I knew the Supreme Court was corrupt, but they aren’t even trying to hide it anymore. Their recent decision to allow businesses to discriminate against gay people was a total sham, in violation of basic principles even I, a legal ignoramus, recognize as baseless.
But what makes this clown show even worse is that the complaint at the heart of 303 Creative v. Elenis is completely made up. In Masterpiece, there really was a baker who really did discriminate against a gay couple, creating both standing and a fact pattern to discuss in court. With 303 Creative, however, the “facts” justifying the case are all make-believe. The plaintiff, Lorie Smith, sued on the grounds that she doesn’t want to make wedding websites for same-sex couples. But no one had actually requested that she do so, for one simple reason: She didn’t make wedding websites. Her lawsuit was purely hypothetical. Legally, she shouldn’t have had a right to sue at all.
To get around the fact that their client had no right to sue, ADF claimed she had received an inquiry from a man named “Stewart” who had some vague questions about maybe hiring 303 Creative in the future for a wedding to “Mike.” But it appears that the entire story may be fabricated. Melissa Gira Grant of the New Republic contacted Stewart, using the email and phone number included in the lawsuit. He denies having sent that request, pointing out that he is already married, to a woman.
Who needs facts anymore? Just make up any ol’ story you want, demand justice, and this Supreme Court will invent an excuse for you, as long as it aligns with their biases. I wasn’t surprised to learn that this particular decision was authored by Gorsuch, who is always happy to lie to promote his religious agenda.
This isn’t even the first opinion Gorsuch has written based on made-up “facts.” Last term, Gorsuch ruled in favor of a football coach who wanted to lead prayers at a public high school, in direct violation of the First Amendment. To get to the desired outcome, both Gorsuch flat-out lied about the situation. Gorsuch claims the coach merely “offered his prayers quietly while his students were otherwise occupied.” That, and this cannot be stated firmly enough, is a lie. As Sotomayor noted in her dissent, the coach actually held showy prayers at the 50-yard line during games. He made such a spectacle that “[m]embers of the public rushed the field to join Kennedy, jumping fences to access the field and knocking over student band members.” She even included helpful pictures, which is unusual in a dissent, to illustrate what a lying liar Gorsuch is.
The court is illegitimate and needs to be dissolved. Expect it to instead litter the law with phony precedents that will poison justice for years to come.
Abort The Court!
As abhorrent as originalism is, at least it was an approach to the law that could be argued from. But Scalia even stopped with the facade of originalism for getting in the way of his firmly held beliefs and the current crop of fascists in robes don’t even pretend anymore.
And yet, nothing will be done about it. The Republicans want this and the Democrats refuse to take a stand against conservatism, instead spending all their political power beating down progressivism… and then blaming progressives for the consequences of Republicans getting what they want unopposed by the Democrats.
Well, since there is no constitutional method in which to dissolve the court, one has two alternatives.
Impeachment or aborting their terms of office. The former just isn’t going to happen, due to excessive GOP pollution, that leaves terminating their terms of office.
Which are lifelong.
Got enough chilled alcohol to immerse justices?
Because, you’re spot on, the case was distilled perjury, heard as a serious case. We, rather than having a highest court that’s supreme, have a highest court that’s kangaroo. They deserve to be shit with a one bore shitgun.
Or locked up for corruption, for a lifelong term.
I’m all in for the latter, as it keeps my hands free from getting all smelly.
Oh, sound effects for the shitgun are the same as the Star Trek photon torpedo, just limited by the number of barrels, as all I have is a double barreled shitgun. The SCOTUS retaining the only fully automatic machine shitgun.
Given being outshitted, I guess we’ll have to resort to using the atomic bum…
If the court is illegitimate, then we are no longer obligated to obey it’s rulings. As usual, the fucking libs don’t have the guts to ignore the government, even a fascist one.
QFT.
Yes, they are corrupt and aren’t even hiding it any more.
