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Supreme Court decision Archives - Occasional Planet https://occasionalplanet.org/tag/supreme-court-decision/ Progressive Voices Speaking Out Wed, 27 Jan 2016 16:46:36 +0000 en-US hourly 1 211547205 Justice Ginsburg dissents on Hobby Lobby, big time https://occasionalplanet.org/2014/07/03/justice-ginsburg-dissents-on-hobby-lobby-big-time/ https://occasionalplanet.org/2014/07/03/justice-ginsburg-dissents-on-hobby-lobby-big-time/#respond Thu, 03 Jul 2014 12:00:16 +0000 http://www.occasionalplanet.org/?p=29250 Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg issued what has been described as a “scathing,” 35-page dissent to the Court’s ultra-conservative, June 30, 2014  ruling in

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ginsburgSupreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg issued what has been described as a “scathing,” 35-page dissent to the Court’s ultra-conservative, June 30, 2014  ruling in the Hobby Lobby case. In its 5-4 decision, the Court  declared that most companies do not have to cover contraception for their employees if the company has a religious objection to doing so.

“The court, I fear, has ventured into a minefield,” said Ginsburg. According to Mother Jones, In her dissent, Ginsburg wrote that  that her five male colleagues, “in a decision of startling breadth,” would allow corporations to opt out of almost any law that they find “incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs.”

For those of us lacking the patience to wade through the entire decision and the full 35-page dissent, Mother Jones has excerpted 10 of Ginsburg’s key points. It’s hard to argue with her logic–although, apparently, five Justices had no trouble doing just that:

1. “Would the exemption…extend to employers with religiously grounded objections to blood transfusions (Jehovah’s Witnesses); antidepressants (Scientologists); medications derived from pigs, including anesthesia, intravenous fluids, and pills coated with gelatin (certain Muslims, Jews, and Hindus); and vaccinations[?]…Not much help there for the lower courts bound by today’s decision.”

2. “Approving some religious claims while deeming others unworthy of accommodation could be ‘perceived as favoring one religion over another,’ the very ‘risk the [Constitution’s] Establishment Clause was designed to preclude.”

3. “Religious organizations exist to foster the interests of persons subscribing to the same religious faith. Not so of for-profit corporations. Workers who sustain the operations of those corporations commonly are not drawn from one religious community.”

4. “The exemption sought by Hobby Lobby and Conestoga would…deny legions of women who do not hold the employers’ beliefs access to contraceptive coverage”

5. “Any decision to use contraceptives made by a woman covered under Hobby Lobby’s or Conestoga’s plan will not be propelled by the Government, it will be the woman’s autonomous choice, informed by the physician she consults.”

6. “It bears note in this regard that the cost of an IUD is nearly equivalent to a month’s full-time pay for workers earning the minimum wage.”

7. “Even if one were to conclude that Hobby Lobby and Conestoga meet the substantial burden requirement, the Government has shown that the contraceptive coverage for which the ACA provides furthers compelling interests in public health and women’s well being. Those interests are concrete, specific, and demonstrated by a wealth of empirical evidence.”

8. “The distinction between a community made up of believers in the same religion and one embracing persons of diverse beliefs, clear as it is, constantly escapes the Court’s attention. One can only wonder why the Court shuts this key difference from sight.”

9. “Suppose an employer’s sincerely held religious belief is offended by health coverage of vaccines, or paying the minimum wage, or according women equal pay for substantially similar work?”

10. “The Court does not even begin to explain how one might go about ascertaining the religious scruples of a corporation where shares are sold to the public. No need to speculate on that, the Court says, for ‘it seems unlikely’ that large corporation ‘will often assert RFRA claims.’”

