[Sotomayors dissent should be read by every American and taught in
colleges and universities. ]
[[link removed]]

A SUPREME DISSENT: JUSTICE SONIA SOTOMAYOR EVISCERATES THE COURT’S
CIVIL RIGHTS ROLLBACK  
[[link removed]]


 

Stephen Rohde
July 20, 2023
Truthdig
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Sotomayor's dissent should be read by every American and taught in
colleges and universities. _

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is sworn in on Capitol Hill in
Washington, Monday, July 13, 2009, during her confirmation hearing
before the Senate Judiciary Committee. , (Photo: George Bridges/AP)

 

Straining to hand the anti-LGTBQ movement a major legal victory, all
six conservative Supreme Court justices voted on June 30 in _303
Creative, LLC v Elanis _ to uphold a challenge to Colorado’s
anti-discrimination laws. In so doing, they upended decades of key
legal precedent that has long held that the First Amendment does not
entitle commercial enterprises that offer their goods and services to
the general public to discriminate on the basis of race, religion,
sexual orientation or any other protected category.

To get a sense of just how spurious both the case, which relies on a
hypothetical scenario, and the majority decision are — not to
mention the floodgates for discriminatory conduct the decision opens
up — one need only look at Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s stinging
dissent. The full scope of her
[[link removed]] powerful
and widely noted 38-page dissent
[[link removed]], which
was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson deserves
serious attention. It should be read by every American and taught in
colleges and universities, not only for its legal insights and moral
clarity, but also for the guidance it will provide future justices
seeking to repair the immense damage _303 Creative _could well
cause. 

303 Creative LLC is a Colorado company that sells graphic and website
designs for profit. Lorie Smith is the company’s founder and sole
member-owner. She believes same-sex marriages are “false” because
“God’s true story of marriage” is a story of a “union between
one man and one woman.”  Same sex marriage, according to her,
“violates God’s will” and “harms society and children.”

303 Creative has never sold wedding websites, but Smith now believes
that “God is calling her to explain His true story about
marriage.” For that reason, she would like her company to sell
wedding websites “to the public” — just not to same-sex
couples.  She also wants to post a notice on the company’s website
announcing its intent to discriminate. In Smith’s view, “it would
violate [her] sincerely held religious beliefs to create a wedding
website for a same-sex wedding because, by doing so, [she] would be
expressing a message celebrating and promoting a conception of
marriage that [she] believe[s] is contrary to God’s design.”

By Gorsuch’s logic, any business engaged in “creative
expression” can invoke the Court’s new free pass and openly
discriminate on the basis of race, religion, gender, national origin
or any other protected classification. 

Since Smith’s company has never sold a wedding website to any
customer, Colorado has never had to enforce its Anti-Discrimination
Act (“CADA”) against the company. Instead, Smith and her company
sued the state in federal court, seeking a court decree giving them a
special exemption from CADA’s Accommodation Clause and Communication
Clause. The first makes it unlawful for a business to offer itself to
the public yet deny to any individual, because of sexual orientation
among other grounds, the full and equal enjoyment of the business’
goods or services. The latter clause makes it unlawful to advertise
that goods or services will be denied because of sexual orientation,
among other grounds. 

According to Smith, the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment
entitles her company to refuse to sell websites for same-sex weddings,
even though the company plans to offer wedding websites to the rest of
the general public. In other words, the company claims a categorical
exemption from a public accommodations law simply because the company
sells expressive services.

The majority opinion, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, adopts the
entire thrust of 303 Creative’s argument. Gorsuch ignores the
threshold issue — which the Court has often used in the past to
avoid major constitutional controversies — that this is a purely
hypothetical controversy since no same-sex couple has ever asked Smith
to design a wedding website for them. Instead, Gorsuch eagerly jumps
at the chance to advance a fundamental conservative policy goal of
undermining marriage equality. To do so, he weaponizes the First
Amendment by finding that to _compel _Smith to create a website for
same-sex couples — an act of creative expression — violates her
free speech right to be free from government compulsion.  

