Oh yeah, they refused to hear Indiana's(?) currently blocked abortion law leaving it blocked, which is good, but said the fetal remains requirements were legal, which is bad (sorta.)
That alone seems like grounds to nuke the fillibuster next time the Dems have a chance. You don't negotiate with bad faith actors
The only area the filibuster remains is on legislation. Which is one that I doubt enough individual Senators want to give up. It's already dead for appointments. They also killed Blue Slips this Congress.
Oh yeah, they refused to hear Indiana's(?) currently blocked abortion law leaving it blocked, which is good, but said the fetal remains requirements were legal, which is bad (sorta.)
Yeah and Thomas' comments on that suggested that he might rule against birth control, not just abortion.
Oh yeah, they refused to hear Indiana's(?) currently blocked abortion law leaving it blocked, which is good, but said the fetal remains requirements were legal, which is bad (sorta.)
Yeah and Thomas' comments on that suggested that he might rule against birth control, not just abortion.
Did anyone join him on his dissent?
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
It's tremendously depressing that 'declined to hear the case' is the best news we can possibly hope to hear from SCOTUS for the next several decades, most likely.
Oh yeah, they refused to hear Indiana's(?) currently blocked abortion law leaving it blocked, which is good, but said the fetal remains requirements were legal, which is bad (sorta.)
Yeah and Thomas' comments on that suggested that he might rule against birth control, not just abortion.
It's tremendously depressing that 'declined to hear the case' is the best news we can possibly hope to hear from SCOTUS for the next several decades, most likely.
On abortion matters, it's pretty good. Established precedent is that women have be allowed access to abortions, and there can't be undue burdens. With this as the status quo, it means "declined to hear" its almost always going to mean "allowed the lower court to smack down a shitty law."
Outside of abortion, that ceases to be the case, but I'm at the point where i'm pretty ecstatic whenever the country doesn't take another lurching step towards dystopia.
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I’d love for them to decline to hear cases about:
Electoral districts
All the immigration stuff
Reproductive rights
Gun laws
Congresses role in regulatory policy
Etc
Oh yeah, they refused to hear Indiana's(?) currently blocked abortion law leaving it blocked, which is good, but said the fetal remains requirements were legal, which is bad (sorta.)
Yeah and Thomas' comments on that suggested that he might rule against birth control, not just abortion.
Thomas was all about birth control. To the point where you couldn't blame someone for mistaking his dissent to be about a case related specifically to just birth control.
He compared birth control to eugenics for gods sake.
Oh yeah, they refused to hear Indiana's(?) currently blocked abortion law leaving it blocked, which is good, but said the fetal remains requirements were legal, which is bad (sorta.)
Yeah and Thomas' comments on that suggested that he might rule against birth control, not just abortion.
Thomas was all about birth control. To the point where you couldn't blame someone for mistaking his dissent to be about a case related specifically to just birth control.
He compared birth control to eugenics for gods sake.
He compared aborting a pregnancy because of disability or race to eugenics, sort of.
Oh yeah, they refused to hear Indiana's(?) currently blocked abortion law leaving it blocked, which is good, but said the fetal remains requirements were legal, which is bad (sorta.)
Yeah and Thomas' comments on that suggested that he might rule against birth control, not just abortion.
Thomas was all about birth control. To the point where you couldn't blame someone for mistaking his dissent to be about a case related specifically to just birth control.
He compared birth control to eugenics for gods sake.
He compared aborting a pregnancy because of disability or race to eugenics, sort of.
He directly said that birth control was a means of effecting eugenics. He used the term over 30 times in his dissent.
"From the beginning birth control and abortion were promoted as means of effecting eugenics."
Sometimes birth control is used for eugenics. A man who decides to have a vasectomy due to a serious risk of genetic illness in his family is practicing eugenics.
"Problematic eugenics" is when it is forced on people against their will, usually for bigoted reasons like wanting to wipe out a certain ethnicity.
Ehhhhhhhhh, I wouldn't define that as eugenics, personally. I view eugenics as a forced, external action by the state (or a similarly situated actor); not one voluntarily committed by one's self for one's own reasoning.
