The Conservative Supreme Court- Chutzpah Meets Cowardice
The Court doesn't get to suppress the 1st Amendment when it's inconvenient
In today’s episode of “People Unclear on the Concept,” we follow the deeply unpopular Conservative members of the US Supreme Court. They, for some reason, feel they should be immune to consequences stemming from their rulings.
During the most recent term, the six justices overruled a woman’s right to safe and legal abortion, neutered the NRA, emasculated a suspect’s Miranda rights, and (essentially) ruled that guns have more rights than women. (Ah, yes; remember when Conservatives in Congress decried “judicial activism?” It turns out they don’t mind it so much when it’s their side doing the “activism.”)
Now the justices are upset that protesters are picketing their homes, and they want it to stop immediately. And the Supreme Court’s marshal is asking state and county governments to end the demonstrations. The justices aren’t big on free speech rights, either.
Protesters have been gathering outside the homes of all six conservative Supreme Court justices in recent weeks. Now, in a remarkable act of cowardice, the court is asking officials to quell the demonstrations, claiming they are violating state and county protesting laws. The requests are the latest attempts to coddle a deeply unpopular court and insulate its conservative members from outrage over their anti-democratic decisions.
Supreme Court marshal Gail Curley last week sent letters to Maryland and Virginia’s governors, both Republicans, and to the Democratic county leaders in Maryland’s Montgomery County and Virginia’s Fairfax County, asking them to put an end to the demonstrations, NBC News reported. Some conservative politicians have equated the protests to the deadly Capitol insurrection. In May, lawmakers responded by passing a bill giving judges’ families increased security.
“For weeks on end, large groups of protesters chanting slogans, using bullhorns, and banging drums have picketed Justices’ homes in Maryland,” Curley wrote in her letter to Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan. She advised him to put the protest down by enforcing a state law banning people from disrupting someone else’s “tranquility,” and she described loud protests as “exactly the kind of conduct that Maryland and Montgomery County laws prohibit.” She sent a similar letter to Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
Hogan and Youngkin, who oppose abortion, have pressured federal officials to interpret relatively obscure laws as prohibiting protests outside the justices’ homes (they don’t). Federal and local officials have determined that they don’t have sufficient grounds to apply those laws to non-violent protests and that to do so would violate the protesters’ 1st Amendment rights.
The justices don’t have to like the protests, but they can’t silence them. Perhaps they should’ve thought about that before deciding to set women’s rights back 50 years, eh?
To the justice’s dismay, the protesters’ free speech rights are protected by the 1st Amendment. If the demonstrations remain peaceful, state and federal governments can do nothing under the law to remove the protesters.
That said, the protests are still irking our conservative Supreme Court justices, who evidently aren’t satisfied with just trampling on Americans’ civil rights. They think they deserve to trample in peace.
As a very wise man once told me, decisions have consequences. The justices made theirs, and now they’re facing the consequences. First, at least three of them lied about respecting the precedent of Roe v. Wade, and then they voted to overturn Roe when they had the opportunity. For them to decry demonstrations at their homes is the height of chutzpah and flat-out cowardice.
If you’re going to participate in making a decision that sets the distaff half of the population back 50 years, at least have the courage to face the consequences of that decision. You don’t get to walk away peacefully and expect protection from the consequences of such an impactful decision.
These cowards disrupted the “tranquility” of women across the country. The least they should expect is to have their own “tranquility” disturbed. You don’t get to trample the rights and bodily autonomy of millions of women and not be loudly and repeatedly reminded of your timidity.
F*****g cowards. May they never eat a restaurant meal in peace again.