One More Time: The Supreme Court Again Says Reconsider NY's Abortion Mandate!

Yes, once again, the New York courts suffered an embarrassing unanimous, summary overruling of their decisions which persistently upheld the imposition of the state's abortion coverage mandate upon religious objecting organizations, such as a Roman Catholic Diocese.

For years now, I've been discussing New York's mandate that employers include abortion coverage in their employee health insurance. I have not disguised my strong objections to the state government imposing this mandate upon religiously objecting institutions, nor my utter contempt for those rulings of the New York courts that have shown no regard for trampling on free exercise of religion. (It's only the First Amendment!)

For example, consider the first round of litigation, brought by the Albany Catholic Diocese, claiming that it was entitled to a religious exemption from the abortion mandate. The Court of Appeals, the state's highest court, summarily --i.e., without the full appellate process--dismissed the case. Here's the--hard to believe--ruling:

On the Court's own motion, appeal dismissed, 

without costs, upon the ground that no substantial

constitutional question is directly involved. [My emphasis.]

(Nov. 24, 2020.)

No substantial constitutional question?

But then, the Supreme Court, in its own summary, unanimous order--yes, all the conservative and liberals Justices--told the New York courts to try again. Here are the Justices' own words:

CERTIORARI -- SUMMARY DISPOSITIONS

20-1501 ROMAN CATHOLIC DIOCESE, ET AL. V. EMAMI, SHIRIN, ET AL.

The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted. The

judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded. [My emphasis.]

(Nov. 1, 2021.)

(For a more complete discussion and reference to previous related posts on New York Court Watcher, see, REPRISE: Religious Institutions Must Pay Abortion Coverage in NY, Nov. 1, 2021.)

In the second round of litigation on the very same matter, the New York courts again upheld the imposition of the abortion mandate upon religiously objecting institutions--i.e., holding that the religious institutions, such as a Catholic Diocese, were not entitled to the mandate's very narrow religious exemption. (New York only allows exemptions for churches and other analogous institutions, but not for faith-based organizations such as Catholic Charities.)

On this go round, the Court of Appeals at least did not say that there was no constitutional question worth its time. But the Court did, nevertheless, uphold the mandate as imposed on religiously objecting institutions. (See Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany v. Vullo, May 21, 2024.)  

Yesterday, the Supreme Court once again summarily and unanimously--yes, again, all the conservative and liberal Justices--granted the Albany Diocese's appeal (i.e., the writ for certiorari) and overruled the New York courts' insistence on upholding the abortion mandate against religious objectors and refusing to grant them an exemption.. Here it is:

ROMAN CATHOLIC DIOCESE, ET AL. V. HARRIS, ADRIENNE A., ET AL.

The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted. The

judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the Court of Appeals [My emphasis.]

June 16, 2025.) 

The Supreme Court ordered the Court of Appeals to reconsider the case, specifically in light of the Justices' decision earlier this month in Catholic Charities Bureau, Inc. v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Comm'n. (June 4, 2025.) In that decision, the Supreme Court unanimously--yes, all the conservatives and all the liberals--overruled Wisconsin's refusal to grant a religious exemption to Catholic Charities. The state had a narrow exemption in its tax law for churches and analogous institutions whose purpose is religious practice. But the mission of Catholic Charities and similar faith-based organizations is to provide social services and perform other charitable works. It is not simply to engage in religious practices such as baptism, prayer, and proselytizing. So they were not entitled to religious exemptions. It made no difference that Catholic Charities and similar organizations are founded on religious convictions to help those in need.

The Supreme Court, in its unanimous reversal of the Wisconsin court, stressed the unremarkable constitutional principle that a state cannot pick and choose between religious beliefs and practices. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor put it for the Court, the problem with the Wisconsin law was that it

explicitly differentiat[ed] between religions based on theological practices. Indeed, [an institution's] eligibility for the exemption ultimately turns on inherently religious choices (namely, whether to proselytize or serve only co-religionists)...

Much like a law exempting only those religious organizations that perform baptisms or worship on Sundays, an exemption that requires proselytization or exclusive service of co-religionists establishes a preference for certain religions based on the commands of their religious doctrine.

In short, Wisconsin's denial of a religious exemption for Catholic Charities, like New York's denial of one to the Albany Catholic Diocese and other religious institutions, was based on unconstitutional criteria. It was effectively based on whether the state viewed the institution's religious practices to be religious enough--i.e., whether they fit the state's notion of religion.

New York's narrow religious exemption--to which the Albany Catholic Diocese was not entitled--similarly picks and chooses between religious beliefs and practices and similarly violates 1st Amendment religious freedom. The state itself acknowledged this in its final brief to the Supreme Court after the Court's Wisconsin decision:

[W] agree that, in light of the Catholic Charities opinion, some of the subject accommodation’s criteria are likely unconstitutional as applied to at least some of the petitioners in this case...It is possible that the First Amendment challenge here could be resolved by extending the accommodation at issue to petitioners, or perhaps by simply severing objectionable aspects of the criteria.

So, it is now back to the Court of Appeals. New York's high court must now ensure that the exemptions from the abortion mandate are expanded to include religiously objecting institutions, without any unconstitutional picking and choosing based on what religious institutions are religious enough. 

Let's be absolutely clear. This has nothing to do with whether one favors a woman's right to choose and the broader right of bodily integrity. Which I do, and strongly so. Instead, this has to do with how serious we are about protecting a fundamental constitutional right against government interference, and specifically, the need for freedom of religion and conscience in a free society.

Finally, let's place all this back and forth about government interference with religious freedom, religious objections, and the denial of religious exemptions in context. This continuing, seemingly incessant difficulty and confusion in religious liberty cases. A predominant cause, if not the predominant one, is Justice Antonin Scalia's opinion for the Supreme Court in (Employment Division of...) Oregon  v. Smith, 1990. The Court held that the Indian Tribe in question was not entitled to an exemption from an Oregon anti-drug law, so they could continue to use peyote in their concededly sincere religious rituals. 

Whatever one thinks of the bottom-line decision in the case, the rule announced by Scalia to govern interference with religious freedom is an outrage. The Court did not hold that the state had a compelling reason to outlaw hallucinating drugs--that's what Justice O'Connor argued in a concurring opinion. Rather, Scalia's opinion for the Court asserted that the Constitution does not protect freedom of religion against an "otherwise valid law." So, unless a law violates some other constitutional right or invidiously discriminates, that law overrides the fundamental constitutional right of religious free exercise.

As O'Connor elaborated in her separate opinion, Scalia's opinion was utterly dishonest and stripped religious liberty of the traditional protection afforded to fundamental constitutional rights. Scalia denied that strict scrutiny applied to 1st Amendment free exercise of religion--i.e., the basic constitutional principle that the government must justify its interference with any fundamental right by proving that it is necessary to achieve a compelling interest--e.g., necessary for national security, to protect against an epidemic, military discipline, and the like. He also claimed that the Court had never granted religious exemptions to an otherwise valid law. Both of those assertions were lies. Period.