Stare Decisis, the influence of precedent is dead.
A future court could overrule this one in a minute and it would be a normal and usual thing.
I used to ask, “Are we going to let 6 Supreme Court justices wreck a country of 333 million people?” We do outnumber them by a lot, after all.
The answer is unfortunately, for now, yes we will.
The Supreme court has no way to enforce its decisions.
We could just ignore them.
It’s been done before.
@ 3
Shhhhhhhhh… Not so loud! Every time an actual leftist criticizes the Democrats or fucking liberals a Republican wins and election and a baby fairy dies!
Three things.
One, PZ, WordPress made me do math to sign in! What the what? It’s early in the morning and I’m old. No fair!
Two, on point, Smith is full of bovine excrement from head to foot. Her “biography” tells a fanciful story about being an unbeliever, but attending a church so she could collect “evidence against God” but, instead, found baby Jeebus and it were a mirakle, praise th’ lord ‘n’ pass th’ ammo! Since then she’s been a devout, oh, so religious, butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, praise baby Jeebus Catholic with deeply, deeply held and sincerely held religious beliefs. I call BS on the entire story. I’ve read too many fake testaments like this to buy a single letter. Although, I’ll buy a foul, Alex for 500. So, Smith is just a noisy troublemaker, aka the perfect client for the ADF.
Three, speaking of the ADF, the senior lawyer who brought the case is none other than Josh “Mr. Manhood” Hawley of Insurrectionists “R” Us’ wife, Erin Hawley. Yeah, the wife of Christian fascist Hawley filed the fake suit before the Supreme Council. Well, isn’t that special! Can you say … SATAN????
Bonus round: if the person impersonating the hapless Stewart contacted Smith through her website, it’s done by a webform, not through email. So, conveeeeeeniently there is no email trail. You could plug in any email, even that of a professor from a university in Minnesota.
Yes, well, I was on TYT a while ago, which site the righties seem particularly to hate. I’m not sure why. I suppose because it is rather leftie in trend and that seems to trigger them. But then there are lots of leftie sites on the net.
At any rate, I can’t now recall what the subject was, what the story of the moment was actually about. Things got so wild I got lost in the process. It must have been something to do with LGBT matters, because the righties were slinging feces left, right and center, all sorts of allegations and accusations, and all of it was completely made up. There was nothing actually that you could argue with them about because it was all fantasy. You couldn’t actually say they were wrong or confused because their remarks had nothing to do with anything that you could be wrong or confused about. You sit there and read and marvel. You grasp that they’re opposed to rights for LGBT people, but they’re not talking about real LGBT people, rather some fantasy version of LGBT people. It would be like a fantasy version of Frodo Baggins, who was already fantasy to begin with. Don’t they have a constitutional right to their own Frodo Baggins?
So now they’re taking this stuff right up to the Supreme Court? No surprise really. What else have they got? You always assumed that sooner or later they were going to get to the Supremes, and as a certain somebody once said, they’re going to “dance with what brung ’em.”
I had a very deep conversion with a JW back in 2006. It concerned June 6, 2006, the day (number) of the beast.
He was a coworker and I considered him a friend. I saw him as intelligent but blinded by his beliefs.
His congregation was having a study session regarding (666) the number of the beast. During our days of intelligent talk, I was extracting what I could from his religious oriented mindset and his answers were honest and based on what he was being taught by the JWs, I determined the number of the beast represented the prevailing government, or any government for that matter. Every answer he gave to my questions led me back to an opposing force large enough it could compete for the minds (control) of the people. Only a government not controlled by a religious leader fits this scenario.
Religions has infiltrated our The Supreme Court and are using it as a way of attacking the beast. If/when religion controls the government, the beast has been defeated.
his is how religions operate.
Now that discrimination is again legal in the US, why can’t states withdraw the business licenses of entities they don’t like?
