The Supreme Court’s unanimous judgment was a clear win not only for Catholic Social Services but for First Amendment advocates looking for a strong denunciation by the court of blatant religious discrimination by the city government.

Even so, the court’s opinion was narrower than some advocates of religious freedom would have preferred.

The Catholic agency had asked the Supreme Court to overturn Employment Division v. Smith, a problematic 1990 opinion that has restricted the free exercise of religion for decades. The court instead found that this case fell outside the parameters of Smith and declined to reexamine the precedent.

The justices split 6-3 on whether the opinion in Smith should be overturned immediately.

Roberts’ 15-page opinion, which declined to overturn Smith, was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.

Justice Samuel Alito penned a 77-page concurrence, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, arguing that the court should overturn Smith.

Alito offered extensive textualist and originalist analysis of the Constitution’s free exercise clause, concluding that the “case against Smith is very convincing” because of how that decision “conflicts with the ordinary meaning of the First Amendment’s terms.”

In a separate concurrence, Gorsuch noted that the court’s failure to address the old opinion hands the Catholic agency a rather tenuous win. As Gorsuch explained, that opinion allows governments to restrict religious exercise through laws that are “neutral” and “generally applicable.”

In the Philadelphia case, the majority opinion found that the law in question contains a clause that made it not “generally applicable,” rendering the law’s restriction of religious freedom unconstitutional.

Gorsuch noted that “with a flick of a pen, municipal lawyers may rewrite the city’s contract” to remove the problematic clause and make the law generally applicable.

If this happens, Gorsuch said, the Catholic agency will find itself “right back where it started,” in danger of being shut down by the government and in a new round of litigation. For this and other reasons, Gorsuch supported Alito’s recommendation to overturn Smith.

But, as Justice Alito stressed in his dissent, there is an easy way around the court’s decision: eliminate the Section 3.21 exemption—an exemption the city never used. “If it does that, then, voilà, today’s decision will vanish—and the parties will be back where they started,” Alito explained.

And he is right. The case of Jack Phillips from Masterpiece Cakeshop proves the point. Justice Gorsuch highlighted this in his separate concurrence, which Justices Alito and Thomas also joined.

“After being forced to litigate all the way to the Supreme Court, we ruled for him on narrow grounds similar to those the majority invokes today,” Justice Gorsuch wrote. Specifically, in that case, “because certain government officials responsible for deciding Mr. Phillips’s compliance with a local public accommodations law uttered statements exhibiting hostility to his religion, the Court held, those officials failed to act ‘neutrally’ under Smith.”

However, “with Smith still on the books,” Justice Gorsuch added, “all that victory assured Mr. Phillips was a new round of litigation—with officials now presumably more careful about admitting their motives.” That is precisely what Phillips faces now, being fined and again hauled into court for refusing to craft a “gender transition cake.”

The time has long since passed for the high court to overturn Smith, and Justices Gorsuch and Alito’s concurrences, which Thomas joined, lay bare that reality. So, while yesterday’s decision was a win for CSC, it was not a victory for religious liberty.

the legislature passed the Second Amendment Preservation Act (“SAPA”) — which was then signed into law by Missouri Governor Mike Parson on June 12, 2021. //

So, what exactly is SAPA? In a nutshell, it’s a law that prohibits the enforcement of federal provisions that infringe on the right to keep and bear arms. //

Sounds like this is setting up a bit of a showdown. Who’s got the winning hand here? As noted above, this legislation has been in the works for years — it wasn’t just thrown together haphazardly. //

Cam Edwards, over at our sister site, Bearing Arms, had this to say about the constitutionality of the provision:

There’s nothing unconstitutional about the new Second Amendment Preservation Act. In fact, it fits squarely within the Court’s precedent in Printz vs. U.S., which held that state and local law enforcement are under no obligation to perform the duties of federal law enforcement. Missouri’s Second Amendment Preservation Act is comparable to California’s Sanctuary State law, which forbids state and local governments from cooperating with ICE in most cases. The Supreme Court upheld California’s law last summer, and if they have the opportunity to weigh in on the Missouri law, I’m sure the justices will do the same. //

