Like a lot of people reading this, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes was unhappy with the last two Supreme Court decisions this judicial term — rulings striking down the Biden administration’s loan forgiveness plan, and allowing de facto discrimination against LGBTQ people.
And criticizing how baseless these decisions were, Hayes declared that the 6 Republican-appointed justices “have empowered themselves to govern as a sort of irresponsible super-legislature.”
By now you are familiar with these decisions, as well as Thursday’s decision, which struck down affirmative action. But if you need a refresher, go here and here and here. The main thing you need to know right now is that critics of these rulings, apart from pointing out that apart from Clarence Thomas, the right-wing majority of the court appointed by presidents who did not win the popular voteArgue persuasively that the conservative faction has worked effectively to overturn policies with which they disagree on purely political, not legal, grounds.
This was the gist of Hess’s discussion on the matter. He began by saying that as he sees it, the purpose of court hearings is to settle disputes between the parties. “What is so sad about today’s 2 cases is that there was no dispute. Actually the court was not solving any problem between the two parties. Instead, the conservative majority was acting like a legislative body, pushing its preferred right-wing policy outcomes regardless of the facts,” he said.
To support this claim, Hayes cited the case which, once again in de facto, ruled in favor of a fundamentalist’s right to discriminate against LGBTQ people. Plaintiff owns a Colorado-based web design business that was considering moving into the wedding website market, and filed the lawsuit in advance to prevent it from providing that service to same-sex couples. Frankly speaking, he had no business as such, nor had any same-sex couple sought his services.
Hayes said, “It is almost as if this case was designed with the express purpose of moving this issue through the courts, so that the Supreme Court can decide on it.”
“What’s wrong with him?” Hayes asked, noting that he’s never experienced the hypothetical situation for which he’s suing. She won anyway, Hayes said, “because the conservative majority doesn’t care about the real facts, and they don’t really care about making the decision. They want to undermine Colorado’s anti-discrimination law, which will make religious conservatives It would be easy for them to discriminate against gay people.
“That is the policy outcome they wanted from the beginning. That’s why the case reached them,” Hayes said. He then talked about the student loan forgiveness case, and the facts of that case—the plaintiffs were not injured by student loans, and claimed to represent a company that who wanted nothing to do with the lawsuit and actually benefited from debt relief – very close to the second case in line.
“Supreme Court conservatives don’t like Biden’s student loan forgiveness policy. It doesn’t matter that no one was hurt, no one was injured, and there’s no actual brawl. When you have judges who turn their backs on resolving disputes and following precedent, they’re not doing anything that’s worth recognizing anymore,” Hayes said.
“The problem is not just that I think the essence of these decisions is bad, although I admit that very badly. It’s that this court has taken on a kind of imperial mindset that all decisions about public policy are really up to them,” Hayes continued.
“The 6 right-wing politicians in the Trump Supreme Court are giving themselves the right to govern as a sort of irresponsible super-legislature. At this point you are within your right to start asking, ‘Who chose these people?’ If they’re not bound by precedents, if they’re not bound by controversies and prestige and all appearances of doing justice, and they just say, ‘I don’t like this law, I don’t like this policy,’ then who elected them? ? Hayes asked.
Hayes said, “Also, you’d be forgiven for thinking the whole thing is corrupt and illegitimate, and wondering how long this can really go on without any seismic correction.”
Watch the clip here: