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CNN
a day ago
- Politics
- CNN
How the Supreme Court could wind up scrapping high-profile precedents in coming months
The Supreme Court's landmark opinion on same-sex marriage isn't the only high-profile precedent the justices will have an opportunity to tinker with – or entirely scrap – when the court reconvenes this fall. From a 1935 opinion that has complicated President Donald Trump's effort to consolidate power to a 2000 decision that deals with prayer at high school football games, the court will soon juggle a series of appeals seeking to overturn prior decisions that critics say are 'outdated,' 'poorly reasoned' or 'egregiously wrong.' While many of those decisions are not as prominent as the court's 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges that gave same-sex couples access to marriage nationwide, some may be more likely to find a receptive audience. Generally, both conservative and liberal justices are reticent to engage in do-overs because it undermines stability in the law. And independent data suggests the high court under Chief Justice John Roberts has been less willing to upend past rulings on average than earlier courts. But the Supreme Court's 6-3 conservative majority hasn't shied from overturning precedent in recent years – notably on abortion but also affirmative action and government regulations. The court's approval in polling has never fully recovered from its 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which established the constitutional right to abortion. Here are some past rulings the court could reconsider in the coming months. Even before Trump was reelected, the Supreme Court's conservatives had put a target on a Roosevelt-era precedent that protects the leaders of independent agencies from being fired by the president for political reasons. The first few months of Trump's second term have only expedited its demise. The 1935 decision, Humphrey's Executor v. US, stands for the idea that Congress may shield the heads of independent federal agencies, like the National Labor Relations Board or the Consumer Product Safety Commission, from being fired by the president without cause. But in recent years, the court has embraced the view that Congress overstepped its authority with those for-cause requirements on the executive branch. Court watchers largely agree 'that Humphrey's Executor is next on the Supreme Court's chopping block, meaning the next case they are slated to reverse,' said Victoria Nourse, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center who worked in the Biden administration. In a series of recent emergency orders, the court has allowed Trump – ever eager to remove dissenting voices from power – to fire leaders of independent agencies who were appointed by former President Joe Biden. The court's liberal wing has complained that, following those decisions, the Humphrey's decision is already effectively dead. 'For 90 years, Humphrey's Executor v. United States has stood as a precedent of this court,' Justice Elena Kagan wrote last month. 'Our emergency docket, while fit for some things, should not be used to overrule or revise existing law.' Through the end of the Supreme Court term that ended in June, the Roberts court overruled precedent an average of 1.5 times each term, according to Lee Epstein, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who oversees the Supreme Court Database. That compares with 2.9 times on average prior to Roberts, dating to 1953. An important outstanding question is which case challenging Humphrey's will make it to the Supreme Court – and when. The high court has already agreed to hear an appeal – possibly this year – that could overturn a 2001 precedent limiting how much political parties can spend in coordination with federal candidates. Democrats warn the appeal, if successful, could 'blow open the cap on the amount of money that donors can funnel to candidates.' In a lawsuit initially filed by then-Senate candidate JD Vance and other Republicans, the challengers describe the 2001 decision upholding the caps – FEC v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee – as an 'aberration' that was 'plainly wrong the day it was decided.' If a majority of the court thinks the precedent controls the case, they wrote in their appeal, 'it should overrule that outdated decision.' Republicans say the caps are hopelessly inconsistent with the Supreme Court's modern campaign finance doctrine and that they have 'harmed our political system by leading donors to send their funds elsewhere,' such as super PACs, which can raise unlimited funds but do not coordinate with candidates. In recent years, the Supreme Court has tended to shoot down campaign finance rules as violating the First Amendment. A recent Supreme Court appeal from Kim Davis, a former county clerk from Kentucky who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, has raised concerns from some about the court overturning its decade-old Obergefell decision. Davis is appealing a $100,000 jury verdict – plus $260,000 for attorneys' fees – awarded over her move to defy the Supreme Court's decision and decline to issue the licenses. Davis has framed her appeal in religious terms, a strategy that often wins on the conservative court. She described Obergefell as a 'mistake' that 'must be corrected.' 