Supreme Court Says No To Environmentalists, Teenage Speech, Taxpayer Rights, but Yes to FaithBased Gov’t Programs and More
Jun 25th, 2007 | 29 responses
It’s going to make a lot of people shake their heads, but it makes you wonder too, does the Daddy-Court of the Land really get to have the final say-so? Ought all good children still continue to eat their peas without pause? Or should something else occur… the thundercloud so many carry inside nowadays, when put together with all other thunderclouds, could make a perfect storm… the kind that cleanses, blows away the dead and dry, makes way for new…
In the meantime, the zeitgeist for today is that Paterfamilias has just nailed its newest proclamations to our doors. The Real New Rules, of how we all ought live, looks like this:
–the Supremes said No to environmentalists (what’s the matter with those gopher-loving, clean-water-worshipping, lovers of things wild anyway? We can all get plenty of the wild by driving on any freeway.)
– No to speech/ images by adolescents,(those pesky teenage individualists, what do they think they’re doing? Trying to grow up in a rat maze made by adults, or something? And besides, how do we know that t-shirt wasn’t advertising Thorazine? And more so, just because you wear a name on a t-shirt does that automatically mean you’ve become what’s on your shirt? If there were true, wouldn’t everyone by now have turned into a schizoid version of Calvin Klein, no! I can’t be Calvin Klein, because I’ve got Johnny Weissmuller underwear on, I must be Johnny Weissmuller, No! I’m wearing Gloria Vanderbilt shoes, I must have turned into a woman when I put them on, No! that can’t be because I am wearing a Hermes scarf, I must be Hermes… )
–No to taxpayers wanting equitable distribution of their taxes because many do not want their taxes to go to support religions they don’t believe or partake in (Yes, those godless Deists and atheists, they oughter read the Constitution. Ahem, mutter mutter another voice: Ah, Sir? the Constitution was written by some who were ah, not Baptists that we know of. Some were even Freemasons. [oh sacre bleu, quick, hide the daughters!).
But, don’t you sometimes wish for a Penultimate Court over the Supremes, an even higher court that could uphold or overturn the lower “Supreme” court? (I can still say things like that in this country right? I mean, without getting “cheneyed” so someone accuses me of ‘terrible thought crimes involving livid imagination”? Yes, I meant to say livid. Is that okay? I mean, I don’t want to be accused of making ‘traitor fries,’ when I only just meant to be making ‘tater fries.’)
And don’t you wish instead of the Supremes cherry-picking amongst which cases they will hear, that at least once a year, they had to take ten cases decided ‘by the people,’ the ballot for which would NOT include any of the ‘litmus test topics’ some Johnny-One-Notes in this country have been forever screeching? diverting us from other matters that really do matter.
Here are the pithy posts the Supreme Court itself posted, in brief, today displaying its work product over these last many months (below). I am taken by the idea in my very small study of the law so far, that the law’s greatest bloodline intent is to keep as much peace as can be had under trying circumstances of persons sometimes hostile to one another, going head to head. But will these bring peace? Or just gather more thunderclouds? And could that be turned to good?
blockquote>In the first of several rulings on the merits, the Court split 5-4 in deciding that a federal agency that is required by law to take a specific action under one federal law does not have to follow the conflicting mandate of the Endangered Species Act. The decision, written by Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., came in National Association of Home Builders v. Defenders of Wildlife (06-340) and a companion case.
In the second decision of the day, also written by Alito and again dividing the Court 5-4, the Justices ruled that taxpayers do not have standing to sue to challenge the White House program on federal aid to faith-based organizations. The Court did not overrule Flast v. Cohen, as two Justices in the majority urged it to do so. The case was Hein v. Freedom from Religion Foundation (06-157).
The third decision, written by Justice David H. Souter, found over two Justices’ partial dissents that government employees carrying out their official duties and not for personal benefit are not subject to damage claims against them personally based on a lawsuit asserting that they violated the RICO anti-racketeering law or private property rights. The decision came in Wilkie v. Robbins (06-219).
