Naked Power Grab by Supreme Court
The furor over yesterday’s SCOTUS decision regarding Hobby Lobby and businesses’ adherence to Law is limited to contraception.
What is vastly larger in scope is that the Court has set itself up to be the ultimate arbiter of which actual policies are worthy or not of exception to Law, citing “religious freedom.” Virtually any policy is now fair game to challenge under “religious freedom” in the courts; dietary concerns, dress, health care and immunizations, etc etc. Courts can now be flooded with similar lawsuits on virtually any government policy under the Sun.
This clearly hard-right ideological decision is a cynical and dystopian attack on reality and history. History tells us that religion has guided men to adhere to some of the worst policies humans have to offer. The reality is, a significant percentage of the American public will use this invented “religious freedom” to ignore any law they wish. And the ultimate decider of which people can ignore the law is now the Judicial Branch.
Next up, not paying taxes will be “religious freedom” or withholding certain percentages of taxes according to areas of the budget a person or corporation does not wish to pay for.
This is nothing but a naked power grab and clear overreach by the SCOTUS. The hard right claps and cheers. That is because they are firmly in control, and now have their Evangelical Christian power elevated to the point they can literally divorce themselves from the rest of America with the Court’s permission. They can legally separate themselves from secular Law, and except themselves from any collectivist activity necessary for any government to function. What goes unaddressed are those other religions that wish to impose their own policies on employees and adherence to Law.
It will be interesting to see which parties and which policies are of concern enough to warrant the attention of our new Judicial States of America for similar favored rulings. Very interesting.