We are seeing our rights slowly being stripped away by a Supreme Court that was handpicked to do it by the conservatives. Judges were picked by Trump and the far-right not because of their jurisprudence but rather for their ideology.
‘Hard for it to be a bigger deal’: The future of American rights
The Christian Science Monitor
By Peter Grier
April 13, 2022
The Voting Rights Act. Title IX sex discrimination legislation. The Americans with Disabilities Act. Supreme Court rulings overturning state bans on contraception and interracial marriage, and legalizing abortion and gay marriage.In general, over the past 60 years Americans have experienced a sweeping expansion of federally guaranteed personal rights. During this “rights revolution” era, the United States government established a foundation of laws that apply to every state in the land.
But that era now appears to be over. If anything, the tide may be running in the other direction, as conservative justices and Republican-controlled states look to roll back aspects of this revolution that they believe constitute legal overreach.
This is a two prong attack on our rights by the Republicans, the first the attack on our rights is coming from the Republican states anti-abortion laws and anti-LGBTQ laws (Make no bones about it, it is on not only us but also the whole LGBTQ community. In Florida the “Don’t Say Gay” law, and in Tennessee the bill to circumvent marriage equality.)
The bottom line: The long-standing common American approach to many personal rights may be fracturing. The rights you enjoy may soon depend on where you live, with blue and red states diverging on abortion, marriage, gender, and other contentious issues.
“This is a big deal,” says Donald Kettl, a professor emeritus and former dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. “In the context of American democracy, it would be hard for it to be a bigger deal.
People are always talking about the “Bill of Rights” the first ten amendments to the Constitution and almost always talk about the First and Second Amendments but there were ten amendments and the Ninth Amendment is very interesting (It is very short and sweet and to the point.)…
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
That’s it.
Not very long is it but it is very powerful!
Accord to Cornell Law School it was meant to,
The Ninth Amendment was James Madison’s attempt to ensure that the Bill of Rights was not seen as granting to the people of the United States only the specific rights it addressed. In recent years, some have interpreted it as affirming the existence of such “unenumerated” rights outside those expressly protected by the Bill of Rights.
WOW!
So when you hear justices like Thomas, Kavanaugh, and Barrett (The Holy Trinity because they were appointed because of their religious beliefs and not because of their legal erudition.) talk about expanded our rights beyond those right enumerated in the Constitution they keep forgetting the 9th Amendment.
And it is not just abortion and LGBTQ+ rights that are in their crosshairs but…
Depending on how the Supreme Court rules, the ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson could also reverberate beyond the issue of abortion. The 1973 Roe decision was famously based on a “right to privacy” that the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 protected a pregnant woman’s right to choose. And it’s not just abortion – other big high court rulings have invoked a privacy right as well.
The right to privacy is an unenumerated right that the Supreme Court first made explicit in a 1965 ruling, Griswold v. Connecticut. In that case the high court held that a Connecticut law banning the sale of contraceptives, even to married couples, was unconstitutional.
[...]
Many conservatives have long opposed the logic behind the right to privacy. They see it as judge-made policy that is based nowhere in the Constitution’s actual language.
[…]
A final aspect of the widening rights gulf between red and blue states is the privatization of legal enforcement – a phenomenon that Jon Michaels of the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law and David Noll of Rutgers Law School have dubbed “vigilante federalism.”
This refers to laws that empower private citizens to sue to enforce compliance. For instance, SB 8, the Texas law banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, gives private actors the right to file civil lawsuits against anyone who “aids or abets the performance of an abortion ... or intends to do so.”
This court is going to affect how deeply the government can dictate how far the government can control your personal life.
Ask yourself what is the ultimate goal of the Republican party.
Most of the damage being done now is coming from the Red states (Hmm… maybe I am starting to see why they are are called “Red.”).
Anti-LGBTQ Proposals Are Flooding U.S. State Legislatures at a Record Pace
First came bathroom bills, then “Don’t Say Gay.” But state lawmakers may just be getting started.
Bloomberg
ByKelsey Butler
April 8, 2022
This year is heating up to be another record-breaking one for anti-LGBTQ legislation in U.S. state legislatures.In an attempt to fire-up a conservative base ahead of mid-term elections, Republican legislators have proposed at least 325 bills so far, with about 130 targeting transgender rights specifically. That’s already ahead of the 268 introduced last year, a previous record. A total of 27 made it into law in 2021, for the worst year in recent history for anti-LGBTQ legislation, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy group. This year, so far seven have become laws.
“We are seeing an uptick in the frequency and extremism of these bills as time goes on,” said Sam Ames, director of advocacy and government affairs at the Trevor Project, a nonprofit that focuses on suicide prevention for LGBTQ youth.
[…]
The latest groundswell in anti-LGBTQ legislation comes in the wake of the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which allowed same-sex couples to marry in all 50 states. The following year North Carolina passed its infamous bathroom bill, which spurred a boycott and ultimate rescinding of the law.
“It didn’t matter that we had overwhelmingly good popular opinion on marriage equality, state legislators were in a different mental and emotional space, and they spent their year spinning their wheels trying to find anything that they could do to claw back equality,” said Cathryn Oakley, state legislative director and senior counsel for the Human Rights Campaign.
Here in Connecticut we are fighting the spread of denying our human rights to determine control over our bodies.
What this bill does it prevents states with strict criminal anti-abortion laws prevents a patient, or healthcare provider from being extradited to another state for providing an abortion here in Connecticut.
When I read that I quickly sent off an email to the Chair of the legislative LGBTQ Health and Human Services Network which I am on and suggested “to get the bill amended or an amendment to another bill to include transgender children and doctors from being tried in a state that makes it illegal to treat transgender patients?”
It is on the agenda for our meeting this week.
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