It's worth noting that the prior decision was not about the merits of the law at issue but the conduct of the particular state officials involved in the particular case.

Going beyond the last case, its a case where expansive (or selectively pro-conservative-Christian) reading of “religious freedom” opposes the right’s usual preference on federalism, so if be cautious about any prediction based on ideology of the justices.

I find this view to be pretty naive. The vast majority of judges in the US legal system are naturally going to be conservative in that the job is to follow the letter of the law. To the extent that progressive justices move up through the legal system is only through political appointments.

It seems easier to me to say the vast majority of progressive opinions from the Supreme court have been outcomes driven and the current court is reverting to process-driven (you have to actually pass legislation for legislative changes).

With the way that the Supreme Court not just got politicized, but effectively taken over over the last six years, it is IMO foolish to the extreme to rely on the SC defending anything in the future.

This is an effect of media quite literally lying about the nature of the SCOTUS. The vast majority of cases they rule on are settled on apolitical lines. There has been a concerted effort in the past ~5 years to undermine the legitimacy of the court by trying to portray it as some hackneyed partisan legislature. Do some things get decided on political lines? Absolutely, but not any more than the SCOTUS has always handled these things.

Populists, both left and right, benefit from eroding the perceived legitimacy of independent institutions.

I agree that many Supreme Court decisions do do this. And I think that two of those are Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. So I think the Court overturning those decisions would be a good thing, as it would send a signal that the Court is willing to back off from expressing political views as law and try to return to its proper function.

Yeah. Based off the various deep dives I heard about a year ago, the court is supposed to strongly favor leaving prior court rulings in place, but the current justices decided that they were fine changing prior rulings since it's a convention, not a rule.

The current SC really dislikes all the prior rulings that were based off the 14th amendment, so I fully expect this same behavior to continue.

You know who has the authority to overturn that decision? Our democratically elected legislature.

I once believed this also.

I would take this view more seriously for any decision that is not the result of a 5-4 vote with the usual suspects on the usual sides.

I mean, if you read the ruling, it’s based on a bunch of stuff. Your comment seems to me like a case in point—correct me if I’m misunderstanding your point.

I think you are massively understating the instability the SCOTUS has presented in the past few weeks by overturning existing case law.

I find the same thing with liberal courts. For instance with the second amendment. We clearly have a problem here with the court system reflecting their own personal views instead of what’s written in law. But the problem is not coming from the right. Unless your point is that when a court doesn’t agree with you then they’re wrong.

Your disagreement doesn't have any effect on reality.

Care to back up your claims with actual evidence?

> stricken down a fifty year precedent

Is it somehow bad to strike down old precedents, regardless of content?

> told a state that they can’t enact their own concealed carry act

Is it somehow bad to tell US states that they can't do things that would violate the US constitution, which is explicitly meant to apply to all states?

> obtuse society-wrecking

Translation: "these rulings don't agree with my political positions" (so I'm going to use language that conceals my preference to suggest that they're bad).

> They shall go down in our childrens history as villains.

Not a constructive addition to the conversation, smells of emotional manipulation.

Legislating from the bench is all the Supreme Court does. Their decisions are literally personal interpretations of the Constitution as they wish it was written, because there is no objective interpretation of that document. That's why their decisions include dissenting opinions, and why they undo previous decisions.

Oh you read the whole judgement?

Perhaps you missed this nugget on page 118

> For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence and Obergefell.

Are you going to amend your comment now?

Out of curiosity, what about the current makeup of appellate courts in this region + the Supreme Court makes you think this is going to get shut down quickly?

It can be and the Supreme Court has done it before, but you will need a slate of judges that will willingly curtail their own reach and that of the rest of the federal government. Good luck with that.

> This was already decided forty years ago

If the US Supreme Court never overturned its decisions, these decisions would still be in force:

- laws criminalising private consensual same-sex activity are constitutional (Bowers v Hardwick, 1986–overturned by Lawrence v Texas in 2003)

- miscegenation laws do not violate the 14th Amendment (Pace v Alambama, 1883–overturned in part by McLaughlin v Florida in 1964 and fully by Loving v Virginia in 1967)

- legally enforced racial segregation does not violate the 14th Amendment (Plessy v Ferguson, 1896–effectively overturned by Brown v Board of Education in 1954)

- racial segregation in public schools is constitutional (Cumming v Richmond County Board of Education, 1899–also overturned by Brown v Board of Education)

- states have the constitutional right to ban racially integrated private educational institutions (Berea College v Kentucky, 1908–also overturned by Brown v Board of Education)

- it is constitutional to execute juvenile offenders who were 16 or 17 at the time of their crime (Stanford v Kentucky, 1989–overturned by Roper v Simmons, 2005)

- it is constitutional to execute the intellectually disabled (Penry v Lynaugh, 1989–overturned by Atkins v Virginia in 2002)

- it is constitutional for public schools to force students to salute the flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance, even if they have a religious objection to doing so (Minersville School District v Gobitis, 1940–overturned a mere three years later by West Virginia State Board of Education v Barnette, 1943)

- labor laws which impose limits on working hours are unconstitutional (Lochner v New York, 1905–never explicitly overturned, although a series of 1930s decisions effectively did so)

- minimum wage laws are unconstitutional (Adkins v Children's Hospital, 1923–overturned by West Coast Hotel Co. v Parrish, 1937)

- child labor laws violate children's constitutional right to work (Hammer v Dagenhart, 1918, and Bailey v Drexel Furniture Co, 1922–overturned by United States v Darby Lumber Co, 1941)

If the principle "the Supreme Court should never overturn its past decisions" was accepted–the US would be a very different country today. Even if you only want to apply that principle to "established precedent" – Pace v Alabama was law for over 80 years, so if that principle was seriously followed, interracial marriage bans might well still exist in the US today.

> - That I give any moral value to legal minutia.

Fair enough, but you are commenting on a post about a judicial ruling, not a post about a constitutional amendment or an act of the legislature. The moment judges decide to ban something or uphold a ban on something based on consequentialist decisions rather than interpreting the law is the moment we go from a rules-based government to government by judicial fiat, and that has some very bad consequentialist repercussions. This was a bad law that needed to be overturned, and it was.

They're going through precedent like cordwood, that's not apolitical by any stretch of the imagination. Don't mistake your politics for neutrality