As a result, although several Justices want Oregon v. Smith overruled, the Court has to do end runs around that decision. It does so, for example, by finding some discrimination in the law in question (like the Court just did in the Wisconsin case), or by finding that a law is invalid only because it violates free speech (like the Court did in the recent case involving a business owner who did not want to create a website for a same-sex marriage: 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, 2023).

The Supreme Court should return to a straightforward strict scrutiny: if religious freedom is being abridged, the government should have to prove that 1) it has a compelling purpose and 2) it has no other way to achieve that purpose. That is the test the Court has used for a long time to protect other fundamental constitutional rights and to protect against racial discrimination.

If Oregon v. Smith is not bad enough, the New York Court of Appeals compounded the problem in this state in Catholic Charities v. Serio, 2006. (That case involved religious objections to the state's contraceptive insurance mandate.) Not only did the Court of Appeals discard strict scrutiny protection for free exercise of religion, just like Scalia did in Smith. Beyond that, New York's high court discarded any requirement that the government had to justify its abridgment of religious liberty. Instead, it ruled that the religious objector must justify his complaint. The religious objector, the Court of Appeals held, bears the burden of proving that the law's interference with the objector's religious liberty is unreasonable. Another complete reversal of traditional constitutional protection of fundamental rights.

These two decisions, the ruling in Scalia's Smith opinion and the Court of Appeals ruling in Catholic Charities, have left the constitutional right of religious liberty adrift and left each of the two courts with a tortured jurisprudence for dealing with violations of one of our most basic rights.

The Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals need to overrule these atrocious precedents.

Disclosure: I have been providing whatever small assistance and advice I can on behalf of the Albany Diocese and Albany Catholic Charities.   

Why I Loved Sandra Day O'Connor

Source: Annenberg Public Policy Center

We learned last week that she had passed away. We knew it was coming. We knew she was quite ill and that the Justice O'Connor we knew had already left us. But we are, nevertheless, newly aggrieved that she is gone.

I didn't know Justice O'Connor well on a personal or social level. But I did have the opportunity to meet her and to spend some time chatting informally several times. The first time was in February 1986 when she was escorting the Supreme Court Fellowship finalists, then a few times during my fellowship year, and once or twice again at some event at the Court or elsewhere.

Credit: Alan Day/Western Horseman

We usually just engaged in small talk. Nothing jurisprudential or otherwise profound, except for our shared, profound love of the Arizona desert. She would speak of her home in the Southwest and growing up on a cattle ranch--a real "cowgirl of the Arizona desert." I would talk of my two Army tours at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, and riding on post for hours every weekend--a wannabe cowboy. I confess feeling a bit special that she would remember me and our Arizona chats each time we met.

So yes, for that reason alone she has had a special place in my heart.

(A dear friend of mine who taught at the University of Arizona became close to her in her latter years on the bench and thereafter, and everything he told me about Justice O'Connor confirmed that my heart was in the right place.)

But let me speak as one who follows the Supreme Court, and who believes that the Court is at its best when it protects civil rights and liberties--limited only by legitimately overriding interests. I have certainly not always agreed with Justice O'Connor. Though she might well have had the better position on many issues.

[Yes, there's Bush v. Gore (2000), perhaps the most dishonest, unprincipled Court decision of the modern era--regardless of how one feels about the ultimate outcome. Her vote in the bare majority was inexcusable. Later in life, she seemed to recognize that.

N.B., many of the great Justices in Supreme Court history have likewise cast a deplorable vote or authored some dreadful majority opinion.]

Nevertheless, without surveying her entire body of judicial work, it would be accurate, albeit barely relevant, to say that I did agree with her on many of the most important issues of the day. Much much more important than that, however, I admired how she typically strove to strike a wise balance between the competing needs of liberty and order, as opposed to elevating some rigid ideologically-driven methodology for decision-making.

Here are just a few of Justice O'Connor's opinions that, in my view, show what a fine Justice she was:

Credit: Kevin Wolf/Invision/AP

Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan, 1982: O'Connor wrote the opinion for the 5-4 majority that the state nursing school's restriction to women was invalid sex discrimination. Rejecting the dissenters' insistence that the women-only institution was "discriminat[ing] invidiously against no one," she explained that the state was actually perpetuating "archaic and stereotypic notions" about the proper roles for men and women.

Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 1992: O'Connor co-authored a three-Justice plurality opinion to sustain a woman's right to choose. Articulating an "undue burden" standard to balance the "personal liberty" of deciding whether to carry a pregnancy to term against "the demands of organized society," she rejected the four dissenters' absurd argument that there could be no such constitutionally protected right to choose an abortion because, among other things, "the Constitution says absolutely nothing about it."

[For more on that preposterous argument, see The Leaked [Dobbs] Opinion--Constitutional Nonsense Revisited* (Part 1), May 7, 2022. Of course, Dobbs overruled O'Connor's balanced approach.]

Lawrence v. Texas, 2003: O'Connor joined the Court's 6-3 decision to invalidate Texas's law criminalizing "sodomy" engaged in by members of the same sex. She did so, in a separate concurring opinion, based on constitutional equal protection, arguing that mere "moral disapproval" does not "justify a law that discriminates among groups of persons"--notwithstanding the dissenters' reliance on "the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct."

Grutter v. Bollinger, 2003: O'Connor authored the Court's 5-4 decision upholding the limited consideration of race to ensure the "compelling" benefits of diversity in education. But, while rejecting the dissenters' argument that racial preferences were necessarily prohibited by equal protection, she did insist that educational institutions must ensure "narrow tailoring," such that any "race-conscious admissions program [does] not unduly harm members of any racial group."

[Of course, as with her balanced approach on the right to choose in Casey, the Court recently overruled her approach to affirmative action, invalidating any consideration of race in education admissions, in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023).]

Ewing v. California, 2003: O'Connor wrote a plurality opinion which, however, secured a majority of her colleagues for the proposition that the "cruel and unusual" prohibition of the 8th Amendment did forbid punishments that were grossly disproportionate. She rejected the view, repeated by a couple of Justices in several cases, that the Constitution prohibited only "horrid modes of punishment" such as "flaying alive, rending assunder with horses...maiming, mutilating and scourging to death." [Justice Scalia's reference to his opinion in Harmelin v. Michigan, (1991).] To O'Connor, the mere fact that the term "excessive" was not used to modify "punishments" in the 8th Amendment did not exclude the possibility that such a punishment could be "cruel and unusual."

Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 2004: O'Connor authored the Court's opinion, holding that an American citizen imprisoned in this country as an "enemy combatant"--without charges or a hearing--does have a due process right to receive notice of the Government’s factual assertions and an opportunity to rebut them in a judicial proceeding. The dissenters argued that she was "transmogrifying the Great Writ." But she explained that, in the absence of a valid suspension of habeas corpus by Congress, "it would turn our system of checks and balances on its head" to deny a citizen the right to judicially challenge the basis for his detention government, "simply because the Executive opposes making available such a challenge."

To be sure, Justice O'Connor was not always in the majority. At least two of her dissenting opinions deserve mention as underscoring her wise sense of balance and care about preserving fundamental principles despite competing interests.

