The Supreme Court: Has the Supreme court made discrimination an acceptable practice in America? Is it now an American right to discriminate against people that we don’t like or don’t agree with? That is what it looks like to me. They took a made up court case about a fictitious case of free speech and ruled on it. The conservatives on the court already knew how they were going to rule. All they needed was a case to come before them so they could rule as they did. I can’t help but feel that they have set the country back about 70 years.

The case was not a real case but they ruled on it anyway. By a vote of 6-3 the Court ruled in favor of an Evangelical Christian web designer in Colorado that did not have to accept business from a same sex couple wanting a gay marriage web site. Colorado law bars businesses from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation but Smith argued that it violated her free speech and all six so called conservative Justices ruled in her favor. Part of me feels that any person should be able to turn away any business that they want to turn away but part of me really has a huge problem with discrimination being part of free speech. I feel that this will open the door to more and more attacks on our rights. It turns out that the person that was named in the lawsuit never asked for a web site to be designed, is not gay, and is straight and married. That is what I mean as it being a made up case for a ruling that was already pre- written. This is not a court that wishes to rule on the law. This is a court, with an agenda, thinking it knows better than the courts of the past and wishes to make the law.

What can be the long reaching results of declaring that discrimination is part of free speech? I was born in 1953. I grew up while the civil rights battle was raging in much of America. King, Malcolm X, Father Groppi, Jesse Jackson were regulars on the news. It was a historic time in America with the fight against Discrimination and the fight for Civil Rights being in the forefront. I witnessed great change in America in race relations but I also saw that many people’s attitude about race never changed. For the most part the law was changed to protect the right of Black and minority Americans but I know that changing the law doesn’t change people’s heart. The superior attitude that some people have over others never went away. The Supreme Court, in just 2020, had ruled that the Federal anti-Discrimination Law Protects Gay and Transgender workers. Now they say that services provided by businesses can discriminate under the provision of Free Speech. I really see these two decisions in just the span of 3 years are a little bit in conflict with each other. You can’t discriminate unless it is violating your right to free speech? Free speech can almost be applied to everything we do every day of our lives. Denying services to those Black Students in Woolworths was people expressing their right to free speech by how I am interpreting the Supreme Court ruling. That booth from Woolworths now sits in the Smithsonian as a representation for our fight for civil rights and equality under the law. That was no different than the web designer, a denial of service because you are offended by the other person or the group that the other person represents. What the Supreme Court is basically saying to me is that a restaurant can’t deny me employment or fire me because I am gay but that same restaurant does not have to serve me as a customer. Or a car dealership can’t discriminate me when it comes to employment but they don’t have to sell me a car if I am a race or sexual orientation that they find objectionable.   

Another biggie that the Supreme Court struck down was Affirmative Action. Here again it is something that is race related. I was never a fan of affirmative action but I didn’t know a better way so I kept my mouth shut. No matter what the Declaration of Independence says, people in America are not created equal with inalienable rights given to us by our creator. This country has never worked that way and it doesn’t now. We were founded by men that thought they had the right to enslave whole groups of people that they thought were inferior. I am not only talking about the Black slaves that we brought from Africa but also the Indigenous Natives that we also enslaved, which isn’t even talked about very much in our history books. We had to have laws to ensure that they were given the same rights as everyone else even after they were given their freedom. In America, freedom does not mean equal. To this day we have people that will try and take other people freedoms and liberties away from them in the name of gaining power. Affirmative Action was an attempt to try and level that playing field. It wasn’t perfect but I don’t know of a better way. It was way too easy to overlook minority students in favor of White students. I feel it did force Universities to search out minority students that could excel but had previously been overlooked. Of course the battle cry from the right was reverse discrimination like there was some poor White student that was being denied admission because of a Black person. I may be wrong but I am pretty sure that any White student that truly wanted to get an education was capable of getting one. Maybe not from the school they wanted but they were still able to get that education. That was not always true to the Black or minority students.

Many great Universities already had a program that benefited mostly White students. That was legacy programs. George W Bush got into Yale not because of the merit but because he was a legacy being a son of an alumni. How many more deserving students have been denied admission to any number of schools because of legacy programs which is kind of like an Affirmative Action program? Funny how powerful White people don’t complain about that. The playing field has never been level and even with Affirmative Action it still wasn’t level.  In my opinion, I think it is more level than at any point in our history. Affirmative action helped make that happen. I worry that we will go backwards. It has been said that Clarence Thomas would not be on the Supreme Court if it wasn’t for Affirmative Action. Even Blacks that did not benefit directly from Affirmative Action have benefited from the ones that came before them that did and helped pave the way.

Even though the student loan forgiveness doesn’t appear to be a racist decision it is one that poorer Whites and minorities will suffer from. My wife has her Doctorate and we had student loan debt that had to be paid off. It was just a sad fact of life and we did it. I will ask the question of why are some loans forgiven like PPP loans but not students loans? Why are businesses bailed out but not our students? There is just something here that just doesn’t smell right. We have members of Congress had had PPP loans forgiven that didn’t complain at all about their loan forgiveness. Try and help a struggling College grad and you would think that the sky is falling. There really doesn’t appear to be a very level playing field.

The Supreme Court was set up as part of the checks and balances in our government. Those checks and balances were put there so no single branch of our government would not become too powerful. They were supposed to leave their party partisanship behind and rule for the good of the law and not for any political party or ideology. I have said that when the Supreme Court becomes a tool of the Oppressor this country was in for a very bad hair day. I feel that that day has arrived.