The Other Supreme Court Decision
The big news from the Supreme Court building yesterday was the “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” case. And yeah, it is kind of interesting. But there is another case that was decided yesterday that is perhaps more relevant and more important, although there’s nothing exciting like getting high in it.
Hein v. Freedom from Religion was decided yesterday, and once again, the Court let me down.
In 2001, President Bush established the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. I have never really been all that comfortable with politics and religion getting into bed together, and this seemed like a remarkably blatant violation of the establishment clause. Evidently somebody else thought so too. The group Freedom From Religion sued, claiming that this new department that the President created by executive order was unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court completely failed to address the core issue at stake, and instead quibbled about jurisdiction and standing. They ruled against the plaintiffs mainly on the grounds that the group had no standing to sue just because they were federal taxpayers. The other issue at stake was the Court’s arbitrary separation of executive and legislative actions. Evidently, Congressional actions can be challenged in court, but not executive (at least under the precedent of Flast).
I understand that allowing anyone to sue the government just because they are a taxpayer could open up floodgates that we don’t want opened. What I would have liked, though, is for the court to grant special standing in this case because the issue at stake, separation of church and state, is so important. The Court has bent the technical rules of standing before so they could decide important issues.
The distinction between executive and legislative actions really makes no sense to me. The plaintiffs in the case argued that the difference should not matter because the same harm is being done to the taxpayer whether his or her money is being used in an unconstitutional way by Congress or by the President. The Court allowed itself to be overly limited by the precedent of Flast, which dealt with a Congressional action.
It’s not that I dislike faith-based initiatives. I am a faith-based person trying to live a faith-based life. I am a member of a faith-based church. But I absolutely do not want to have the government corrupting the purity of religious charity and bringing in its own bureaucracy and restrictions. This case was an important one and shame on the Supreme Court for dodging the real issue at stake and substituting technicalities.
That you didn’t like the decision is no surprise to me. And it probably wouldn’t surprise you that I disagree. I am quite glad the Supreme Court decided that the plaintiff had no standing. That is the difference in a court that is a court and a court that is a legislative body.
And again, there is only one mention of religion in the constitution. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” It says nothing about the executive branch. What good is a constitution if we make it say things it doesn’t say? What good is a constitution when we try to decide what the spirit of the law is? The spirit of the law will mean something different to you than it does to me. When you allow people to make the constitution say something it doesn’t say, you give a lot of power to a small number of people.
Conservative or liberal, I like a letter of the law judge.
Therefore, I am quite glad that Roberts and Alito are willing to throw out the charges on what you call a “technicality.”
And yes, I couldn’t resist getting on here late at night to see how the blog was coming along.
Previous decisions had already extended it from “Congress” to the executive, to the states, to municipalities, so that’s a pretty lame loophole to hinge this all on.
So under the “letter of the law” as you interpret it, you would be fine with President Mitt Romney declaring by executive order that all religions are banned except for Mormonism? After all, it just says “Congress” in the Constitution…
I think we have moved way beyond that argument. Supreme Court cases have long decided that separation of church and state is not just a Congressional issue. The closest and most obvious link is that whatever programs the Executive sets up, Congress has to fund. So how about this for a compromise: Bush can set up his little Faith-based programs, but Congress may not fund it (because that would be unconstitutional).
I have another question for you Chris. How do you feel about Dred Scott? Talk about a case that dealt with an important issue, but was brushed aside on a technicality (Sorry Dred, you don’t have standing to sue, seeing as you are property and all). The Court really was just going by what the Constitution said.
David, that compromise would be fine. If Mit Romney wanted to declare the nation a Mormon nation, I see nothing in the constitution to stop that. But if congress did not appropriate any funds to that effect, then his declaration would be for nothing.
And let me summarize my entire opinion on judicial precedent, Kyle. A previous decision also once declared that public facilities for people of different races that are “seperate but equal” is constitutional. Plessy v Ferguson tells me all I need to know about precedent. The fact is, there is nothing constitutional about precedent and there is nothing in precedent that means you have the correct interpretation. Precedent is like a prostitute. You use it when you want it and discard it when you think its wrong. The inconsistency of precedent delegitimizes it in a big way to me.
So Chris, do you also think that since the letter of the law says blacks are only 3/5 of a person, that we should go back to that practice? No system is perfect, when we see a problem, we should do whatever we can to fix it.
The problem is that we did fix that problem through the correct method…constitutional amendment. Article 1 Section 2 Clause 3 was superceded by Amendment 14 Section 2. The problem with your argument is that the letter of the law is that blacks are equal to one whole person, due to that amendment.
What is the relevance of that? The point I got was this: The Constitution is/was flawed and so is an approach that refuses to adapt its literal meaning to modern times. Just because that one flaw was fixed doesn’t mean that it should never be changed/adapted again.
I am not saying that at all. What I am saying is that when we are faced with a situation in which the Constitution may be outdated or flawed as viewed by some, we should correct it in the best manner…through constitutional amendments. When we allow the very few, Supreme Court judges, to create law (or interpret the constitution the way that they want to interpret it rather than a direct interpretation) for the entire nation that did not select them, instead of allowing the people to decide on these changes, then we give the supreme court far too much unchecked power (I say unchecked because we are not really in the habit of attempting to restrain the Supreme Court’s law-making decisions). That is all that I am saying here. I am glad that we changed the constitution to allow for the full incorporation of people of color into our society, and that is the way that it should be.
There is no such thing as a “direct interpretation” of a document like the Constitution, just like there is no such thing with a document like the Christian Bible. Everyone just thinks that their interpretation is the “most direct” and all the others are flawed.