Atwater v. Lago Vista, 2001: In a case involving a seat belt violation, the majority held that the 4th Amendment permitted a warrantless arrest for any criminal offense, regardless of how minor, as well as a full custodial search and detention in a jail cell at the police precinct during "processing"--all incident to that arrest. O'Connor was appalled. Noting that the majority itself recognized that the arrest and detention of the driver--a mother with children in the back seat--was a "pointless indignity" serving no legitimate law enforcement interest, she found it incongruous that the majority could nevertheless adopt an unqualified bright line that rendered the "extraordinary intrusion" on a mere seat-belt violator to be constitutionally permissible. As she put it, "the Court's position is inconsistent with the explicit guarantee of the Fourth Amendment" that prohibits searches and seizures that are unreasonable.

Employment Division of Oregon v. Smith, 1990: In a case involving the application of a criminal drug law against the use of peyote by members of a Native American church in an ancient religious ritual, the majority reversed the decision of Oregon's high court which had ruled that a religious exemption was constitutionally required. Writing for the majority to reject any such exemption, Justice Scalia declared that the Supreme Court had "never held that an individual's religious beliefs excuse him from compliance with an otherwise valid law." In her separate concurring opinion--joined in most part by the dissenting Justices--O'Connor comprehensively detailed how Scalia's assertion was simply dishonest and "dramatically departs from well settled First Amendment jurisprudence."

As O'Connor showed, the Court had frequently repeated that only those laws that are "essential to accomplish an overriding governmental interest" could constitutionally burden religious free exercise. Indeed, despite the majority's mischaracterization of such a test as a "constitutional anomaly," she noted that it was actually the "constitutional norm" to protect fundamental rights and prohibit racial discrimination.

Source: Sandra Day O'Connor Institute

Beyond that, she took the majority to task for insisting that an unavoidable and acceptable consequence of democratic government was to "place at a relative disadvantage those religious practices that are not widely engaged in." Citing, among other decisions, Chief Justice Warren Burger's opinion for the Court in Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), she felt compelled to remind the majority that, "the First Amendment was enacted precisely to protect the rights of those whose religious practices are not shared by the majority and may be viewed with hostility. The history of our free exercise doctrine amply demonstrates the harsh impact majoritarian rule has had on unpopular or emerging religious groups."

[I know I have spent more time on this case than others. But I find Scalia's majority opinion particularly galling in its dishonesty and callous disregard of a minority religion. For like reason, I find Justice O'Connor's separate opinion so imperative. Those who follow the Court's religious liberty jurisprudence know that the Court has done whatever it can to bypass the Smith decision. Several Justices have already made clear that the decision should be "reconsidered." It is almost certain that O'Connor's opinion will eventually be expressly vindicated by the Court.]

This has been a brief survey of some of the most significant and representative opinions of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Perhaps more than any other member of the Court over the last few generations, she has been a wise and candid balancer of the strong competing interests at issue in virtually all the cases that reach the Court. And unlike some of her colleagues who have seemed ideologically blind or otherwise uncompromising to disfavored or less-favored interests, or who avow fidelity to some politically induced and supposedly neutral interpretive methodology, she has been motivated by the practical realities and the real-world ramifications of her decisions. That is anathema to some Justices.

"Just apply the law" is a mantra that fails to recognize that there is almost always strong legal support for both sides in appeals at the Court. For Justice O'Connor, the actual consequences from embracing one legally supported position or the other was necessarily a foremost consideration. For that reason, her opinions made sense. Like the very best Justices in the Court's history, wisdom and decency and reality, as opposed to some cramped formalistic legalism, were the hallmarks of O'Connor's jurisprudence.

The No-Longer-Just-Leaked Opinion--Constitutional Nonsense Revisited (Part 4)

The now-official opinion by Justice Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, overturning Roe v. Wade and eliminating any right to choose an abortion, repeats what we've seen previously when the draft was leaked:

As we have explained, procuring an abortion is not a fundamental constitutional right because such a right has no basis in the Constitution’s text or in our Nation’s history.

As discussed in previous posts on New York Court Watcher, this argument is utter nonsense and dangerous. (See The Leaked Opinion--Constitutional Nonsense Revisited [Part 1], in which we looked at "it's-not-in-the-text" of the Constitution; [Part 2], in which we considered "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition;" and [Part 3], in which we examined Alito's assurance that his opinion applies only to abortion and that there's no reason to be concerned about any other rights.)

To recap very briefly, as explained in Part 1, most fundamental rights are nowhere mentioned in the text of the Constitution. The document is absolutely not a catalog of rights. It nowhere mentions, for example, the right to marry, the right to be intimate with one's partner, the right to have children, the right to have a friend, etc., etc., etc. Indeed, Alito's argument--now the argument of the Court--was prominently feared by the Framers of the Constitution and nearly defeated adding a Bill of Rights: the fear that mentioning any rights might be the basis for denying others not mentioned. That fear has now been realized and forms the primary basis in the Court's decision today to reject the right to choose an abortion.

As explained in Part 2, the secondary argument, relying on the country's history, could be used to support racial segregation and discrimination against women, as well as the criminalization of interracial marriage, the use of birth control, and gay and lesbian intimacy. All of those were an entrenched part of this Nation's history and tradition from the time of its founding until overruled by the Court in more recent times.

And in Part 3, the notion that this opinion applies only to the right to an abortion and to no other right was shown to be as much nonsense as the text and history arguments. Those were the same arguments made to the Supreme Court against any right to use birth control and to equal protection for women. The same arguments to uphold criminal laws against gays and lesbians, including against same-sex marriage. Indeed, these were the same arguments to uphold racial segregation and criminal laws against interracial marriage. Are these arguments now being revived, but only to be applied against rights the current conservative majority of the Court dislikes?

Well, Justice Thomas for one has made clear where the arguments embraced by the Court necessarily take it:

in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold [the right to use contraceptives], Lawrence [the right to engage in same-sex intimacy], and Obergefell [the right to marry for same-sex couples]. Because any substantive due process decision is “demonstrably erroneous,” we have a duty to “correct the error” established in those precedents.

Of course, Justice Thomas didn't mention Brown v. Board of Education [outlawing racial segregation], Loving v. Virginia [invalidating laws against interracial marriage], or Reed v. Reed [recognizing equal protection for women]. But all of those decisions, and many others, similarly rejected arguments that the Court majority applied today to uphold restrictions on abortion and to reject any right to choose. 

Justice Alito's introductory and concluding assertion is indisputably correct: Abortion presents a profound moral issue on which Americans hold sharply conflicting views. Yes. But the very same was said--and in some cases can still be said--about racial integration, interracial marriage, women's rights, gay rights, consensual adult sex, contraceptives, etc. But also about gun rights, campaign finance, affirmative action, etc. Does the existence of sharply conflicting views really mean that the Supreme Court should leave those matters to the states?

Regardless of one's views about abortion--and, as I believe is undeniable: there are profound interests on both sides--the arguments applied by Alito, and now by the Court majority, to justify denying any right to choose are nonsense. And beyond that, if they are to be taken seriously, they place other rights recognized in Supreme Court landmarks in jeopardy.