Despite the fact that Smith grounds her personal beliefs in “God’s
design,” the Court pointedly does not base its decision on freedom
of religion. This appears calculated to clear the path for future
claimants to seek the right to violate anti-discrimination laws on the
basis of any political, ideological or philosophical grounds so long
as they are engaged in “an act of creative expression.”  And
nothing in the majority opinion limits that exemption to LGBTQ
discrimination. By Gorsuch’s logic, any business engaged in
“creative expression” can invoke the Court’s new free pass and
openly discriminate on the basis of race, religion, gender, national
origin or any other protected classification. 

WHILE THE MAJORITY RETREATS FROM THE “PROMISE OF FREEDOM,” THREE
JUSTICES DISSENT

Justice Sotomayor’s pointed and comprehensive dissent began by
pointing out that only five years ago in _Masterpiece
Cakeshop,_ _Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Comm’n, _(2018), “this
Court recognized the ‘general rule’ that religious and
philosophical objections to gay marriage ‘do not allow business
owners and other actors in the economy and in society to deny
protected persons equal access to goods and services under a neutral
and generally applicable public accommodations law.’” 

She also pointed out that in _Masterpiece Cakeshop_ (which the Court
reversed and remanded for further review without deciding whether
one’s right to free speech or free exercise of religion excused that
person from non-discrimination laws), the Court recognized the
“serious stigma” that would result if “purveyors of goods and
services who object to gay marriages for moral and religious
reasons” were “allowed to put up signs saying ‘no goods or
services will be sold if they will be used for gay marriages.’”

Sotomayor’s alarm at the apparent contradiction — indeed,
hypocrisy — handed down by the majority is obvious: “The Court,
for the first time in its history, grants a business open to the
public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a
protected class.”  Indeed, the Court “holds that the company has
a right to post a notice that says, ‘no [wedding websites] will be
sold if they will be used for gay marriages.’”

“Our Constitution contains no right to refuse service to a
disfavored group.”

Sotomayor immediately put the Court’s ruling in the context of what
is happening outside the courthouse. “Around the country, there has
been a backlash to the movement for liberty and equality for gender
and sexual minorities. New forms of inclusion have been met with
reactionary exclusion. This is heartbreaking. Sadly, it is also
familiar. When the civil rights and women’s rights movements sought
equality in public life, some public establishments refused. Some even
claimed, based on sincere religious beliefs, constitutional rights to
discriminate. The brave Justices who once sat on this Court decisively
rejected those claims.”

Declaring the majority opinion “wrong. Profoundly wrong,”
Sotomayor explains why: The anti-discrimination law in question
“targets conduct, not speech, for regulation, and the act of
discrimination has never constituted protected expression under the
First Amendment. Our Constitution contains no right to refuse service
to a disfavored group.”

The majority gives only cursory treatment to the development of
anti-discrimination law in the United States.  By contrast, Sotomayor
devotes the first 20 pages of her dissent to documenting that vital
history in detail.  She definitively establishes how the Court’s
decision in _303 Creative _is so drastically at odds with our
country’s struggle to overcome the effects of slavery, Jim Crow,
segregation and white supremacy in order to guarantee “to every
person the full and equal enjoyment of places of public accommodation
without unjust discrimination.”  The legal duty of a business open
to the public to serve the public without unjust discrimination “is
deeply rooted in our history.”  For Sotomayor, the true power of
this principle lies “in its capacity to evolve, as society comes to
understand more forms of unjust discrimination and, hence, to include
more persons as full and equal members of ‘the public.’”

HOW MANY PRECEDENTS CAN ONE RULING IGNORE?

Sotomayor’s vivid description of the historic struggle to ensure
equal public accommodations for all people reveals that the decision
in _303 Creative_ is not the first time opponents have claimed that
non-discrimination laws violate _their _constitutional rights. 

“Backlashes to race and sex equality gave rise to legal claims of
rights to discriminate, including claims based on First Amendment
freedoms of expression and association,” she notes.  But the Court
has been “unwavering in its rejection of those claims,” because
“invidious discrimination ‘has never been accorded affirmative
constitutional protections’” citing a key decision from 1973.

For example, opponents of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, such as Sen.
John Tower (R, TX), argued that the legislation would deny them “any
freedom to speak or to act on the basis of their religious convictions
or their deep-rooted preferences for associating or not associating
with certain classifications of people.” But Congress rejected those
arguments and concluded that Title II of the Act, in particular, did
not invade “rights of privacy [or] of free association.”