Sometimes birth control is used for eugenics. A man who decides to have a vasectomy due to a serious risk of genetic illness in his family is practicing eugenics.
"Problematic eugenics" is when it is forced on people against their will, usually for bigoted reasons like wanting to wipe out a certain ethnicity.
Yeah, let's give cover to a guy who I'm sure meant what you are putting forth and not the other, more awful thing in line with his other views.
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Oh yeah, they refused to hear Indiana's(?) currently blocked abortion law leaving it blocked, which is good, but said the fetal remains requirements were legal, which is bad (sorta.)
Yeah and Thomas' comments on that suggested that he might rule against birth control, not just abortion.
Thomas was all about birth control. To the point where you couldn't blame someone for mistaking his dissent to be about a case related specifically to just birth control.
He compared birth control to eugenics for gods sake.
He compared aborting a pregnancy because of disability or race to eugenics, sort of.
He directly said that birth control was a means of effecting eugenics. He used the term over 30 times in his dissent.
"From the beginning birth control and abortion were promoted as means of effecting eugenics."
This is a misleading pull quote from page 9 of a long opinion. Thomas spends considerable time and effort describing the history of eugenics in America and the historic linkages, by supporters of BC, as a primary method of enabling eugenics here. His argument is that Sanger believed it (and he makes it completely clear that she did, and that BC-as-eugenics was a thing), that it's a very bad thing to believe, and that abortion for eugenics is even more bad than that. There's nothing in Thomas's concurrence that would suggest he'd uphold a hypothetical law banning birth control, if some state tried it. There's nothing in his concurrence that suggests he believes BC is actually a means of effecting eugenics, but he calls out lots and lots of times when supporters of BC, and of abortion, do say that.
Here's the whole quote, 9 pages into a developing argument. idk where you're pulling yours from (no links or sourcing), but they got it slightly wrong:
This case highlights the fact that abortion is an act rife with the potential for eugenic manipulation. From the beginning, birth control and abortion were promoted as means of effectuating eugenics. Planned Parenthood
founder Margaret Sanger was particularly open about the fact that birth control could be used for eugenic purposes. These arguments about the eugenic potential for birth control apply with even greater force to abortion, which
can be used to target specific children with unwanted characteristics.
In this quote "...from the beginning..." refers to the beginning of the eugenics movement, which he has just spent several pages detailing.
Also, just so we're clear, Thomas was concurring with Sotomayor in this, not dissenting. I feel liek your understanding of this is being fueled by articles freaking out about Thomas, not the concurrence itself. FOr reference, here it is https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/052819zor_2dq3.pdf
I don't agree with him here, I think he's making a couple of errors in the beginning that lead him down this path. Ultimately though, his argument is that having created a right to choose, the Court is going to have to eventually come up with some definitions of that right and that laws banning abortion for eugenic reasons will be part of the argument whether they like it or not.
Ehhhhhhhhh, I wouldn't define that as eugenics, personally. I view eugenics as a forced, external action by the state (or a similarly situated actor); not one voluntarily committed by one's self for one's own reasoning.
You can do that but there are examples on American soil of folks voluntarily submitting to privately run eugenics programs. The word itself is just the "science" of human breeding.
The hugely objectionable bit is definitely the outside coercion of folks to engage in it. On the face of it I don't think it is clearly evil (though it may be stupid.)
Ehhhhhhhhh, I wouldn't define that as eugenics, personally. I view eugenics as a forced, external action by the state (or a similarly situated actor); not one voluntarily committed by one's self for one's own reasoning.
You can do that but there are examples on American soil of folks voluntarily submitting to privately run eugenics programs. The word itself is just the "science" of human breeding.
The hugely objectionable bit is definitely the outside coercion of folks to engage in it. On the face of it I don't think it is clearly evil (though it may be stupid.)
I'd say that the criteria on which people make eugenic decisions can also be enormously problematic, as can be motivations of people who are 'educating' marginalized populations about eugenic methods. This is something Thomas goes into considerable detail about.