'If ever there was a case of exceptional importance, the first individual in the Republic's history who was jailed for following her religious convictions regarding the historic definition of marriage, this should be it,' Davis told the justices in her appeal. Even if there are five justices willing to overturn the decision – and there are plenty of signs there are not – many court watchers believe Davis' appeal is unlikely to be the vehicle for that review. Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University, wrote recently that there are 'multiple flaws' with Davis' case. People in the private sector – say, a wedding cake baker or a website developer – likely have a First Amendment right to exercise their objections to same-sex marriage. But, Somin wrote, public employees are a very different matter. 'They are not exercising their own rights,' he wrote, 'but the powers of the state.' Days after returning to the bench in October to begin a new term, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in one of the most significant appeals on its docket. The case centers on Louisiana's fraught congressional districts map and whether the state violated the 14th Amendment when it drew a second majority-Black district. If the court sides with a group of self-described 'non-Black voters,' it could gut a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. Three years ago, a federal court ruled that Louisiana likely violated the Voting Rights Act by drawing only one majority Black district out of six. When state lawmakers tried to fix that problem by drawing a second majority-minority district, a group of White voters sued. Another court then ruled that the new district was drawn based predominantly on race and thus violated the Constitution. The court heard oral arguments in the case in March. But rather than issuing a decision, it then took the unusual step in June of holding the case for more arguments. Earlier this month, the court ordered more briefing on the question of whether the creation of a majority-minority district to remedy a possible Voting Rights Act violation is constitutional. The case has nationwide implications; if the court rules that lawmakers can't fix violations of the Voting Rights Act by drawing new majority-minority districts, it could make it virtually impossible to enforce the landmark 1965 law when it comes to redistricting. That outcome could effectively overturn a line of Supreme Court precedents dating to its 1986 decision in Thornburg v. Gingles, in which the court ruled that North Carolina had violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the power of Black voters. Just two years ago, the court ordered officials in Alabama to redraw the state's congressional map, upholding a lower court decision that found the state had violated the statute. 'Some opponents of the Voting Rights Act may urge the court to go further and overturn long-standing precedents, but there's absolutely no reason to go there,' said Michael Li, an expert on redistricting and voting rights and a senior counsel in the Brennan Center's Democracy Program. The case will not affect the battle raging over redistricting and the effort by Texas Republicans to redraw congressional boundaries to benefit their party. That's because the Supreme Court ruled in a landmark 2019 decision that federal courts cannot review partisan gerrymanders. What's at stake in the Louisiana case, instead, is how far lawmakers may go in considering race when they redraw congressional and state legislative boundaries every decade. Air Force Staff Sgt. Cameron Beck was killed in 2021 on Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri when a civilian employee driving a government-issued van turned in front of his motorcycle. When his wife tried to sue the federal government for damages, she was blocked by a 1950 Supreme Court decision that severely limits damages litigation from service members and their families. The pending appeal from Beck's family, which the court will review behind closed doors next month, will give the justices another opportunity to reconsider that widely criticized precedent. The so-called Feres Doctrine generally prohibits service members from suing the government for injuries that arose 'incident to service.' The idea is that members of the military can't sue the government for injuries that occur during wartime or training. But critics say the upshot is that service members have been barred from filing routine tort claims – including for traffic accidents involving government vehicles – that anyone else could file. 'This court should overrule Feres,' Justice Clarence Thomas, a stalwart conservative, wrote earlier this year in a similar case the court declined to hear. 