US Supreme Court Discussions

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I also wouldn't be surprised if people who discriminate flock to her business.

[RoseMorninStar]

I presume this 'Christian' web designer is basing their 'righteousness' on selective readings of their faith. The 10 commandments don't mention homosexuality, but it does mention adultery. Do they/can they discriminate against those who have divorced and remarried (and thereby committed adultery), for example? What about those who don't keep holy the Sabbath? Will they do work for those who lie (such as in product or service claims that have not been verified)? What a can of worms.

This is why so many people have become 'Nones' (not Nuns) Too often religion is wielded like a a weapon to abuse and manipulate rather than embodying the most important of 'commandments': Love One Another.

[N.E. Brigand]

While I don't think the Colorado case should have been heard (although I'm not sure: did the dissent even raised the question of standing?), it need not have much of an effect. No gay couple, knowing her views, would actually want her to design a website for their wedding. Suppose the Supreme Court had ruled that she would have to do so: what would have prevented her from then designing a site that said, "Stewart and Mike invite you to join their day of celebration. But remember: homosexuality is a sin"? Preventing her from saying that would be even more of an infringement on her First Amendment rights (to freely express her noxious opinions).

[RoseMorninStar]

It feels akin to pharmacists who do not wish to fill prescriptions based on their personal beliefs. Or doctors who refuse to give certain types of care (to certain people?) based on their personal beliefs. I know people who have a hard time finding a primary care doctor willing to prescribe regular birth control, even if it is for other health conditions, for which it is often prescribed. The issue seems to be an odd one as the people in question get to pick & choose which things they 'don't believe in' but easily overlook others.

[N.E. Brigand]

I will be curious to see the fate of 303 Creative as a business. 303 is one of the area codes for the Denver metro and the area is pretty socially liberal. This particular business has made itself a national name because the owner went to the Supreme Court over a thing that appears to have happened in her imagination and came away with an anti-LGBTQ ruling. I wouldn't be surprised if discriminating heterosexual clients decide to just avoid her business.

I will be curious to see if 303 Creative ever actually gets into the business of designing wedding websites at all.

[RoseMorninStar]

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes tells U.S. Supreme Court to shove it

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Is N.E.B. Arizona's AG?

Kidding aside, as misguided as the ruling may be, Mayes comments are equally misguided. She would much better serve her constituency by quietly enforcing the existing law and if and when it comes to it, defending it.

[N.E. Brigand]

New York Times: "Where Clarence Thomas Entered an Elite Circle and Opened a Door to the Court. The exclusive Horatio Alger Association brought the justice access to wealthy members and unreported V.I.P. treatment. He, in turn, offered another kind of access."

The Society itself is non-partisan (Thurgood Marshall and Maya Angelou are both mentioned in the article as having been members), and its goals and work seem noble, albeit in the usual self-congratulatory way of making rich people feel good about themselves. Justice Thomas was invited to become a member shortly after joining the Court. He's now an honorary board director. And because of him, the Society's annual scholarship presentation is the only non-legal event held at the Supreme Court itself. "'He really seemed to like the fact that everyone else enjoys being in the courtroom,” said Mr. [Anthony] Hutcherson [who ran the event from 2000 to 2014]. Among people of almost inexhaustible wealth, 'he could give them that, and nobody else could.'"

What did Justice Thomas get out of it, besides good feelings? Well:

The Horatio Alger Association has repeatedly celebrated Justice Thomas. It has made him an honorary board member and twice created scholarships named after his son, Jamal. Both scholarships were unusual in that they directed money to two Virginia prep schools, instead of paying for college or graduate school. One, established at Fork Union Military Academy in 2002, overlapped with the attendance there of a young man whom Justice Thomas mentored. The other, begun at Randolph-Macon Academy in 2007, coincided with Justice Thomas’s great-nephew’s time there.

“Recipients were selected by the individual schools and, to our knowledge, scholarships were not awarded to” the students connected to Justice Thomas, a spokeswoman for the Horatio Alger Association said, adding that, overall, about 30 students have received the scholarships. Both schools declined to comment.

And:

[A] look at his tenure at the Horatio Alger Association, based on more than two dozen interviews and a review of public filings and internal documents, shows that Justice Thomas has received benefits — many of them previously unreported — from a broader cohort of wealthy and powerful friends. They have included major donors to conservative causes with broad policy and political interests and much at stake in Supreme Court decisions, even if they were not directly involved in the cases. ...

In his early years on the court, Justice Thomas disclosed about 20 private plane flights and an assortment of other gifts, including cigars, a Daytona 500 jacket, a silver buckle and a rawhide coat. After The Los Angeles Times chronicled his gifts and travel in 2004, he stopped disclosing private flights and has seldom reported gifts or other benefits. After the Crow revelations, the justice said that “colleagues and others in the judiciary” had advised him that he did not need to report the hospitality of good friends.

The article notes that other Supreme Court justices, including Antoni Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, also were the frequent recipient of free travel and housing -- and the Times notes that both Scalia and Ginsburg appear to have accepted such gifts from people with business before the Court. However, they did at least apparently disclose all such donations, whereas in "a ranked list of privately paid travel by justices from 2004 to 2014, Justice Thomas came in second to last, but that covered a period when Justice Thomas had stopped disclosing gifts and trips beyond those related to teaching, speeches and conferences."

Also in the article: "Justice Thomas’s acceptance of such hospitality apparently predates his time on the court. A former girlfriend said in an interview that 'a buddy' of Justice Thomas had paid for their vacation in the Bahamas in the mid-1980s, when he was chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. A longtime friend said he had paid for the justice’s 1987 wedding reception."