Ehhhhhhhhh, I wouldn't define that as eugenics, personally. I view eugenics as a forced, external action by the state (or a similarly situated actor); not one voluntarily committed by one's self for one's own reasoning.
You can do that but there are examples on American soil of folks voluntarily submitting to privately run eugenics programs. The word itself is just the "science" of human breeding.
The hugely objectionable bit is definitely the outside coercion of folks to engage in it. On the face of it I don't think it is clearly evil (though it may be stupid.)
I'd say that the criteria on which people make eugenic decisions can also be enormously problematic, as can be motivations of people who are 'educating' marginalized populations about eugenic methods. This is something Thomas goes into considerable detail about.
I should have been more clear that last statement was about folks making their own decisions, free from undue influence, about their own offspring. That may well be a pipe dream in actuality.
Like, if I could choose that my kids didn't have the genetic markers for a painful chronic condition I've suffered with, I could totally understand choosing that. It may be dumb if that condition travels with markers for highly desirable traits though.
spool, why should we be giving Thomas any benefit of the doubt on this? What is the "good-faith" reading of all this, as to why he even bothers bringing that up so often?
spool, why should we be giving Thomas any benefit of the doubt on this? What is the "good-faith" reading of all this, as to why he even bothers bringing that up so often?
It doesn't require any good-faith reading... just standard reading. He's very clear. But, if you need more justification just recognize that he wrote his opinion while letting a decision stand that invalidated a law banning eugenic abortions.
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It's clear that Thomas is concern trolling in his concurrence and glossing over hugely important facts. It's clearly communicated in his use of "aborted children" terminology, and I'd honestly be disappointed in this sophomore paper level writing if it weren't for the fact that the Supreme Court has already very clearly become a joke after ol Boofin Brett joined the group.
spool, why should we be giving Thomas any benefit of the doubt on this? What is the "good-faith" reading of all this, as to why he even bothers bringing that up so often?
It doesn't require any good-faith reading... just standard reading. He's very clear. But, if you need more justification just recognize that he wrote his opinion while letting a decision stand that invalidated a law banning eugenic abortions.
None of that addresses why he brought up birth control.
spool, why should we be giving Thomas any benefit of the doubt on this? What is the "good-faith" reading of all this, as to why he even bothers bringing that up so often?
It doesn't require any good-faith reading... just standard reading. He's very clear. But, if you need more justification just recognize that he wrote his opinion while letting a decision stand that invalidated a law banning eugenic abortions.
None of that addresses why he brought up birth control.
covered in my long post. Also v clear in his opinion! It's because he's talking about eugenics, and they all connect. Abortion-as-eugenics is the worse form of the older and more common BC-as-eugenics argument by the same people, and it's some shit the Court is going to eventually have to grapple with even though they aren't doing so today.
spool, why should we be giving Thomas any benefit of the doubt on this? What is the "good-faith" reading of all this, as to why he even bothers bringing that up so often?
It doesn't require any good-faith reading... just standard reading. He's very clear. But, if you need more justification just recognize that he wrote his opinion while letting a decision stand that invalidated a law banning eugenic abortions.
None of that addresses why he brought up birth control.
covered in my long post. Also v clear in his opinion! It's because he's talking about eugenics, and they all connect. Abortion-as-eugenics is the worse form of the older and more common BC-as-eugenics argument by the same people, and it's some shit the Court is going to eventually have to grapple with even though they aren't doing so today.
It's not really a question for the court. And it's very telling that the supposed small government side is the one going "but but they might have bad reaaassons"
Somehow I doubt Thomas would apply the same logic to gun control.
spool, why should we be giving Thomas any benefit of the doubt on this? What is the "good-faith" reading of all this, as to why he even bothers bringing that up so often?
It doesn't require any good-faith reading... just standard reading. He's very clear. But, if you need more justification just recognize that he wrote his opinion while letting a decision stand that invalidated a law banning eugenic abortions.
