Friday Reads: Anything but Normal!

Before women could Vote. On August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was passed. It took more legal effort to enfranchise indigenous women and women of color.

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

My daughters say “Oh Boomer” to me a lot. It used to be “Oh, Mutherrrr.” Their perpetual disappointment in me has morphed as much as their Grandfather’s Republican party and its adherents have morphed into something quite monstrous. I tell them not to blame me for this mess.

In utero and baby Jean attended ERA rallies all around the Midwest. In utero, developing fetus Jean was blessed by Maya Angelou, Kate Millett, and Bette Friedan.   I worked hard in high school and college to change the sexual assault laws in my state and also tried to find ways to bring women of color together with the primarily white feminist movement to ensure we supported all women. (1982-83).

I’ve demonstrated against caging babies, shock and awing Iraq, and for Black Lives Matter. I quit the Republican Party in the 90s, having seen the racist/sexist Pats turn me into a talking point in their culture war. That 1992 Pat Buchanan speech at the Republican convention caused me to register Independent even as I was running as a Republican to stop the future we now have.

Elect me, and you get two for the price of one, Mr. Clinton says of his lawyer-spouse. And what does Hillary believe? Well, Hillary believes that 12-year-olds should have the right to sue their parents, and Hillary has compared marriage and the family as institutions to slavery and life on an Indian reservation.

Well, speak for yourself, Hillary.

This, my friends, is radical feminism. The agenda that Clinton & Clinton would impose on America – abortion on demand, a litmus test for the Supreme Court, homosexual rights, discrimination against religious schools, women in combat units – that’s change, all right. But it is not the kind of change America needs. It is not the kind of change America wants. And it is not the kind of change we can abide in a nation that we still call God’s country.

This is Jim Crow segregation on Independence Day. Free to be you and me separately. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 overturned the remaining Jim Crow laws.

By the time I met Hillary in Minneapolis in 1994, and ever since then,  I can say proudly that Hillary speaks for me. Nothing about this Republican Party speaks for most Americans in this country; all you have to do is check any poll on any topic. And yet, they persist by rewriting the laws that used to make us a democratic Republic.

Guys like Robertson and Buchanan also led me to Buddhism, where I could practice compassion. I’m a proud footsoldier in the backlash against the theocratic fascism the Republican party stands for. Communism never has been confirmed or real. Fascism has. “My dad bombed them back to Germany in World War 2. Remember, the last guy in the White House said they were the “very good people” on both sides.  He still aspires to be the American Putin.

I listened to an interview with President Biden conducted by Nicole  Wallace yesterday on MSNBC. The institutionalist Biden was full of lowkey descriptions of how the Republican Party today is “not the Republican Party of your father.”  Today’s Republicans include Congressional inquisitors and corrupt law inventors in the Roberts’ Court. They’re a cult of a wannabe dictator.

We’re watching a rollback of America’s 20th century. We finally get to celebrate both of our Independence Days, and I’m starting to think the Supreme Court will let the South have its Jim Crow laws back by next year. Last year gave women the status of state chattel, and they’re working on making us federal chattel. The states are working hard on erasing the GLBT community. Obergefell is likely on the SCOTUS agenda too.  They’re coming for birth control, also.

Much of this backward motion is based on obliterating stare decisis and wrongly interpreting post-Civil War American Constitutional amendments.  These amendments, you might remember, were penned by the nascent Republican Party. This isn’t your great-great-grandfather’s Republican Party, either. Having served in the Dubya administration, Nicole Wallace probably knew most of this better than anyone. She reinforced the Biden interpretation of our “not normal” Supreme Court and the Maga Republicans who are into performative running amok but never actually govern.

Alaska wasn’t a state until 1959. The U.S. government actively removed Indigenous children from their tribes until the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) of 1978. SCOTUS barely saved the ICWA this year. One of the nine flipped.

This is from the Los Angeles Times. “Opinion: The Supreme Court’s ultimate ‘judicial activism’: striking down affirmative action in college admissions.” This was written by Erwin Chemerinski. 