Just wait till the christians feel they have enough power, fhey start anathematizing eachother and their usual murderous hijinks.
ardipithecus @ # 11: … why can’t states withdraw the business licenses of entities they don’t like?
Florida is working on that.
stuffin: the Catholic SCOTUS would happily crack down on JWs next.
@numerobis
Catholic SCOTUS, now that is scary.
Trump’s Treason SCOTUS ..
Scary and sadly all too real right now.
Time it’s nightmare ended.
Say, hasn’t SCOTUS declined cases before because of a lack of standing?
In am betting that this “right” to discriminate against a protected group based on religious beliefs. applies only to Christians. Muslims? No. Any takers? Way back when, the Court disallowed the smoking of peyote in a prison as part of a religious ceremony buy some Native Americans. Scalia said that religion does not trump civil law.
If I were an atheist web designer, may II refuse service to conservative Christians? Of course not, I don’t have any religious convictions at all.
I’m certain that sooner or later they’re going to rule that atheists can never have standing on church/state cases because we insist that we aren’t a religion.
A few thoughts:
First, the standing of the plaintiff/appellant in 303 Creative v. Elenis was not predicated on the supposed request from “Stewart.” The U.S. District Court specifically noted that the supposed request was received on September 21, 2016, the day after Lorie Smith filed her lawsuit. Her legal standing was not based on the September 21 request.
Second, the Supreme Court did not base its standing analysis on the supposed request for “Stewart.”
Third, Justice Gorsuch, whom you malign as being “always happy to lie to promote his religious agenda,” authored the 2020 opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County, in which the Supreme Court held – for the first time – that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination “because of sex,” also covers claims based on sexual orientation and gender identity. CNN noted as much here: https://tinyurl.com/mszv4uft (“Gorsuch’s opinion delivering a massive loss to the LGBTQ community likely came as a surprise to members of the LGBTQ community after he delivered them a key win in 2020. … The decision [in Bostock] extended protections to millions of workers nationwide and was a defeat for the Trump administration, which argued that the sex discrimination bar in Title VII did not extend to claims of gender identity and sexual orientation.”). His authorship of Bostock seems to negate your attempt to characterize him as an idealogue.
Supremely corrupt. As was said about Cheetolini, if anyone else had done the things they are guilty of (i.e. financial fraud, influence peddling, undeclared income, sexual assault, etc.) they would be locked up until trial or dismissal.
I’ve had shitty frozen pizzas that were more “Supreme” than this Court.
In other words:
https://youtu.be/KfhyjbQF7iQ
I want to know how this case managed to get all the way to the Supreme Court without being dismissed due to lack of merit.
@12, do you mean like this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_nativist_riots
Oh, Florida now won’t recognize specific state driver’s licenses “if the driver is in the US illegally”.
Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island and Vermont.
How a cop is supposed to know if someone’s here illegally based off of a driver’s license is beyond me.
Maybe they’ll go to war with other states, such as Ohio and Michigan over Toledo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledo,_Ohio#19th_century
#20 Spencer
You are missing the simple fact that the plaintiff has never been approached to design a same-sex wedding site because the plaintiff has never designed a wedding site for anyone and has no plans to do such work.
Please explain how the plaintiff was harmed in any manner that the court can address. (The rest of the lies are just nails in this poisonous crucifix.)
Because of his Indian removal policies Andrew Jackson is my most hated president, but I do like his stance vis-a-vis the Supreme Court.
He is infamous for saying: “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.”
Would that Biden would say something similar regarding John Roberts. Oh, what fun there would be in the nation!
@20–
One correct decision does not absolve Gorsuch.
I would like to remind you that Justice Taney, in the Amistad case, joined the majority ruling which said ‘supposing these African negroes not to be slaves, but kidnapped, and free negroes, the treaty with Spain cannot be obligatory upon them’…but then went on to write the majority ruling in the Dred Scott case, widely regarded as the worst single decision ever made by the Supreme Court, which includes as its core argument ‘[black people] are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word “citizens” in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides.’