None of that addresses why he brought up birth control.
covered in my long post. Also v clear in his opinion! It's because he's talking about eugenics, and they all connect. Abortion-as-eugenics is the worse form of the older and more common BC-as-eugenics argument by the same people, and it's some shit the Court is going to eventually have to grapple with even though they aren't doing so today.
*sigh*
Okay and so we get back to my first post in this quote tree. Why shouldn't we be worried about him bringing it up the way he does, precisely because it's shit the Court is going to be wrestling with eventually?
"Don't worry, the SCOTUS hasn't decided to outlaw birth control yet" is exactly as soothing as "Don't worry, the SCOTUS hasn't decided to outlaw abortion yet"
"Don't worry, the SCOTUS hasn't decided to outlaw birth control yet" is exactly as soothing as "Don't worry, the SCOTUS hasn't decided to outlaw abortion yet"
It's also not what I'm saying, or what Thomas is saying, and y'all are just skating past the real key point here, which is where he acknowledges that abortion is a right.
Stop letting your news feeds throw you into a worry fit, folks. I've been watching the hot takes on this and they're increasingly unhinged - especially in relation to an action by the court that upheld abortion rights and which he agreed with.
Getting any further into this risks turning the thread into an abortion debate, can we please not do that? There's a separate thread for the discussion, complete with a handy opinion on what you should believe right in the title.
"Don't worry, the SCOTUS hasn't decided to outlaw birth control yet" is exactly as soothing as "Don't worry, the SCOTUS hasn't decided to outlaw abortion yet"
It's also not what I'm saying, or what Thomas is saying, and y'all are just skating past the real key point here, which is where he acknowledges that abortion is a right.
Stop letting your news feeds throw you into a worry fit, folks. I've been watching the hot takes on this and they're increasingly unhinged - especially in relation to an action by the court that upheld abortion rights and which he agreed with.
Thomas specifically:
1. Claims that abortion rights are not in the Constitution
2. Tries to make the case that abortion and birth control is racist, presumably as an excuse to ban it on 14th amendment grounds
He is concurring only because this was a single circuit decision which they rarely rule on. In fact he said the law overturned addresses a compelling state interest.
Oh yeah, they refused to hear Indiana's(?) currently blocked abortion law leaving it blocked, which is good, but said the fetal remains requirements were legal, which is bad (sorta.)
Yeah and Thomas' comments on that suggested that he might rule against birth control, not just abortion.
Thomas was all about birth control. To the point where you couldn't blame someone for mistaking his dissent to be about a case related specifically to just birth control.
He compared birth control to eugenics for gods sake.
He compared aborting a pregnancy because of disability or race to eugenics, sort of.
He directly said that birth control was a means of effecting eugenics. He used the term over 30 times in his dissent.
"From the beginning birth control and abortion were promoted as means of effecting eugenics."
This is a misleading pull quote from page 9 of a long opinion. Thomas spends considerable time and effort describing the history of eugenics in America and the historic linkages, by supporters of BC, as a primary method of enabling eugenics here. His argument is that Sanger believed it (and he makes it completely clear that she did, and that BC-as-eugenics was a thing), that it's a very bad thing to believe, and that abortion for eugenics is even more bad than that. There's nothing in Thomas's concurrence that would suggest he'd uphold a hypothetical law banning birth control, if some state tried it. There's nothing in his concurrence that suggests he believes BC is actually a means of effecting eugenics, but he calls out lots and lots of times when supporters of BC, and of abortion, do say that.
Here's the whole quote, 9 pages into a developing argument. idk where you're pulling yours from (no links or sourcing), but they got it slightly wrong:
This case highlights the fact that abortion is an act rife with the potential for eugenic manipulation. From the beginning, birth control and abortion were promoted as means of effectuating eugenics. Planned Parenthood
founder Margaret Sanger was particularly open about the fact that birth control could be used for eugenic purposes. These arguments about the eugenic potential for birth control apply with even greater force to abortion, which
can be used to target specific children with unwanted characteristics.
In this quote "...from the beginning..." refers to the beginning of the eugenics movement, which he has just spent several pages detailing.
