Like a whole lot of people reading this, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes was displeased with the last two Supreme Court decisions of this judicial period — the rulings nullifying the Biden administration’s debt forgiveness plan, and allowing, literally, discrimination against LGBTQ people.
And while running down how groundless these rulings were, Hayes declared that the 6 justices appointed by Republicans “have granted themselves the authority to govern as a kind of unaccountable super-legislature.”
By now you’re familiar with these rulings, as well as the one on Thursday that gutted Affirmative action. But if you need a refresher, go here and here and here. The main thing you need to know right now is that critics of these rulings, in addition to pointing out that aside from Clarence Thomas, the court’s right wing majority were appointed by presidents who didn’t win the popular vote, argue convincingly that the conservative bloc has effectively acted to overrule policies they disagree with on purely political, not legal grounds.
That was the crux of Hayes’ discussion of the matter. He began by noting that as he sees it, the purpose of court trials is to resolve disputes between parties. “What makes today’s 2 cases so galling, is that there were no disputes. The court was not actually solving any problem between two parties. Instead, the conservative majority was functioning like a legislative body, pushing their preferred right-wing policy outcomes irrespective of the actual facts at hand,” he said.
To back this assertion up, Hayes noted the case that, again literally, ruled in favor of a bigot’s right to discriminate against LGBTQ people. The plaintiff is the owner of a Colorado-based web design business who was considering going into the wedding website market, and sued preemptively to keep from having to provide this service to same sex couples. To be clear, she didn’t have such a business, nor did any same sex couples ask her for her services.
“It’s almost as if this case was designed with the express purpose of moving this issue up through the courts, so the Supreme Court could rule on it,” Hayes said.
“What harm has she suffered?” Hayes asked, noting that she has not at any time experienced the hypothetical situation she sued over. She prevailed anyway, Hayes said, “because the conservative majority doesn’t care about the actual facts, and they don’t care about actually judging. They want to undermine Colorado’s anti discrimination law, making it easier for religious conservatives to discriminate against gay people.”
“That’s the policy outcome they wanted from the beginning. It’s why the case got to them” Hayes added. He then talked about the student debt forgiveness case, and how the facts of that case — the plaintiffs were not injured by the student debt, and claimed to represent a company that wanted nothing to do with the lawsuit and actually benefitted from debt relief — lined up very closely to the other case.
“The conservatives on the Supreme Court do not like Biden’s student loan forgiveness policy. It doesn’t matter if there was no injury, no one with standing, and there’s no real dispute. When you have judges that turn away from the work of resolving disputes and following precedent, they’re just not doing anything that’s recognizably judging anymore,” Hayes said.
“The problem is not just that I think the substance of these decisions are bad, although I very much do. It’s that this court has adopted a kind of imperial mindset that all decisions about public policy are actually theirs to make,” Hayes continued.
“6 right wing politicians in robes on the Trump Supreme Court are granting themselves the authority to govern as a kind of unaccountable super-legislature. At this point you’re well within your rights to start asking, ‘who elected these people?’ If they’re not bound by precedent, if they’re not bound by disputes and standing and all the trappings of judging, and they just say, ‘I don’t like this law, I don’t like this policy,’ who elected them?” Hayes Asked.
“What’s more, you would be forgiven for thinking the whole thing is corrupt and illegitimate, and wondering how long exactly this can continue without some seismic reform,” Hayes said.
Watch the clip here:
