Shame on John Roberts

The multi-generational campaign to capture the court has brought us to this dangerous and pathetic place. And the high priest in this drama, John Roberts, is a full and eager collaborator.

We hold these truths self evident. 

Evidently the extremist right-wing super majority on the U.S. Supreme are not among the We in that sentence.

I would say this is the worst Supreme Court we have ever had, but that overstates the Court’s ability to act independently. This is not a Supreme Court, that acts in accordance with law and precedent. Instead, it acts like an ancient priesthood reading entrails to support the ruling Pharaohs.

The multi-generational campaign to capture the court has brought us to this dangerous and pathetic place. And the high priest in this drama, John Roberts, is a full and eager collaborator.

Chief Justice of the United States, John G. Roberts

Back in 2013 when Justice Roberts gutted enforcement of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby v Holder, he wrote that times have changed and there is no longer a need in America for pre-clearance of electoral maps. He ignored all evidence to the contrary and assured America that removing protections would not result in the drawing of racially discriminatory districts. 

Of course, he was wrong. Racial Gerrymandering roared back. 

Ten years later, before this last midterm election, Roberts refused to hear a case on racial gerrymandering, thus assuring GOP control of the House. But now, in this current session he could no longer avoid it. And the facts were damning. The Chief Justice was forced to acknowledge that Alabama did indeed engage in racially discriminatory and illegal map making. 

Just a few days later, he authored the opinion striking down affirmative action, saying the law must be color blind. 

Law in America has never been color blind. During the so-called war on drugs, huge penalties were enacted for crack cocaine and minor penalties for powder. Crack was the drug of choice in the Black city neighborhoods, powder in the white suburbs. A generation of racially disparate incarceration followed.  One day after the Court killed off affirmative action it declined to hear a case that might overturn a Jim Crow law written in the 1890s for the purpose of limiting the Black vote. 

Race doesn’t matter, unless it does, and then Justice Roberts looks the other way.

Same with money.  In 2010 he joined the majority in its Citizens United decision. Roberts opined that the Court knew better than Congress what campaign finance laws would best protect our democracy. At that time, the court assured us that unleashing mountains of corporate cash would be okay, and that it would all be transparent to voters. Of course, dark money super pacs followed, and things like bipartisan work on environmental legislation disappeared. The assurances of transparency and were flatly wrong. Eight years later, in the Janis decision, Roberts said unions could not collect dues to cover the cost of collective bargaining from workers who benefit from that bargaining. Justice Roberts thinks money does not corrupt politics, unless it comes from a union.

Not content making a hash of the law with regard to race and money, this court weighed into religion too.

Two decisions this week, ostensibly about religious freedom, are instead rulings on to protect discriminatory behavior. Businesses are now free to refuse customers by citing religious opposition. Workers are now free to demand accommodations by citing religious practices. All of the evidence shows that religious bigotry is on the upswing in America. But you know how it is with this court, religion doesn’t matter, until it does. 

And it does. It was how the right organized to capture the court in the first place. Because anti-regulatory demands did not sufficiently rile up Americans, the business lobby funded decades of anti-choice organizing in Churches. Say goodbye to reproductive freedom. Because for John Roberts, the independence of the court matters, until it does not.

Beyond any reasonable doubt, an illegitimate majority on a captured and compromised Court has done great damage to our society, to our democracy, and to the rule of law. But focusing on the court alone misses the point: It is part of a partisan movement every decent American should reject.

By force, that state of Florida now imposes a ruling dogma on its citizens. The complexities of our history have been erased from textbooks just as the ancient pharaohs chiseled away the deeds of their predecessors from the great obelisks that stood in Thebes and Amarna. With every effort to erase the truth, however, the Pharoah of Florida today, reminds us of all that he would have us forget: along with a tradition of equality and freedom, America has a history of exploitation and cruelty.

In the middle of this terrible heat wave, with temperatures in the hundreds, the Governor in Texas strips cities of the authority to mandate water breaks one every four hours for women and men working outside. As it says in the book of Exodus 1:13, “they made them work on their building projects and in their fields, and they had no pity on them.” These new Pharaohs preach religious freedom, but ignore what religion teaches. 

House Republicans will spend the next few months screaming about perceived outrages on the left. Meanwhile, they will show up for ribbon cuttings at projects they voted not to fund. Demagogues and liars will not make our country better. Book bans, discrimination, cruelty for its own sake are not hallmarks of a great nation.

Justice Roberts’s court is not the first in our history to side with the exploiters over ordinary Americans, but it may be the first fully partisan captured court. It will defend the outrages in MAGA controlled states, just as the Taney Court defended the outrages in the Cotton producing states even after the Civil War began. 

Happy birthday America. We have always pitted our better angels against established power and privilege. It has never been easy. Like millions of you, I am proud to count myself among those who attend to one and to resist the other.