Three large wins at the Supreme Court.

 

File photo of the Supreme Court. NPR/Getty.

The United States Supreme Court issued three large and impactful rulings today. NPR. The first case was brought by a straight White woman who alleged that she was denied a promotion and received a demotion in favor of LGBT individuals. The 6th Circuit Court had ruled that her case could not go through due to a higher standard for discrimination when the subject is a member of a majority racial group or sexuality. The Court said that was no longer acceptable and that anti-discrimination laws were clearly crafted to protect all Americans against discrimination equally. 

The second case was about Mexico suing American gun manufactures for "deliberately" allowing guns to cross the border into Mexico. Gun companies have immunity to that kind of argument unless there is evidence that gun companies were aiding and abetting gun smugglers. The Court ruled that the Mexican Government did provide any evidence that the gun companies wanted gun smuggling to happen or participated in the gun smuggling directly, dismissing the case. 

Finally, the third case was about a Wisconsin tax case against a Catholic Charity. Wisconsin had argued that the charity had to pay unemployment tax because it wasn't a "proselytizing entity". The Court ruled that was wrong as even though the charity helped people regardless of their faith, it was still a clear religious organization and the separation of church and state still applied. 

My Comment:

I know most of the news today is about the Trump-Musk breakup, but these three court cases are of much greater importance. All three of them are pretty huge victories as far as I am concerned, and they will have much longer term importance than a stupid Twitter spat. 

I consider the first case to be the most important one. It was always a stupid idea to have higher standards for so called "reverse racism" than cases involving minorities. Indeed, reverse racism is just racism, it doesn't matter who the discrimination is brought against, it matters that there is discrimination. It's just as bad to discriminate against a White or straight person as it is to discriminate against a Black person or a gay one. 

This should bring a lot of justice to folks that were indeed actively discriminated against for being White and/or straight. I am expecting hundreds, if not thousands of lawsuits to be filed and a lot of settlements to be issued as the new standard will be a lot easier to reach. And it should make companies finally get rid of DEI hiring practices, they simply aren't worth it due the exposure to litigation.

As for the second case, it's a huge win for gun rights. Had the Mexican lawsuit gone through it could have bankrupted the gun industry. The case was always absurd on its face. Once a gun is sold, it's not on the manufacturer what happens with it. It was clear that they never wanted those guns to go to Mexico in the first place, why would they? This was obviously the right ruling, you can't punish a company because the actions of buyers. We didn't arrest the gas station that sold the fuel for the Boulder attack so why would we do the same to gun companies?

Besides, the claims that most of the guns in Mexico come from America is spurious at best. Some do, especially AR-15's, but the Cartels get their guns from multiple sources. After all, many Cartel gunmen are rocking full-auto AK's, which obviously aren't sold in the United States. Plus, they often get their weapons from stolen stocks from the Mexican government. The Mexican government's claims here were ridiculous on their face. 

Finally, the third case seems to be pretty straight forward. My state of Wisconsin tried to force a religious organization to pay taxes, which is not something religious organizations should be able to do. You could argue that churches shouldn't be tax exempt, but that's not the law of the land and it's clear that Catholic Charities is a religious organization. Indeed, they should be commended for helping non-Catholics and Catholics equally, instead of having their tax-exempt status pulled. Some are arguing that this will have knock off effects on Wisconsin's unemployment laws, but that's the breaks. Better to have that than to break the law in a pretty obvious way. 

These three cases slightly redeem the Court in my eyes. I was not happy that they didn't take the case that would have ended the bans on AR-15's in blue states, to say the least. And they have not done all that they could do to end the lawfare against the Trump administration. But these three cases are wins and I will take all the wins I can get.