For decades, conservatives have railed against judicial activism, but Thursday’s decision striking down affirmative action by colleges and universities in admissions was the height of conservative judicial activism. The court rejected almost half a century of precedents, overturned decisions made by public and private universities across the country, and ignored the history of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.The experience of California — where affirmative action was eliminated by Proposition 209 in 1996 — shows that it still will be possible to have diversity in higher education, but it will take sustained effort and it will be difficult.

In 1978, in University of California vs. Bakke, Justice Lewis Powell wrote the pivotal opinion and explained that colleges and universities have a compelling interest in having a diverse student body and may use race as one of many factors in admissions decisions to benefit minorities and enhance diversity. The Supreme Court reaffirmed this in 2003 in Grutter vs. Bollinger and again, most recently, in 2016, in Fisher vs. University of Texas, Austin. For decades, universities across the country have based their admissions policies on these holdings.

What changed in a mere seven years? Donald Trump appointed three justices: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. They joined the three conservative dissenters in the Fisher case — John G. Roberts Jr., Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito — to overturn 45 years of precedents allowing affirmative action. As they did last year in overruling Roe vs. Wade, the conservatives on the court paid no attention to the principle of stare decisis and following precedent.

Nor did the conservatives on the court pay attention to the judgment of university educators that diversity in the classroom matters in education. I have been a law professor for 43 years and have taught classes that are overwhelmingly white and those with a significant number of minority students. The discussions in the classrooms are vastly different and the educational experience for all students is enhanced when there is diversity.

As Justice Sandra Day O’Connor explained in the Grutter decision, preparing students for our diverse society requires that they experience diversity. But the six conservative justices have now substituted their views and flatly rejected decades of experience of those in higher education.

In 1965, Women got the right to access Birth Control. Roe v Wade was decided in 1973 when I was in high school. However, it took a while longer to wrest my personal credit score back after I got married. I lost mine in 1975, and it would not be restored to me until 1976. Women’s Sports were put on the map with Title 9 in 1972. This enabled me to play on the university men’s soccer team because they had no women’s equivalent at the time. Yup, I played Triple-A men’s soccer in 1975. It was that, or my university lost its funding, and football is a religion in Nebraska.

Women got many civil liberties and rights in the 1970s.  My mother got her form of birth control from my aunt, taking her to her doctor while saying you’re not going to get pregnant on your Honeymoon like me. Since Mother was about to be married, she got her first diaphragm. It was a process to make family planning inaccessible to most women.  All I had to do was walk into the Student Health building at my University, where birth control pills were readily available to any woman.  Will that be the case in 5 years? Justice Thomas is eager to revisit Griswold v Connecticut (1965).

We’re also on our way to removing hard-fought civil liberties for the GLBT Community. We just celebrated Pride Week. The anniversary of Stonewall was also this week.  On June 28, 1969, the Stonewall riots started the movement to bring civil liberties and rights to the GLBT community.

Today’s two SCOTUS decision show just how far back in time and how poor six justices are prepared to make us by not letting the President forgive some Student Loans.  Today we also saw the rollback of the strides made by the GLBT community and its allies.  It’s why polls show people think there’s something wrong with them. There is something very wrong with 6 of them, and I feel for the other 3.

There are live breaking updates today on CNN  “SCOTUS blocks Biden’s student loan plan and limits LGBTQ protections in major rulings.”  Chief Justice Roberts is on the defensive.  He should quit whining.

Recent rulings by the newly composed Roberts court have sent a resounding message about its role and the separation of powers. This comes at a time when the Supreme Court has been under intense scrutiny by critics who argue that it is moving the law to the right and overturning precedent simply because of the addition of three justices nominated by a Republican president.

During the last week of the term, the conservative court — bolstered by three nominees of President Donald Trump — issued sweeping 6-3 decisions defining how the country lives its daily life.

In striking down affirmative action, the court overturned another decades-old precedent a year after reversing Roe v. Wade — without explicitly saying so.

