Roe v. Wade was overturned today, consistent with the leaked decision a couple of months ago, and the reactions are highly passionate as usual. I’ll direct the reader to this post where I share my thoughts on it, but in any case, what I want to address now is the unhelpful trend of reacting to headlines rather than actually reading what SCOTUS argued and understanding the reasoning and intended scope of their decisions. One can obviously disagree with those decisions, but at least argue things that are relevant rather than resorting to talking points, bumper sticker arguments, and emotional appeals. I’ll use three recent examples:
Overturning Roe v. Wade
The typical reaction to this is that SCOTUS overreached and has now made things dangerous for women (or “birthing persons”). Women will now lose their right to abortion and thousands of women will die due to medical issues that arise during pregnancy or pursuing unsafe illegal abortions. Michelle Obama’s popular post that has made the rounds on Instagram pretty much illustrates this reaction.
I won’t rehash what I argued in my previous post, but the key part of this decision is that it reversed Roe’s reasoning that the Constitution protected a right to abortion in the “emanations” and “penumbras” of the text, borrowing phrasing from a previous decision about the right to privacy. This was, in my estimation, a spectacular example of Court overreach and reading things into the text that aren’t there, something that even several pro-choice lawyers and legal scholars will quietly admit. The decision does not remove abortions; what it does is return the matter to voters and legislatures, where I think it belongs. People can now participate in the messy process of trying to convince voters, but that’s democracy.
Now one can still disagree with the decision; a lawyer friend of mine admits that the reasoning for Roe was a bit weird but argues that this recent decision pretty much neuters the Equal Protection Clause, so we’re better off tolerating some stretched reasoning than doing something like that. Maybe so. At least this is an argument about the actual decision and not misinformed takes that we get from Michelle Obama or wacky alarmist reactions from the likes of Keith Olbermann.
SCOTUS strikes down a Maine law
In Carson v. Makin, the Supreme Court struck down a law that prohibited state funds for use by private religious schools. Why would they do that?! A blatant disregard of the separation of church and state, I was told by people who admitted to me that they didn’t even read the ruling.
Just a cursory reading showed this: What the law allowed was that, for people in rural or sparsely populated areas with no public schools, they could go to other designated public schools or use state funds to go to another school of their choice, public OR private. The law tried to exclude religious schools from that based on them simply being religious. SCOTUS pointed out, appropriately I think, that this was clear targeting of religion for no good reason. If the law allows use for private schools, it cannot single out religious schools like that. It did not make it such that public funds would go directly to private schools, religious or otherwise. The decision is narrower than people made it out to be.
SCOTUS strikes down a NYC conceal and carry law
When this happened, the prevailing headline and social media reaction was that the gun-crazed conservative justices made it impossible to have any sort of gun regulation. This is not what the ruling did: It targeted a vague NYC law that made it a requirement that someone show “proper cause” for wanting a conceal and carry license. The justices pointed out that this was too vague and actually ruled out the general desire of self defense. Leaving such matters too broadly to the government ran afoul of the second amendment, in their view, but the ruling does not mean that states cannot have requirements at all for licenses (background checks, for example).
I am less certain on the rightness of this ruling, but I get what the majority was getting at. Again, it would be nice to see arguments on the actual merits of the decision (is “proper cause” too broad and burdensome for the citizen?) rather than alarmist reactions accusing the SC of mandating conceal and carry (yep, heard the one).
Conclusion
The intellectually honest and mature thing to do is evaluate anything, SCOTUS decisions or otherwise, on the merits of the actual arguments being made. I know it’s easier to try to score social media likes with little blurbs online that resort to talking points, but that hardly makes one a wise, discerning person.
leesomniac 