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“Democracy”: The GOP War on the Founding Fathers’ Vision

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2023 //
19

A blog reader who identifies as “Democracy” argues that today’s Republican Party, which prizes individualism over the common good has abandoned the vision of the Founding Fathers.

It appears that Ron DeSantis and the entirety of the Republican Party is in direct opposition to American history and the United States Constitution.

The Founders envisioned a democratic society “in which the common good was the chief end of government.” They agreed with John Locke’s view that the main purpose of government –– the main reason people create government –– is to protect their persons through –– as historian R. Freeman Butts put it –– a social contract that placed “the public good above private desires.” The goal was “a commonwealth, a democratic corporate society in which the common good was the chief end of government.”

The Preamble – the stated purposes – of the Constitution, reads

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

In Article I, Section 8 of that document, the legislative branch is given broad, specific powers (among them taxing, borrowing money, regulating commerce, coining money and regulating its value, etc.). Indeed, Article I, Clause 1 gives Congress the power to tax for “the common defence and general Welfare of the United States.” Clause 18 of Section 8 stipulates that Congress had the power “To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers.”

Two Supreme Court decisions early in the republic’s history –– both unanimous –– supported and cemented a broad – liberal – interpretation of the implied powers of Congress.

Republicans call them “socialism.”

In 1819 (McCullough v. Maryland) the Supreme Court reaffirmed that the U.S. government was “a Government of the people. In form and in substance, it emanates from them. Its powers are granted by them, and are to be exercised directly on them, and for their benefit.”

The Court explicitly reaffirmed that one of the critical purposes of government under the U.S. Constitution is to promote the general welfare “of the people.”

In that case, Chief Justice Marshall wrote this about the necessary and proper clause:

“the clause is placed among the powers of Congress, not among the limitations on those powers.” And he added this: “Its terms purport to enlarge, not to diminish, the powers vested in the Government. It purports to be an additional power, not a restriction.”

In Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) Chief Justice Marshall wrote this about the Congressional commerce power:

“This power, like all others vested in Congress, is complete in itself, may be exercised to its utmost extent, and acknowledges no limitations other than are prescribed in the Constitution.”

The history of the United States, and the Constitution, over time, reflect progressive changes. The American Revolution was a progressive movement inspired by the ideas of Enlightenment thinkers; conservatives opposed it. The early expansion of voting rights to those who didn’t own land was progressive, and conservatives of the day fought
against it. The purchase of the Louisiana Territory, a purchase that doubled the size of the fledgling United States, rested on a liberal interpretation of constitutional authority. U.S. government funding of roads and canals relied on a liberal perspective of Congressional commerce power. Those roads and canals were instrumental to economic growth and prosperity, not unlike federal funding of interstate highways, the Internet, medical research, and health care.

And yet, the Republican Party is filled with people who basically reject all of this in favor of sedition.

As David Blight, Yale professor of American history put it,

“Changing demographics and 15 million new voters drawn into the electorate by Obama in 2008 have scared Republicans—now largely the white people’s party—into fearing for their existence. With voter ID laws, reduced polling places and days, voter roll purges, restrictions on mail-in voting, an evisceration of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and a constant rant about ‘voter fraud’ without evidence, Republicans have soiled our electoral system with undemocratic skullduggery…The Republican Party has become a new kind of Confederacy.

Obviously, public education has a central – critical – role to play here. Here’s how Will and Ariel Durant explained it in ‘The Lessons of History’ (1968):

“Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again.”

Republicans: The New Confederacy
Categories Democracy, Democrats, DeSantis, Elections, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, History, Lies, Republicans, Trump

July 4: A Day to Recommit to Our Founding Ideals

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2023 //
52

I learned to love the USA from a very young age. I was 7 when World War 2 ended, and I remember very well how patriotic everyone was. From my earliest years, I learned to love America because it provided a safe haven for my family at a time when the Jews of Europe were targeted for mass extinction.

I was brought up in the 1940s and 1950s when our public schools taught only about our goodness and greatness, while leaving out the shameful chapters of our history.