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Voting rights watch: Florida restarts its [previously squelched] voter purge https://occasionalplanet.org/2013/08/19/voting-rights-watch-florida-restarts-its-previously-squelched-voter-purge/ https://occasionalplanet.org/2013/08/19/voting-rights-watch-florida-restarts-its-previously-squelched-voter-purge/#respond Mon, 19 Aug 2013 12:00:44 +0000 http://www.occasionalplanet.org/?p=25536 The fallout continues. States that previously wouldn’t have dared to impose voting restrictions that disenfranchised minorities–and, of course, Democrats–are back in business. Florida is

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The fallout continues. States that previously wouldn’t have dared to impose voting restrictions that disenfranchised minorities–and, of course, Democrats–are back in business. Florida is one of them. The state’s Republican Governor, Rick Scott has now revived his plan to purge Florida’s voter rolls of people suspected of not being American citizens. He tried the same tactic in 2012,  but according to Talking Points Memo, that effort was:

 … filled with errors, found few ineligible voters and prompted lawsuits by advocacy groups that argued the purge disproportionately targeted minority groups, according to the Miami Herald. Florida’s list of registered voters suspected of not being U.S. citizens shrank from 182,000 to 2,600 to 198 before the 2012 election.

“It was sloppy, it was slapdash and it was inaccurate,” Polk County Supervisor of Elections Lori Edwards told the Herald. “They were sending us names of people to remove because they were born in Puerto Rico. It was disgusting.”

In the 2012 purge, eighty-seven percent of the people on the list were minorities, according to a Miami Herald analysis; 58 percent were Hispanic. According to the Miami Herald, election officials in most counties simply stopped moving to enforce the purge, saying they didn’t trust the state government’s list. (Two counties in southwest Florida have continued with the effort.) Over 500 of the 2,700 had been identified as citizens; 40 had been identified as non-citizens.  Forty.

The DOJ ordered the state to stop the purge in May [2012]. A civil rights lawyer for the DOJ argued that the effort appeared to violate both the National Voter Registration Act, a 1993 law that requires a 90-day period between any voter purge and and a federal election, and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, under which Florida cannot make changes that affect voting in five of the state’s counties without DOJ approval.

But that was last year, before the Supreme Court shredded the Voting Rights Act, giving states a free pass to make voting more difficult in any way they chose, even if it impacted minorities [who just happen to vote mostly for Democratic candidates]. Regarding Florida specifically, the Supreme Court decision nullified a federal lawsuit in Tampa that sought to stop new searches for noncitizen voters. On the very day that the Supreme Court handed down its decision, Scott jumped right in, vowing to renew his voter-purge efforts.

Florida, as we all remember, has a dismal record on voting rights. The 2000 election was a significant low point. The state also attempted a voter purge that year. And, in 2012. Governor, Scott joined the Republican Party in a fundraising appeal that accused Democrats of defending the right of noncitizens to vote.

Did I mention that Governor Scott is up for re-election in 2014? That fact makes this a dandy time to start disqualifying voters who might cast their ballots for someone else.

According to the Miami Herald, Scott’s top elections official, Secretary of State Ken Detzner, is now creating a new list of suspected noncitizen voters by cross-checking state voter data with a federal database managed by the Department of Homeland Security.

The whole effort is rather inane: The number of illegally registered, non-citizens is clearly small, and not enough to swing an election. One Florida commentator–Chan Lowe, of the Sun-Sentinel— questions why, in today’s anti-immigrant atmosphere, a non-citizen would take the risk of registering illegally to vote:

..if you’re living here and are not a citizen, the last thing you want to do is tick off the authorities. And that’s if you’re a legal resident. If you’re an undocumented alien, you’d have to be insane to risk getting picked up because you registered to vote, of all things. It’s hard enough to get American citizens to vote in their own elections, because you can’t convince them that their single vote matters. Why would an alien think any differently

You have to wonder: Rick Scott surely knows that his voter-purge effort is going to yield very meager results. To me, it’s beginning to look more like a right-wing, dog-whistle campaign that signals to the base that Governor Scott is tough on immigration. You’d think that would be an awkward place to be in Florida, but perhaps not with Scott’s base.

Whatever his reasons, Scott’s eagerness to disenfranchise voters bears watching. And let’s not mistake it for an UNnintended consequence of the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder. This is apparently what the conservative majority on the Roberts court had in mind, and this is what we’re getting.

 

[Editorial cartoon: Jeff Parker, 2012]

 

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