Also, just so we're clear, Thomas was concurring with Sotomayor in this, not dissenting. I feel liek your understanding of this is being fueled by articles freaking out about Thomas, not the concurrence itself. FOr reference, here it is https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/052819zor_2dq3.pdf
I don't agree with him here, I think he's making a couple of errors in the beginning that lead him down this path. Ultimately though, his argument is that having created a right to choose, the Court is going to have to eventually come up with some definitions of that right and that laws banning abortion for eugenic reasons will be part of the argument whether they like it or not.
The entire thing is a non-sequitor to repeatedly denounce Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood for being racist. Which, sure, Sanger was a racist white supremacist and should be called out for it when that's relevant. However, trying to tie it to his concurrence relies almost entirely on this:
The use of abortion to achieve eugenic goals is not merely hypothetical. The foundations for legalizing abortion in America were laid during the early 20th-century birth-control movement.
And just nope. The foundation for legalizing abortion is the 14th Amendment, as explained in Roe and Casey. The whole thing seems tangential, which makes it likely to be intended as a toe hold for future rulings to cite it as a basis to restrict somewhat differently worded statutes.
It's interesting how the UK thread was talking earlier about transphobia still being a thing found of both sides of the spectrum there, but not in the US.
And now SCOTUS has basically said bathroom bills are not even worth hearings as long as lower districts keep ruling the same way.
It's interesting how the UK thread was talking earlier about transphobia still being a thing found of both sides of the spectrum there, but not in the US.
And now SCOTUS has basically said bathroom bills are not even worth hearings as long as lower districts keep ruling the same way.
That's kind of the role of SCOTUS, though; if lower courts are consistently ruling in a certain way, unless SCOTUS out of the blue believes that all of them are wrong for some constitutional reason, there's no reason for SCOTUS to intervene. Usually it takes a circuit split to really get SCOTUS to take up something controversial; they generally tend to stay out of areas that are settled law
The author Thomas cites is not pleased with how he portrayed their work.
In making his argument, Thomas cited my book Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck repeatedly. (He also cited an article I wrote about Harvard’s ties to eugenics). I don’t want to appear ungrateful: It’s an honor to be relied on by the highest court in the land, and these days, nonfiction authors appreciate just being read at all. But Thomas used the history of eugenics misleadingly, and in ways that could dangerously distort the debate over abortion.
It's interesting how the UK thread was talking earlier about transphobia still being a thing found of both sides of the spectrum there, but not in the US.
And now SCOTUS has basically said bathroom bills are not even worth hearings as long as lower districts keep ruling the same way.
That's kind of the role of SCOTUS, though; if lower courts are consistently ruling in a certain way, unless SCOTUS out of the blue believes that all of them are wrong for some constitutional reason, there's no reason for SCOTUS to intervene. Usually it takes a circuit split to really get SCOTUS to take up something controversial; they generally tend to stay out of areas that are settled law
Yes, and how many of us were expecting this SCOTUS to come out and say "Actually, you're all wrong"?
Another interesting case we haven't talked about much! This one is Hererra v Wyoming:
Clayvin Herrera and his hunting party followed a group of elk across the Montana border into Bighorn National Forest back in 2014, killed some of them, and returned with the meat. State of Wyoming convicted him of off-season hunting, hunting without a license, and and threw the book at him. Should be open and shut, but Herrera and his group were members of the Crow Nation and they have a treaty with the United States dating back to 1868 allowing them to hunt on that land "... for as long as the game lasts".
State of Wyoming Argues that:
- the Crow made that treaty before Wyoming existed, and Statehood is a big Cancel Everything button so treaties don't count anymore haha get rekt
- even if it did count, it says you can only hunt on unoccupied land so guess what, Being a State = We Civilized Everything so it's all occupied now, every square inch.
- even if that strikes you as complete nonsense, all the Crow land is now a National Forest and that counts as being occupied since the feds go there sometimes and see how foresty it is!
- Crow don't have this right anymore since they stopped hunting in the late 1800s and we killed all the game anyway so I guess it didn't last lmao
- even if none of this sounds remotely plausible, the Supreme Court already ruled that Indians lose forever in Ward vs Race Horse and the 10th circuit agreed in Crow Tribe of Indians v Repsis so we're done here you don't even get to talk about treaties since technically you already lost this case!
