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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsGorsuch/Roberts appreciation thread.
That headline is something I thought Id never write.
But what they did deserves some positive reinforcement and thanks from us progressives.
Gorsuch, especially, stunned the world.
What he did will help save countless numbers of jobs and careers for LGBTQ people.
I blast him and others when they support terrible things.
So, I feel its only right to praise decisions like this one.
He didnt have to do this.
Conservatives, especially Evangelical ones, now hate him.
So, thank you Justice Gorsuch and CJ Roberts for doing the correct thing today.
Proud liberal 80
(4,167 posts)F*ck both of them
Crunchy Frog
(26,587 posts)LenaBaby61
(6,974 posts)Agree
Let them tell fat ass that he has to release his taxes, and lets see if they keep abortion safe and legal. IF they rule correctly on those two cases then I MAY give them a tiny bit of props. Just a tiny bit, because you know damn well that they're not going to give liberals everything that they want.
EVER.
chillfactor
(7,576 posts)until I see how they vote on the abortion issue.
Squinch
(50,949 posts)Skittles
(153,160 posts)I am betting their newfound humanity does not extend to women.
And Gorsuch still sits on a stolen Supreme Court seat.
Loki Liesmith
(4,602 posts)A win is a win but a close reading of the opinion shows that it will problematize future liberal goals.
honest.abe
(8,678 posts)I will be pleased if he votes with us on some of these critical cases. I dont expect him to vote with us frequently.
AlexSFCA
(6,137 posts)Loki Liesmith
(4,602 posts)Ms. Toad
(34,072 posts)I have always thought the argument that won the day was too clever by half. But astute court watching, as described here, explains how it ended up - in this case - carrying the day.
I think it will extend well to other laws barring sex discrimination. I even think, because of the way the holding was framed, it will hold up well to more subtle challenges which assert status (alone) is a legitimate basis for termination, even if termination based on acts cannot be.
ibegurpard
(16,685 posts)Citizens United and gutting the VRA are owned by Roberts.
I can appreciate this decision without changing my opinions of them overall.
Funtatlaguy
(10,875 posts)They have been and will be awful on many others.
wellst0nev0ter
(7,509 posts)They need to go. They don't deserve credit for not legislating from the bench for once in their entirely beshitted careers.
dem4decades
(11,293 posts)smarter than me, let's hope they're right.
RandySF
(58,823 posts)totodeinhere
(13,058 posts)They got this right but they are so wrong on so many other issues. It would suit me just fine if they both resigned from the Court after President Biden gets sworn in.
JHB
(37,160 posts)Neither of them belong on the SC.
We've had justices before who were not the "complete conservative operative as intended" before (see Souter), but those justices went through an unadulterated review process. Both these men are on the SC for reasons that defy any appreciation.
I'll appreciate them when they resign. They will deserve it then.
UTUSN
(70,695 posts)AlexSFCA
(6,137 posts)in scope and delivery (6-3). The fact that gorsuch wrote the opinion and rbg had nothing to add, is mind boggling. Similar to Kennedy I guess. Scalia would have never ruled like this. Will Kavanaugh shock us on abortion? wouldnt that be great.
LakeArenal
(28,817 posts)He could make history or destroy history.
honest.abe
(8,678 posts)where Trump or the GOP push the limits of the law. Their votes could be the difference between disaster and survival. Yes, I will appreciate them for that if it happens.
Maven
(10,533 posts)And he wouldn't be occupying a stolen seat.
PlanetBev
(4,104 posts)I dont think theyll be as kind when the abortion ruling is handed down in the next week or so.
Funtatlaguy
(10,875 posts)CJ Roberts will be the 5-4 decider on that one. Crossed 🤞 fingers he does correct thing.
mvd
(65,173 posts)It was very important for LGBTQ rights in this country. But as justices, they are still poor.
kwolf68
(7,365 posts)Voted in another case of importance to me,
COUNTY OF MAUI, HAWAII v. HAWAII WILDLIFE
Where he and YES Brett Kavanaugh voted with the Liberal wing. Though in Kavanaugh's affirmation he did nothing but quote Scalia, though it was well reasoned jurisprudence.
Here we have Gorsuch doing good work too.