The fourth ruling, written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., over three full dissents and one partial dissent, declared that public school officials do not violate a student’s free speech rights by punishing the student for words or actions that promote a drug message. The ruling in Morse v. Frederick (06-278) also should count as a 5-4 decision because Justice Stephen G. Breyer would have decided the case on qualified immunity grounds, and not reach the First Amendment issue.
The Court issued its fifth ruling of the day, concluding that a Wisconsin abortion rights group had a First Amendment right to aid during election season campaign ads that named a candidate running for the Senate. Three of the five Justices in the majority urged the Court to overturn the part of a 2003 ruling that upheld the constitutionality of the federal law restricting such radio and TV ads close to elections. The Chief Justice’s main opinion, joined fully by Justice Alito, said the case did not provide an occasion to revisit that ruling. Justice Souter recited at length from the bench for the four dissenters — who were in the minority in four of the five rulings on Monday. The ruling came in Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life (06-969) and a companion case.
tx: helaine
29 Responses to “Supreme Court Says No To Environmentalists, Teenage Speech, Taxpayer Rights, but Yes to FaithBased Gov’t Programs and More”
The damage the Bush’s have wrought on our government is going to last for decades after the last one is gone.
Thanks alot whackjobs.
And, of course, this isn’t activism.
This is how things sould be!
Yeah, sure!
I only wish I could move
The country that I knew and loved is disappearing, step by step.
Pyst, take the issue up with your parents for your being “Born to Late”.
For every conservatism you find in the so-called Bush influenced Supreme Court, I will find you two liberalisms of the Warren Court.
Sucks when your toy is taken away, doesn’t it?
Four 5-4s…so much for Robert’s Unity Court.
Yeah, AustinR, it sucks.
It sucks when freedom of speech is taken away.
It sucks when the separation of church and state is eroded.
It sucks when dovelopers are given a free hand to destroy a healthy natural underpinning for our country to leave for future generations.
It absolutely sucks.
What’s really sad is that the composition of this court represents a victory for conservatives, but its hard to see who’s winning besides the monied interests that Doma listed. The losers?Ordinary Americans who must live with the erosion of their civil liberties and the spinning of our rights under the Constitution. I thought this court was supposed to be strictly contructionist.
But that’s ok because its payback time for the Warren court, right AR? Its all about one side winning and the other losing, right?
i don’t agree with many of the courts decisions, and the lean of the court seems definitely political with a conservative lean. but posts on this site and the comments seem to definitely have a liberal lean. every decision that favored a conservative outcome is attack every decision that is against a liberal outcome is just as much attacked… and yet this blog is called, moderate.
here’s my take,
the judges for instance have a strong argument that money ending up in the hands of religious organizations is not a constitutional violation if they aren’t selected to institute a religious message. if money is given to organizations that do social work, there’s no constitutional justification why religious organizations should be excluded and (an example) marxist organizations should be included. this is about not excluding religion, more than anything.
on campaign ads, they however, seemed to be missing a lot of issues. first, the government has a right to control over broadcast media because its a public medium and a right to control the election process (second part is in the Constitution). second, a restriction on the time when you air speech isn’t necessarily the same as a restriction on speech.
i don’t know enough about the other issues to comment. bong hits for jesus depends all on what the student did had a relationship to the school, and i don’t know the story well enough.
I trust we can assume your love of the law is not tarnished by political slant?
Therefore, you would agree to overturn McCain-Feingold to the extent it places limits on an individual’s ability for political expression.
You would agree a taxpayer should have standing to challenge the federal funding of the restoration of the 16th St Baptist Church in Birmingham.
The last item is hardly an affront on evironmentalism. The ruling simply said when one specific environmental law already exists, it does not get usurped by a conflicting general regulation.
Brian Shapiro,
The funding of faith based social progrms leads to much more than the simple picture you paint.