Hererra argues that:
- Statehood can't cancel treaties that's some bullshit as usual
- Did you not see us actually hunting? Also here's a bunch of historical stuff where white people complain about how we kept hunting, not that it matters because the treaty doesn't say "... for as long as white people don't fuck this up for us".
- it was some particularly egregious bullshit when the Wyoming Supreme Court wouldn't even let me mention the treaty during the trial, but we weren't surprised because white people.
- Ward vs Race Horse wasn't just especially racist, it was also repudiated by the Supreme Court in Minnesota v Mille Lacs Band of Chippewa Indians way back in the dim mists of *checks watch*1999, which ought to throw your 1896 white people bullshit into an especially harsh light - a thing I mentioned at trial earlier but you did not listen
Court rules that:
- holy shit Wyoming, here's a bunch of reasons why statehood isn't incompatible with managing pre-existing treaties
- 5 states had recently joined the union right before that treaty was signed, did you think nobody was noticing that shit and thinking about it?
- Thank you for bringing up Repsis because that decision was extra bad, mostly because
- Mille Lacs shit alllll over Ward v Race Horse and we thought that was pretty obvious. Wyoming even cops to knowing this is a bullshit argument, but, just in case there's any question, let's just say right now
*****
**********
Fuck the Race Horse decision, it is terrible, stop fucking relying on it, we're giving it to this Herrera guy for target practice right after the gavel drops. Don't say that shit in our Court ever again.
**********
*****
- Now that's cleared up, can we just take a moment to ask Wyoming to be fucking serious please, an empty 30 million acre forest is not occupied, especially not purely by the act of drawing a circle around it on a map. Double especially when it was created to "preserve it from settlement" in the first place.
- and can we ask them to stop being super fucking racist by claiming that Statehood counts as the arrival of "civilization" and so it's all occupied land now
- in fact let us go down the line here and just draw a big nope on all these other reasons why it's 'occupied', see this is super easy when you use the right decision as your guide!
- oh, hang on, yeah the conservation thing might be legit. Wyoming can still argue that the Crow aren't allowed to just hunt whatever the fuck if there's a conservation reason. Feel free to try that shit back at the appellate level I guess.
- regardless, vacated, Herrera's free, remand for Wyoming to try again with 100% less racism this time
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The only area the filibuster remains is on legislation. Which is one that I doubt enough individual Senators want to give up. It's already dead for appointments. They also killed Blue Slips this Congress.
Yeah and Thomas' comments on that suggested that he might rule against birth control, not just abortion.
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Did anyone join him on his dissent?
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That was his Concurrence.
On abortion matters, it's pretty good. Established precedent is that women have be allowed access to abortions, and there can't be undue burdens. With this as the status quo, it means "declined to hear" its almost always going to mean "allowed the lower court to smack down a shitty law."
Outside of abortion, that ceases to be the case, but I'm at the point where i'm pretty ecstatic whenever the country doesn't take another lurching step towards dystopia.
Electoral districts
All the immigration stuff
Reproductive rights
Gun laws
Congresses role in regulatory policy
Etc
Thomas was all about birth control. To the point where you couldn't blame someone for mistaking his dissent to be about a case related specifically to just birth control.
He compared birth control to eugenics for gods sake.
He compared aborting a pregnancy because of disability or race to eugenics, sort of.
He directly said that birth control was a means of effecting eugenics. He used the term over 30 times in his dissent.
"Problematic eugenics" is when it is forced on people against their will, usually for bigoted reasons like wanting to wipe out a certain ethnicity.
Yeah, let's give cover to a guy who I'm sure meant what you are putting forth and not the other, more awful thing in line with his other views.
