While McCutcheon v the FEC is an important case because it would
finish the wingnut dream of transforming our representative
democracy to a corporatist dictatorship, the SCOTUS has a docket full of
additional cases taking direct hits at established constitutional
rights and social policy.
Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action brings affirmative
action back to the Supreme Court. Unlike direct challenges to
affirmative action, this case claims that states have a right to use the
ballot initiative to ban it. Depending on the ruling. the teatalitarian party could see this case as a green light to circumvent
the U.S. constitution. The question before the Supreme Court is whether
an amendment banning affirmative action in a state constitution violates
the equal protection clause of the U.S. constitution.
The state constitutional amendment that bans affirmative action resulted from a
ballot initiative in 2006. The proposal was rejected by the 6
th District Court in 2011 because
“it
places an unfair burden on those seeking to have race considered as one
of many factors in university admissions.” Practically speaking, this
means the constitutional amendment protects advocacy for white privilege
while banning advocacy for greater diversity in the student body. Rick
Snyder’s Attorney-General, Bill Schuette appealed to the Supreme Court
of the United States which will listen to
arguments for this case on October 15
th.
The plaintiffs in McCullen v. Coakley claim that Massachusetts’
abortion clinic buffer zone law violates the first and fourteenth
amendment rights of pro-birth activists who just want to be really close
when they offer women sidewalk “counselling” the women never asked for.
Of course, the pro-birth movement’s definition of “counselling”
includes things like shoving pictures of aborted fetuses in women’s
faces. Anyone can see you can’t do that 35 feet away.
They also like to tell the women that they will burn in hell, that
abortions cause breast cancer and makes it harder to bear children later. But I digress.
The law, passed in 2000, establishes a buffer zone that keeps
protestors 35 feet away from the clinics’ entrances and driveways.
Originally, the law was passed following a 1994
mass shooting in which 2 abortion clinic employees were killed and several more people were wounded.
But, as the plaintiff’s lawyer
explained ”You can’t stand outside 35 feet and communicate with people … You have to have eye contact.”
The plaintiffs claim the buffer law is really about “view point
discrimination” directed at the pro-birth movement and they have high
hopes that the court will “revisit some of its own prior precedents that
led lower courts to believe that, as a matter of law, pro-life speech
is less deserving of protection.”
The fact of the matter is the law keeps all protestors, regardless of
viewpoint, 35 feet away from the abortion clinic. As such, the law
doesn’t preclude the pro-birth movement from voicing their opinions to
people who want to hear them. The fact that the pro-birth movement
thinks that just because they do have a right to say whatever they want,
it means they can literally force people to listen. Moreover, the
extreme elements of the pro-birth movement aren’t satisfied with merely
telling their lies and shoving pictures in women’s faces. As noted
earlier, Massachusetts passed the abortion buffer zone law because a
pro-birther shot several people outside an abortion clinic, killing two
of them.
We also have the history of clinic bombings, pro-birthers harassing
and killing doctors in the name of furthering their cause. In other
words, this law was passed as a means to provide physical safety to
patients and people who work at the clinics.
Wingnuts aren’t happy with merely limiting women’s access to
abortion under any circumstances, including those under which the
mother’s life is at risk or the pregnancy is the result of rape. Now,
they’re arguing that employers have the right to impose their religious
beliefs about contraception on women they employ.
This time wingnut agitators are hoping the court rules in favor
of employers stepping between women and their doctors in one or both of
two cases. The Court will hear
Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius at the request of the Federal Government. Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Sebelius is working its way through the legal system.
In Mount Holly v. Mount Holly Gardens Citizens in Action, which will be argued on December 4
th, wingnuts hope the court will gut the protections against racial discrimination provided under the Fair Housing Act.
In 2000, the township of Mount Holly began to buy homes in the low
income and predominatly African American/Hispanic neighborhood. Most if
not all of the homes were
demolished and replaced
with new, more expensive homes. The community sued the township,
alleging that the township violated the Fair Housing Act and other
anti-discrimination laws. In practical terms, they were
priced out of their neighborhood and for that matter, priced out of any housing in Mount Holly, including rentals.
According to the DOJ’s
amicus brief,
the community presented a study during litigation, which concluded
that the redevelopment plan the redevelopment plan would adversely
affect 22.54% of the African-American households and 32.31% of the
Hispanic households, but only 2.73% of the white households. The study
also concluded that the new housing would be affordable to 79% of the
entire county’s white households, but only 21% of African American and
Hispanic households.
It isn’t hard to see that the township’s idea of improving the
neighborhood would result in a radical change in the neighborhood’s
demographics. It also isn’t hard to see why far right organizations
like the CATO institute favor this form of neighborhood improvement and
have
joined with the Township in this case.
The Gardens’ residents can’t afford the new housing not because of
their race but because of their poverty. While it’s a harsh truth that a
disproportionate number of minorities live in poverty, claiming that
making expensive products is racist and that these “racists” have an
obligation to compensate the victims of poverty is absurd. The FHA was
intended, in the words of Senator Walter Mondale, “to permit people who
have the ability to do so to buy any house offered to the public if they
can afford to buy it. It would not overcome the economic problem of
those who could not afford to purchase the house of their choice.”
Of course, such thinking only makes sense to people who believe that
laws protecting minorities from discrimination are an affront to the
racial entitlement known as white privilege. Let’s face it, the same
people who argue how unfortunate it is that a disproportionate number of
minorities live in policy, have done everything to preserve it. They
have worked to make college less accessible, eliminate protections
against racism in college admissions. By creating obstacles to
post-secondary education, conservatives are also denying the people
affected by those policies the opportunity to get better paying jobs.
When combined with other policies that will inevitably result in
creating an underclass largely comprised of racial minorities, the end
result is creating more racial segregation. So while building more
expensive houses is not, per se, racist, passing policies that
inevitably result in racial segregation is.