Similar claims attempting to uphold discrimination also lost in the
courts.  In _Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States _(1964), the
Court rejected the argument of the motel owner that Title II was
“tak[ing] away the personal liberty of an individual to run his
business as he sees fit with respect to the selection and service of
his customers.” Instead, the Court cited “a long line of cases”
holding that “prohibition of racial discrimination in public
accommodations” did not “interfer[e] with personal liberty.” 

In _Katzenbach v. McClung_ (1964), the owner of Ollie’s Barbecue
(Ollie McClung) likewise argued that Title II’s application to his
business violated the “personal rights of persons in their personal
convictions” to deny services to Black people.  Dripping with
sarcasm, Sotomayor notes, “McClung did not refuse to transact with
Black people. Oh, no. He was willing to offer them take-out service at
a separate counter. . . .  Only integrated table service, you see,
violated McClung’s core beliefs. So he claimed a constitutional
right to offer Black people a limited menu of his services.”
Citing _Heart of Atlanta Motel,_ the Court rejected this argument. 

In _Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises, Inc._ (1968), the owner of a
chain of drive-in establishments asserted that requiring him to
“contribut[e]” to racial integration in any way violated the First
Amendment by interfering with his religious  liberty, because that
would “controven[e] the will of God.” The Court found this
argument “patently frivolous.” 

Sotomayor observes that fighting discrimination is like “battling
the Hydra;” whenever you defeat “one form of . . .
discrimination,” another “spr[ings] up in its place.”

Yet again, in _Roberts v. United States Jaycees _(1984), the Court
rejected the argument by the United States Jaycees, which sought an
exemption from a Minnesota law that forbade discrimination on the
basis of sex in public accommodations.  The Jaycees argued that to
include women would violate its “members’ constitutional rights of
free speech and association.” “The power of the state to change
the membership of an organization is inevitably the power to change
the way in which it speaks,” they claimed; “the right of the
Jaycees to decide its own membership” was “inseparable,” in its
view, “from its ability to freely express itself.”

On the contrary, the Court in _Roberts _held that the “application
of the Minnesota statute to compel the Jaycees to accept women” did
not infringe the organization’s First Amendment “freedom of
expressive association” because the public accommodations law did
“not aim at the suppression of speech” and did “not distinguish
between prohibited and permitted activity on the basis of
viewpoint.”  The law’s purpose was “eliminating discrimination
and assuring [the State’s] citizens equal access to publicly
available goods and services.” That goal, the Court reasoned, “was
unrelated to the suppression of expression” and “plainly serves
compelling state interests of the highest order.”

In her concurrence, Justice O’Connor stressed that since the U. S.
Jaycees was a predominantly commercial entity open to the public, the
state was “free to impose any rational regulation” on commercial
transactions themselves. “A shopkeeper,” Justice O’Connor
offered as an example, “has no constitutional right to deal only
with persons of one sex.” 

Similarly, the Court had just decided in _Hishon v. King &
Spalding_ (1984) that a law partnership had no constitutional right
to discriminate on the basis of sex in violation of Title VII,
regardless of the fact that the law partnership was an act of
association, and its services (legal advocacy) were expressive;
indeed, they consisted primarily of speech. The law firm had argued
that requiring it to consider a woman for the partnership violated its
First Amendment rights “of free expression” and “of commercial
association.”  The Court rejected this argument and held that the
application of Title VII did not “infringe constitutional rights of
expression or association” because compliance with Title VII did not
“inhibi[t]” the partnership’s ability to advocate for certain
“ideas and beliefs.” The Court reiterated that “‘invidious
private discrimination . . . has never been accorded affirmative
constitutional protections.’”

Quoting Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Sotomayor observes that fighting
discrimination is like “battling the Hydra;” whenever you defeat
“one form of . . . discrimination,” another “spr[ings] up in its
place.” Clearly frustrated, Sotomayor writes, “[t]ime and again,
businesses and other commercial entities have claimed constitutional
rights to discriminate. And time and again, this Court has
courageously stood up to those claims — until today. Today, the
Court shrinks. A business claims that it would like to sell wedding
websites to the general public yet deny those same websites to gay and
lesbian couples. Under state law, the business is free to include, or
not to include, any lawful message it wants in its wedding websites.
The only thing the business may not do is deny whatever websites it
offers on the basis of sexual orientation.”