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This is a misleading pull quote from page 9 of a long opinion. Thomas spends considerable time and effort describing the history of eugenics in America and the historic linkages, by supporters of BC, as a primary method of enabling eugenics here. His argument is that Sanger believed it (and he makes it completely clear that she did, and that BC-as-eugenics was a thing), that it's a very bad thing to believe, and that abortion for eugenics is even more bad than that. There's nothing in Thomas's concurrence that would suggest he'd uphold a hypothetical law banning birth control, if some state tried it. There's nothing in his concurrence that suggests he believes BC is actually a means of effecting eugenics, but he calls out lots and lots of times when supporters of BC, and of abortion, do say that.
Here's the whole quote, 9 pages into a developing argument. idk where you're pulling yours from (no links or sourcing), but they got it slightly wrong:
In this quote "...from the beginning..." refers to the beginning of the eugenics movement, which he has just spent several pages detailing.
Also, just so we're clear, Thomas was concurring with Sotomayor in this, not dissenting. I feel liek your understanding of this is being fueled by articles freaking out about Thomas, not the concurrence itself. FOr reference, here it is https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/052819zor_2dq3.pdf
I don't agree with him here, I think he's making a couple of errors in the beginning that lead him down this path. Ultimately though, his argument is that having created a right to choose, the Court is going to have to eventually come up with some definitions of that right and that laws banning abortion for eugenic reasons will be part of the argument whether they like it or not.
You can do that but there are examples on American soil of folks voluntarily submitting to privately run eugenics programs. The word itself is just the "science" of human breeding.
The hugely objectionable bit is definitely the outside coercion of folks to engage in it. On the face of it I don't think it is clearly evil (though it may be stupid.)
I'd say that the criteria on which people make eugenic decisions can also be enormously problematic, as can be motivations of people who are 'educating' marginalized populations about eugenic methods. This is something Thomas goes into considerable detail about.
I should have been more clear that last statement was about folks making their own decisions, free from undue influence, about their own offspring. That may well be a pipe dream in actuality.
Like, if I could choose that my kids didn't have the genetic markers for a painful chronic condition I've suffered with, I could totally understand choosing that. It may be dumb if that condition travels with markers for highly desirable traits though.
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It doesn't require any good-faith reading... just standard reading. He's very clear. But, if you need more justification just recognize that he wrote his opinion while letting a decision stand that invalidated a law banning eugenic abortions.
None of that addresses why he brought up birth control.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
covered in my long post. Also v clear in his opinion! It's because he's talking about eugenics, and they all connect. Abortion-as-eugenics is the worse form of the older and more common BC-as-eugenics argument by the same people, and it's some shit the Court is going to eventually have to grapple with even though they aren't doing so today.
It's not really a question for the court. And it's very telling that the supposed small government side is the one going "but but they might have bad reaaassons"
Somehow I doubt Thomas would apply the same logic to gun control.
*sigh*
Okay and so we get back to my first post in this quote tree. Why shouldn't we be worried about him bringing it up the way he does, precisely because it's shit the Court is going to be wrestling with eventually?
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
It's also not what I'm saying, or what Thomas is saying, and y'all are just skating past the real key point here, which is where he acknowledges that abortion is a right.
Stop letting your news feeds throw you into a worry fit, folks. I've been watching the hot takes on this and they're increasingly unhinged - especially in relation to an action by the court that upheld abortion rights and which he agreed with.
Thomas specifically:
1. Claims that abortion rights are not in the Constitution
2. Tries to make the case that abortion and birth control is racist, presumably as an excuse to ban it on 14th amendment grounds
He is concurring only because this was a single circuit decision which they rarely rule on. In fact he said the law overturned addresses a compelling state interest.
The entire thing is a non-sequitor to repeatedly denounce Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood for being racist. Which, sure, Sanger was a racist white supremacist and should be called out for it when that's relevant. However, trying to tie it to his concurrence relies almost entirely on this:
And just nope. The foundation for legalizing abortion is the 14th Amendment, as explained in Roe and Casey. The whole thing seems tangential, which makes it likely to be intended as a toe hold for future rulings to cite it as a basis to restrict somewhat differently worded statutes.
It's interesting how the UK thread was talking earlier about transphobia still being a thing found of both sides of the spectrum there, but not in the US.