For one thing, anti discrimination laws in hiring staff are not enforced like they are in secular undertakings.
It’s true that religious groups perform valued services. It’s also ture that by federal funding, certain groups and their oultooks are empowered, way beyond the value of the services they perform.
Another wrinkle lies in the selection of recipients.
Where money flows, it’s too easy to play favorites.
If the ‘worng’ religion were elected to power, I wonder how the suuporter fo this policy would feel.
domajot,
but when i said that there’s no constitutional justification for exclusion, i’d include the idea that secular groups can be given unintended power that taxpayers don’t support. religion is one form of ideology, that belief in god is part of the ideology doesn’t make it more worthy of exclusion of anything else.
the details in how the law is carried out, how anti discrimination laws are enforced or what anti discrimination laws actually should require (and this itself is contested), are exactly that, details that can and should be dealt with separately from the first and primary constitutional question.
right now, differences between how these laws are carried out are being justified, and maybe they shouldn’t be. but to me thats a separate constitutional issue than whether religious groups are recipients of money.
More like 5-10 or more, and far more substantial, far more arrogant, than anything that can be claimed as “conservative activist.”
False advertising. Moderate = “moderate Democrat” or “mainstream liberal” (non-extremist), though you will encounter radicalism on here, too.
Well, give them time , DLS- the Bush court is just getting rolling. And most moderates would oppose the conservative activism of decisions like these. You don’t have to be a liberal to dislike the direction that we’re heading.
brian, your justification for the funding of “faith-based” social services makes sense. Certainly soup served in the name of God or in the name of Good or in the name of invisible pink unicorns is still soup. As long as there aren’t any ideological stings attached, it shouldn’t matter. However, I can see it getting complicated fast. One quick example could be “faith-based” sex-ed programs, that only teach abstinence because of Christian beliefs. There are many opportunities for endorsing your belief system while you’re giving social aid. And if this is paid by the government, then it could be a problem. Certainly in theory a Marxist group could do much the same thing, but the Constitution explicitly states that government cannot endorse a certain religion, it says nothing about other kinds of ideology. It’s really arbitrary I suppose, but that is what is said. Mind you, I wouldn’t give a damn about being taught about God if I got a meal with it. Then again, I wouldn’t want to have my daughter hear that “condoms don’t work” even if the school got to hear it for free.
My general feeling is that we are trying to squeeze our very complicated world into the framers rather simple set of rules, made for simpler times. The fact that those rules can still be applied at all, even if in very twisted ways, is a tribute to their genius.
Lynx,
also I don’t feel people should be too concerned if there are religious messages during public service. a lot of private, secular hospitals support religion as a way of dealing with psychological issues as much as they support eastern treatments like yoga. the issue of abstinence in sex education is a complicated issue also. But I believe that any group that receives public funding should be required to adhere to guidelines for that funding, and if we want to decide that abstinence-only education is using bunk science, we should not fund that. however this would also likely include activist ideology influencing sex education on the other side of the spectrum.
there are areas of concern, one of them is to prevent religions from misusing the funding appropriated to them or overtly prosthelitizing, or even issues concerning discrimination laws that have been raised here.
but like i said, constitutionally, i fell they’re all separate issues.
Domajot -
As past precedence was being cast aside at will to fulfill the desires and wishes of the Left, there were no national debates about stare decis (except among conservatives).
When the SCOTUS manged to find new and unenumerated rights, from a document that said such things could not exist within its text, where was the national debate about originalism?
When the SCOTUS usurped the rights of the States, communities, and individuals in favor of secularist and atheistic interpretations, where was the outcry that this, too, represented government sanctioning of religious views by negation?
Boo hoo hoo.
While I don’t agree with some of today’s, or this term’s, rulings, I find the irony that so soon into the Robert’s Court, i.e., a Conservative majority on the SCOTUS, that all of a sudden the left has discovered the issue of Judicial fiat.