Blue State Deplorable
10 hours ago
So let me get this straight. It’s ok for California to ignore federal immigration law, but not okay for Missouri to ignore federal law that infringes on its citizens’ 2nd Amendment rights. Got it~ //

emptypockets
11 hours ago
"Consider this opinion of the Supreme Court:

The general misconception is that any statute passed by legislators bearing the appearance of law constitutes the law of the land. The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land, and any statue, to be valid, must be in agreement. It is impossible for both the Constitution and a law violating it to be valid; one must prevail.
This is succinctly stated as follows:
The general rule is that an unconstitutional statute, though having the form and name of law, is in reality no law, but is wholly void, and ineffective for any purpose; since unconstitutionality dates from the time of its enactment, and not merely from the date of the decision so branding it.
An unconstitutional law, in legal contemplation, is as inoperative as if it had never been passed.
Such a statute leaves the question that it purports to settle just as it would be had the statute not been enacted.
Since an unconstitutional law is void, the general principals follow that it imposes no duties, confers no rights, creates no office, bestows no power or authority on anyone, affords no protection, and justifies no acts performed under it . . .
A void act cannot be legally consistent with a valid one.
An unconstitutional law cannot operate to supersede any existing valid law.
Indeed, insofar as a statute runs counter to the fundamental law of the land, it is superseded thereby.
No one is bound to obey an unconstitutional law and no courts are bound to enforce it.
— Sixteenth American Jurisprudence, Second Edition, Section 177. (late 2nd Ed. Section 256)
Keep this in mind when your friends and family, or your elected officials tell you that “it’s the law, you have to.”

If that law is arbitrary to the constitution, if it renders you subject to illegal or unconstitutional laws and acts it is in fact, null and void.
https://ryoc.us/us-supreme-...
Which seems to have already decided that..."There’s nothing unconstitutional about the new Second Amendment Preservation Act."...is a statement of fact.

A pastor who endorses claims of racial 'systemic injustice,' Ed Litton, has been elected president of the largest U.S. Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention.

The turn language is taking in politics calls to mind that controlling language to control thought was a prime goal of the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s ‘1984.’ //

Orwell’s admonition to think precisely is not an admonition to think narrowly. In fact, a casual perusal of the history of English writing will reveal irrefutably that those who have written most precisely have in fact thought—and read—very broadly. It makes sense. To use words precisely, one must have working knowledge of a number of them at one’s disposal.

This leads us to a somewhat ironic conclusion: The neglect of the language in favor of politics that has taken place in English over the past few decades has led to an impoverishment not only of the language but also of our politics. If we want our politics to improve, we need to reverse the process and start once again to cultivate the language. English needs to be about English.

Orwell said, “In Prose, the worst thing one can do with words is to surrender them.” If those whose business in life is to cultivate the language will not take up the fight, then who will?

The only reason to torture Tolkien’s work like this is not to understand it more deeply but to tear it down. And why would modern scholars want to do that? Because everything that Tolkien was, and everything he wrote, is an affront to the modern secular scholar’s understanding of the world, reality, and the meaning and purpose of life.

Put bluntly, the worlds Tolkien created sprang from an imagination shaped and suffused by his deep Roman Catholic faith. “The Silmarillion” in particular is in some ways a poetic and literary reflection on the Catechism of the Catholic Church. In considering Tolkien’s Middle Earth, there is no way to escape this reality.

His creation, as he himself said, was a kind of sub-creation under the inspiration and aegis of almighty God. His grand themes — good and evil, truth and falsehood, power and glory and honor and sacrifice — all flow forth from his Christian faith and his decidedly sacramental view of the world. For Tolkien, all the world is shot through with meaning by a Creator who loves mankind and is manifest in His works.

That men and women now come to slander and distort and ultimately destroy these sub-creations of Tolkien is also, in a strange way, a testament to his legacy. Like Melkor, they are possessed by dark thoughts of their own imaginings, unlike those of the great Tolkien, and seek not so much to increase their own power and glory, but to bring Tolkien’s down to their grubby station, where everything can be reduced to race and sex and politics.

These people are taken today to be Tolkien scholars. What can we, who love Tolkien and his profoundly Christian art, do but repeat in sorrow a line from “Lament for the Rohirrim”—

The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.