And now SCOTUS has basically said bathroom bills are not even worth hearings as long as lower districts keep ruling the same way.
That's kind of the role of SCOTUS, though; if lower courts are consistently ruling in a certain way, unless SCOTUS out of the blue believes that all of them are wrong for some constitutional reason, there's no reason for SCOTUS to intervene. Usually it takes a circuit split to really get SCOTUS to take up something controversial; they generally tend to stay out of areas that are settled law
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/clarence-thomas-used-my-book-argue-against-abortion/590455/
Yes, and how many of us were expecting this SCOTUS to come out and say "Actually, you're all wrong"?
Clayvin Herrera and his hunting party followed a group of elk across the Montana border into Bighorn National Forest back in 2014, killed some of them, and returned with the meat. State of Wyoming convicted him of off-season hunting, hunting without a license, and and threw the book at him. Should be open and shut, but Herrera and his group were members of the Crow Nation and they have a treaty with the United States dating back to 1868 allowing them to hunt on that land "... for as long as the game lasts".
State of Wyoming Argues that:
- the Crow made that treaty before Wyoming existed, and Statehood is a big Cancel Everything button so treaties don't count anymore haha get rekt
- even if it did count, it says you can only hunt on unoccupied land so guess what, Being a State = We Civilized Everything so it's all occupied now, every square inch.
- even if that strikes you as complete nonsense, all the Crow land is now a National Forest and that counts as being occupied since the feds go there sometimes and see how foresty it is!
- Crow don't have this right anymore since they stopped hunting in the late 1800s and we killed all the game anyway so I guess it didn't last lmao
- even if none of this sounds remotely plausible, the Supreme Court already ruled that Indians lose forever in Ward vs Race Horse and the 10th circuit agreed in Crow Tribe of Indians v Repsis so we're done here you don't even get to talk about treaties since technically you already lost this case!
Hererra argues that:
- Statehood can't cancel treaties that's some bullshit as usual
- Did you not see us actually hunting? Also here's a bunch of historical stuff where white people complain about how we kept hunting, not that it matters because the treaty doesn't say "... for as long as white people don't fuck this up for us".
- it was some particularly egregious bullshit when the Wyoming Supreme Court wouldn't even let me mention the treaty during the trial, but we weren't surprised because white people.
- Ward vs Race Horse wasn't just especially racist, it was also repudiated by the Supreme Court in Minnesota v Mille Lacs Band of Chippewa Indians way back in the dim mists of *checks watch*1999, which ought to throw your 1896 white people bullshit into an especially harsh light - a thing I mentioned at trial earlier but you did not listen
Court rules that:
- holy shit Wyoming, here's a bunch of reasons why statehood isn't incompatible with managing pre-existing treaties
- 5 states had recently joined the union right before that treaty was signed, did you think nobody was noticing that shit and thinking about it?
- Thank you for bringing up Repsis because that decision was extra bad, mostly because
- Mille Lacs shit alllll over Ward v Race Horse and we thought that was pretty obvious. Wyoming even cops to knowing this is a bullshit argument, but, just in case there's any question, let's just say right now
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Fuck the Race Horse decision, it is terrible, stop fucking relying on it, we're giving it to this Herrera guy for target practice right after the gavel drops. Don't say that shit in our Court ever again.
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- Now that's cleared up, can we just take a moment to ask Wyoming to be fucking serious please, an empty 30 million acre forest is not occupied, especially not purely by the act of drawing a circle around it on a map. Double especially when it was created to "preserve it from settlement" in the first place.
- and can we ask them to stop being super fucking racist by claiming that Statehood counts as the arrival of "civilization" and so it's all occupied land now
- in fact let us go down the line here and just draw a big nope on all these other reasons why it's 'occupied', see this is super easy when you use the right decision as your guide!
- oh, hang on, yeah the conservation thing might be legit. Wyoming can still argue that the Crow aren't allowed to just hunt whatever the fuck if there's a conservation reason. Feel free to try that shit back at the appellate level I guess.
- regardless, vacated, Herrera's free, remand for Wyoming to try again with 100% less racism this time