Repealing the Last Half of the 20th Century
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority wants to return us to a past that never actually existed.
Not long ago, the U.S. Supreme Court held the belief that centuries of enslavement of Black Americans followed by decades of Jim Crow laws were fundamental wrongs in need of remedies. Regardless of political persuasion, the Court’s justices held the opinion that segregated lunch counters and “separate but equal” laws were profoundly unconstitutional. For generations, the Court considered a woman’s right to bodily autonomy as settled law.
The result of the Court’s judicial consistency on these issues was the most significant expansion of civil liberties since Reconstruction. But in an about-face, the current Court would have us believe the very remedies intended to address past wrongs are themselves the source of injustice.
Now, the Court’s majority view is that discrimination is just another form of free speech. Moreover, the Court’s current position is that financial obligations, no matter how burdensome, only warrant redress when they impact corporations or the well-heeled. And, as of last month, the majority’s view is that the sufficient remedy for four hundred years of Black inequity is a few decades of half-measures.
