3 Scary Decisions Handed Down by the Far Right Supreme Court [View all]

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Last edited Mon Jun 11, 2012, 09:33 AM - Edit history (1)

http://www.alternet.org/rights/155761/3_scary_decision_handed_down_by_the_far_right_supreme_court/


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As the country waits in fear and loathing for the high tribunal to drop the dime on Obamacare and give its blessings to Arizona’s “papers please” immigration law, court watchers might do well to parse the damage Chief Justice John Roberts and his colleagues have already done this term to our collective rights and liberties.

With more than 70 cases on its total docket and more than a dozen still undecided, including the health care and Arizona blockbusters, it’s difficult to single out the opinions issued to date that best illustrate the court’s hard turn to the right. But here are three that should make any short list:

1. Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders, County of Burlington

In March 2005, Albert Florence, a 34-year-old African-American car dealership executive, was riding in the passenger seat of his SUV. His pregnant wife was at the wheel and the couple’s three children were nestled in the back when a New Jersey state trooper pulled the vehicle over for speeding. The trooper ran a routine records check on a statewide computer database, which disclosed that Florence had an outstanding arrest warrant for nonpayment of a fine stemming from his arrest seven years earlier after he had fled the scene of a traffic stop.

Although the fine in fact had been fully paid, Florence was taken into custody. Over the next week, he was housed in two county detention centers and was subjected in each to full-body strip-searches during which he was made to stand naked, squat, cough, spread his butt cheeks and move his genitals. “It was humiliating,” Florence later told The New York Times. “It made me feel less than a man. It made me feel not better than an animal.”