CONSERVATIVE COURT’S RUSE OF CONFLATING FREE SPEECH WITH
DISCRIMINATORY CONDUCT

Sotomayor’s dissent couldn’t be clearer: “The First Amendment
does not entitle petitioners to a special exemption from a state law
that simply requires them to serve all members of the public on equal
terms. Such a law does not directly regulate petitioners’ speech at
all, and petitioners may not escape the law by claiming an expressive
interest in discrimination. The First Amendment likewise does not
exempt petitioners from the law’s prohibition on posting a notice
that they will deny goods or services based on sexual orientation.”

The Supreme Court, Sotomayor explains, has long held that “the First
Amendment does not prevent restrictions directed at commerce or
conduct from imposing incidental burdens on speech.” _Sorrell v.
IMS Health Inc._ (2011). “Congress, for example, can prohibit
employers from discriminating in hiring on the basis of race. The fact
that this will require an employer to take down a sign reading
‘White Applicants Only’ hardly means that the law should be
analyzed as one regulating the employer’s speech rather than
conduct.” _Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights,
Inc._ (2006) (“_FAIR”_). 

The decision itself inflicts a kind of stigmatic harm, on top of any
harm caused by denials of service.

The law at issue in _FAIR_ was the Solomon Amendment, which
prohibited an institution of higher education in receipt of federal
funding from denying a military recruiter “the same access to its
campus and students that it provides to the nonmilitary recruiter
receiving the most favorable access.” 

A group of law schools challenged the Solomon Amendment based on their
sincere objection to the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”
policy, a homophobic policy that barred openly LGBT people from
serving in the military. The law schools claimed that the Solomon
Amendment infringed the schools’ First Amendment freedom of speech,
because they provided recruiting assistance in the form of emails,
notices on bulletin boards and flyers. As the Court acknowledged,
those services “clearly involve speech.” And the Solomon Amendment
required “schools offering such services to other recruiters” to
provide them equally “on behalf of the military,” even if the
school deeply objected to creating such speech. 

But, as the Court further explained, that requirement did not
transform the equal provision of services into “compelled speech”
of the kind barred by the First Amendment, because the school’s
speech was “only ‘compelled’ if, and to the extent, the school
provides such speech for other recruiters.”  Any speech compulsion,
the Court held, was “plainly incidental to the Solomon
Amendment’s regulation of conduct.” 

As Sotomayor explains, “the same principle resolves this case.” 

Smith wants to post a notice on her company’s homepage that the
company will refuse to sell any website for a same sex couple’s
wedding. But the Supreme Court in _Sorrell_ has already said that
“a ban on race-based hiring may require employers to remove ‘White
Applicants Only’ signs.” And citing _FAIR_, Sotomayor reiterates
that the law “does not dictate the content of speech at all, which
is only ‘compelled’ if, and to the extent,” the company offers
“such speech” to other customers_._ All the company has to do is
offer its services without regard to customers’ protected
characteristics. Any effect on the company’s speech is therefore
“incidental” to the state’s content-neutral regulation of
conduct, as was held in _FAIR_ and _Hurley_.

“Once these features of the law are understood,” Sotomayor writes,
“it becomes clear that petitioners’ freedom of speech is not
abridged in any meaningful sense, factual or legal. Petitioners remain
free to advocate the idea that same-sex marriage betrays God’s laws.
. . . Even if Smith believes God is calling her to do so through her
for-profit company, the company need not hold out its goods or
services to the public at large.” Finally, Sotomayor points out
that “even if the company offers its goods or services to the
public, it remains free under state law to decide what messages to
include or not to include. To repeat (because it escapes the
majority): The company can put whatever ‘harmful’ or
‘low-value’ speech it wants on its websites. It can ‘tell people
what they do not want to hear,’‘ as the majority puts it. “All
the company may not do is offer wedding websites to the public yet
refuse those same websites to gay and lesbian couples,”
citing _Runyon_, which distinguished between schools’ ability to
express their bigoted view “that racial segregation is desirable”
and the schools’ proscribable “practice of excluding racial
minorities..