Today, we are challenged to believe that one can study those shameful chapters and still love your country. Today, too many politicians—notably Republicans—are censoring textbooks and banning library books, anything that students may read, to ensure that they never encounter the ugly parts of our history or anything that includes references to sex or gender identity. Our schools confront a multi-pronged assault built on racism, bigotry, prudishness, and fear of the Other.

Too many Republicans practice the politics of hate and division. Instead of talking about their plans to improve the economy, they use their time in the public eye to demonize the powerless.

My wish is that we could strive again towards the Founding Fathers’ ideals of freedom, reason, equality, justice, and respect for the right of others to dissent, to practice their own religion, to live as they wish within a context of laws. The Founders enunciated these ideals but did not live up to them. It’s up to us to reclaim their vision.

Our Founding Fathers did not want to create a Christian nation. There are several clauses in the Constitution assuring that no one would have to conform to a state-sponsored religion, no one would have to pass a religious test to qualify for office. Whatever your religion or if you practice no religion, the Constitution protects you.

And yet, today religious zealots speak as if the nation belongs to them. It doesn’t. It belongs to all of us.

The greatest threat to our democracy at this moment is the Supreme Court, which seems intent on reversing every precedent and returning the USA to a time before the New Deal, when the government did not actively protect anyone’s rights. It is beyond my understanding that this Court ruled that one’s sincere religious views—no matter how hateful—gives you license to be a bigot.

Our ability to thrive as a nation depends on our ability to work with and value people who are not the same as us. We may be the most diverse people in the world. We cannot succeed unless everyone believes that this is their nation too and that they too can have a fulfilling life regardless of where they came from and when they arrived.

Whether we can keep our democracy rests on our shoulders. Trump and his passionate base have done their best to undermine the pillars of our democracy by questioning the legitimacy of any election they lose, by insulting the rule of law, and by assailing the free press.

The strength of our democracy depends on all of us to get involved. Join an organization that defends our rights and freedoms. Encourage others to do the same. Run for office. Democracy is not a spectator sport. 2024 may be an election that determines our future. Take action.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Injustice, Justice, Religion, Republicans

Tom Ultican: Chartered to Indoctrinate

By dianeravitch
July 3, 2023 //
15

Governor Greg Abbott of Texas likes to say that he supports vouchers because he wants “education, not indoctrination.” This is hilarious because most vouchers are used for religious schools, whose purpose is indoctrination. They certainly do not teach students to think critically, as that might refute their mission.

Tom Ultican read the recent report by the Network for Public Education about the growth of faith-infused charter schools. The report is called “A Sharp Right Turn.” If you want your child to learn critical thinking, these schools would be the wrong choice. Critical thinking means that you are encouraged to question what you are taught.

Ultican writes:

Carol Burris and team at Network for Public Education (NPE) just published, “A Sharp Turn Right” (STR). NPE President Diane Ravitch noted there are several problems associated with charter schools’ profiteering, high closure rates, no accountability…

“This new report, A Sharp Turn Right, exposes yet one more problem — the creation of a new breed of charter schools that are imbued with the ideas of right-wing Christian nationalism. These charter schools have become weapons of the Right as they seek to destroy democratically governed public schools while turning back the clock of education and social progress by a century.” (STR Pages 3 and 4)

STR focuses on two types of charter schools. One characterizes themselves as “classical academies” and the other touts “back to basics,”without noting they also employ the same “classical” curriculum. Both provide right-wing clues on their web-sites, alerting parents of alignment with Christian nationalism. Marketing is often red, white and blue, with pictures of the American founding fathers, and discussions on patriotism and virtue. Some schools include direct references to religion like Advantage Academy’s claim of educating students in a “faith-friendly environment…”

Using keyword searches, NPE identified 273 active charter schools fitting this description and noted they surely missed more. Nearly 30% of them were for-profit; about double the rate for the charter sector in general. Almost 50% of them have opened since Donald Trump was inaugurated president in 2017… (STR Page 7)

