Sadly We Are Repeating History: The Dred Scott Decision

There was a case that led up to the Civil War, if you are from the north you probably learned about it as a human rights case, but if you are from a Republican state you learned that it wasn't about slavery but rather states rights! The 1857 U.S. Supreme Court decisions: the Dred Scott v. Sandford case divided the nation over slavery. The encyclopedia Britannia wrote this about the ruling...

Dred Scott Decision Causes and Effects

 

Causes

The North and the South had been divided for many years over the issue of slavery. The Southern economy was based largely upon cotton, which was grown on large farms called plantations. Enslaved African Americans did most of the work on the plantations. The Northern economy relied more on manufacturing and used paid workers.

Neither the North nor the South wanted the other’s ideas to spread to U.S. territories in the West. Northern states wanted to stop the spread of slavery. But Southern states believed that the U.S. government did not have the right to decide whether slavery should be allowed in a state or territory.

[...]

Effects

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dred Scott case struck down the Missouri Compromise as unconstitutional, maintaining that Congress had no power to forbid or abolish slavery in the territories.

The doctrine of popular sovereignty as articulated in the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)—whereby the people of each federal territory would have the power to decide whether the territory would enter the Union as a free or a slave state—was also invalidated by the ruling.

The opinion of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney further declared African Americans were not and could never be citizens of the United States.

[...]

Despite the ruling, many Northern courts and politicians rejected the Dred Scott decision as binding. In several states legislatures resolved to prohibit slavery in any form from crossing onto their soil and enacted legislation freeing slaves passing within their borders.

Now we fast forward to 2025, where new legal battles are reaching the Supreme Court — this time involving telemedicine, abortion rights, and transgender healthcare.

A constitutional showdown is brewing over whether states with abortion bans can demand medical records from states that allow telehealth services for abortion or trans health care — and whether they can punish providers across state lines.

States Heading Toward Constitutional Showdown Over Abortion Shield Laws

Texas and New York are at the leading edge of an escalating states’ rights battle over the mailing of abortion pills to patients in states with bans.

The New York Times

By Pam Belluck

September 9, 2025

America’s battle over abortion has entered an intense phase of legal maneuvering over a deeply fraught issue of states’ rights: Whether states must honor one another’s abortion laws.

At the center of the fight are abortion shield laws, which were adopted by many states that support abortion rights after the Supreme Court revoked the nationwide right to abortion three years ago. Shield laws in at least eight states protect health care providers who prescribe abortion pills by telemedicine and send them to patients in states with abortion bans.

Officials in those shield-law states are prevented from obeying subpoenas, extradition requests and other legal actions that states with bans take against abortion providers. That is a stark departure from typical interstate practices of cooperating in legal matters.

With more and more patients — well over 100,000 per year — receiving pills from shield-law providers, states with abortion bans have been searching for ways to block or hinder those laws. Now, the battle is about to explode into a constitutional showdown in a New York court — a challenge that is expected to wind up in the Supreme Court.

On Monday, the attorney general of New York, Letitia James, announced that she was stepping into a case filed in New York by the attorney general of Texas, Ken Paxton. The case stems from a lawsuit Mr. Paxton filed in December against a New York doctor, whom he accused of prescribing abortion pills to a patient in Texas.

In court documents, Mr. Paxton argues that New York’s abortion shield law amounts to a “policy of hostility to the public acts/statutes of a sister state” and that it violates the Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit Clause, which says that states should generally respect other states’ laws.

In announcing that she would “defend the constitutionality of the shield law,” Ms. James said that “Texas has no authority in New York, and no power to impose its cruel abortion ban here. Our shield law exists to protect New Yorkers from out-of-state extremists.”

And thus the ground work has been laid for the new Dred Scott case on state rights!

Just like in Dred Scott, where the Court tried to define citizenship and how laws apply across state lines, today's telemedicine battles raise similar constitutional tensions. The upcoming rulings could set a precedent that reshapes the future of medicine, privacy, and state power.

If the Court allows states to punish providers or patients across state borders, it risks repeating the moral and constitutional mistake of Dred Scott — by denying people their personal autonomy and letting one state impose its will on another.

Such a ruling could kill telemedicine. Imagine this: a cancer specialist in California advising a doctor treating a patient in rural Alaska could be breaking the law — just because they’re not licensed in both states.

All to control what a person does to their onw body... the Republicans want to step between you and your doctor!

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The Supreme Court pocket ruling said that ICE can use race in stopping people...

‘Unconscionably irreconcilable'. Sotomayor rips Supreme Court’s pro-Trump ICE ruling

The liberal justice called the order "unconscionably irreconcilable with our nation’s constitutional guarantees."

By Terry Collins

USA TODAY

Sept. 9, 2025

Key Point:

• Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissenting opinion criticizing the majority's decision and the Trump administration's actions.
• Sotomayor argued the ruling allows the government to seize people based on their appearance, language, and type of work.
• The Supreme Court overturned a lower court's order that had restricted ICE agents' tactics in Los Angeles.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor blasted the Trump administration’s operation of the Los Angeles immigration raids, vowing not to stand idly by while the United States' "constitutional freedoms are lost."

On Sept. 8, the Supreme Court lifted a restraining order from a federal judge in LA who had restricted Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from conducting stops without reasonable suspicion.

In July, US District Judge Maame Frimpong of the Central District of California said the government can’t rely solely on the person’s race, the language they speak, the work they perform, and whether they’re at a particular location, such as a pickup site for day laborers.

Sotomayor called the order "unconscionably irreconcilable with our nation’s constitutional guarantees."

The justice, an Obama appointee, ripped her high court conservative colleagues and the government over the ruling. Sotomayor declared that all Latinos, whether they are U.S. citizens or not, "who work low-wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time, taken away from work, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agents’ satisfaction."

Think about this... college admissions are now banned for even using race as one of the criteria for admission but it is okay to use race as one of the criteria for ICE.

✔️ Police being allowed to consider race among other factors when stopping someone vs.

❌ Colleges being banned from considering race among other factors when admitting someone.

I think that there is something wrong wrong here. I don't see any difference between the two!

✅ Legally defensible? Maybe.
❓ Morally consistent? Highly debatable.