Dear Editor,
In its recent decision under 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, which opens the door for U.S. businesses to refuse services to LGBTQ+ people, conservative activists on the U.S. Supreme Court added another notch in their belts by which recent rulings have further weakened the 14th Amendment’s guarantee that no person shall be denied equal protection under the law. This amendment—the legal foundation of our country’s commitment to allow individuals to live as they choose—also asserts that “no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
In so doing, justices Gorsuch, Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh and Barrett moved the country one step closer to adopting a form of Apartheid based on gender identity and sexual orientation. Although, in their Senate confirmation hearings, many jurists who ruled in the majority in this case had vowed to uphold the legal principle of stare decisis and honor judicial precedents, they are now going back on that commitment and voting as if their personal opinions are justified as the basis for all present and future judicial rulings.
Equality and justice for all are being eclipsed by the predilection of the court’s majority toward narrow-mindedness and bigotry. Recent Supreme Court rulings are undermining numerous legal precedents, including those arising from cases such as Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), which requires states to license or recognize same-sex marriages performed out-of-state; and Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia (2020), which prohibits employers from discriminating against individuals who are gay or transgender (upholding protections under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964).
The only consistent trend behind recent Supreme Court rulings seems to be that the conservative majority is convinced that their own individual beliefs imbue them with a moral omnipotence that gives them the power, and the right, to assert their will over 332 million U.S. citizens and to disregard 235 years of legal precedence. It is as if the current majority has adapted a de facto 28th Amendment to the Constitution, based on the guiding principle of “my way or the highway.” The result is a decision-making body that, at times, appears less like a court, and more like an inquisition.
The essential question we all need to ask ourselves is this: Which of our established rights is the current majority of the Supreme Court going to come after next? Reproductive rights and contraception? Literary freedom of expression (book-banning)? The Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts? It all depends on which precedent-busting cases the court majority’s right-wing comrades at large will feed them through the judicial pipeline of prejudice that is turning the wheels of injustice and grinding away at the foundational principles upon which the United States of America was founded.
Those who value the principles of equality and justice need to rally support for those whose rights are being abrogated. We need to vote for those seeking public office who will appoint justices that truly believe in the Declaration of Independence’s tenets that all people are created equal, “that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” And we must uphold the 14th Amendment’s guarantees that all people must be treated equally, regardless of race, religious beliefs, gender or sexual orientation.
The powers wielded by the three branches of the government of the United States, including the judiciary, derive from The People. It is time to rise up and use every legal and ethical means available to reassert our country’s founding principles of inalienable rights and legal guarantees of equal protection under the law.
Michael J. Caduto,
Reading