For years the left counted on the Judiciary to resolve those issues to their favor that they could not muster the political will within Congress and the Executive, even during times of holding both branches, to pass the laws and regulations they desired.
So now, when all the unmandated rules and regulations foisted upon the American public in the name of our own good by our betters, according to said Left, for the past 40 years seem in jeopardy, that such a hue and cry on the vested and uncontrollable powers possessed by the SCOTUS fill me with naught but crocodile tears and laughter.
And don’t forget, it was a very successful campaign message for Republican Presidential candidates that they would indeed put these types of jurors on the court, and stop the aforementioned Leftish tyranny of judicial fiats.
So, despite what the LEFT LEANING LIBERAL MEDIA (and as in the most recent investigation showed, 87% of the media contribute to Democratic candidates, so why don’t we put the ‘unbiased’ lie to bed) say, the American public at least seem to feel the court leaned to far left.
Now it doesn’t.
Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
p.s. – I may not believe in the Good Book, but it is full of great and apt quotations!
Brian,
If, as you say, the side issues could be ironed out, I would tretract my argument.
In my view, they can’t be ironed out, however.
A church doesn’t, that I know of, hire separate staff to do social services and another staff to do other work. They just hire ‘staff’. Often, the different functions are performed in the same space. It would even be unreasonable to demand that one organization split so completely between different areas of function; the effort could well break them financially.
Then, too, some churches that consider homosexulity to be a sin, for example, would never be able to comply with an anti-discrimination ruling. Excluding these groups from grant money could become very problematic.
The question of favoritism looms large, too. Naturally, it’s a potential problem with secular groups as well. From what I observe, it just seems that it’s much easier to achieve transparency with secular organizations in today’s atmosphere.
The elephants in the room are Muslim groups. How do we balance being fair and giving them grants with the fear in the country about the uses to
which their grant money could be applied?
Ironing out the side issues would just lead to more issues, IMO.
There would have been more of a chance for a reasonable solution if the President hadn’t made
such a big deal about it. Doing things like creating a special office for faith based issues definitely sent a message that this is about more than just equal opportunity. Actions and words like that elevated fears and suspicions, perhaps some unnecessarily.
I didn’t say anything about the Warren led SC, which infact I have issues with. But when I see overt, naked far right leaning in the SC I find that just as wrong, and will speak my piece about it without a thought of what “team” likes it, or doesn’t.
casual, Austin, DLS, if you like watching the 1st amendment being eroded you are in the wrong country. Maybe we can find you guys a far right dictatorship to your liking since our constitution doesn’t seem to hold much weight with y’all anymore.
What I said doesn’t make me part of any political “team”, it makes me an American when I raise my voice about transgressions against the constituion. I guess the only amendment the far right gets it’s panties in a twist about is the 2nd, and I do as well when it’s threatened, does that make me a temporary part of your “team”? Well I wouldn’t play for that team even if they paided me A Rod money.
– domajot
Took the words right out of my mouth. Sometimes I feel like we’re creating our own strange version of Lord of the Flies. Of course it’s all still dressed up to look progressive and civilized enough (to the average citizen), but the longer this administration rolls along, the more I wonder where all the adults have gone.
Right on, Pyst, domajot, JSpencer. In Bush’s America you have only one right. You have the right to remain silent.
Pyst is right- why concern ourselves with the decisions of the Warren court when what we will be living with for the next 25 years or so are the decisions of the Roberts court. Roberts and Alito are showing their true colors and their decisions should be pleasing the far right in this country, even as they chip away at our democracy. The trend of 5-4 decisions is likewise ominous.
Kimrit – you do not, or did not, consider it ‘chip(ing) away at Democracy’ when the courts took issues out of the public forum and decided the course of the nation, rather than elected officials?
Democracy to you is when a minority position, having failed to achieve Legislative approval or a mandate from the public, is forced upon the public by Judicial fiat?