It identifies the largest charter school systems indoctrinating students with Christian nationalist ideology and discloses where they are operating. Discussing, in some depth, Hillsdale College with its Barney charter schools and the large number of new charter affiliates, the report asserts:

“What they all have in common is teaching Hillsdale’s prescriptive 1776 curriculum, which disparages the New Deal and affirmative action while downplaying the effects of slavery. Climate change is not mentioned in the science curriculum; sixth-grade studies include a single reference to global warming.” (STR Page 15)

The reality is today’s taxpayers are forced to pay for schools teaching a form of Christianity associated with white superiority; politically indoctrinating students with specific rightist orthodoxy. What happened to the principal of separation of church and state? This charter schools for indoctrination movement must be stopped before American democracy is sundered.

Ultican reviews the long-held belief in separation of church and state, and the Supreme Court’s decisions that balanced the Constitution’s protection of freedom of religion and its prohibition of any establishment of religion.

This balancing act was disrupted by Reagan’s appointment of Justice Antonin Scalia, who saw no reason to separate church and state. The appointment of Justice Clarence Thomas gave Scalia an ally. Scalia and Thomas believed that all religious activity is religious speech and therefore protected. We saw the most recent example of this reasoning in the Court’s decision holding that discrimination against gay people was acceptable if their very existence offended the religious beliefs of the service provider, since in this case she feared she might be expected to give he assent to their wedding. The Court called its license to discriminate a vindication of free speech rights.

Ultican concludes:

Time to wake up and smell the coffee; the modern Supreme Court is corrupt and needs reformation. Instead of deciding issues based on law and precedence, they create theories designed to support a political philosophy rather than showing fidelity to the constitution. This reflects a complete degradation of jurisprudence. The poorly formed decisions regularly undermine the rights and protections the founders bestowed on citizens; all while some Justices appear to be ethically compromised.

For the first time in American history, billions of taxpayer dollars are flowing to private religious schools. The STR report shines a light on charter schools with religious agendas. Even more disturbing, these new taxpayer funded privatized schools are literally indoctrination centers, teaching a depraved political ideology.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Curriculum, Dark Money, Democracy, Education Industry, Extremism, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state

Florida: DeSantis’ War Against LGBT Rights Falters in Courts

By dianeravitch
July 2, 2023 //
39

The Miami Herald points out that Governor Desantis’ efforts to eliminate the rights of LGBT people have not fared well in the courts. However, he will appeal all the decisions he has lost to higher courts in hopes of finding bigoted judges who agree with him. He is s petty, vengeful man who has pledged to control the courts and the Justice Departnent if elected President and make them instruments of his war on WOKE

Multiple federal court decisions have frozen key portions of Ron DeSantis’ campaign against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights in recent weeks, complicating the Florida governor’s efforts to present himself as a conservative champion with a track record of winning cultural battles over LGBTQ causes.

In the last week alone, the DeSantis administration faced setbacks in three legal battles over LGBTQ rights. Judges rejected state efforts to block transgender adults’ access to gender-affirming care under Medicaid, bar transgender children from accessing puberty blockers, and ban minors from certain types of live entertainment at restaurants – legislation widely interpreted as a proposal to target drag shows.

DeSantis’ agenda has hit other roadblocks, with judges blocking portions of his plans to control teaching and training on gender identity in schools and workplaces. The governor also faces ongoing litigation over his efforts t0 ban transgender athletes from competing on sports teams of their declared gender and to restrict access to school books, including those with LGBTQ themes.

His pressure on private industry has faced challenges, as well, with Disney — one of the state’s largest employers — suing the governorclaiming he overstepped his power in taking punitive action against the company over its opposition to policies the company viewed as hostile to the LGBTQ community. DeSantis is pushing for the federal trial to start after the 2024 presidential election. In the meantime, Disney will host a major LGBTQ conferencein Florida this September that promotes diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

Categories Bigotry, Civil Rights, Democracy, DeSantis, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Failure, Fascism, Florida, Gender

Jeannie Suk Gersen: Overturning Affirmative Action

By dianeravitch
July 2, 2023 //
91

Writing in The New Yorker, where she is a contributing columnist, Jeannie Suk Gersen analyzes the SCOTUS decision that ended affirmative action. Gersen is a Harvard Law School professor.

