Yesterday evening the US Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, defended the Constitution’s Bill of Rights against a concerted attack by one of the three most totalitarian governors in the United States, New York’s Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo had decreed that the size of religious services could be arbitrarily limited to as few as 10 people. Ostensibly, this was to protect us all from the dreaded Chinese Lung AIDS because, as we all know, that virus hates people who go to church and hangs out in the church parking lot to attack those who attend. This is much like how the virus loves to visit bars and restaurants after 9 p.m. and how it also targets Thanksgiving meals. For reasons unknown to scientists, the virus is afraid to get close to BLM or Antifa demonstrations…though it is very, very attracted to demonstrations defending Constitutional rights. How very odd. It is almost like the scientists are just making up sh** to target gatherings they personally oppose or push policies they approve of. But we know they would never do that.
My colleague Jen Van Laar has the whole story here, BREAKING: SCOTUS Rules 5-4 to Grant Catholic Diocese, Orthodox Jews’ Request to Block Cuomo Attendance Limits, but it is really interesting for a few things.
First, Chief Justice John Roberts, who assured us there are no Obama judges, seems to have morphed from siding with the liberals on occasion to prevent 5-4 decisions and control who wrote the controlling opinion into being a full-fledged member of the liberal wing of the court. I imagine we’ll now read stories in National Review assuring us of the wisdom of not having 6-3 conservative victories because we are a closely divided nation, and such a thing would be bad for the court’s credibility…just like 5-4 conservative victories were bad.
In this decision, he shows just how irrelevant he is. He says that yes, Cuomo’s edicts probably violate the Constitution, but since he’s said he won’t enforce the limits right now, no harm, no foul. As some on Twitter said, it is sort of like reporting that you’ve been mugged and having the cop tell you, “you’re not being mugged right now, come back while he’s mugging you if he does it again.”
Second, Neil Gorsuch is emerging as a major conservative voice. In yesterday’s opinion, he exposed Cuomo’s order for the shallow, transparent, power-grubbing sham that it is.
‘Who knew public health would so perfectly align with secular convenience?’ From Justice Gorsuch: https://t.co/9jbx3KL00X pic.twitter.com/Z6yh81u23M
— Byron York (@ByronYork) November 26, 2020
Gorsuch was furious at Roberts. This is what Barrett made possible. The constitution is coming back, at last pic.twitter.com/bn7dJNY2fz
— (((Aaron “Worthing” Walker))) (@AaronWorthing) November 26, 2020
In fact, he spared little effort to conceal his contempt of the blatant dishonesty by the minority in trying to assert that the First Amendment only exists to the extent that the government allows it.
Third, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the self-ordained “wise Latina” who believes that the law’s protection should vary according to color, ethnicity, and sexual proclivity, has improbably emerged as the successor of Ruth Bader Ginsberg as the soul of the Supreme Court they wish to create.
She reasoned that it is perfectly fine for unelected bureaucrats to ignore the constitution so long as they were doing it for the right reasons. This is exactly the line of attack that I’ve warned about in numerous previous posts. Under Sotomayor’s logic, labeling something as a public health crisis places its management outside the political sphere and in the hands of experts. It is difficult to even explain how fatal that is to our system of government. It means that if someone declares “gun violence” to be a public health crisis, the Second Amendment only exists as far as the experts allow. If “racism” is a public health crisis, Heaven knows what mischief could be worked. It isn’t hard to see “bullying” being declared a public health crisis and free speech disappearing in society much as it is in social media.
Sotomayor also demonstrated that she is either not very bright or little more than a troll.
Wow – Sotomayor contrasts the Court’s reliance on Cuomo’s allegedly anti-religious comments here with Trump’s on the Muslim ban. pic.twitter.com/8sIf6o7Bgo
— Raffi Melkonian (@RMFifthCircuit) November 26, 2020
This argument is so 2017, and nothing in it applies to the case before the court. This is just Sotomayor doing her judicial WAP dance for the left.
The glomming onto Sotomayor as some sort of legal guru rather than the room temperature intellect she has been known to be for decades is not shocking. All you have to do to be a legal hero on the left is kill babies. Sotomayor is certainly fine with that. The saving grace is that, for now, she is a member of a minority. Hopefully, Chief Justice Roberts will eventually see that he needs to stop currying favor with his new BFFs on the left and recall the days when he believed in something if he’s to have any influence.