It is Democracy when the Constitution is amended not by the methodology proscribed and ratified by the States, but by whole cloth creation of classes of rights that do not exist in the Constitution, and by that same Constitution should have been forbid to the Federal Government? (and no, I mean not Roe, bit the whole slew of cases where the Commerce Clause was twisted and tortured beyond any recognition; where after the ERA failed, the courts stepped in an applied it anyway, etc., etc.)
As I said, I don’t agree with all the rulings, but I agree with more of them, and the reasoning behind even those I disagree with, than I did before.
And even the Rehnquist court was still ‘liberal’, due to the total makeup of the Justices.
To repeat an earlier post – Boo hoo hoo. Sucks when your toy gets taken away, doesn’t it?
The SC isn’t a toy, and anyone that would use such childish remarks will never get “it” apprently.
Austin, I have come to the conclusion you are nothing more than an instigator since you never have much to add other than “gotcha”, or neeneer neener type posts. You are wasting electricity, and your toy (your computer) should be taken from you since you are abusing it. Or maybe we can take away your first amendment rights since it isn’t important to you.
K. Ritter:
Actually, the Court is merely not as leftist activist as it has been in the past (since the 1930s, in fact, but notoriously so in the Warren Court years). It is a relief rather than alarming. We aren’t seeing any conservative counterpart now and here to the Warren Court or other judges’ rulings that outrage Americans all the time. Given what liberal activists (seeking the courts as their alternative legislature, court rulings rather than real legislation or amendments to the Constitution, which require them to win elections first) have won over decades, is conservative activism possible someday? Yes. Is it also wrong? Yes. And if we ever see it in modern times we have liberal activists to thank. They “broke the dikes” and they remain those at fault even if the flood changes direction someday.
Earlier:
Who’s to say a higher court would be any better? Everyone would just go there and the higher-level justices would be tempted (y’all have just been Borked) to arrogate even more power there.
This issue has long been an issue faced by non-liberals who have been upset and sometimes outraged by liberal judicial activism. Aside from having Congress legislate exclusions to the scope of the Court’s ability to rule, what has been stated as an alterative, given the outrages we have sometimes seen not only by the Warren Court in the past but by judges even today, is open defiance of the court(s). It actually has become (as has harsh treatment of the United Nations) a mainstream rather than remained an extremist idea in this country.
Pyst:
Austin’s remarks were not childish in the least. Liberals have long used the Supreme Court and other courts as a weapon, a political weapon (y’all have been Borked again — same when you see abortion-related demonstrations next time at the Supreme Court rather than next to Congress) as well as a first rather than last solution and general-purpose legislation-from-thin-air tool.
Pyst -
And you are SUCH a contributer of well thought-out positions and eloquently stated rhetoric.
All you seem to contribute is bile-laced anger at America, the world, and any opinion that conflicts with your own (heck, look at the moniker you have chosen for yourself).
I used to contribute much more original thoughts in my posts, and I used to spend a lot of time spelling out my positions and philosophies.
Doing so or not doing so, however, hasn’t seemed to made much of a difference to the quality and character of the responses I get, so why bother?
Heck (wow, two hecks in one post {now three}), I am one of the few remaining of what used to be a regular group right-libertarian posters that seems to come by on a regular basis anymore (I miss you, cstanley and others).
Wonder why? Certainly can’t be the left-leaning trend at this site over the past 2 years, because it doesn’t exist here (or in the MSM, either). I know that because the left-leaning majority here keeps telling me that.
Why I continue to come here is for my own amusement, which really is the only reason for anyone to anymore. Hardly anyone left here engages in debate anymore (myself included), trying by force of logic, facts, and fair opinion to change the thoughts of others.
It is all bomb-throwing, all the time, just like on the political TV shows. At least here, I get to participate.
The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;–to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public ministers and Consuls;–to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;–to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;–to Controversies between two or more States;–between a State and Citizens of another State;–between Citizens of different States;–between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.
In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.
The last sentence is ambiguous. [grin]
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