Where’s the Courage

by Ruth A. Sheets

The Supreme Court ended its term this week and demonstrated once again that courage is simply not part of their repertoire.

Maybe that is what we want in Supreme Court justices, as little manifest courage as can be managed. 

During this term, the justices decided that corporations are persons with much more value than any other persons.  They awarded victories to nearly every corporation that stood against the “little guy” with the guidance and support of the Chamber of Commerce.  A woman’s health was destroyed by drugs not properly reported as having massive side effects, but the pharmaceutical industry was declared immune to responsibility.  Standing for the weak would have required courage.  We’ll all suffer for this one. 

Now, your boss can sexually or in any other way harass you and it is only really harassment if that person has the power to fire you.  The Court does not have the courage to acknowledge that real sexual harassment still goes on every day, and not always by the higher-ups who actually do the hiring and firing in large corporations. 

It seems that when our courts are bought and paid for by big business, it is hard for them to stand against these businesses even when the plaintiffs really do have a good case. 

Then, the Court’s Hypocrican constituents begged for the Court to put down the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  The timid justices said “Now’s our chance.  We’ll just say that things are better now while we give our buddies in the racist states free reign to stop those people we/they don’t want voting.  Awesome!”

The justices couldn’t even see that the young woman who challenged the University of Texas “affirmative action” practices just didn’t meet the school’s standards and that lots of other people were turned down just as she was.  She was nothing special, well, she was white, after all.  Did the justices acknowledge that UT is really working to make their campus more inclusive?  Of course not.  That would have required the courage they do not have.  They spewed some wishy-washy nonsense about using race only if there is no other way to include more non-white students

To make sure that people didn’t start an American Spring, they threw a little candy to the LGBT community.  There was no courage here even though I hear the word a lot this week.  They didn’t say, as they should have that all restriction against gay marriage in the United States is unconstitutional.  They merely sent the Prop 8 ruling back to the lower courts, not exactly courageous.  They put down DOMA, but that was unconstitutional when it was passed as a political maneuver in 1996 to appease the Republicans.  Where is the courage?

But, there was some political courage displayed this week.  Texas State Senator Wendy Davis, stood 11 hours to filibuster an appalling anti-woman bill in the Texas legislature.  Despite some ridiculous rules and procedures, she stood there alone, no support, faced with Republicans just dying to shut her down.  That is real courage and scares the heck out of all those Hypocricans who have none but pretend they do.  And, of course, they are trying their best to make what she did seem trivial and un-American.  Pathetic!