In a narrow 5-4 ruling the Supreme Court has blocked California from stopping in-home bible study groups from their religious assembly. Chief Justice Roberts joined the three leftist judges Kagan, Bryer and Sotomayor. [pdf link here] Apparently the first amendment barely survived this visit by the high court.
♦ Amendment 1 – Freedom of Religion, Speech, and the Press:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
(SCOTUS BLOG) – […] In an unsigned opinion, the majority wrote that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit’s failure to put California’s COVID restrictions on hold was “erroneous.” The Supreme Court’s decisions in earlier challenges to COVID-related restrictions have, the justices wrote, “made several points clear.” Among other things, the majority stressed, government regulations are subject to heightened scrutiny whenever they treat any secular activity more favorably than religious activity; it doesn’t matter that the state also treats some secular businesses or activities poorly. Moreover, the majority added, a case may remain a live controversy even if the government changes the policy – particularly when, as here, “officials with a track record of ‘moving the goalposts’ retain authority to reinstate those heightened restrictions at any time.”
In her dissent, Kagan contended that the First Amendment “requires that a State treat religious conduct as well as the State treats comparable secular conduct.” That, she wrote, is what California has done, by adopting “a blanket restriction on at-home gatherings of all kinds.” (read more)
Roberts is part of the leftist block.
A Bible study in the USA hinges on one Supreme Court judge swinging one way or the other. Yikes.
Are you sure this is not 1947?
We were similarly close to losing the 2nd Amendment in Heller. It’s terrifying.
scotus cannot alter or void the constitution.
True, the humans can’t alter it or void it, however they can ignore it in their decisions or, like with the election, sit on their hands and not accept cases presented, denying any scrutiny by the document. They’re humans making choices. Only human.
More generally, on the thread topic, not only is Congress denied, Congress is the body of government charged with making any law, not the Executive or Judicial branches or any unelected bureaucrats in the system under them. If the courts choose to not snap back their zealotry, then it falls to us and extra-judicial action. Plenty of blood has been spilled in the name of religion throughout human history so there is plenty of precedent in play. Same with freedom. The Communists threaten both. They are human. The enemy.
They will certainly try. I’m starting to wonder where this is all going and/or going to end up. These days, down is up, black is white, men are women, women are men, or something else. I feel like I’m living some kind of bad dream.
I’m pretty sure most of them swing both ways so easily they hit each other (or perhaps themselves) as they exit their respective chambers.
That this was ever even a question is simply more confirmation that this is NOT America anymore.
It’s still America. The LGBQWERTY, less than 2% of the aggregate, are doing everything they can to demoralize you. Wait until they try to disarm you. Lexington and Concord 2022.
The Bill of Right are 10 very clear and concisely stated inalienable Rights.
NAME just one that hasn’t been twisted and distorted by the Supreme Court.
Less than 2% of the aggregate population, the culturally marxist LGBQWERTY in federal government, has neither the balls nor the numbers to unilaterally abrogate the COTUS/BOR after 70 years in political power when their numbers became known to all. All they can do is gaslight you.
Don’t know where you have been the Supreme Court has been unilaterally abrogating the Constitution and every Amandment since the Civil War. It has just accelerated since FDR blackmailed Scotus with court packing. WOW that sound familiar.
Let’s see the culturally marxist LGBQWERTY federal jurists enforce an edict to disarm the American citizen of his unalienable rights. Lexington and Concord 2022.
Think it’s not possible. New Progressive think. The right to keep and bear arms means the government can’t order your Arms be amputated.
What now?
You’re an insane progressive/moderate/libertarian. are you not?
If the communists are not taken out they will take us out.
SCOTUS has become too powerful . Maybe the threat of packing the Supreme Court will knock them down a peg. As our dear President has said, the court is corrupt and gutless. Packing it might be the best thing. It certainly won’t make it worse than it already is.
I am pretty sure that was all but baked into the cake near as soon as John Marshall made that ruling in Marbury vs. Madison concerning judicial review.
That’s right turn the Court over to Obama control he already controls the other two branches of government. WHAT COULD GO WRONG?
What Could Go Wrong? Not much more than is already going wrong and has gone wrong. Catch up with the news, watch the border crisis, and take another look at the stolen election. Ask yourself, What Has GONE right? I agree with President Trump – the court is corrupt and gutless. How do you suggest we change it ? These corrupt , gutless people have life terms.
Sorry I thought that sarcasm was implied.
Yes it will. Imagine adding 3 Obamas to SCOTUS. Good bye Bill of Rights.
No, it will make them just more fearful of losing their power. Same thing happened during FDR’s 2nd term. He threatened to pack it and they all turned chicken going along with his garbage.
I am no longer disappointed with Robert’s I am disgusted. The man is a total loser.
related to SCOTUS: Packing the court
“At its largest, during the Civil War, the Court had ten Justices. While some scholars assert that the expansion to ten Justices was driven by docket needs, others contend that Congress enlarged the Court to allow President Abraham Lincoln to“appoint Justices who favored the Republicans’ agenda of combating slavery and preserving the union.”