Same judge.
@20. Spencer Macdonald : Cherry pick huh?
Gorsuch like the other Trump traitors imposed on SCOTUS committed perjury before being appointed to the (once) Supreme Court (on overturning Roe vs Wade at least) and deserves to be impeached and jailed for it. There is a very long and infuriating and depressing list of cases where the treason SCOTUS has made ideologically biased unjust and illegitimate rulings taking the US of A backwards and making it a far worse place.
In what other job can lie to get your position, do the opposite of what you said or at the least strongly implied you’d do and still not be fired?
Would it be posssible for Biden or Congress or someone else (?) to simply rule that since they obtained their positions by deceit and have proven to be utterly corrupt (Thomas as well as Gorsuch too esp there) none of the rulings or decisions made by the Trump SCOTUS traitors count and all their rulings are null and void? Really wish Biden among others would act here and force those traitors out of office and ideally into jail. Is it not possible to declare them and the Federalist Society to be domestic enemies of the USA given they really pretty much are?
StevoR, Biden can only force them out of office by force of arms, destroying the Constitution in the process.
Only Congress can remove them by impeachment and conviction and removal from office.
R. L. Foster in #26
Jesus Christ no.
StevoR
It’s simple. Congress can remove them for whatever reason they want. Then, they’re replaced, and presumably the replacements can undo the particularly horrible decisions made by the prior judges.
Leader of the UK Labour Party!
Spencer Macdonald @20: I notice you specify what the plaintiff’s standing was NOT based on, but you fail to state what it WAS based on. Anything?
@10 stuffin
Hate to break it to you, stuffin, but that’s not what the witnesses believe, and I’m sure your coworker went to great pains to explain that to you. The witnesses have their share of faults, but wanting to seize control of the government is not one of them. You have them confused with the rapture-ready southern baptists.
@30 ” Biden can only force them out of office by force of arms, destroying the Constitution in the process.”
At least someone understands this. So many people crying for the Democrats to do something about the Supreme Court decisions when the time to do that was in 2016 and not elect Trump. Or maybe for RBG to step down when she had cancer at a time when she could be replaced by someone ideologically aligned with her.
Maybe we should blame the voters who couldn’t be bothered to vote in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin? Or maybe the people in Kentucky and North Carolina who are capable of electing a Democratic governor but continually vote for Republicans in the senate. Yeah the D’s aren’t great, but what argument is there that to every mistake they make, Republicans willfully make 10?
@donfelipe: One thing Biden, or his AG, or someone in the DoJ, can do, is to lay out clear rebuttals to the Court’s most egregiously bad rulings (including this one), and calmly building solid Con-Law arguments for scrapping and rehearing each of them, and maybe disregarding those decisions until their obvious errors and malfeasances are corrected.
Or borrow Putin’s defenestration team?
Oh, was that my outside voice?
@30. wzrd1 & #31 GerrardOfTitanServer + : Thanks for your answers. I wonder if Biden could at least call them out much more strongly, urge them publicly to resign and pull security details from them – pressure and public shaming? I know, they clearly don’t have much shame but still..
@36. Raging Bee : I like those ideas too. At least a full on verbal and political attack on the politicians masquerading as (LOLsob) “proper” (ie fair, impartial objective, leally bound etc..) Judges is in order. make them personas non grata and put them under regular pressure to resign and full law enforcement scrutiny including possible arrests as well as impeaching please Democratic Party!
@32. KG : “Leader of the UK Labour Party!”
Wait, don’t you mean PM except that’s been shown not to be with Liz Truss etc .. and isn’t tehLAbor leader challengeable from his own MPs and party too? I don’t know enough British politics but that’s my possibly mistaken impression there.
Can’t withdraw security details, due to codified laws.
Impeachment works so well, look how well it worked on Trump!