The Leaked Opinion--Constitutional Nonsense Revisited (Part 3)

Here's the final installment in this series. Preparing an article on overturning precedent and grading final exams and papers are the culprits for the delay.

Justice Samuel Alito
Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images

We've previously looked at Justice Alito's two main arguments against a woman's right to choose an abortion. In Part 1, we looked at "it's-not-in-the-text" of the Constitution; in Part 2, we considered "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition." We now turn to his assurance that his opinion applies only to abortion and that there's no reason to be concerned about any other rights.

As Alito put it:

to ensure that our decision is not mis­understood or mischaracterized, we emphasize that our de­cision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right. Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.

Really? Even though the entire thrust of his opinion parallels the legal arguments that have been urged against other rights? Legal arguments ultimately rejected in landmark decisions protecting those rights? Legal arguments still raised against those rights?

Consider the essence of Alito's arguments. He doesn't conceal it. He says the same things repeatedly. And for him, what he repeats is proof beyond any doubt that the Constitution does not support a woman's right to choose. But it's more than that. For him, the Constitution's text and tradition affirmatively repudiate the notion of any such right.

As he must, Alito addresses the Constitution's explicit protection of "liberty." It's there in the 5th Amendment against federal violations, and in the post-Civil War 14th Amendment against violations by the states. So what to make of "liberty?"

Here's the essence of Alito's arguments--his proof positive that there can be no constitutional right for a woman to choose: the meaning of "liberty" is strictly limited to the legal understandings and decisions of the past; and it is illegitimate for the  Court to disrupt this past.

So, a cramped view of a fundamental constitutional concept, based on a legal past that binds the Court.

For Alito, that is axiomatic. Those who sought to preserve racial segregation and anti-miscegenation laws urged the same thing. More recently, it has been--and still is--relied upon by those who have denounced any private right to use contraceptives and equal rights for LGBTQ persons, and have even disputed the application of equal protection to women.

Let's first listen to Alito. Then we'll look at the arguments of those who contested landmark civil rights and liberties landmarks. Here's Alito:

The term "liberty" alone provides little guidance.

We must exercise the utmost care whenever we are asked to break new ground in this field. 

We must ask what the Fourteenth Amendment means by the term "liberty."

The abortion right is also critically different from any other right...within the Fourteenth Amendment's protection of "liberty."

It is certainly not "ordered lib­erty."

The clear answer is that the Fourteenth Amendment does not protect the right to an abortion. 

And, for Alito, the limited understanding of "liberty" is certainly fixed by the past:

An unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment persisted from the earliest days of the common law. 

For the first 185 years after the adoption of the Constitu­tion, each State was permitted to address this issue in ac­cordance with the views of its citizens. 

When the Four­teenth Amendment was adopted, three-quarters of the States made abortion a crime. [And again...]

By the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, three-quarters of the States had made abortion a crime. [And again...]

By 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, three-quarters of the States, 28 out of 37, had enacted statutes making abortion a crime.

Accordingly, for Alito:

Our Nation's historical understanding of ordered liberty does not prevent the people's elected representatives from deciding how abortion should be regulated. 

It follows that the States may regulate abortion. 

Courts cannot substitute their so­cial and economic beliefs for the judgment of legislative bod­ies. [To do so is...]

The exercise of raw judicial power. 

Anyone who studies the Supreme Court's landmarks will find Alito's line of reasoning and insistence to be quite familiar. Certainly not because it's what the Court embraced to advance civil rights and liberties. But because it is precisely what was argued by the opponents of those constitutional protections. It's the same line of reasoning and insistence argued by those who have resisted progress on civil rights and liberties at every turn, and still do.

Think that's an exaggeration? Ok. Let's see what the state of Kansas argued to the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). This is straight from the state's brief defending racial segregation:

The laws of a majority of the states authorized segregation at the time the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified. 

Of the 37 states that comprised the Union at the time of adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, 24 of them maintained legal segregation.

It is a late day to say that such segregation is violative of fundamental constitutional rights.

This court would be going far beyond the limits of the judicial power if, on the basis of such a record, it should reverse the trend of nearly ninety years.

Alito could have written that brief himself. No?

What about the effort in Loving v. Virginia (1967) to save anti-miscegenation laws? This is from the state of Virginia's brief to the Supreme Court supporting its criminal law against interracial marriage:

The Fourteenth Amendment had no application whatever to the anti-miscegenation statutes of the various States.
A majority of the States which ratified the Fourteenth Amendment still maintained and enforced their anti-miscegenation laws as late as 1950.
Federal courts and State courts clearly indicated that anti-miscegenation statutes of the various States are not violative of the Fourteenth Amendment.
It is the exclusive province of the legislature of each State to make the determination for its citizens.
Judicial inquiry into the wisdom, propriety or desirability of preventing interracial alliances is completely inappropriate.

Alito could have written that too.

It might well be argued that there's little likelihood that the Court--even the majority of Justices in Alito's leaked opinion--is going to overrule the Brown or Loving decisions. Even though the very same arguments apply. So let's look at some other landmarks that are more likely candidates for the chopping block. Unlike Brown and Loving, the Court's decisions in these other cases are still denounced by culturally conservative jurists, politicians, and others.

Let's take Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), where the Supreme Court recognized a constitutional right to privacy protecting the freedom to use contraceptives. That decision is a regular punching bag for the "it's-not-mentioned-in-the-Constitution" crowd. Here are arguments from Connecticut's brief supporting its criminal anti-contraceptives law:

 

The Connecticut statute stems from the [federal] Comstock Act of 1873...which prohibited the possession, sale, or mailing of contraceptives.

As of December 31, 1964 thirty states of the Union still have some statute specifically applicable to the prevention of conception.

Jurisdictions that have ruled on the constitutionality of contraceptive statutes all seem to be in agreement that the regulation of contraceptives is a legitimate exercise of the state's police power to regulate public morals.

[Citing, e.g., Commonwealth v. Allison, Mass. 1917 (emphasizing that the "means adopted are sanctioned by long continued usage"); People v. Byrne, N.Y., 1917 (relying of the fact that "convictions had under [an anti-contraceptives law] have never been held unconstitutional"); Lanteen Laboratories v. Clark, Ill., 1938 (noting that "after the federal [Comstock Act of 1873] was enacted, majority of the states passed statutes designed to prevent the sale of contraceptives").] 

This Court dismissed [challenges to contraceptive laws in 1919 and 1938] for want of a substantial federal question.

The Supreme Court may not decide the desirability of legislation in determining its constitutionality. 

Agreeing with those arguments were the dissenting Justices who voted, in Griswold, to uphold the law criminalizing contraceptive use. This is from one of the dissents:

The Court [majority] talks about a constitutional ‘right of privacy’ as though there is some constitutional provision...But there is not.

Every state criminal statute must inevitably curtail ‘liberty’ to some extent.

Here's from the other dissenting opinion:

As to the First, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments, I can find nothing in any of them to invalidate this Connecticut law.

What provision of the Constitution, then, does make this state law invalid? 

 You might as well add that there's no provision in the Constitution mentioning "contraceptives" or "birth control" or "sex." Just what Alito says about "abortion."