Gersen writes that the High Court forbade explicit consideration of race in evaluating candidates for admission, but it left a small opening:

Since universities can no longer consider applicants’ race in deciding whether to offer them admission, the immediate practical question is what information they can consider about applicants. In a key sentence, toward the end of his ruling, Roberts said, “Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.” (Harvard cited the sentence in a message to its community after the Court’s decision.) Roberts’s point was that “the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race.”

It remains to be seen whether colleges will find “race-neutral” ways of identifying students of color so they can maintain a diverse enrollment. One way is to de-emphasize standardized testing, which enlarges the pool of Black candidates.

Colleges and universities have long contended that demographic diversity is an important goal. The learning experience is enriched, they argued, when students come from different backgrounds and bring different perspectives.

But the goal of diversity was thrown out by the Roberts’ court. The six-justice majority ruled that diversity is no longer to be considered by courts to be “a compelling interest.”

She writes:

But even the liberal dissenters, in their strong defense of the need for race-conscious affirmative action, seemed not quite willing to tether their support of the policy to the goal of student-body diversity. That is because the dissenters, in two opinions, penned by Justice Sonia Sotomayor and by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, were focussed on the continuing need to remedy the devastating, ongoing effects of the historical subjugation of Black Americans.

Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of the affirmative-action precedents is that since 1978, in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the Court has said that the goal of remedying past societal discrimination and injustice is not a compelling interest for schools to pursue in admissions. The dissents in the S.F.F.A. cases underscored not only that the sins that the United States has visited on Black people did not end after slavery and Jim Crow but also that the original justification for affirmative action which the Court approved five decades ago—diversity—was entirely incommensurate to the profound problem to be addressed and was doomed to fail. ♦

Suppose the goal of affirmative action was to fast track large numbers of students from historically disadvantaged groups into the professions and the upper ranks of the business and corporate world. On that ground, it’s clear that affirmative action has been a remarkable success. It has propelled many hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of men and women into medicine, law, education, social work, and every other field.

But the problem that affirmative action was created to solve is very far from solved. Despite the strides that have been made, Blacks, Hispanics, people from Indigenous groups are still very far from equality. They continue to suffer from the historic injuries of the past.

I wonder: if the lawyers for the universities had justified affirmative action not on the value of diversity but on the basis of righting historic wrongs, would the Court have ruled differently? I don’t think so. The six hard-right Justices are on a mission to roll back civil rights law, to curb the power of government to right wrongs, and you encourage the emergence of a society in which people pull themselves up by their bootstraps without relying on government.

We know the problems with the bootstrap theory of progress. In a world where there is so much inequality, some people don’t need to pull themselves up. They are already on top. Others, those on the bottom, may not have any bootstraps at all. Rugged individualism will not reduce social and economic inequality.

Sadly, we can no longer look to the Supreme Court to protect either precedents or rights. Instead, we must tremble for our future whenever they announce a new decision.

The only hope for our democracy is an electoral sweep that makes possible an FDR or an LBJ.

It’s not likely to happen in 2024, given Trump’s loyal base, but I believe our survival as a democracy depends on re-electing Biden. Neither Trump nor DeSantis is qualified for the Presidency. The American renaissance is likely to happen when enough citizens realize that the Republican Party is no longer interested in protecting the Constitution and the rule of law. Will that be after Trump leaves politics? Will it be 2028? 2032?

Liz Cheney said recently that the biggest problem in our politics is that the people keep electing “idiots.” We will have our Renaissance when voters realize that governing requires reason and intelligence. That would mean a blue wave to sweep the idiots out of office.

Categories Civil Rights, Democracy, Elections, Higher Education, Justice, Race, Racism

Heather Cox Richardson: The Supreme Court Is Putting Our Democracy at Risk

By dianeravitch
July 1, 2023 //
87

This is one of the best letters that Heather Cox Richardson has written since I started reading her posts. It puts the current Supreme Court’s radical decisions into historical perspective. This Court, hand-picked by Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society, is engaged in a shameless effort to move the clock back to the world as it existed before the New Deal. This Court threatens our democracy and our rights.