Sotomayor offers so many cogent  examples, they are worth quoting at
length:  

_A professional photographer is generally free to choose her subjects.
She can make a living taking photos of flowers or celebrities. The
State does not regulate that choice. If the photographer opens a
portrait photography business to the public, however, the business
may not deny to any person, because of race, sex, national origin, or
other protected characteristic, the full and equal enjoyment of
whatever services the business chooses to offer. That is so even
though portrait photography services are customized and expressive. If
the business offers school photos, it may not deny those services to
multiracial children because the owner does not want to create any
speech indicating that interracial couples are acceptable. If the
business offers corporate headshots, it may not deny those services
to women because the owner believes a woman’s place is in the home.
And if the business offers passport photos, it may not deny those
services to Mexican Americans because the owner opposes immigration
from Mexico. The same is true for sexual-orientation discrimination.
If a photographer opens a photo booth outside of city hall and offers
to sell newlywed photos captioned with the words ‘Just Married,’
she may not refuse to sell that service to a newlywed gay or lesbian
couple, even if she believes the couple is not, in fact, just married
because in her view their marriage is ‘false.’_

Because any burden on petitioners’ speech is incidental to the
law’s neutral regulation of commercial conduct, the regulation
satisfies the standards established by the Court, Sotomayor
explains.  “The law’s application ‘promotes a substantial
government interest that would be achieved less effectively absent the
regulation.’ . . . Indeed, this Court has already held that the
state’s goal of ‘eliminating discrimination and assuring its
citizens equal access to publicly available goods and services’ is
‘unrelated to the suppression of expression and ‘plainly serves
compelling state interests of the highest order.’” And the Court
has also held that “by prohibiting only ‘acts of invidious
discrimination in the distribution of publicly available goods,
services, and other advantages, the law ‘responds precisely to the
substantive problem which legitimately concerns the State and abridges
no more speech . . . than is necessary to accomplish that
purpose.’”

Sotamayor, “Frustrated by this inescapable logic,” chides the
majority for “dial[ing] up the rhetoric, asserting that ‘Colorado
seeks to compel [the company’s] speech in order to excise certain
ideas or viewpoints from the public dialogue.’ The state’s ‘very
purpose in seeking to apply its law,’ in the majority’s view, is
‘the coercive elimination of dissenting ideas about marriage.’”

She calls this “an astonishing view of the law,” because it is
“contrary to the fact that a law requiring public-facing businesses
to accept all comers ‘is textbook viewpoint neutral,’”
citing _Christian Legal Soc. Chapter of Univ. of Cal., Hastings
College of Law v. Martinez_ (2010).  It is also contrary to the fact
that Colorado’s law “allows Smith to include in her company’s
goods and services whatever ‘dissenting views about marriages’ she
wants,” and it is “contrary to this Court’s clear holdings that
the purpose of a public accommodations law, as applied to the
commercial act of discrimination in the sale of publicly available
goods and services, is to ensure equal access to and equal dignity in
the public marketplace.”

Sotomayor also finds it “dispiriting” that the majority suggests
that this case resembles the historic decision in _West Virginia Bd.
of Ed. v. Barnette_ (1943), in which the Court struck down a state
law requiring students who belonged to the Jehovah Witnesses to say
the Pledge of Allegiance every day at school, contrary to their
religious beliefs.  Sotomayor points out that the Court
in _FAIR_ already held that a “content-neutral equal-access policy
is ‘a far cry’ from a mandate to ‘endorse’ a pledge chosen by
the Government” because “it trivializes the freedom protected in
Barnette” to equate the two. “Requiring Smith’s company to abide
by a law against invidious discrimination in commercial sales to the
public does not conscript her into espousing the government’s
message. It does not ‘invad[e]’ her ‘sphere of intellect’ or
violate her constitutional ‘right to differ.’… All it does is
require her to stick to her bargain.”

EQUAL TERMS

“Today is a sad day in American constitutional law and in the lives
of LGBT people,” Sotomayor writes in the concluding section of her
dissent.  “The Supreme Court of the United States declares that a
particular kind of business, though open to the public, has a
constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class.

The Court does so for the first time in its history. By issuing this
new license to discriminate in a case brought by a company that seeks
to deny same-sex couples the full and equal enjoyment of its services,
the immediate, symbolic effect of the decision is to mark gays and
lesbians for second-class status. In this way, the decision itself
inflicts a kind of stigmatic harm, on top of any harm caused by
denials of service. The opinion of the Court is, quite literally, a
notice that reads: ‘Some services may be denied to same-sex
couples.’” 