Now, speaking of sex, what about the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Lawrence v. Texas, 2003,  ruling that laws criminalizing gay sex are unconstitutional? To be sure, "gay sex" is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution. But neither is straight sex or sex of any sort for that matter. Nevertheless, Justices Byron White and Antonin Scalia--who, not coincidentally, are quoted frequently in Alito's leaked opinion--argued vehemently that there was no right to "homosexual sodomy," as they insisted on calling it, because it is not mentioned or implied in the Constitution. (Does anyone honestly believe that White and Scalia opposed gay rights for that reason?)

Like the decision in Griswold, to protect a privacy right to use contraceptives, the decision in Lawrence, to protect the right of same-sex couples to engage in sexual intimacy, remains extremely controversial--again, at least in culturally conservative circles. So just consider the similarities between Alito's leaked opinion and the arguments favoring criminal laws against "homosexual sodomy." This is from Texas's brief to the Supreme Court in Lawrence:

In light of pervasive State criminalization of such conduct throughout the nation's history, it could not seriously be asserted that a right to engage in homosexual sodomy was “deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition.”

Sodomy was a serious criminal offense at common law.
It was forbidden by the laws of the original thirteen states at the time of the ratification of the Bill of Rights.
It was punishable as a crime in all but five of the thirty-seven states in existence at the time of the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Courts cannot concern themselves “with cultural trends and political movements” without “usurping the role of the Legislature.”

The State of Texas has a legitimate state interest in legislatively expressing the long-standing moral traditions of the State against homosexual conduct.

Then there's this from Justice Scalia's dissenting opinion in support of the Texas law:

Quoting approvingly from Justice White's majority opinion in Bowers v. Hardwick, 1986, where the Court had previously upheld criminal laws against "homosexual sodomy"--as, again, Scalia and White were fond of calling it:

“Proscriptions against that conduct have ancient roots.” 

“Sodomy was a criminal offense at common law and was forbidden by the laws of the original 13 States when they ratified the Bill of Rights.”

A right to engage in homosexual sodomy was not “‘deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition,’"

Scalia continued...

There are 203 prosecutions for consensual, adult homosexual sodomy reported from the years 1880–1995.
There are also records of 20 sodomy prosecutions and 4 executions during the colonial period.
Texas's hand should not be stayed through the invention of a brand-new “constitutional right.”

Those judgments are to be made by the people.

A lot like Alito's leaked opinion?

As might be expected, those same arguments against "homosexual sodomy" were urged again 12 years later against same-sex marriage. When the Court, in Obergefell v Hodges, 2015, recognized the right of same-sex couples to marry, Justice Scalia, again in dissent, made those now all-too-familiar arguments to defend laws restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples:

The [majority] opinion is the furthest extension in fact of the Court's claimed power to create “liberties” that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention.
When the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868, every State limited marriage to one man and one woman, and no one doubted the constitutionality of doing so. That resolves these cases.

We have no basis for striking down [this marriage restriction] that is not expressly prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment's text, and that bears the endorsement of a long tradition of open, widespread, and unchallenged use dating back to the Amendment's ratification.

 

Let me refer to just one more landmark to help understand how utterly dangerous and threatening Alito's arguments are to our fundamental notions of civil rights and liberties today. Consider Reed v Reed, 1971. This was the very first decision of the Supreme Court to hold that women are entitled to equal protection under the Constitution. That's right, it was not until 1971! But still, you might think, the Court would never go back and start upholding discrimination against women again. (Although Justice Scalia, the hero of several Justices who have joined Alito's leaked opinion, insisted that the Constitution's Equal Protection guarantee did not apply to women.)

Let's look at the arguments in Reed v. Reed to uphold such discrimination. The state law at issue in that case prioritized the appointment of men over women in probating estates. Here's what the brief to the Supreme Court argued in support of that law:

Statutes specifically preferring males to females have been applied whenever they have come before the courts. [Citing numerous cases from several states dating back to 1845.] 
Their constitutionality has never before been questioned.
The 14th Amendment [Equal Protection Clause] was not enacted to prohibit the enactment of laws making a distinction on the basis of sex.
There is no present legal authority for [a contrary] contention.
Nothing new can be put into the Constitution except by the amendatory process.
The remedy or remedies should be with the electorate, by state legislatures, where local conditions and needs are better known and responded to than nationally.

There is nothing in the vague generalities of the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses which empower this Court to nullify the deliberate choices of the elected representatives of the people.

Yep, these arguments to deny equal protection to women are those we've seen repeatedly and the same ones in Alito's leaked opinion. Whether the arguments were made in the past to support racial segregation, or anti-miscegenation laws, or laws prohibiting contraceptives, or laws criminalizing same-sex intimacy, or laws limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples, or laws denying equal protection of the laws to women, they are of one cloth with the arguments now being made to uphold laws against a woman's right to choose an abortion.

To rephrase how I characterized these arguments at the outset, they boil down to this:

Constitutional guarantees have only narrow, specific meanings; that's the way they've been viewed in the past; and the Supreme Court has no legitimate authority to give those rights and liberties any fuller effect.

Alito may insist that "Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion." But that can't be so if he is serious about his arguments. Because those are the same arguments as those that were made--and in some circles are still made--against other precedents. They are the same arguments that were made, but the Supreme Court rejected, in Brown, and Loving, and Griswold, and Lawrence, and Obergefell, and Reed--and, in fact, in most landmark decisions. Alito's leaked opinion reverses the course taken in those landmarks and he now embraces those arguments as dispositive.

Unless Alito's arguments are retracted, or distinguished away, or in some incoherent, unprincipled way made applicable to some constitutional issues but inapplicable to others, they do actually undermine other precedents. They revive the previously rejected positions urged--and still urged--against many landmark decisions.

One last thing. Many readers have surely been doing this all along. Just exchange laws against abortion for laws against racial integration, or against interracial marriages, or against contraceptives, or against "homosexual sodomy," or against same-sex marriage, or against equal rights for women. Make the substitutions in Alito's leaked opinion or in the arguments made against the landmarks. The rights in question may be different, but the arguments against those rights are the same.

Whatever one thinks about a woman's right to choose--and there are profound interests on both sides of the issue--Alito's leaked opinion is dreadfully reasoned and dangerous to civil rights and liberties.

The Leaked Opinion--Constitutional Nonsense Revisited (Part 2)

In Part 1, we examined the nonsensical, ahistorical, and contra-constitutional argument that "it's-not-in-the-text" of the Constitution. In short, the primary argument in Justice Samuel Alito's leaked opinion--i.e., that a woman's right to choose an abortion is nowhere mentioned in the document--misrepresents the purpose of the Constitution, which was to organize and divide powers in the new national government. Not to enumerate rights. Most significantly, Alito's argument is exactly what the Framers feared when they were considering whether to add a list of some rights to the original document. Moreover, that argument disregards the intended safeguard inserted into the resulting Bill of Rights--what would become the 9th Amendment--that the enumeration of rights was certainly not all-inclusive.

