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Post by onelasttime on Jun 17, 2021 14:12:36 GMT
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Post by onelasttime on Jun 17, 2021 14:14:58 GMT
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Post by onelasttime on Jun 17, 2021 14:18:54 GMT
From ABC News…
“We conclude that the plaintiffs in this suit failed to show a concrete, particularized injury fairly traceable to the defendants’ conduct in enforcing the specific statutory provision they attack as unconstitutional. They have failed to show that they have standing to attack as unconstitutional the Act’s minimum essential coverage provision. Therefore, we reverse the Fifth Circuit’s judgment in respect to standing, vacate the judgment, and remand the case with instructions to dismiss," Breyer wrote.
The fate of Obamacare will likely have far-reaching political consequences for President Joe Biden and potentially for an estimated 21 million Americans currently covered by the landmark Obamacare law, including many with preexisting conditions.“
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Post by onelasttime on Jun 17, 2021 14:37:40 GMT
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Post by onelasttime on Jun 17, 2021 14:42:22 GMT
And in other news from the Supreme Court…
It’s ok to discriminate against a group of individuals and hide behind religious beliefs.
When is this country going to learn its NOT ok to discriminate against a group of individuals solely because of the color of their skin, because of their sex, or because of their sexual orientation for any reason?
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Post by onelasttime on Jun 17, 2021 14:43:52 GMT
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Post by onelasttime on Jun 17, 2021 14:55:08 GMT
“The justices ruled unanimously against Philadelphia, which requires the foster care agencies it works with not to discriminate. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the city's refusal to work with Catholic Social Services violated the First Amendment.”
So because Catholic Social Services refuses to work with gay couples not because they are potentially bad parents/people but because of their sexual orientation the City of Philadelphia chooses not work with them. The Supreme Court finds The City of Philadelphia is in the wrong because it is violating CSS first amendment rights to discriminate.
Do you know how screwed up that is?
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Deleted
Posts: 0
Apr 25, 2024 7:57:27 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Jun 17, 2021 15:10:26 GMT
Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented.
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Deleted
Posts: 0
Apr 25, 2024 7:57:27 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Jun 17, 2021 15:15:08 GMT
Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented. Thank you for this. I like when a pea posts who did or did not vote.
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Post by onelasttime on Jun 17, 2021 15:22:48 GMT
Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented. Thank you for this. I like when a pea posts who did or did not vote. The dissenters were shown in the first post.
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lizacreates
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 3,856
Aug 29, 2015 2:39:19 GMT
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Post by lizacreates on Jun 17, 2021 15:30:50 GMT
Until the next time. Because as many know by now, the GOP will not leave the ACA alone.
What Congress should do, IMO, is to reinstate the individual mandate and set the penalty at a very low amount, maybe even just $1. Alternatively, they could offer a tax credit instead of a penalty to induce people to get insurance. As long as they are exercising their taxing power, the law becomes protected from further challenge like this latest one.
Unless they do something, there'll be another set of bozos bringing this to court and as sure as night follows day there'll be another judge who will agree.
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Post by Darcy Collins on Jun 17, 2021 15:48:06 GMT
I find the fact that the decision was unanimous on the Philadelphia case interesting. I imagine the fact that there are multiple agencies the city works with, so no gay couple was actually refused as a foster parent as they simply went to another agency made the decision to balance LBQT and religious rights easier vs if there was only one path to being a foster parent and the agency refused to screen gay couple. But I haven't followed the case closely and need to read more about the decision - the LA Times article indicates that the narrowness of the ruling may have allowed 3 liberal judges to support with the decision. www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-06-17/supreme-court-catholic-foster-care-agency-over-philadelphia-gay-rights-law
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lizacreates
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 3,856
Aug 29, 2015 2:39:19 GMT
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Post by lizacreates on Jun 17, 2021 16:19:28 GMT
I find the fact that the decision was unanimous on the Philadelphia case interesting. I imagine the fact that there are multiple agencies the city works with, so no gay couple was actually refused as a foster parent as they simply went to another agency made the decision to balance LBQT and religious rights easier vs if there was only one path to being a foster parent and the agency refused to screen gay couple. But I haven't followed the case closely and need to read more about the decision - the LA Times article indicates that the narrowness of the ruling may have allowed 3 liberal judges to support with the decision. www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-06-17/supreme-court-catholic-foster-care-agency-over-philadelphia-gay-rights-lawVery good point. I’m sorry to say this, but the fault here lies in Philadelphia. The issue is that although Philadelphia has non-discriminatory policies, they grant exemptions to those policies. If a gov’t denies that discretionary practice based on religion, then it violates the First Amendment. There’s no other way to look at it and I believe that’s why the ruling was unanimous.