She writes:

Today the Supreme Court followed up on yesterday’s decision gutting affirmative action with three decisions that will continue to push the United States back to the era before the New Deal.

In 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis the court said that the First Amendment protects website designer Lorie Smith from having to use words she doesn’t believe in support of gay marriage. To get there, the court focused on the marriage website designer’s contention that while she is willing to work with LGBTQ customers, she doesn’t want to use her own words on a personalized website to celebrate gay marriages. Because of that unwillingness, she said, she wants to post on her website that she will not make websites for same-sex weddings. She says she is afraid that in doing so, she will run afoul of Colorado’s anti-discrimination laws, which prevent public businesses from discriminating against certain groups of people.

This whole scenario of being is prospective, by the way: her online business did not exist and no one had complained about it. Smith claims she wants to start the business because “God is calling her ‘to explain His true story about marriage.’” She alleges that in 2016, a gay man approached her to make a website for his upcoming wedding, but yesterday, Melissa Gira Grant of The New Republic reported that, while the man allegedly behind the email does exist, he is an established designer himself (so why would he hire someone who was not?), is not gay, and married his wife 15 years ago. He says he never wrote to Smith, and the stamp on court filings shows she received it the day after she filed the suit.

Despite this history, by a 6–3 vote, the court said that Smith was being hurt by the state law and thus had standing to sue. It decided that requiring the designer to use her own words to support gay marriage violated the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech.

Taken together with yesterday’s decision ruling that universities cannot consider race as a category in student admissions, the Supreme Court has highlighted a central contradiction in its interpretation of government power: if the Fourteenth Amendment limits the federal government to making sure that there is no discrimination in the United States on the basis of race—the so-called “colorblind” Constitution—as the right-wing justices argued yesterday, it is up to the states to make sure that state laws don’t discriminate against minorities. But that requires either protecting voting rights or accepting minority rule.

This problem has been with us since before the Civil War, when lawmakers in the southern states defended their enslavement of their Black (and Indigenous) neighbors by arguing that true democracy was up to the voters and that those voters had chosen to support enslavement. After the Civil War, most lawmakers didn’t worry too much about states reimposing discriminatory laws because they included Black men as voters first in 1867 with the Military Reconstruction Act and then in 1870 with the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and they believed such political power would enable Black men to shape the laws under which they lived.

But in 1875 the Supreme Court ruled in Minor v. Happersett that it was legal to cut citizens out of the vote so long as the criteria were not about race. States excluded women, who brought the case, and southern states promptly excluded Black men through literacy clauses, poll taxes, and so on. Northern states mirrored southern laws with their own, designed to keep immigrants from exercising a voice in state governments. At the same time, southern states protected white men from the effects of these exclusionary laws with so-called grandfather clauses, which said a man could vote so long as his grandfather had been eligible.

It turned out that limiting the Fourteenth Amendment to questions of race and letting states choose their voters cemented the power of a minority. The abandonment of federal protection for voting enabled white southerners to abandon democracy and set up a one-party state that kept Black and Brown Americans as well as white women subservient to white men. As in all one-party states, there was little oversight of corruption and no guarantee that laws would be enforced, leaving minorities and women at the mercy of a legal system that often looked the other way when white criminals committed rape and murder.

Many Americans tut-tutted about lynching and the cordons around Black life, but industrialists insisted on keeping the federal government small because they wanted to make sure it could not regulate their businesses or tax them. They liked keeping power at the state level; state governments were far easier to dominate. Southerners understood that overlap: when a group of southern lawmakers in 1890 wrote a defense of the South’s refusal to let Black men vote, they “respectfully dedicated” the book to “the business men of the North.”

In the 1930s the Democrats under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt undermined this coalition by using the federal government to regulate business and provide a social safety net. In the 1940s and 1950s, as racial and gender atrocities began to highlight in popular media just how discriminatory state laws really were, the Supreme Court went further, recognizing that the Fourteenth Amendment’s declaration that states could not deprive any person of the equal protection of the laws meant that the federal government must protect the rights of minorities when states would not. Those rules created modern America.