[N.E. Brigand]

It doesn't seem to rise to the level of Justice Thomas's scandals, but this AP story should be noted:

"Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor’s staff prodded colleges and libraries to buy her books."

The Court issued a statement that says "When [Justice Sotomayor] is invited to participate in a book program, Chambers staff recommends the number of books [for an organization to order] based on the size of the audience so as not to disappoint attendees who may anticipate books being available at an event." Sure, but it still means her staff is pushing to get dollars in Sotomayor's pocket.

[Frelga]

That is reaching so incredibly far. If she is allowed to make money from publishing a book, she is allowed to promote it, and if the event is specifically about her book then it's reasonable that people might want to buy it.

[N.E. Brigand]

The Washington Post reports here on how Leonard Leo, the Federalist Society president who appears in the infamous painting of Justice Clarence Thomas at Harlan Crow's Adirondack vacation home, "helped fund a media campaign lionizing Clarence Thomas." That campaign appears to have included a 2016 op-ed by Mark Paoletta titled "Why Doesn't Clarence Thomas Get His Due? He's a Black Man Who Challenged Liberal Orthodoxy" . . . which was published by the Washington Post.

Paoletta was later an aide in Donald Trump's White House. Paoletta did have the sense to disclose on official forms that he had been paid $300,000 for "media projects," but the op-ed itself included no disclaimer about this.

[N.E. Brigand]

That is reaching so incredibly far. If she is allowed to make money from publishing a book, she is allowed to promote it, and if the event is specifically about her book then it's reasonable that people might want to buy it.

Well, it sounds like attendees had to buy her book in order to get in line for her autograph. And again, this is nothing like Alito's much less Thomas's scandals, but unless there was a separate line for people to meet her who had not bought her book, then it would be wrong for her staff to be pushing the host organizations to buy the book.

I once saw George Takei speak at a bookstore but couldn't afford to buy his then-new book, To the Stars. I don't remember if a book was required to get in line, or if I just felt guilty about meeting him without having anything in hand at all, so I bought a cheaper paperback Star Trek novelization that featured his image on the cover, which he was kind enough to sign. But he wasn't a Supreme Court justice.

[N.E. Brigand]

Impeach the lawless Samuel Alito, who refuses to acknowledge the plain language of the U.S. Constitution.

(Failing that, pass a budget that cuts off the salary, benefits, etc. for Alito and his staff.)

[N.E. Brigand]

In New York, Jonathan Chait foolishly conflates Hunter Biden's issues with those of Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

Unless you amend the Constitution to limit the First Amendment, there will never be a way to prevent a president's relatives from cashing in on the family name. Chait complains that Joe Biden "permitted his son to make his living in the influence-peddling trade." The truth is that Joe Biden was powerless to stop it. Chait envisions Congress enacting "a code of conduct for family members of current and recent presidents and vice-presidents. It shouldn’t be impossible to let the child of a president get a regular job while preventing them from selling their name." Whether or not it should be impossible, it is impossible.

Supreme Court justices, on the other hand, are government employees. Is there a political will to hold them to ethical standards? I don't know. But as Steve Vladeck observes at the link in my previous post, it's plainly permitted by the Constitution.

(I haven't one read of Chait's columns in a while. It's fascinating to see that one of the regular right-wing trolls I remember from the New York magazine comments sections nearly 20 years ago is still active there, albeit under a different screenname.)

[N.E. Brigand]

Chris Geidner writes that "Alito's Wall Street Journal interviews and commentary raise a big recusal question." Or rather six specific questions that Geidner sent a week ago to Justice Samuel Alito, the editors of the Wall Street Journal, and David Rivkin Jr., an attorney who interviewed Alito in the Journal for articles published on April 28 and July 28. As referenced above, Alito also wrote an op-ed for the Journal last week. Rivkin is one of the lawyers on Moore v. U.S., a wealth tax case that the Supreme Court will hear in the upcoming term. None of them got back to Geidner, so he explains the importance of his questions and offers a valuable timeline at that link.

[N.E. Brigand]

Clarence Thomas likes to present himself as a regular guy, the kind of person who's happiest just taking a road trip and sleeping overnight in his RV in a Wal-mart parking lot. This image was undermined in the past few months by the revelation of all the very fancy vacations he got from the ultra rich Republican benefactor Harlan Crow.

And now the New York Times finds that the RV itself apparently was originally paid for by a rich friend.

[RoseMorninStar]

Oh for heaven's sake :shakes head:

[N.E. Brigand]

The Washington Post reports here on how Leonard Leo, the Federalist Society president who appears in the infamous painting of Justice Clarence Thomas at Harlan Crow's Adirondack vacation home, "helped fund a media campaign lionizing Clarence Thomas." That campaign appears to have included a 2016 op-ed by Mark Paoletta titled "Why Doesn't Clarence Thomas Get His Due? He's a Black Man Who Challenged Liberal Orthodoxy" . . . which was published by the Washington Post.

Paoletta was later an aide in Donald Trump's White House. Paoletta did have the sense to disclose on official forms that he had been paid $300,000 for "media projects," but the op-ed itself included no disclaimer about this.

It may never come to anything, but "D.C. Attorney General is probing Leonard Leo’s network" (Politico).

[N.E. Brigand]

After a 90-day extention, Clarence Thomas has filed his 2022 finanical disclosure forms, which include lots of stuff he skipped in prior years.

[N.E. Brigand]

Not about the Supreme Court specifically, but this is an interesting commentary on how Republican in Congress (aided by Democrats who value institutional courtesy more than the needs of their constituents) have abused the "blue slip" process since the Obama presidency to fill the courts with young conservative judges.