Justice Samuel Alito
Erin Schaff-Pool/Getty Images

As I've previously said, Alito is surely aware of all that. He must know how flimsy that "it's-not-in-the-text" argument is. Indeed, he acknowledges--if begrudgingly so--that there are fundamental rights the Supreme Court has recognized that are nowhere to be found in the text of the Constitution.

Alito does not necessarily take issue with unenumerated rights. At least not all of them. But he does repeatedly insist that any non-textual, unspecified constitutional right must be "objectively, deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition." He also repeatedly insists that the right to abortion fails that test, and he exhaustively recites a history of abortion crimes to make his point.

As with the "it's-not-in-the-text" argument, Alito must know the weakness of his fallback test. "Objectively, deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition"--really? He must know that every landmark civil rights and liberties decision of the Supreme Court broke with history and tradition. That's why they are landmarks.

The cherished decisions of the Court, the ones that are most celebrated by Americans and by the Court itself, those decisions that have given life to our highest constitutional ideals of liberty and justice and equality--they failed Alito's test! They never would have been delivered if the Supreme Court embraced history and tradition as the mandate Alito insists it is.

Any student of constitutional law--and, to be sure, Alito is one--should have no difficulty rattling off landmark decisions of the Supreme Court that failed his "this Nation's history and tradition" test. Does Alito actually reject those landmarks? Do the other Justices who have apparently voted with him reject those landmarks as well?

Let's consider a few of them.

• Brown v. Board of Education, prohibiting government-sponsored racial segregation. That 1954 decision, 167 years after the Constitution was adopted, overruled the Nation's history and tradition of allowing racial segregation in this country. In fact, racial segregation was even accepted for 84 years after the explicit guarantee of equal protection was added in 1868 in the 14th Amendment. The Court in Brown famously overruled the "separate-but-equal" doctrine which it had approved in 1896 in Plessy v. Ferguson. The constitutional right against racial segregation clearly failed Alito's test. Did that make Brown an illegitimate decision?
• Loving v. Virginia, recognizing the right of interracial couples to marry. That 1967 decision--perhaps the most dreaded by those who fought against racial integration--rejected the Nation's history and tradition of anti-miscegenation laws. It took 180 years since the framing of the Constitution, and even 13 years after Brown. The Court had to overrule another decision, Pace v. Alabama, an 1883 ruling in which the Court placed its constitutional imprimatur on that long tradition in the states. Sorry, but Loving 's recognition of a right to marry for mixed-race couples flunked Alito's test. Illegitimate?
• Reed v. Reed, invalidating discrimination against women as arbitrary. That 1971 decision was the first to prohibit unequal treatment on the basis of sex. Yes, it was not until 1971, 184 years since the Constitution was adopted and 103 years since the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection. This Nation's history and tradition was to accept "a wide difference in the respective spheres and destinies of man and woman [because the] natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life." (Bradwell v. Illinois, 1873.) It was nearly a century after Bradwell that the Court, in Reed, finally rejected that constitutionally approved notion of women being "evidently unfit" for the same responsibilities and rights as men. Yep, equal rights for women fails Alito's test. Illegitimate?
• Lawrence v. Texas, invalidating state laws criminalizing same-sex intimacy. That 2003 decision overruled Bowers v. Hardwick, decided 17 years earlier, which had approved the continuing "savage discrimination" [to use Judge Richard Posner's description] against gays and lesbians. That mistreatment was certainly part of this country's history and tradition. Indeed, those who vehemently oppose gay rights and the Lawrence decision argue both that the Constitution does not confer a right of "homosexual sodomy" and, moreover, that such conduct was widely forbidden since the nation's founding. Of course, whether "homosexual sodomy" is a fundamental right is hardly the issue; but, rather, whether there is any legitimate government interest that justifies criminalizing the most personal and private conduct of consenting adults. But be that as it may, the right of same-sex couples to engage in intimate conduct--just as opposite-sex couples are permitted--fails both the "it's-not-in-the-text" and the history and tradition tests. A fortiori, so does the right to marry for same-sex couples which the Court recognized 12 years later in Obergefell v. Hodges. Are both decisions now headed for the chopping block?
• Griswold v. Connecticut, recognizing a private right to use contraceptives. That 1965 decision, continually derided by opponents because a "right of privacy" is not mentioned in the Constitution, also defied the history and tradition of this country's view of contraceptives as being immoral. Indeed, such a view was enshrined in the federal Comstock Act of 1873, together with the prohibition of obscene materials, and was enforceable with criminal punishments up to 10 years imprisonment. Well, neither "privacy" nor "contraceptives" are to be found anywhere in the Constitution's text. Nor was either deeply rooted in the Nation's history and tradition back in 1965 when Griswold was decided. As with gay rights, the private right to use contraceptives fails both of Alito's tests. The chopping block?

There are so many other Supreme Court decisions protecting civil rights and liberties that do not pass one or the other or either of Alito's tests. But let's move to some landmarks that protect the rights of the criminally accused. Let's see how they hold up to the "history and tradition" test. 

As all students of constitutional law know, it is the 14th Amendment, not the Bill of Rights, that makes federal constitutional protections enforceable against the states. Its Due Process Clause, which explicitly protects "liberty," is what the Supreme Court has relied on to enforce fundamental rights. But neither "due process" nor "liberty" are defined in the 14th Amendment, or elsewhere in the document. So ever since 1868 when the 14th Amendment was adopted, the Court has been giving meaning to those terms.

Let's take a brief look at how history and tradition have dealt with "due process."

• The right to a jury trial? For the first 100 years after the 14th Amendment was ratified--and 181 years after the Constitution was adopted--the Supreme Court allowed states to conduct prosecutions without affording the accused a right to a jury. Then in its 1968 decision in Duncan v. Louisiana, the Court overruled a string of precedents (see e.g., Maxwell v. Dow, 1900) that had consistently rejected the notion that a jury trial right was a necessary component of due process. The history and tradition of the Constitution's 14th Amendment and of the meaning of its due process provision certainly didn't win the day in Duncan. The jury right in state trials, illegitimate?
• The right to a unanimous jury? Despite the Duncan decision, the Supreme Court continued to reject the notion that a unanimous verdict was required for a conviction. It took another 52 years for the Court to rule that unanimity was a due process requirement. In its 2020 ruling in Ramos v. Louisiana, the Court overruled a couple of post-Duncan decisions--Apodaca v. Oregon and Johnson v. Louisiana, both 1972--and for the first time ruled that states must not only afford the right to a jury trial, but that state juries must be unanimous to convict. So the Supreme Court's recognition of that due process right in the 14th Amendment took 152 years and 233 years after the adoption of the Constitution. Deeply rooted in the Nation's history and tradition?
• The right to counsel? In Gideon v. Wainwright, the Court held that an accused, rich or poor, was entitled to the assistance of counsel in criminal prosecutions in state courts. Accordingly, that 1963 decision required states to provide an attorney for defendants who could not afford one on their own. The Court overruled its 1942 Betts v. Brady decision, which had adhered to the longstanding view that a defendant's rights in state courts under the 14th Amendment were not equal to those rights guaranteed in federal courts by the Bill of Rights. Specifically, state defendants were not constitutionally entitled to the same right to counsel that the 6th Amendment required in federal prosecutions. So, Gideon contravened the history and tradition of due process rights in state courts--that's 95 years of jurisprudence since the adoption of the 14th Amendment and 176 years of jurisprudence under the Constitution itself. Yep, Gideon's right to counsel flunked Alito's history and tradition test.

