Tag Archives: rights

An Excellent Response

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Last Monday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for 303 Creative LLC v Elenis, a case centered on Web Page designer Lorie Smith and her First Amendment right to not put messages on her designs that conflict with her religious beliefs.

In the course of those arguments, there occurred this exchange (audio is at the first link above) between newly confirmed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and Kristen Kellie Waggoner, CEO, President, and General Counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing Smith in this case:

[Jackson] asked about a situation where a Christmas photo company was recreating old-time pictures and as a result they only allowed white children to participate because it accurately reflects the time period. As part of the hypothetical, the company served Black people for other types of photos and would refer them to other vendors if they desired. Jackson asked if this would be acceptable under Smith’s logic, because by forcing the photographer to take Black customers it would be changing their vision and forcing them to create something they do not want to create.
“…there are difficult lines to draw and that may be an edge case, but this is not. We have a creative—a creator of speech and a very clear message—”

It’s about time lawyers stopped being afraid to call out activist judges and Justices’ dumbass cynical quibbling over corner cases and kept them focused on the matter actually before them.

Works for Me

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Senator Chris Murphy (D, CT) has his gun control panties all knotted up because lots of county sheriffs have said they won’t enforce intrinsically unconstitutional gun control laws.

I think we have to have a conversation about whether we can continue to fund law enforcement in states where they are refusing to implement these gun laws[.]

I’ve addressed whether local and county jurisdictions should accept State funding for this or that purpose or whether they, instead, should decline the funds and free themselves from higher government’s controlling strings.

At the national level, Murphy’s terms are acceptable.

But What is the Or Else?

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President Joe Biden (D) is right, this time, and so are Congressional politicians (assuming they actually can get anything done on this), to move to block the coming railroad strike.

But. But, but, but.

What is the or else here? What enforcement mechanism can the government use to enforce its no-strike diktat against the railroad workers? Not against the unions, but against the rail workers?

It isn’t union leadership, after all, who have rejected the just-negotiated agreements, it’s the rank-and-file, the folks who actually do the work, who’ve rejected the agreement.

How would the government deal with the rail worker equivalent of the Blue Flu?

How would the government deal with another standard union tactic: working explicitly and exactly to the letter of the relevant regulations and the letter of the law about to be imposed on the railroad businesses and labor unions, with the result of a drastic slowdown in work performance?

How would the government deal with an overt strike, where the workers of one or more of the four unions explicitly walk off the job (and the workers of the other unions walk out in solidarity or at the least refuse to cross the picket lines)?

Mass arrests in the latter case? Where would the government find the replacement workers? The rail lines still would be shut down until those replacement workers could be found and hired, assuming anyone qualified actually would be interested.

Certainly, civil action with civil—financial—penalties could be taken, but how much will those matter if the union workers themselves have already determined they have nothing to lose? Their beef, after all, isn’t about higher wages, it’s about the quality of the work environment and work benefits, canonized by the number of sick days allowed.

I’ve seen no evidence that anyone in the Federal government is thinking about a response to the possibility the workers call government’s…bluff(?).

In Which a Judge Gets It (Mostly) Right

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Judge Reed O’Connor of the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled at the end of the summer that the Obamacare requirement that health coverage providers must provide coverage for particular aspects of health care—and do so at no cost to the individual being covered—was unconstitutional. He’s currently considering whether to make his ruling permanent and if so, whether to make his ruling applicable only to the litigants in the particular case or to make it nationwide. (As an aside, I have trouble seeing how a ruling of unconstitutionality can have any range less than national.)

Michael Cannon, Cato Institute’s Director of Health Policy Studies, testified as an expert witness in the case that

People have a right to choose whether and what kind of health insurance they need and want. The government shouldn’t be requiring people to buy coverage of any service, whether preventive or otherwise.

O’Connor’s ruling to that extent would be partially correct. However, Government also shouldn’t be dictating to private companies what they must or must not produce. That’s textbook fascism.

There’s also no authority in our Constitution for government to determine what private companies can and cannot produce.

Whose Choice Is It?

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And whose property is it?

A new law being seriously considered by lawmakers in New York City could strip landlords of the ability to perform criminal background checks on prospective tenants.

Because landlords shouldn’t be able to control who rents their property, shouldn’t be able to protect the interests of their existing tenants—who have, by dint of their rent agreements, have some property of their own in the landlord’s buildings.

This law means it’s city government property; landlords possess the buildings only in fee from the city lords.

Republican Councilwoman Inna Vernikov has the right of it:

A bill which would prohibit landlords from conducting criminal background checks of potential tenants. Murdered someone? Beat up your girlfriend? Robbed? Stabbed your neighbor? No problem. Come live among us!

Certainly felons, even violent felons, shouldn’t be blanketly denied a second chance, shouldn’t be blanketly denied an opportunity to demonstrate that they’ve rehabilitated themselves, shouldn’t be blanketly denied an opportunity at redemption.

But that should be the choice of the property owner, the landlord; it cannot be, legitimately, a choice forced upon the property owner, in a one-size-fits-all diktat by the Lords of the city.