Writes Linda Greenhouse in "What Does ‘Sex’ Mean? The Supreme Court Answers/We’ll soon find out whether the court inflames the culture wars or cools them as its term winds down" (NYT).
The top-rated comment over there:
Forgive my cynicism, but I suspect that Roberts, being acutely aware of how politically biased his court appears, decided to select this case as a means of deflecting attention from the flood of conservative opinions yet to come. Having determined that they already lost the culture war on LGBT equality, they tossed progressives this bone, fully prepared to nullify it with a decision that it can be ignored by people with "sincerely held beliefs." They will point to this case as evidence of their neutrality.
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38 comments:
I didn't write that comment you posted, but I could have.
We'll see, won't we? If we're still around, that is. Best of health to all readers.
'Progressives' believe conservatives act in bad faith. Because that's how 'progressives' act.
... the Muslim travel ban ...
Mendacious framing. Could be “systemic.”
Yep, we had hoped to have gotten an originalist. Instead, Gorsuch has revealed himself to be a living constitutionalist. True, his opinion the other day concerned applying the techniques of a living constitutionalist to a statute (1964's use of the word "sex" includes the loony left's 2020 perversions of the concept). But if presented with a constitutional question, the signs are ominous that Gorsuch would go lefty, along with Roberts who has revealed himself as "solid" as a cooked noodle.
All the Court needed to have said was that the concept of "sex" as understood when the statute was enacted in 1964 meant M/F only. "If Congress wants to include other understandings, Congress, following Article I, section 1 (all legislative power), knows what to do," referring of course to going through the hard slog of passing a bill."
But no, the Court actually circumvented that deliberately difficult chore; it legislated in direct contradiction of Article I, section 1.
Progressive comment:
Nothing is ever enough.
That is why nobody should give an inch.
Roberts is a disgrace.
And this is one of the many reasons I don't talk politics with people in person any more; I can't be bothered to spend hours unpacking the assumptions in their questions and intentional or unintentional bad faith framing.
...decided to select this case as a means of deflecting attention from the flood of conservative opinions yet to come.
I understand your argument, but right now, I am busy applauding.
Certainly, this anecdote is fabricated; if this really happened, she would have been crowing about it long ago.
And even so, Gorsuch has been on balance an excellent addition to the Court. Smart, witty, and overall a dedicated and thoughtful conservative. That's frankly what's so disappointing about his opinion in Bostock. One expects that a principled judge is occasionally going to follow those beliefs to a result that's politically unpalatable; to do otherwise is just partisanship. But in this case, Gorsuch not only departed from any discernible principle, he made misleading attempts to characterize his approach in that case as somehow "textual," when that's obviously just laughable.
Button 1: 'LGBT rights are super-important on a major scale if you don't support them you're a straight Nazi'
Button 2: 'SCOTUS LGBT decision was just a bone'
You can press one button
The top-rated comment seems both overly optimistic and pessimistic at the same time!
So many people want to believe that Supreme Court justices are just as hyper politically motivated and corrupt as they are. Roberts engineered this opinion as a sop to the Left to soften the political blow of all the conservative opinions that will soon be delivered? That idea is bat shit crazy. However I may feel about SCOTUS decisions and the POV of the individual justices, I trust, unequivocally their personal and professional integrity. Nothing that I've seen and read about them calls that into question.
Forgive my cynicism, but I suspect that Roberts, being acutely aware of how politically biased his court appears, decided to select this case as a means of deflecting attention from the flood of conservative opinions yet to come. Having determined that they already lost the culture war on LGBT equality, they tossed progressives this bone, fully prepared to nullify it with a decision that it can be ignored by people with "sincerely held beliefs." They will point to this case as evidence of their neutrality.
I can't say I doubt it. They are all politicians now and many of them would simple wilt if they were not invited to all the "right" cocktail parties!
They were selected and they AGREED to rule "on the law", to interpret "the law" in a neutral way. Shame that can't be allowed to happen.