We could go on and on with constitutional rights of the accused that were finally guaranteed against violation by the states--all in landmarks that flunked Alito's test. For example:

• Search and seizure rights were not protected against state violation until 1961 in Mapp v. Ohio
• The right against cruel and unusual punishment, not until 1962 in Robinson v. California
• The right against compulsory self-incrimination, not until 1964 in Malloy v. Hogan
• The right against double jeopardy, not until 1969 in Benton v. Maryland
• The right against a racially selected jury, not until 1986 in Batson v. Kentucky
• And more recently, the right against excessive fines, not until 2019 in Timbs v. Indiana.

Regarding that last mentioned right, as late as 2008 in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Court listed that right against excessive fines among those that had never been held to be enforcible against the states. Indeed, regarding all of those rights of the accused, the aforementioned landmark cases enforced them against the states for the first time. There had been no previous history or tradition of those rights being included within the requirements of the 14th Amendment's due process guarantee.

One final note about the history and tradition test. Alito's repeated reference to it derives from the judicial opinions of one of America's greatest judges, Benjamin Nathan Cardozo. Yes, Cardozo applied that concept in determining what was a fundamental right constitutional right. But he warned against transforming "vague precepts" of due process into "immutable principles."

Throughout his career on the bench, Cardozo made clear that history and tradition were not prescriptions for primitive or static views about the law. To the contrary, in opinions for which he is renowned, he advanced the American law of consumer rights and business ethics as well as so many other areas while on the New York Court of Appeals. He did the same with the protections of workers and retirees and the scope of constitutionally protected liberty while a Supreme Court Justice.

Perhaps most notably for the focus of this commentary, is Cardozo's famous articulation of a foundational liberty within weeks of his appointment to New York's highest court. As he put it in his unanimous opinion in 1914 in Schloendorff v. Society of New York Hosp.:

Every human being of adult years and sound mind has a right to determine what shall be done with his own body.

He was rephrasing what was already accepted as a basic doctrine of civil liberties in other state courts:

Under a free government, at least, the free citizen’s first and greatest right, which underlies all others — the right to the inviolability of his person; in other words the right' to himself — is the subject of universal acquiescence. (See e.g., Mohr v. Williams [Minnesota Supreme Court,1905.])

Despite the history and tradition underlying that "first and greatest right" of bodily autonomy, Alito's opinion gives it the shortest shrift, the narrowest scope. Of course, no right is absolute. But the disregard of that right in Alito's opinion, when it comes to a woman's decision whether to continue a pregnancy, is not explainable except that he picks and chooses where and how his history and tradition test shall apply. 

Clearly, Alito's "objectively, deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition" test, if it were truly to be applied "objectively"--and not based on ideology or partisanship or personal morality--would provide much more weight to a woman's right to choose than Alito is willing to acknowledge. And as we've already seen, his supposedly mandatory test would have precluded so many of the Supreme Court's landmarks that are now basic to American civil rights and liberties. He's not a stupid man. He knows that.

In the next post, Alito's insistence that his opinion does not affect other rights.

The Leaked Opinion--Constitutional Nonsense Revisited* (Part 1)

 *In a series of posts several years ago, I examined some nonsensical arguments that are regularly spouted, often by those who do or should know better. [Supremely Awful Arguments: Constitutional Nonsense (Part 1); (Part 2); (Part 3); (Part 4).] The leaked opinion is full of them.

Let me begin with what is usually left unsaid or ignored regarding the constitutional issue of abortion. There are two profound competing interests involved. There's the woman's interest in making her own choice about her own pregnancy, and there's the governmental and societal interest in protecting a human life that is yet to be born.

Justice Samuel Alito
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

It is a difficult issue that requires thoughtful, delicate balancing. Unfortunately, there is precious little such balancing in the public debate. And Justice Alito's leaked opinion evinces more stridency and vengeance than thoughtfulness or delicacy.

Consequently, and not surprisingly, the constitutional argumentation in his opinion is woefully flawed. The point here is emphatically not about whether Roe v. Wade should be overruled or upheld. That's a  separate matter. The point here is that Alito's arguments to overrule Roe and reject a woman's right to choose are nonsense. Yes, that's a strong indictment. But it's one that's deserved.

There are three main arguments in Alito's leaked opinion. Let's start with the first one that sounds so appealing, but is utter...well, a vulgarity would be most fitting, but let's just say gibberish: the text of the Constitution does not say anything about a right to abortion. 

Alito surely knows better than to make that argument. He's well aware that the Constitution is not a catalog of rights. He knows full well that the Constitution primarily organizes and divides the powers of government. He must know that we nearly did not have a Bill of Rights because the Framers were afraid that such an argument would be made. They were afraid that listing any rights in the document would lead some to argue that those not listed did not exist.

The Framers debated whether it would therefore be more dangerous to add a Bill of Rights which listed some guarantees than to simply leave out any listing at all. Ultimately they chose to include an enumeration of some of those rights that England had been violating, and then to add a provision--the 9th Amendment--that would make clear that the listing was hardly intended to be exhaustive. That a free people had lots of others that weren't mentioned.

In presenting his proposed several amendments to the first Congress, James Madison acknowledged the strength of the argument against listing some rights and the danger of doing so. He offered a provision that he hoped would solve the problem and avoid the "it's-not-mentioned-in-the-text-of-the-Constitution" argument. Well, Madison got his suggested provision--which would become the 9th Amendment. But that dangerous argument that he and the other Framers feared is still being raised. Even by the Justices, as in Alito's leaked opinion.

Perhaps Alito, other Justices, politicians, and commentators need to be reminded. Here's what Madison said as he presented a "bill of rights" to the Constitution on June 8, 1789:

lt has been objected also against a bill of rights, that, by enumerating particular exceptions to the grant of power, it would disparage those rights which were not placed in that enu­meration; and it might follow, by implication, that those rights which were not singled out, were intended to be assigned into the hands of the General Government, and were consequent­ly insecure. This is one of the most plausible arguments I have ever heard urged against the admission of a bill of rights into this system; but, I conceive, that it may be guarded against. I have attempted it, as gentlemen may see by turning to the last clause of the fourth resolution [which became the 9th Amendment].

And yet, we still hear the nonsense. "It's-not-in-the-text." Yes, a right may not be mentioned in the text of the document, but that is emphatically not a reason to disparage a right, let alone to deny its existence. There may well be reasons to disparage or deny a right. But that most certainly is not one of them!

Just consider a few examples:

• The right of a couple--even a traditional heterosexual one--to marry? Nope, nowhere mentioned in the text.
• The right of a married couple to be intimate? Nope, not there.
• The right of that couple to kiss prior to marriage? Not that either.
• The right of a married couple to have children? Nowhere to be found in the document.
• The right of a married couple to raise their children, or even to hug them? Not mentioned.
• The right to look for work to support oneself and one's family? Nope.
• The right to have a friend? Not even that one is in the text.
• The right to join a group of friends or others with similar interests? Nope.
• The right to wave to a neighbor and say 'hello?" Not mentioned
• The right to go for a stroll? Sorry, not in the text.
• The right to donate to a favorite charity? Nah, not there.
• The right to offer your services to that charity? Not that either.
• The right to march in support of a cause? No.
• Etc., etc., etc.

