Highlights and Lowlights From This Year's Supreme Court Decisions

As schools let out across America for the summer, many in Washington get to embark on a nice, long summer vacation as well.  Even those who do not get to enjoy the two-month summer vacation enjoyed by students and teachers and the three and a half month long vacation that enables college students and professors who decide not to participate in summer sessions get to take advantage of, most of the United States federal government get to at least enjoy some time off in honor of America’s 243^rd birthday.  Congress gets next week off and will get to enjoy a longer August recess.  The Supreme Court gets to enjoy the longest vacation of all three branches of the federal government.  They do not have to return to work until October.

Last year at this time, liberals across America had gone into a panic as Justice Anthony Kennedy, considered the swing vote on the court for the previous decade, announced his retirement.  A Republican President, Ronald Reagan, appointed Kennedy but liberals liked him (or at least tolerated him) because he voted like Gavin Newsom when it came to gay marriage and supported Cecile Richards’s position in the 2016 decision to strike down a Texas law requiring abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals; citing the bullsh*t “undue burden” standard.  President Trump eventually nominated Brett Kavanaugh to fill Kennedy’s seat on the Supreme Court.  Sensing that he threatened their “right to cheat,” liberals did everything they could to derail Kavanaugh’s nomination but he ultimately made it onto the Court by securing the support of an extremely narrow majority of Senators.  Since no Supreme Court justices on either side of the aisle announced their intention to retire, it looks like no rhetorical bloodbath will break out in Washington this fall; at least when it comes to the generations-long fight for control fo the judicial branch.

Also at this time last year, I wrote a blog titled “A Good Year at the Supreme Court ?!?” I contrasted last year’s Supreme Court decisions upholding President Trump’s travel ban and ruling that public sector unions cannot force non-union members to pay fees for collective bargaining with those of 2015, which upheld Obamacare and declared same-sex marriage a “Constitutional right.” When it comes to Supreme Court decisions, 2015 gets two thumbs down, 2018 gets two thumbs up, and 2019 gets mixed reviews.  Let’s take a look at what they said this year. 

The biggest victory for conservatives came in The American Legion v. American Humanist Association.  The Supreme Court ruled, 7-2, that a peace cross in Bladensburg, Maryland designed to commemorate local serviceman who lost their lives in World War I, did not violate the Establishment Clause due to its presence on public land. Even liberal  Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan sided with the five Republican-appointed justices by effectively telling the militant atheists offended by the presence of a cross to “grow up.”  Let’s face it: The American Humanist Association can pretend to oppose the peace cross because it does not “include” Jewish people who served but most Jews do not find themselves triggered at the sight of the peace cross; only hard-core atheists have a problem with it. If these people had their way, the Treasury would remove the “triggering” phrase of “In God We Trust” from United States currency and invocations at sporting events would come to a screeching halt.  Based on their decision to dissent in the peace cross states, it looks like Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor may find themselves in that camp.

One year after ruling that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission demonstrated hostility towards the religious beliefs of baker Jack Phillips, who received to make a same-sex wedding cake, the Supreme Court granted the writ of certiorari to Melissa and Aaron Klein, who found themselves in a similar position.  The Kleins, who operated a bakery named “Sweet Cakes by Melissa,” in the most progressive corner of Oregon, also faced financial ruin from the SJW mob, buoyed by the lower courts, for refusing to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding.  SCOTUS ordered the Oregon Court of Appeals to rehear the case in light of its decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The Kleins may eventually have the opportunity to enjoy the sweet taste of victory but it will probably take a little while before they can breathe a sigh of relief.  Keep in mind that even though Phillips won a legal victory at the Supreme Court last year, he continues to face harassment from the SJW mob.  It looks like it will take a little while longer for conservatives to declare victory in the battle to secure religious liberty for those not infected by the PC virus.

The Supreme Court also weighed in on a series of gerrymandering cases. Democrats had complained about the map of Congressional districts in North Carolina, claiming that the Republican legislature drew the districts to benefit Republicans while Republicans hoped the Supreme Court would invalidate Maryland’s ridiculously gerrymandered Congressional map. 

For the past few election cycles, liberals have relied on the judicial branch to invalidate Republican-drawn Congressional districts in Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Apparently, liberals see cartography as one of the roles of the “least dangerous branch” of government, in addition to its well-established role as the nation’s chief architect of social policy.  However, for once, a majority of the justices on the Supreme Court rejected the urge to expand its power; concluding that the federal courts have no role to play when it comes to the redistricting process. 