Everything turned to nonsense with the loss of freedom of association in the civil rights act. There's no way to make common law sense of anything that follows.
In particular sincerely held beliefs is a stand-in for the lost freedom of association, as if your sincerity looked enough like a still-standing religious exemption to get around it.
The freedom of association loss should have been restricted to monopoly markets, not made general, and everything would be fine. Fine in the sense that it still made common law sense.
The restriction on homosexuals was not only moral on those days, but it opened the person to blackmail, which denied him a security clearance, required for many jobs. So it could hardly be restricted away by the civil rights act.
"What Does ‘Sex’ Mean? The Supreme Court Answers"
I don't recall asking their opinion.
so does the letter of the law, matter apparently not, im sure anne gorsuch would be very upset about this decision, which is toxic to religious liberty and common sense,
Everything turned to nonsense with the loss of freedom of association in the civil rights act.
"The modern state has to police more and more of our lives, because it has set itself against the normal. It defines normal acquisition as greed, normal group preferences as bigotry, and normal morality as hate. Consequently it has to watch over us at all times to make sure we aren’t too assertive about our normality, while it caters to our abnormalities." -- Sobran
My problem with most elite conservatives is that they are cowards. John Roberts is as cowardly a man as you’ll find. He will never render a decision that the liberals around him don’t approve of. What he did on Obamacare bordered on criminal. Gorsuch is less cowardly but you know at the core, he won’t fight. Same with Kavanaugh. His self defense in his confirmation hearing was high on self-pity but low on backbone. He should have gone on a counter-attack like Clarence Thomas did but instead he hired a bunch of girls to clerk for him. Thomas fights and he proved it from day one. Alito fights too. He proved that for me when he mouthed criticism of Lord Obama during the SOTU. But Thomas and Alito are from a dying generation.
The left has cowed the right in every area of life. They have cowed me, somewhat, I’m ashamed to admit. But I do sense a very shocking revolt is coming. Those riot images followed by political non-responses burned deep in the American psyche. No matter how many BLM protests those white soccer moms join in on, they are scared now too, The ballot box is the only place left where free speech exists. It’s about to be exercised.
Blogger Matt Sablan said...
"And this is one of the many reasons I don't talk politics with people in person any more; I can't be bothered to spend hours unpacking the assumptions in their questions and intentional or unintentional bad faith framing."
Amen. After watching Shumer, Schiff, Pelosi, Nadler and Sharpton for decades I lean strongly toward intentional bad faith.
The role of the Supreme Court is to remove uncertainty from our legal system. For example, I am quite certain that Congress has already passed a mandate for the participation of transgendered students in high school and college women's sports. My uncertainty is whether they passed it in 1964, 1972, or 1868. I expect that Roberts and Gorsuch will resolve that mystery in the not distant future.
Blogger M Jordan said...
"No matter how many BLM protests those white soccer moms join in on, they are scared now too"
The soccer moms joined the protests because they were already scared. They know that the suburbs are the next stop for BLM and Antifa.
The basic fact is that this decision is a lawyers full employment act. These guys are lawyers. We could do with about a million fewer lawyers but this will keep them busy for the next decade. The Boy Scouts was just an appetizer.
Will one or more of the four liberal justices ever join the conservatives in a decision against formerly liberal policy and ideology, or is that a dream which will never happen? Will RBG ever support a 2nd Amendment right? Will Sotomayor ever decide skin color should NOT matter? Will Kagan ever limit government power against the individual's rights? Will Breyer decide alaong with Thomas that the constitution's language doesn't make the Commerce Clause a federal power trip?
So I just now read John Roberts sided with liberals again on DACA. I think future headlines should be when he sides with conservatives.
What a cowardly skunk of a man.
I will let you in on a little (not so) secret. I am an employment attorney, and my practice includes discrimination cases. I have represented both sides of these cases.