This is what the radical right seeks to overturn. Yesterday the Supreme Court said that the Fourteenth Amendment could not address racial disparities, but today, like lawmakers in the 1870s, it signaled that it would not protect voting in the states either. It rejected a petition for a review of Mississippi’s strict provision for taking the vote away from felons. That law illustrates just how fully we’re reliving our history: it dates from the 1890 Mississippi constitution that cemented power in white hands. Black Mississippians are currently 2.7 times more likely than white Mississippians to lose the right to vote under the law.

The court went even further today than allowing states to choose their voters. It said that even if state voters do call for minority protections, as Colorado’s anti-discrimination laws do, states cannot protect minorities in the face of someone’s religious beliefs. In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that for “the first time in its history,” the court has granted “a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class.”

It is worth noting that segregation was defended as a deeply held religious belief.

Today, using a case concerning school loans, the Supreme Court also took aim at the power of the federal government to regulate business. In Biden v. Nebraska the court declared by a vote of 6 to 3 that President Biden’s loan forgiveness program, which offered to forgive up to $20,000 of federally held student debt, was unconstitutional. The right-wing majority of the court argued that Congress had not intended to give that much power to the executive branch, although the forgiveness plan was based on law that gave the secretary of education the power to “waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision applicable to the student financial assistance programs…as the Secretary deems necessary in connection with a…national emergency…to ensure” that “recipients of student financial assistance…are not placed in a worse position financially in relation to that financial assistance because of [the national emergency]”.

The right-wing majority based its decision on the so-called major questions doctrine, invented to claw back regulatory power from the federal government. By saying that Congress cannot delegate significant decisions to federal agencies, which are in the executive branch, the court takes on itself the power to decide what a “significant” decision is. The court established this new doctrine in the West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agencycase, stripping the EPA of its ability to regulate certain kinds of air pollution.

“Let’s not beat around the bush,” constitutional analyst Ian Millhiser wrote today in Vox, today’s decision in Biden v. Nebraska “is complete and utter nonsense. It rewrites a federal law which explicitly authorizes the loan forgiveness program, and it relies on a fake legal doctrine known as ‘major questions’ which has no basis in any law or any provision of the Constitution.”

Today’s Supreme Court, packed as it has been by right-wing money behind the Federalist Society and that society’s leader, Leonard Leo, is taking upon itself power over the federal government and the state governments to recreate the world that existed before the New Deal.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona called out the lurch toward turning the government over to the wealthy, supported as it is by religious footsoldiers like Lorie Smith: “Today, the court substituted itself for Congress,” Cardona told reporters. “It’s outrageous to me that Republicans in Congress and state offices fought so hard against a program that would have helped millions of their own constituents. They had no problem handing trillion-dollar tax cuts to big corporations and the super wealthy.”

Cardona made his point personal: “And many had no problems accepting millions of dollars in forgiven pandemic loans, like Senator Markwayne Mullin from Oklahoma had more than $1.4 million in pandemic loans forgiven. He represents 489,000 eligible borrowers that were turned down today. Representative Brett Guthrie from Kentucky had more than $4.4 million forgiven. He represents more than 90,000 eligible borrowers who were turned down today. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from Georgia had more than $180,000 forgiven. She represents more than 91,800 eligible borrowers who were turned down today.”

In the majority opinion of Biden v. Nebraska, Chief Justice John Roberts lamented that those who dislike the court’s decisions have accused the court of “going beyond the proper role of the judiciary.” He defended the court’s decision and urged those who disagreed with it not to disparage the court because “such misperception would be harmful to this institution and our country.” But what is at stake is not simply these individual decisions, whether or not you agree with them; at stake is the way our democracy operates.

Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute didn’t offer much hope for Roberts’s plea. “It is not just the rulings the Roberts Court is making,” he tweeted. “They created out of [w]hole cloth a bogus, major questions doctrine. They made a mockery of standing. They rewrite laws to fit their radical ideological preferences. They have unilaterally blown up the legitimacy of the Court.”

