Don't Blame SCOTUS, It's Your Fault

Washington DC – Let me start by saying I am no lawyer nor am I a constitutional scholar. I did do a bit of case study back in college in Constitutional Law, and it is with that training and the sense that every person can decide what is right and wrong that I undertake this writing.

May I also begin by saying the Nation as a whole is heading hell-bent and determined toward a collision with the storyline of a Hand Maid’s Tale, complete with forced birthing, State-Sponsored Prayer, and a scary fixation on weapons.

But don’t blame the Supreme Court for this.

Oh sure, Clarence Thomas seems like he would love to walk himself back into Slavery with his concurring opinion in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s when he alludes to Plessy V Ferguson and the Dred Scott decision while talking about women’s rights. But ultimately, his beef with abortion is the same as Alito’s and presumably the other concurring justices in these most recent bombshell cases.

If the political pundits and liberal slanted media weren’t so busy obfuscating the truth of these decisions with heart-felt hand-wringing about women, the planet, and guns, they might agree that the Supreme Court isn’t trying to re-enact Margaret Atwood’s Novel for realsies in US Constitutional Law. I rather think they’re trying to do the direct opposite.

In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (06/24/2022), New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen (06/23/2022), and West Virginia v. EPA (06/30/2022) the court lands on the side of clear and deliberate law.

Clarence Thomas in his concurring opinion in Dobbs says it best, when he writes, “Like the infamous decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, Roe was also egregiously wrong and on a collision course with the Constitution from the day it was decided. Casey perpetuated its errors, calling both sides of the national controversy to resolve their debate, but in doing so, Casey necessarily declared a winning side. Those on the losing side—those who sought to advance the State’s interest in fetal life—could no longer seek to persuade their elected representatives to adopt policies consistent with their views. The Court short-circuited the democratic process by closing it to the large number of Americans who disagreed with Roe.”

It’s not that they are banning abortion or ringing the dinner bell on gun ownership in New York, or even gutting the clean air act with the EPA. They are saying, US law should not be determined solely by the courts and in those cases where it was, it needs to be overturned.

Roberts hits the nail on the head in the EPA case when he says, “in each case, given the various circumstances, “common sense as to the manner in which Congress [would have been] likely to delegate” such power to the agency at issue, Brown & Williamson, 529 U. S., at 133, made it very unlikely that Congress had actually done so. Extraordinary grants of regulatory authority are rarely accomplished through “modest words,” “vague terms,” or“subtle device[s].” Whitman, 531 U. S., at 468. Nor does Congress typically use oblique or elliptical language to empower an agency to make a “radical or fundamental change to a statutory scheme.”

In each case, it is not that the court is making a determination for or against the popular opinion of the day, whether it’s abortion rights, gun ownership, or clean air. They are simply saying if you want to make a law about these highly controversial issues, you can’t use the courts to do so.

Congress needs to act to protect women’s rights with abortion if you want a federal law protecting women. If you want a Constitutional Law protecting women and unborn babies, you need to change the Constitution. What they are saying is, that you can’t end-run the Constitution with hyperbole and feel like they did in Roe V Wade.

If you’re going to make constitutional law, like guaranteeing the right to an Abortion in this Nation, you need to enact it properly and not use the court’s political leanings of the day to set forth a precedent for all time.

If you want gun control in this country, you can’t make a touchy-feely standard where some bureaucrat decides whether you need a gun or not in New York because you don’t feel safe. If you want Gun control, Congress needs to act to get gun control in this country.

If you want the EPA to be able to stop coal-fired power plants from being built, then Congress needs to act and give them the power to protect the planet from Greenhouse gas emissions. They can’t assume that because in 1972 Congress said they were supposed to make the air clean, but fifty years later, when we now know that carbon emissions are bad and Congress hasn’t done a damn thing about it, just assume that the law still works and that the EPA can work on autopilot.

Congress needs to do its job by making laws and updating the Constitution. It’s not the President’s job or the Supreme Court’s job to make laws in this Nation. The Founding Fathers squarely put that role in the hands of the legislature and boy howdy, I am sorry it’s hard. Do your damn job.

While the Courts are pointing fingers at Congress, maybe we need to look even a little further. The House only gets two years to do their work, and they are the House of the People. The Senate gets 6 years but still, we vote them in directly too.

Blame the Citizen United decision if you want, as a reason why we have an impotent Congress, but ultimately, Congress is us.

I think the major takeaway of this last batch of Supreme Court decisions is we need to wake the hell up as a nation and stop putting Science denying, Gun-toting, self-loathing women like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert into office if you want to protect our Nation’s children.

It’s The Fourth of July today, and I am pretty damn sure Jefferson and Washington are rolling in their graves. The United States was never supposed to be a nation of flakes, flits, and firebrands. It was supposed to be a nation of hardworking men and women united with a common purpose to make a better place for our future.

If you blame the courts for why women don’t have rights in this nation and the children of West Virginia are going to get black lung while playing video games with the lights on, take a good long look in the mirror. If you blame the courts for the armed militia walking through time square while the elementary schools of this nation are practicing active shooter drills, you’re part of the problem. The problem is us, and we can fix this problem. Go vote, because the courts won’t help you.

God bless this Nation and all who call her their home.

Image and Thumbnail Credits: Christopher German