claus wanting to create his own traditional vision of Christmas by posing at the mall with only White children, the graphic designer’s lawyer said he wasn’t sure—it’s “extreme.”
Then Alito added his two cents: she asked aforementionedDid a Black Santa at the mall refuse to pose with children wearing KKK outfits?
This question was met with giggles from some of the usually silent audience in the room. And Alito looked pleased with himself.
It shouldn’t have. The Colorado Attorney General quickly dropped his question, replying that there is no legal protection for the right to wear KKK clothing. Judge Kagan added that Santa’s complaint was not about the hypothetical child’s race, but rather about the hypothetical child’s attire.
“You see a lot of Black boys in Ku Klux Klan outfits, don’t you? All the time,” Alito protested—again trying to joke from the bench. (Does Judge Alito see too many White children in Ku Klux Klan clothes?)
He was incredibly unseemly for a Supreme Court judge. But Alito’s behavior also points to something more insidious: How He seems to take these cases lightly and lightly, which could have a dire impact on the lives of people across the country. Not just the right to abortion, the right of students to be exempt from establishing religion in public schools, the power of politicians to regulate guns, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to deal with climate change, Alito said. Her view in Dobbs mocks previous resolutions that legislated women’s rights.
All this comes about because the court’s reputation has been tarnished and a large proportion of the public is questioning the court’s legitimacy: less than half of Americans now say they trust the Supreme Court. Confidence in the court tumbled to the right, ousting Roe and turning to open partisanship, making a series of conservative decisions. This is a big problem not only for the court itself, but also for American democracy and stability.
This court has made clear that women and minority groups are more than willing to reclaim their rights and give privileged treatment to Christians and Christians. Depends on the situation, these this To build an America where those who look, love, or worship differently from the white Christian population have fewer rights and less ability to live freely.
And its undisputed leader is Alito. court the conservative wing seems to find everything very amusing.