In a shot across the bow of this radical court, in her dissent to Biden v. Nebraska, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that “the Court, by deciding this case, exercises authority it does not have. It violates the Constitution.”

—

Categories Accountability, Biden, Bigotry, Billionaires, Cardona, Miguel, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Dark Money, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fraud, Gender, Higher Education, History, Inequity, Injustice, Justice, Race, Racism, Religion, Shame, Student Financial Aid and Student Debt

Colorado Web Designer Who Won Supreme Court Victory Has Not Opened Her Business

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2023 //
46

The web designer who won her case today in the Supreme Court has not yet opened her business and has not been asked to design a wedding website for a gay couple. I’m not sure why she had standing to overturn the state’s anti-discrimination law when she has no business.

The case, though framed as a clash between free speech and gay rights, was the latest in a series of decisions in favor of religious people and groups, notably conservative Christians, who celebrated the ruling on Friday as a victory for religious freedom.

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the ruling “profoundly wrong,” arguing that the Colorado anti-discrimination law “targets conduct, not speech, for regulation, and the act of discrimination has never constituted protected expression under the First Amendment. Our Constitution contains no right to refuse service to a disfavored group.”

The designer, Lorie Smith, said her Christian faith requires her to turn away customers seeking wedding-related services to celebrate same-sex unions. She added that she intends to post a message saying the company’s policy is a product of her religious convictions.

A Colorado law forbids discrimination against gay people by businesses open to the public as well as statements announcing such discrimination. Ms. Smith, who has not begun the wedding business or posted the proposed statement for fear of running afoul of the law, sued to challenge it, saying it violated her rights to free speech and the free exercise of religion.

But when the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, 303 Creative L.L.C. v. Elenis, No. 21-476, it agreed to decide only one question: “whether applying a public-accommodation law to compel an artist to speak or stay silent violates the free speech clause of the First Amendment.”

In a news conference Friday in Washington, Ms. Smith said she was grateful to the court, who “affirmed today that Colorado can’t force me or anyone to say something we don’t believe.”

Here’s what else to know:

  • Progressive interfaith groups and L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy organizations around the country condemned the ruling. Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement that the ruling was “a deeply troubling crack in our progress and should be alarming to us all.”
  • Both sides have said that the consequences of the court’s ruling could be enormous, though for different reasons. Ms. Smith’s supporters said a decision for the state would allow the government to force all sorts of artists to state things at odds with their beliefs. Her opponents said a ruling in her favor would blow a hole through anti-discrimination laws and allow businesses engaged in expression to refuse service to, for example, Black people or Muslims based on odious but sincerely held convictions.
  • The decision appeared to suggest that the rights of L.G.B.T.Q. people, including to same-sex marriage, are on more vulnerable legal footing, particularly when they are at odds with claims of religious freedom. At the same time, the ruling limited the ability of the governments to enforce anti-discrimination laws.
  • Lower courts have generally sided with gay and lesbian couples who were refused service by bakeries, florists and others, ruling that potential customers are entitled to equal treatment, at least in parts of the country with laws forbidding discrimination based on sexual orientation.

On her dissent, Justice Sotomayer wrote:

The unattractive lesson of the maiority opinion is this: What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is yours. The lesson of the history of public accommodations laws is altogether different. It is that in a free and democratic society, there can be no social castes. And for that to be true, it must be true in the public market. For the “promise of freedom” is an empty one if the Government is “powerless to assure that a dollar in the hands of lone person] will purchase the
same thing as a dollar in the hands of another].” Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., 392 U. S. 409, 443 (1968). Because the Court today retreats from that promise, I dissent.

Categories Bigotry, Civil Rights, Colorado, Democracy, Education Reform, Gender

U.S. Supreme Court Trounces Gay Rights, Student Debtors

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2023 //
68

The United States Supreme Court has been on a rightwing roll, eliminating affirmative action yesterday, now upholding discrimination against gays, and striking down Biden’s attempt to provide relief to student debtors. The five conservative justices rewarded the faith that Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society placed in them. They were chosen based on their extreme ideology.