And let's not leave out some rights favored by those Justices, politicians, and commentators who most frequently make the nonsensical "it's-not-in-the-text-of-the-Constitution" argument:

• The right to contribute money to a political candidate? Not mentioned.
• The right of a corporation to finance a video about a candidate? Nope. [The closest the Constitution says is "speech." That's the only relevant word James Madison used, and he surely knew its definition.]
• The right to go hunting? Nope.
• The right of self-defense in one's home? Not even that.
• The right to even choose who gets to enter one's home? Not in the text.
• The right to avoid and hate liberals for ruining this country? Nope.
• Again, etc., etc., etc.

The fact is that most of our rights, most of those liberties and privileges that are essential to a free society are not mentioned in the text of the Constitution. The document was never intended to be some all-inclusive catalog of rights. Indeed, not a catalog of rights at all.

And yet, that "it's-not-in-the-text" argument is front and center in Alito's leaked opinion. He must know it's nonsense. He must know it has little to do with whether a woman has or should have a right to choose. Maybe he is just so blinded with anger about abortion rights that he refuses to see or just doesn't care.

Next on New York Court Watcher, Alito's "it's-not-part-part-of-American-tradition" argument.

REPRISE: Religious Institutions Must Pay Abortion Coverage in NY

In a series of posts last year, I discussed the challenge to New York's abortion insurance mandate brought by religious objectors. Led by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, the challengers sought an exemption on sincere religious grounds.

(See Religious Institutions Must Pay Abortion Coverage in NY (Part 1): More Aftermath of Scalia's Dreadful Oregon v. Smith Opinion [July 6, 2020];

Religious Institutions Must Pay Abortion Coverage in NY (Part 2): More Aftermath of Scalia's Dreadful Oregon v. Smith Opinion [July 22, 2020]; and

A Tale of Two Religious Liberty Decisions: SCOTUS Versus NY's Court of Appeals [Nov. 26, 2020].)

As I wrote in that latter post:

In a case involving the state's regulation requiring employers to provide abortion insurance coverage, New York's highest court wouldn't even hear an appeal. In Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany v. Vullo, religious objectors--to whom abortion is, for some, the equivalent of killing a human being and, for others, akin to it--were seeking an exemption on tha basis of religious liberty. But apparently, the Judges of New York's highest court didn't even think that the fundamental right of free exercise of religion is serious enough to deserve a hearing. 

         Here is the entirety of the Court of Appeals' ruling:

On the Court's own motion, appeal dismissed, 

without costs, upon the ground that no substantial

constitutional question is directly involved.

Motion for leave to appeal denied with one hundred

dollars costs and necessary reproduction 

disbursements.

Chief Judge DiFiore and Judges Rivera, Stein, 

Garcia, Wilson and Feinman concur.

Judge Fahey dissents and votes to retain the appeal.

(Mo. No. 2020-549, Nov. 24, 2020) [My emphasis added.

"No substantial constitutional question." And "On the Court's own motion." It is difficult to see anything but contempt on the part of the court for sincere, central religious beliefs and for genuine claims that constitutional religious liberty is being violated. Regardless of how the court would or should ultimately have ruled after an appeal, the refusal to even hear the appeal seems inexcusable.

So, in the New York State courts:

the trial judge denied the religious objection;

the Appellate Division (the state's intermediate court) affirmed that denial;

and the Court of Appeals (the state's highest court) deemed the case unworthy to hear.

Understanding full well that a serious question of religious free exercise was in fact at issue--despite the Court of Appeals dismissive contempt--the Albany Catholic Diocese petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for certiorari (i.e., to review the case). Moreover, numerous scholars and various religious and religious liberty organizations submitted briefs to the Court in support of the Albany Diocese's constitutional argument which New York's highest court didn't consider worthy of an appeal.

Well...

The Supreme Court today granted the Albany Diocese's petition for certiorari, summarily vacated the decision of the New York courts, and sent the case back to New York's Appellate Division for reconsideration. Here's the order:

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2021

CERTIORARI -- SUMMARY DISPOSITIONS

20-1501 ROMAN CATHOLIC DIOCESE, ET AL. V. EMAMI, SHIRIN, ET AL.

The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted. The

judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the Appellate

Division, Supreme Court of New York, Third Judicial Department

for further consideration in light of Fulton v. Philadelphia,

593 U. S. ___ (2021). Justice Thomas, Justice Alito, and

Justice Gorsuch would grant the petition for a writ of

certiorari.

So...

The Supreme Court unanimously--that includes all three liberal justices: Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan--vacated the rulings of the New York courts which had denied the religious exemption to the state's abortion insurance mandate. A six-justice majority voted to summarily remand the case back to the New York courts for reconsideration. And three justices, Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch--who have previously made clear that (Employment Division...of) Oregon v. Smith has to go--wanted the Supreme Court to proceed with a full appeal, presumably to overrule that precedent.

[N.B., Oregon v. Smith is the Supreme Court decision which, in Justice Scalia's dreadful and dishonest majority opinion--no, I'm not pulling any punches, any more than did Justice O'Connor--ruled against the religious liberty claim of The Native American Church on the truly incredible ground that any "otherwise valid law" defeats constitutional free exercise of religion. Yep, legislation defeats a fundamental constitutional right!

I've written and spoken at length about the Smith decision and its impact on religious liberty. See e.g., Justice Scalia's Record (Part 1), 2/18/16; Religious Liberty--commentary, interview, video, presentation [updated 5/15/13]; Religious Liberty: Fundamental Right or Nuisance, 14 U. St. Thomas L.J. 650 (2018); The Fall of Free Exercise, 70 Alb. L. Rev. 1399 (2007). Ironically, but not surprisingly, conservatives today are much more supportive of free exercise of religion than previously, and liberals much less so, because recent cases have involved majority and fundamental religions objecting to abortion rights, LGBTQ rights, and other rights favored by political liberals.]

Now...

The question is, what will the New York courts do with the case in light of the Supreme Court's summary vacatur? It's doubtful that the Appellate Division this time around will be so dismissive of the Albany Diocese's religious liberty claim for an exemption. It's also doubtful that the Court of Appeals this time around--however the Appellate Division rules--will treat this fundamental constitutional claim so contemptuously.

I guess we shall see.

[Disclosure: I have been assisting counsel for the Albany Diocese in this case, just as I did in Catholic Charities v. Serio (2006), involving New York's contraceptive insurance mandate.

Regardless of my strong support for the right to use contraceptives and for the right to choose, I believe that the free exercise of religion, like other fundamental constitutional rights, must not be lightly disregarded and, rather, should be limited only when actually necessary to protect important health, safety, national security, and other critical concerns. And that's hardly a unique or radical position. In fact, it is the most basic principle of constitutional law.]