The Court here has opened up a new, somewhat more amorphous than usual, "protected classification" against which employers may not discriminate. But this will not likely lead to a big flood of new litigation. It is mostly symbolic for a couple of reasons. First the percentage proportion of this new protected class is simply not very numerous. And, employers had already priced this legal obligation into their operations many years ago, as this has been long anticipated.
The big secret though, is that the federal courts are pretty hostile to employment discrimination cases; they are very hard to bring and win, as the vast majority present with "mixed" motives for the alleged termination and the standards of proof are strict, even for the "but for" causation test. The evidence is usually not strong enough to win in court. Sometimes to leverage a settlement, but most large employers fight.
Perhaps a few test cases that will flesh out the parameters of the transgender issue(s) particularly, but this will amount to much less than most people think.
Forgive my cynicism, but I suspect that Roberts, being acutely aware of how politically biased his court appears, decided to select this case as a means of deflecting attention from the flood of conservative opinions yet to come.
This comment has not aged well.
The word sex may well encompass homosexuality and transexualism. If and when the Republicans regain control of the house and the senate with supermajority controls, the civil rights act may be something that needs to be repealed now.
This opinion will be Gorsuch’s legacy. He joins his “conservative” brethren, Blackmun and Kennedy, in holding that the throbbing of Judicial heartstrings outweighs principles of Constitutional construction.
Meanwhile the leftmediaswine and their consorts torture the meaning of “textualism” just as Gorsuch tortures the meaning of “sex” and the Democrats and idiots fouling our streets torture the meaning of “racism.”
And really, who gives a rat’s ass about the extension of LGBTQWERTY “rights.” Presumably, pedophiles and zoophiles will follow and judgment need not be in this life. Although the judicial extension of statutory protection to “transsexuals” - or whatever they are called this week - is absurd.
The issue is judicial integrity which is measured by devotion to the law and not to the bleating of the crowd - either crowd. The ancillary issue is the denuding of our already irresponsible Congress from the duty facing difficult issues head on.
I may be naive (wait for it...). A man and a woman apply for a job. Both like to dress and present as masculine. The man gets the job, the tipping point being the woman's appearance. I can see that as sex discrimination contemplated by the text of the 1970s law.
That's distinguishable from a case in which women complain that they're denied equality when they must compete physically, such as in a NCAA track and field event, against a man who presents as a woman. And I think that's a case Gorsuch is intellectually able to distinguish from Bostock.
The Boy Scouts was just an appetizer.
And Catholic Church. It's interesting that the lawyers are speaking of crimes without characterizing the suspects. Is it taboo to identify trans/homo males?
They need to lose their Pro-Choice religion, drop political congruence ("="), and follow a separation of Progressive Church and State. People... persons in the transgender spectrum have equal rights as individuals, couplets, and friends with "benefits".
Blogger Matt Sablan said...
“And this is one of the many reasons I don't talk politics with people in person any more; I can't be bothered to spend hours unpacking the assumptions in their questions and intentional or unintentional bad faith framing.”
I get all this but the “questions” part. Questions? From the incurious left?
I like his “canon of donut holes” comment.
What "Muslim travel ban" was that?
The one applying to 7 countries including North Korea and Venezuela? The one that did not include the billion or so Muslims living in Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and other Muslim countries? Or Muslims in countries with Huge Muslim populations like India (195mm) or China (50mm)?
Linda Greenhouse is full of shit. Why should I pay any attention to her on any subject?
John Henry
These cocktail parties I hear about must really suck, but the women must be hot afterward, being both crazy and starved for a real man to screw.
Yes, calling it a "Muslim travel ban" is a lie so basic and egregious that anything else you say can't be taken serious. Now shut up and come back when you want to learn something.
MJordan: "The ballot box is the only place left where free speech exists."
Well spoke.
True to the 'patriarchy,' being female is whatever a man says it is. Unbelievable decision really.
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