This morning, the Court ruled that a person who objects to gays need not do business with them. Colorado bans discrimination based on sexual orientation, but the Extreme Court struck down the state law. The justices in the majority based their decision of free speech rights, upholding the view that the web designer’s free speech was impaired if she had to do work for gay people.

The Boston Globe reported:

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a defeat for gay rights, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority ruled Friday that a Christian graphic artist who wants to design wedding websites can refuse to work with same-sex couples.

The court ruled 6-3 for designer Lorie Smith despite a Colorado law that bars discrimination based on sexual orientation, race, gender and other characteristics. Smith had argued that the law violates her free speech rights.

Smith’s opponents warned that a win for her would allow a range of businesses to discriminate, refusing to serve Black, Jewish or Muslim customers, interracial or interfaith couples or immigrants. But Smith and her supporters had said that a ruling against her would force artists — from painters and photographers to writers and musicians — to do work that is against their beliefs.

“The First Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court’s six conservative justices.

The student debt decision was also 6-3, with the conservative justices knocking out Biden’s efforts to reduce the financial burden on millions of people.

The New York Times reported:

The Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority struck down President Biden’s proposal to cancel at least some student debt for tens of millions of borrowers, saying it overstepped the powers of the Education Department.

In a 6-to-3 decision, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote that a mass debt cancellation program of such significance required clear congressional authorization.

Citing the same authority the Trump and Biden administrations used to pause student loan payments during the pandemic, Mr. Biden promised in August to forgive $10,000 in debt for individuals earning less than $125,000 per year, or $250,000 per household, and $20,000 for those who received Pell grants for low-income families.

Nearly 26 million borrowers have applied to have some of their student loan debt erased, with 16 million applications approved. But no debts have been forgiven or additional applications accepted in light of the legal challenges.

I hope that all 26 million indebted people vote for Biden. He tried.

Categories Bigotry, Civil Rights, Democracy, Education Industry, Higher Education, Student Financial Aid and Student Debt

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2023 //
4

Categories Bigotry, Civil Rights, Democracy, Education Industry, Higher Education, Student Financial Aid and Student Debt

Pennsylvania: State Senate Passes Voucher Bill, with Help from Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2023 //
3

Peter Greene writes here about the latest news from Pennsylvania, where he lives. The Republican-dominated state senate passed a voucher bill. Newly elected Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro has said he supports vouchers. He’s getting lots of kudos from Rightwingers. Is this why we was elected? It’s now up to House Democrats, who have a sliver majority, to stop this giveaway to private and religious schools.

Peter Greene writes:

Choicers in Pennsylvania are so close they can taste it, and everyone has come off the bench to help push this newest bill past a governor who has said he likes vouchers just fine—under certain condition. This is from my piece from Forbes.com this morning.

Democrat Josh Shapiro made no secret of his support for school vouchers when he was campaigning for the Pennsylvania governor’s seat. Now conservatives are pushing him to put that support to work.

The Senate passed the newest school voucher bill Thursday night; House Democrats say that it will not advance. Supporters are still hoping that it can be saved in the budget process.

The Lifeline Scholarship Program has been kicking around Harrisburg in a variety of bills that presented a variety of school voucher formats as voucher supporters looked for a version that would garner enough support to pass. The current iteration is a traditional school voucher, essentially a taxpayer funded tuition subsidy for students attending private schools.

Under this bill, students in the lowest 15% of schools in the commonwealth (as determined by standardized test scores) would be eligible.

The vouchers, named a top priority by Pennsylvania’s GOP, have become a key part of the current budget negotiations in the state that is already under a court order to fix its funding system for public schools.

The voucher system would be a chance for school voucher proponents to get their foot in the door, an especially tasty victory in a state with a Democratic governor. To add to the pressure to pass, a coalition of right wing voucher fans has sent Shapiro a letter arguing for the voucher program.

Open the link to the article to find the link to the entire article in Forbes.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Education Industry, Pennsylvania, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers
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