Liberals had hoped that the Supreme Court would rule the other way, striking down the newly drawn map in North Carolina and thereby setting a precedent that would force the creation of new maps in Michigan and Ohio.  Liberals want to do everything in their power to secure the upper hand heading into 2020.  Right now, Republicans need a net gain of 18 seats to retake control of the House of Representatives. The Democrats correctly hoped that new maps in Michigan, North Carolina, and Ohio would cause that number to increase by creating new Democratic-leaning districts to replace existing ones represented by Republicans.  Liberals would have gladly traded losing one or two seats in Maryland for picking up multiple Democratic-leaning seats in those three states. 

While it may have looked like the “yellow brick road” to retaking the House majority would soon have to change, Republicans’ path to achieving the magic number of 218 House seats will remain the same in light of the Supreme Court ruling.  Liberals seem to have forgotten that after this upcoming election, a whole new set of maps will go into effect to reflect the results of the 2020 Census.  Liberals will not have to worry about partisan maps in many states; as voters have approved “independent redistricting commissions” that would draw legislative districts at both the state and federal level in three more states following the 2018 election.  Following the 2018 election, a total of ten states have “independent redistricting commissions.” 

Many of the maps drawn following the 2010 Census became reality because the Republicans controlled both the executive and legislative branches in a series of critical swing states: Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin.  Following the 2020 elections, the makeup of the governments in most of those states will look quite different.  Three of the five states now have a Democratic governor.  In Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the Democratic governor will have veto power over the maps of legislative districts created by their states’ Republican legislatures. In Michigan, the makeup of the state government does not matter because its voters approved an “independent redistricting commission” last fall. 

Speaking of censuses, the biggest lowlight of this term at the Supreme Court came with the decision in Department of Commerce v. New York, where the Supreme Court temporarily refused to allow the Commerce Department to include a “citizenship question” on the 2020 census.  The Court indicated that it may revisit its decision if the Trump administration provided an “adequate justification” for including the citizenship question on the Census questionnaire. Traditionally, the census counts the number of people residing in the United States; regardless of their legal status. This means that illegal immigrants get counted in the census and therefore play a role in the calculation of state populations. This has the role of inflating the number of representatives in states with large non-citizen populations such as California.  The fact that illegal immigrants get counted in the census actually explains why many elected officials have such an interest in securing amnesty for the DACA population; they see these people as their constituents, even though they do not have the right to vote…right now.  Based on the Democratic presidential debates, it looks like politicians on the left side of the political spectrum care a lot more about illegal immigrants than they do about American citizens and the Court’s ruling in Department of Commerce v. New York only reinforces the perception that the political establishment sees no distinction between citizens and legal and illegal aliens.

In response to the Supreme Court’s ruling on the citizenship question, President Trump has “asked lawyers if they can delay the Census, no matter how long, until the United States Supreme Court is given additional information from which it can make a final and decisive decision on this very critical matter.” Realistically, those lawyers will probably give the President an answer of “no” when it comes to his request to delay the Census.  The Constitution mandates that the Census must take place every ten years and historically begins on April 1. However, it makes no sense why the Commerce Department has to begin printing forms on July 1, nine months before the Census begins.  Perhaps President Trump can persuade the courts to change their mind, enabling them to print out the forms much closer to April 1; rather than letting the forms collect dust for nine months. 

So, 2019 could have gone better but it definitely could have gone worse.  If President Trump loses the 2020 election, however, conservatives can expect to experience a lot less years like 2018 and a lot more years like 2015.  Many Democratic presidential candidates have signed onto the idea of “court packing” while Bernie Sanders has suggested “rotating out” Supreme Court justices he doesn’t like and replace them with “new blood” committed to upholding the worst Supreme Court decision in United States history (Roe v. Wade) and overturning what Sanders views as the worst Supreme Court decision in United States history (the Citizens United case). 

President Trump made an extremely smart political decision in the spring of 2016 when he released a list of judges he would appoint to the Supreme Court if he won the 2016 Presidential Election. Liberals have supposedly assembled a similar list of potential Supreme Court justices but unlike President Trump, who knew that releasing the list would help him win over voters skeptical of his conservatism, liberals want to keep the list a secret; perhaps that it would only have the effect of sending conservative voters to the polls to vote against the Democratic nominee in 2020.  In the interest of transparency, as well as making sure that President Trump wins re-election in 2020, liberals should release that list.