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Post by epeanymous on Jun 17, 2021 16:28:16 GMT
I would love it if someone would tally up all of the $$$ spent to challenge a program to provide health care access to people.
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Post by revirdsuba99 on Jun 17, 2021 16:59:29 GMT
Would have provided a bundle to help pay for it!
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Post by lucyg on Jun 17, 2021 19:54:45 GMT
I wasn’t totally paying attention, but a legal analyst on MSNBC was saying that the Philadelphia decision is very narrow and applies only to this case, not something general that applies across the board. Happy to see the ACA survive another challenge. It really is astonishing to see so much effort continuing to go into trying to make health care less accessible to everyone. Has anyone told them Obama isn’t president anymore, so trying to hurt him isn’t nearly as much fun (and productive) as it used to be?
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Post by papersilly on Jun 17, 2021 19:58:42 GMT
the GOP needs to give up on trying to repeal the ACA. it's been around for 9 years. the GOP has not provided an acceptable replacement and more people support it now. it's just become a part of our lives.
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Post by onelasttime on Jun 17, 2021 20:27:07 GMT
In my world any type of discrimination by one group of people against group of people is wrong. Doesn’t matter the reason, like religious beliefs, it’s just plain wrong. Period end of discussion. From FiveThirtyEight…. link” In A Unanimous Decision, The Supreme Court Delivered Another Victory For The Religious Right”From the article… UPDATE (June 17, 2021, 10:59 a.m.): On Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision that Philadelphia’s requirement that Catholic Social Services abide by the city’s nondiscrimination policy regarding same-sex couples violated the First Amendment’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion. The majority opinion ruled narrowly, avoiding the question of whether to overrule the Supreme Court’s decision in Employment Division v. Smith. This piece from Monday outlines what was at stake in the case. Over the past few decades, particularly this one, the U.S. Supreme Court has increasingly lent a sympathetic ear to those who say their religious beliefs are being trampled on, carving out one religious exemption after another to the First Amendment. Now, the court is poised to take another giant leap this term, possibly delivering the religious right another major victory in its recurring face-off with LGBTQ equality. The religious right has already won a number of other cases in the past few years: In 2014, the court ruled 5-4 that the town of Greece, New York, could open its town hall meetings with sectarian prayers, as long as no one was coerced to participate and the practice was open to all religions. In 2017, the court ruled 7-2 that a Lutheran church in Missouri could receive government funds for its preschool playground despite the First Amendment’s guarantee of the separation of church and state. In 2020, a banner year for religious exemptions, the court ruled that religious schools are not held to antidiscrimination hiring laws, that their students are eligible for state-funded scholarships and that religious entities cannot be compelled to offer their employees contraceptive health care. And in February, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the court sided with houses of worship seeking exemptions to a ban on holding indoor services. The court found that, though public health and safety were important, they did not outweigh the right to free exercise of religion. The court underscored that ruling again in April, when in another 5-4 ruling it concluded that religious gatherings in private homes were not subject to government-imposed COVID-19 restrictions.”