She continues, “Ask any LGBT person and you will learn just how
often they are forced to navigate life in this way. They must ask
themselves: If I reveal my identity to this co-worker, or to this
shopkeeper, will they treat me the same way? If I hold the hand of my
partner in this setting, will someone stare at me, harass me, or even
hurt me? It is an awful way to live. Freedom from this way of life is
the very object of a law that declares: All members of the public are
entitled to inhabit public spaces on equal terms.” 

“Freedom from this way of life is the very object of a law that
declares: All members of the public are entitled to inhabit public
spaces on equal terms.” 

Sotomayor is pleased that the “LGBT rights movement has made
historic strides, and I am proud of the role this Court recently
played in that history.” Today, however, “we are taking steps
backward. A slew of anti-LGBT laws have been passed in some parts of
the country,” which “variously censor discussion of sexual
orientation and gender identity in schools, … and ban drag shows in
public,” yet “we are told that the real threat to free speech is
that a commercial business open to the public might have to serve all
members of the public.” “In this pivotal moment,” she continues,
“the Court had an opportunity to reaffirm its commitment to equality
on behalf of all members of society, including LGBT people. It does
not do so.”

And Sotomayor sees a much broader impact in what the majority has
done.  “Although the consequences of today’s decision might be
most pressing for the LGBT community, the decision’s logic cannot be
limited to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender
identity. The decision threatens to balkanize the market and to allow
the exclusion of other groups from many services.”

As her dissent states, “A website designer could equally refuse to
create a wedding website for an interracial couple, for example. How
quickly we forget that opposition to interracial marriage was often
because ‘Almighty God . . . did not intend for the races to
mix,’” citing_ Loving v. Virginia_ (1967).  “Yet the reason
for discrimination need not even be religious, as this case arises
under the Free Speech Clause. A stationer could refuse to sell a birth
announcement for a disabled couple because she opposes their having a
child. A large retail store could reserve its family portrait services
for ‘traditional’ families. And so on. Wedding websites, birth
announcements, family portraits, epitaphs. These are not just words
and images. They are the most profound moments in a human’s life.
They are the moments that give that life personal and cultural
meaning.”

Yet, the justice somehow summons the hope that this shameful decision
“does not mean that we are powerless in the face of the decision.
The meaning of our Constitution is found not in any law volume, but in
the spirit of the people who live under it. Every business owner in
America has a choice whether to live out the values in the
Constitution. Make no mistake: Invidious discrimination is not one of
them. ‘[D]iscrimination in any form and in any degree has no
justifiable part whatever in our democratic way of life,’” citing
the dissent of Justice Frank Murphy in _Korematsu v. United States_,
(1944), wherein he added,  “It is unattractive in any setting but
it is utterly revolting among a free people who have embraced the
principles set forth in the Constitution of the United States.

“The unattractive lesson of the majority opinion is this,”
Sotomayor ends her dissent: “What’s mine is mine, and what’s
yours is yours. The lesson of the history of public accommodations
laws is altogether different. It is that in a free and democratic
society, there can be no social castes. And for that to be true, it
must be true in the public market. For the ‘promise of freedom’ is
an empty one if the Government is ‘powerless to assure that a dollar
in the hands of [one person] will purchase the same thing as a dollar
in the hands of a[nother],’” citing the Supreme Court in 1968
in _Jones v.Alfred H. Mayer Co._, “Because the Court today retreats
from that promise, I dissent.”  

Sotomayor’s brilliant opinion is part of an historic tradition in
which visionary justices such as Ruth Bader Ginsberg, William Brennan,
Oliver Wendall Holmes Jr. and John Marshall Harlan issued powerful
dissents not only to dissect the flaws in majority opinions but to
articulate a better path forward for future cases to treat the
Constitution as an instrument of justice and equality for all people.

_Stephen Rohde is a constitutional scholar, lecturer, writer,
political activist and retired civil rights lawyer. He is the author
of “American Words of Freedom” and “Freedom of Assembly,” and
is a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Review of Books and Los
Angeles Lawyer magazine._

* U.S. Supreme Court
[[link removed]]
* anti-LGBTQ
[[link removed]]
* Justice Sonia Sotomayor
[[link removed]]
* dissent
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]