In the very last opinion of the term, Chief Justice John Roberts discussed the student loan case at hand, but seemed to be sending a broader message to address recent criticism of the court as going beyond “the proper role of the judiciary.”

He noted that “reasonable minds,” including the three liberals on the bench, could disagree with the analysis of the student loan decision, but he cautioned that “plainly heartfelt disagreement” should not be mistaken as “disparagement.”

“Any such misperception would be harmful to this institution and our country,” he said.

Yes, that was his name, phone number, email address, and website on the inquiry form. But he never sent this form, he said, and at the time it was sent, he was married to a woman. “If somebody’s pulled my information, as some kind of supporting information or documentation, somebody’s falsified that,” Stewart explained. (Stewart’s last name is not included in the filing, so we will be referring to him by his first name throughout this story.)

“I wouldn’t want anybody to … make me a wedding website?” he continued, sounding a bit puzzled but good-natured about the whole thing. “I’m married, I have a child—I’m not really sure where that came from? But somebody’s using false information in a Supreme Court filing document.”

I’m giving two Justices and their dissents the last word for this very long post. You can see Justice Sotomayer’s response to the broadening of protecting Christians from being civil and polite human beings up top.

Then there’s the Court’s newest Justice Jackson.  Jackson’s dissent decries affirmative action decision as ‘tragedy for us all’.  This is from the Washington Post. It is written by Amy B. Wang.

“With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces ‘colorblindness for all’ by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life,” Jackson wrote in her dissenting opinion in Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, one of two cases decided Thursday that centered on affirmative action.

Jackson recused herself from the other, Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, because of her ties to Harvard. Both cases were decided on ideological lines, with the court’s six conservative justices voting in the majority. But Jackson’s dissent received particular attention Thursday for its blistering paragraphs and for its sharp rebuttals from conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, the court’s other Black justice.

https://twitter.com/SIfill_/status/1674592067912187906

It is important to say this.  Three women stand between us and the past we do not want to repeat. There needs to be a change because there are not enough of them.  An African-American woman.  A Jewish Woman,  An Hispanic Woman.  They are on team justice and democracy.  They need backup.

One final court case, and I would love to press this because I expect they never expected a Buddhist to say that most of your holidays are holidays that are meaningless to me.  Accommodate my religious whims, please!  I need to be scheduled on a lunar calendar, please!  This is from Reuters.  And, of course, we can guess the demographics of the whiny-ass complainer in this lawsuit. “U.S. Supreme Court buoys religious employees who seek accommodations at work.”

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday bolstered the ability of employees to obtain accommodations at work for their religious practices, reviving a lawsuit by an evangelical Christian former mail carrier accusing the Postal Service of discrimination after being disciplined for refusing to show up for work on Sundays.

The 9-0 ruling threw out a lower court’s decision rejecting a claim by Gerald Groff, a former mail carrier in Pennsylvania, that the Postal Service’s actions refusing to exempt him from working on Sundays, when he observes the Sabbath, violated federal anti-discrimination law.

The Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, has a track record of expanding religious rights, often siding with Christian plaintiffs.

The Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had found that Groff’s absences placed too much of a hardship on his co-workers and employer. The Supreme Court ordered the 3rd Circuit to reconsider the matter.

Groff’s case centered on a federal anti-discrimination law called Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on religion and other factors including race, sex and national origin.

If we have to endure blue laws again because of these folks, I am absolutely going to have a hissy fit.  Well, it looks like I’m having one now, so it will have to be a much bigger one. One of these days, the ACLU will have a case on its hands, and I will be the complainant.

I’m not sure if celebrating Independence Day is in order this year.  Maybe we need a Remembrance Day for democracy.  I sometimes see this social media question about which band you’d love to go on the road with.  There’s my answer.  Parliament.  I’d love to sit in front of the Supreme Court Building or, better yet, in a few justices’ neighborhoods and sing “Tear the Roof off the Sucker” with Bootsy and George.

“bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. education & free discussion are the antidotes of both.”

Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, August 1, 1816

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?