A new, major victory may come with Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. The case centers on whether a Catholic-run foster care services provider can turn away same-sex couples under the First Amendment’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion. Philadelphia requires religious organizations that receive city funding and contracts to follow its nondiscrimination policy regarding same-sex couples. That policy applies to both religious and nonreligious organizations, but Catholic Social Services, one of the largest child welfare service providers in Pennsylvania, is arguing that it should not have to consider same-sex couples as foster parents, as homosexuality and same-sex marriage go against church doctrine.Two lower courts have ruled in favor of the city, upholding as precedent the Supreme Court’s 1990 decision in Employment Division v. Smith, which requires any law infringing on religion to be neutral — not targeted at any specific religion — and applied equally to all. But in ruling on Fulton, it’s possible the justices could overturn Smith, a decision in which the conservative Catholic Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the majority opinion.
What is at stake is the interpretation of the free exercise clause of the Constitution,” said Carl H. Esbeck, an emeritus professor of law at the University of Missouri who filed an amicus brief in support of CSS for the National Association of Evangelicals. “You’d think this is an issue that was long ago decided, but it is really up for grabs here because if you overrule Smith then suddenly the free exercise clause offers a lot more protection than it has in the last 30 years. That is why this case is on everybody’s watch list.” Esbeck and other court watchers expect CSS to win, too. Steven K. Green, director of the Center for Religion, Law and Democracy at Willamette University, wrote in April for The Conversation that “[r]eligious claimants have been on a winning streak before the Supreme Court in recent years.” And, indeed, a recent study from legal scholars Lee Epstein and Eric Posner found that the court has ruled in favor of religious claimants 81 percent of the time since Chief Justice John Roberts was appointed in 2005. In the 52 years before his appointment, that figure stood at about 50 percent. A blue grid background with two hands holding up signs that say “Keep Abortion Legal” and “Stop Abortion Now” RELATED: Most Americans Don’t Want Roe v. Wade Repealed. Many Also Support Restrictions On Abortion. Read more. » The beneficiaries of these rulings have changed, too. In the 20th century, court decisions often protected religious minorities like atheists. For example, a 1963 ruling prohibited compulsory sectarian prayer in public schools, and a 1972 ruling allowed parents to take their children out of school for religious reasons. But decisions in the past decade or so have repeatedly protected mainstream religious majorities — usually Christian. “[T]his transformation is largely the result of changes in the Court’s personnel,” Epstein and Posner wrote in their study. “ majority of Roberts Court justices are ideologically conservative and religiously devout—a significant break from the past.”
Indeed, six of the nine justices — Roberts, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Sonia Sotomayor, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh — are Catholic, the highest number in the history of the court.1 And Kavanaugh raised eyebrows last year when he dissented from the court’s majority opinion, authored by Roberts, that rejected a California church’s challenge to the state’s limitations on in-person gatherings due to COVID-19. Though the court ruled that the church could hold services — but only at limited capacity — Kavanaugh felt that the decision did not go far enough in protecting religious freedom. He wrote that the state’s COVID-19 laws “indisputably discriminates against religion” in violation of the free exercise clause. Roberts, seemingly upbraiding Kavanaugh for his framing of the case as deliberately prejudicial toward religion, wrote that “[t]he notion that it is ‘indisputably clear’ that the Government’s limitations are unconstitutional seems quite improbable.”
Another development in this shift toward favoring exemptions for religious liberty is “Project Blitz” — a strategy of the religious right to flood state legislatures with controversial religious liberty laws intended to challenge the status quo by reaching the Supreme Court. Supported by a coalition of conservative Christian organizations, Project Blitz targets LGBTQ rights, women’s reproductive rights and more. And in Fulton, CSS is represented by The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which has taken multiple cases that originated with Project Blitz’s model legislation. The Becket Fund claims to have won 87 percent of its almost 200 cases to date.
Legal scholars see two likely routes for an eventual ruling on Fulton. First, in ruling for CSS, the court could overturn Smith. Marci Hamilton, a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania’s Fels Institute of Government who filed an amicus brief in support of the city of Philadelphia, likens Smith to a stop sign in front of a church. “Everybody has to stop there, no matter what you believe,” she said.
