OUR SUPREME COURT - NOT FOR THE PEOPLE

By Ruth A. Sheets

On February 8, 2024, the Supreme Court heard the case that challenged Colorado’s right to keep Trump off the primary ballot of the state due to his being an insurrectionist.  I was pretty sure the SC would force Colorado to put Trump back on the ballot but was not sure exactly how it would be done. 

I knew the Colorado case was lost for sure when Justice Brown shared a reading of aspects of history related, she said, to the 14^th amendment.  I didn’t get much from her argument, but since it sounded very lawyeresque, and Justice Kagan joined in opposing Colorado, also on some grounds I didn’t understand fully, it was clear Colorado had lost, even though no decision has been handed down yet.    When even the “liberal” justices took up the “conservative” cause,” there was no hope that Colorado, a state that had the right according to the Constitution to keep insurrectionists and those who aid and comfort insurrectionists off the ballot would be able to do it.

So, let’s see, states can gerrymander to their heart’s content, can make up all kinds of voter suppression laws despite the Constitution’s stated right of every citizen of this country age 18 and older has the right to vote, can decide that state legislatures can control women’s bodily autonomy, they can ban books and threaten to jail women for miscarriages or leaving their state for medical assistance, but can’t keep an insurrectionist off the ballot.  Uh-huh! 

Unfortunately, it seems our current Supreme Court (mostly the conservatives) has proven itself over and over that it likes the Constitution only when it agrees with their own beliefs, often religious ones even though most of our founders believed in a clear separation of church and state.  The “conservatives” claim to be "originalists," trying to pretend they know what the founders were thinking if they thought about the issue at all, then rejecting any of those supposed thoughts that don't agree with them.  On rare occasions, when little is at stake, they might rule in a way that helps someone other than themselves and their donors, like same-sex marriage, but not if it is a major decision with critical consequences for this nation.   

• - They gave the presidency in 2000 to W. Bush who had not won the popular vote or the Florida vote, had the ballots been permitted by the court to be recounted. 
• - They decided corporations are persons but not that they should be actually treated as persons, except when it comes to money, claiming those corporate "persons" should be able to donate as much money as they want to PACs and political campaigns and no one actually had to know to whom and how much, while actual citizens can't do that (Citizens United). 
• - They gutted the Voting Rights Act even though it was confirming the rights of Black Americans to vote (15th amendment), wrongly declaring racism and its discrimination were a thing of the past (Shelby). 
• - The Dobbs decision lied that abortion was not legal at the time of the founding so it was up to the states to decide a woman's fate on the grounds that a 17^th century witch hunter knew anything about women or abortion.  The 14th Amendment gives everyone privacy, but to the SC conservatives and their state pseudo-christian supporters, not women. 
• - Religious groups can discriminate against anyone they don’t like or who does not share their world view even when the case brought is a fiction (the case involving wedding websites).

Trump is an insurrectionist and even if he was not physically present at the Capitol on January 6th, he was the architect of the violence and would have been happier had there been more deaths, particularly that of Mike Pence.  Had any other American plotted or incited such an event, he/she would have been in jail for decades if not life.  Somehow the con artist, created TV star continues his Teflon status where everything just slides off him. 

Trump was recently declared by the DC Court to have no blanket immunity as president, so he and his “lawyers” has sent that decision to the Supreme Court.  The Court will be faced with the dilemma that if they give their Donnie immunity, Biden would have it too and could then legally arrest Trump for his significant crimes and hold him in jail without bail.  What one president is allowed to do the others may too, or that’s the way it should be if all things were equal.  Unfortunately nothing related to Trump is equal.

Trump should be disallowed from the ballots in every state, but our SC just can't manage that for fear of the Trump supporters that the Court has permitted to be armed and dangerous.  The Supreme Court justices might worry about violence done by Trumpers and Trumpettes, but they cared nothing for the suffering women would face if they passed off abortion rights to states.  Yep, the 6 will in this case, care what their donors and Trump supporters think.  After all, they are mostly white and a bunch of them have guns.  Those folks have regularly nearly with impunity, threatened anyone who dares to  publicly criticize their Don, their deity. 

The SC seems to be working hard to undermine our democracy on behalf of rich white “Christian” men and corporations, and I don't see any change in its direction.  Their idea of making America great again seems to be moving backward toward the 19^th century courts that nearly exclusively gave rights to rich white men over everyone else. Well, it is important that we make it clear that those days are gone and our diverse society demands something different. 

It is not clear why our SC might stand with a former president whose behavior is regularly on the edge of illegal, crossing over now and then.  It is too bad so many people in our nation choose not to see that in reality, Trump is a whiney child-man who is an insurrectionist, and who, along with his congressional troop of insurrectionists, should not be permitted to hold any office ever again.  Our SC is expected to find a twisted way to force states to let their Donnie and the other insurrectionists stay on ballots and hold office if elected.  That shows us all that for our Supreme Court, following our Constitution is conditional, making them not very trustworthy.  To keep future and current presidents from becoming criminals, the SC may deny Trump immunity or just revert the case to the lower court.  They may take a long time to do it though to give their Donnie more time on the campaign trail.  

The SC needs to be reformed.  Term limits for the justices, a limit on the number of justices a president can appoint per term, expanding the SC to 13 or more members, a code of ethics that has real consequences, and limiting the scope of their rulings would be a good start.  Congress can according to the Constitution do all of those things.  The question, will they?  Not with the current make-up.  

Therefore, if we want a Supreme Court that is for the people and that will protect and defend our democracy, we had all better vote and get everyone we know to the polls or we will lose many more of our rights, possibly our democracy too.  This is no longer a hypothetical.