The ONE Justice you can always count on for shitbag rulings is Thomas, he has to be the absolute worst Supreme Court Judge in American history. His pablum in the case I quote was gibberish a mediocre undergrad law student would utter.
onetexan
(13,041 posts)See this is interesting op-ed's angle:
"Neil Gorsuch Lays Landmines Throughout LGBTQ Discrimination Opinion
This good result feels like an attempt to Trojan Horse in some awful stuff."
https://abovethelaw.com/2020/06/neil-gorsuch-lays-landmines-throughout-lgbtq-discrimination-opinion/?rf=1
"First of all, Gorsuch wrote the opinion. Handing a landmark ruling on civil rights to Gorsuch should tell you theres some funny business in the offing. This wasnt handed to the majoritys junior justice for the sake of doing yeomans work. In controversial opinions, the median justice might write the opinion to lay out the compromise terms that made the majority, but this opinion doesnt seem to be all that prickly: the law says sex so you cant discriminate on the basis of sex. The majority opinion isnt based on a lot of sleight of hand or tenuous interpretations of different doctrines. Put another way, Sonia Sotomayor would have pegged an opinion squarely on that text in the statute too, so Gorsuch isnt writing because of some kind of compromise. Whats the angle here?...
Now here comes the infamously pro-business, anti-regulation Gorsuch upholding a sweeping act of business regulation.
Those who adopted the Civil Rights Act might not have anticipated their work would lead to this particular result. Likely, they werent thinking about many of the Acts consequences that have become apparent over the years, including its prohibition against discrimination on the basis of motherhood or its ban on the sexual harassment of male employees. But the limits of the drafters imagination supply no reason to ignore the laws demands. When the express terms of a statute give us one answer and extratextual considerations suggest another, its no contest. Only the written word is the law, and all persons are entitled to its benefit.
There we go! This is going to be the vehicle for the next assault on basic tenets of statutory interpretation and Chevron deference. The Civil Rights Act has long served as every conservatives favorite argument for textualism. If courts considered legislative history, then they would have to dismiss the addition of sex as a joke? you can hear some pompous professor posit. This, of course, ignores that Smiths anti-civil rights coalition wasnt a majority and the majority that passed the legislation did so intending to take the term seriously despite its disingenuous introduction, but whats a conservative argument without cherry-picking? In any event, a case involving this statute sets up a perfect bid to undermine the value of legislative intent in divining the meaning of statutory language, as well as the doctrine granting executive agencies deference in interpreting how to execute statutory language. All of that stuff is extratextual nonsense!
Gorsuch couldnt be more clear about what hes intending to do with this opinion short of inserting a giant winking emoji:
This Court normally interprets a statute in accord with the ordinary public meaning of its terms at the time of its enactment. After all, only the words on the page constitute the law adopted by Congress and approved by the President. If judges could add to, remodel, update, or detract from old statutory terms inspired only by extratextual sources and our own imaginations, we would risk amending statutes outside the legislative process reserved for the peoples representatives. And we would deny the people the right to continue relying on the original meaning of the law they have counted on to settle their rights and obligations.
Eyes. Rolling. So. Hard. Right. Now.
Gorsuch then proceeds to, you cant make this up, cite old editions of Websters Dictionary to determine what discrimination could have possibly meant to those of the distant past. Neil Gorsuch is exactly the guy at the wedding or funeral that begins with, Websters Dictionary defines
.
Alito and Kavanaugh wrote dissents almost perfectly constructed to set up Gorsuchs ode to triumphant textualism. Alito even goes so far as to say that its crazy to limit statutory interpretation to the analysis of the text in a passage that could be captioned, TFW your wholly contrived judicial philosophy betrays your naked political philosophy. Alitos dissent, longer than the majority opinion, reads as such a celebration of TERF culture it may as well be titled: Harry Potter and the Goblet Of Bigot Tears.
Pointing to later legislation that specifically references homosexuality as an indication that it couldnt have been intended by the term sex in the Civil Rights Act, the dissents earn a proper textualist admonishment from Gorsuch:
But what? Theres no authoritative evidence explaining why later Congresses adopted other laws referencing sexual orientation but didnt amend this one. Maybe some in the later legislatures understood the impact Title VIIs broad language already promised for cases like ours and didnt think a revision needed. Maybe others knew about its impact but hoped no one else would notice. Maybe still others, occupied by other concerns, didnt consider the issue at all. All we can know for certain is that speculation about why a later Congress declined to adopt new legislation offers a particularly dangerous basis on which to rest an interpretation of an existing law a different and earlier Congress did adopt.
Particularly dangerous. Remember that one, because thats what it will be the next time the Court levels its aim on a statute that fails to explicitly spell out everything it means. For a group of people who sneer at 900 page bills and hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations they sure do want Congress to write out every eventuality.