But if Smith is overturned, she continued, that would mean only certain laws would apply to religious entities like CSS. A pastor late for church, she said, could zip right past a stop sign.
“That pastor has an argument he never had before if Smith is no longer the law,” Hamilton said. “The real danger, and in my view, the evil that resides in this concept of religious liberty without regard to consideration of the common good is that we end up permitting religious actors to question laws that are necessary for all of us. It will open the floodgates to religious organizations saying they shouldn’t have to cover any medical procedures they deem against their faith, whether it is a blood transfusion, reproductive care or covering vaccines.”
But not everyone views Smith being overturned as a bad thing. Howard Slugh, general counsel of the Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty, filed an amicus brief for CSS and would welcome the demise of Smith. “If the court overturns Smith, it would give much more protection to every religious person throughout the country,” he said. “It means the government will have to meet a much higher bar” before it can infringe on the free exercise of religion.
The second path the court might take would be to carve out an exemption specifically for CSS and, by extension, any other religious group that objects to same-sex couples. Many Fulton observers say this is the course they expect the court to take.
“I suspect we will see an opinion that aims to be narrow — one that doesn’t overturn Smith but finds for CSS that the city is not applying their exemptions neutrally,” said Amanda Shafer Berman, an attorney who co-wrote an amicus brief for the Annie E. Casey Foundation in support of Philadelphia. “I think they can end with a ruling for petitioners that doesn’t overturn the apple cart but is one more precedent of a tougher look at government infringing on religious freedom.”
Berman points out that in the oral arguments, which the court heard (remotely) on Nov. 4, the justices asked a number of questions about exemptions that the city of Philadelphia does allow to its nondiscrimination policy — for instance, when a family is not suited to foster a disabled child or does not have the means to care for a child with special needs.
Either way, the impact of a decision for CSS could be enormous, said Green of the Center for Religion, Law and Democracy. Overturning Smith would mean endowing religion with “most-favored nation status” — a phrase coined by the First Amendment scholar and law school professor Douglas Laycock and co-opted by Kavanaugh in his dissent on COVID-19 regulations. Essentially, the concern is that religious liberty would almost always outweigh any other government concerns, like health, public safety and nondiscrimination.
“If you elevate religious objections to neutral laws, then potentially any religious entity that contracts with the government, or any business that doesn’t want to be subject to nondiscrimination laws could say, ‘We have a religious objection to serving same-sex couples or providing certain types of health care,’” Green said. “If they rule that way, I think you are going to find a host of businesses that will raise that claim.”
And if the court makes the more narrow ruling, Green continued, that could have a sweeping impact as well. It all depends on what the judges value more — the rights of religious practitioners or LGBTQ rights.
“I have very little doubt that the religious conservatives on the bench could say there is nothing in the Constitution that mentions LGBTQ rights,” he said. “But we have something in the Constitution that talks about religious rights, and that’s called the First Amendment.”
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Post by onelasttime on Jun 17, 2021 21:50:33 GMT
From ABC News article
“The refusal of Philadelphia to contract with CSS for the provision of foster care services unless it agrees to certify same-sex couples as foster parents cannot survive strict scrutiny, and violates the First Amendment," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. Me: They are denying these couples the chance to be foster parents not because of something they said or that they did that wouldn’t make them good foster parents but because of who they are a gay couple. That is discrimination when you apply that standard to a class/group of people.
Roberts said that the group "seeks only an accommodation that will allow it to continue serving the children of Philadelphia in a manner consistent with its religious beliefs; it does not seek to impose those beliefs on anyone else."
Catholic Social Services is affiliated with the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.
Philadelphia learned in 2018 from a newspaper reporter that the agency would not certify same-sex couples to become foster parents. The city has said it requires that the two dozen-plus foster care agencies it works with not to discriminate as part of their contracts. The city asked the Catholic agency to change its policy, but the group declined. As a result, Philadelphia stopped referring additional children to the agency.”
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