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/LSB/LSB10562
The “Wise Latina” wrote, in her dissent,
“Because the majority continues to disregard law and facts alike, I respectfully dissent from this latest per curiam decision.
Doing the linguistic math, so to speak, 2+2=5 if you’re corrupt or on the Left.
But…hold everyone else to your insipid and specious (mis)application of the rule of law, especially if it means tearing the Constitution apart.
she is a racist bi_ ch.
the court wont exist in 5 months
Dems can thank this guy who almost singlehandedly destroyed the America Dream in 2020.
Don’t forget the socialization of trading losses.
I wonder how long it will be before the Communist will say we must quarter soldiers in our homes to ensure tyrannical Covid gathering decrees and mandates are followed?
Will the “Supreme Court” rule that the 3rd Amendment only applies to times of peace. Therefore, since we are in a “war” on a “killer virus”that soldiers are needed to enforce Covid decrees and mandates on “dissenters” that refuse to comply. These decrees and mandates are necessary in order to “protect” the public, used for the common (collective) good and not a violation of the Constitution because it was done in a “time of war” in a manner prescribed by (Communist) decree, mandated “law”.
How many of the “failed lawyers in black robes” aka judges and justices would twist themselves into pretzels to rule in favor of the Grubermint as just happened in this religious freedom, 1st Amendment case? John Roberts anyone?
Am I being too farfetched?….. Just think of all the unbelievable, sick, twisted leftist, Communist BS that has already been upheld by “the courts”in one way or the other? 5/4…………no standing……. etc. Is my thoughts so far out? But I digress.
Unbelievable! I don’t know what else to say.
leave it to kagan to conflate state powers to crush citizens into submission as some kind of 1st amendment argument.
leave it to kagan to narratve legal interpretation to completely refuses to recognize religious protections as a superior constitutional matter.
the woman makes me want to hulk smash
The solution is mass resistance. Don’t give into their illegal and immoral demands. We need more men like this.
Ginsberg should have been taken off the court as a judge for THAT statement.
When are writers going to stop using the phrase “Roberts joined the three leftist judges…”.
Roberts is the leftist of them all.
Hope that trip to Epstein Island was worth selling out your country, John.
Roberts went rouge on some items during PDJT’s term, then became at odds with conservatives on key rulings post-election. Now he has clearly joined the empire, sold his soul/surrendered to their blackmail.
But none of this really surprises me. Our nation is like a mighty starship suddenly overtaken by the Borg. They are pushing out any who fail to comply, eliminating laws that have supported our Republic, and doing this at warp speed.
Roberts didn’t go “rogue”. He’s been a reliable liberal vote for some time now.
“(The First Amendment)…requires that a State treat religious conduct as well as the State treats comparable secular conduct.”
What a complete misunderstanding this is of a basic right! You are not required to treat it the SAME as a secular conduct! You are to treat it as SUPERIOR to a secular conduct! Since it is a Constitutional right, it carries GREATER weight. Elena Kagan is either a dolt, or a totalitarian.
There’s that “requires” word again. That should raise an alarm.
If Costco is open, if Amazon is available, if Walmart is open, if gas stations are open… ALL OF T HE SUPREMES should have struck this tyranny down. I don’t understand what has happened to the Supreme Court. They are close to useless in my opinion. How dare anyone try to “govern” what people do in a private residence. Everyone should resist all of it. What is happening to my country? Land of the free (not!).
The real question, IMO, is how can states suddenly have the right to “restrict” ANY legal activity because when there was a new virus (allegedly) in town, a handful of major quacks started spewing all kinds of nuttery about how to “control” it; without ANY science let alone a “consensus”, which they claim as their new standard for anything else.
How did this happen, in the United States of America?
How was it only ONE governor refused to go along with most of the totalitarian soft takeover?
How did a president, a man who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, become convinced that the way to go was to push the states to do the alienation of our human rights?
Why didn’t we “resist” when it could have made a difference? Why didn’t we demand, in the millions, that Fauci, Birx, Redfield, and Adams be not just ‘sidelined’, but thrown off that task force in disgrace?
It comes to this.
The other day I made some remarks mildly critical of Franklin Graham. I stand by those remarks today.
Whether he is a pastor or not, he is a figure of major influence in the Evangelical Church, and I see a couple of men of the cloth defying the communist COVID scam in Canada, and I saw a church surrounded by police to stop the pastor from holding services, in that country, and what I hear from religious leaders in this country is either silence, or “Jesus would get a vaccine”.
The church in this country is in BIG trouble. They should be a major force in the resistance.
Until SCOTUS overturns the coup d´tat (the very epitome of screaming unconstitutionality), nothing else it does can matter a hoot or a whit.
Should have been 9-0 of the Constitution drill mattered to every AS justice
Maybe Lin Wood was right about Roberts. He was always a closeted progressive or is being blackmailed.