'It has been almost universally condemned by judges and scholars.' Thomas is correct that criticism of the opinion has bridged ideologies. The Constitutional Accountability Center, a liberal group, authored a brief in the Beck case arguing that the 'sweeping bar to recovery for servicemembers' adopted by the Feres decision 'is at odds' with what Congress intended. But the federal government, regardless of which party controls the White House, has long rejected those arguments. The Justice Department urged the Supreme Court to reject Beck's case, noting that Feres has 'been the law for more than 70 years, and has been repeatedly reaffirmed by this court.' Prominent religious groups are taking aim at a 25-year-old Supreme Court precedent that barred prayer from being broadcast over the public address system before varsity football games at a Texas high school. In that 6-3 decision, the court ruled that a policy permitting the student-led prayer violated the Establishment Clause, a part of the First Amendment that blocks the government from establishing a state religion. But the court's makeup and views on religion have shifted substantially since then, with a series of significant rulings that thinned the wall that once separated church from state. When the justices meet in late September to decide whether to grant new appeals, they will weigh a request to overturn that earlier decision, Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe. The new case involves a Christian school in Florida that was forbidden by the state athletic association from broadcasting the prayer ahead of a championship game with another religious school. The Supreme Court should overrule Santa Fe 'as out of step with its more recent government-speech precedent,' the school's attorneys told the high court in its appeal. 'Santa Fe,' they said, 'was dubious from the outset.' It is an argument that may find purchase with the court's conservatives, who have increasingly framed state policies that exclude religious actors as discriminatory. In 2022, the high court reinstated a football coach, Joseph Kennedy, who lost his job at a public high school after praying at the 50-yard line after games. Those prayers, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court at the time, amounted to 'a brief, quiet, personal religious observance.' Kennedy submitted a brief in the new case urging the Supreme Court to take up the appeal – and to now let pregame prayers reverberate through the stadium. The school, Kennedy's lawyers wrote, 'has a longstanding tradition of, and deeply held belief in, opening games with a prayer over the stadium loudspeaker.'
CNN
a day ago
- Politics
- CNN
How the Supreme Court could wind up scrapping high-profile precedents in coming months
The Supreme Court's landmark opinion on same-sex marriage isn't the only high-profile precedent the justices will have an opportunity to tinker with – or entirely scrap – when the court reconvenes this fall. From a 1935 opinion that has complicated President Donald Trump's effort to consolidate power to a 2000 decision that deals with prayer at high school football games, the court will soon juggle a series of appeals seeking to overturn prior decisions that critics say are 'outdated,' 'poorly reasoned' or 'egregiously wrong.' While many of those decisions are not as prominent as the court's 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges that gave same-sex couples access to marriage nationwide, some may be more likely to find a receptive audience. Generally, both conservative and liberal justices are reticent to engage in do-overs because it undermines stability in the law. And independent data suggests the high court under Chief Justice John Roberts has been less willing to upend past rulings on average than earlier courts. But the Supreme Court's 6-3 conservative majority hasn't shied from overturning precedent in recent years – notably on abortion but also affirmative action and government regulations. The court's approval in polling has never fully recovered from its 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which established the constitutional right to abortion. Here are some past rulings the court could reconsider in the coming months. Even before Trump was reelected, the Supreme Court's conservatives had put a target on a Roosevelt-era precedent that protects the leaders of independent agencies from being fired by the president for political reasons. The first few months of Trump's second term have only expedited its demise. The 1935 decision, Humphrey's Executor v. US, stands for the idea that Congress may shield the heads of independent federal agencies, like the National Labor Relations Board or the Consumer Product Safety Commission, from being fired by the president without cause. But in recent years, the court has embraced the view that Congress overstepped its authority with those for-cause requirements on the executive branch. Court watchers largely agree 'that Humphrey's Executor is next on the Supreme Court's chopping block, meaning the next case they are slated to reverse,' said Victoria Nourse, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center who worked in the Biden administration. In a series of recent emergency orders, the court has allowed Trump – ever eager to remove dissenting voices from power – to fire leaders of independent agencies who were appointed by former President Joe Biden. The court's liberal wing has complained that, following those decisions, the Humphrey's decision is already effectively dead. 'For 90 years, Humphrey's Executor v. United States has stood as a precedent of this court,' Justice Elena Kagan wrote last month. 'Our emergency docket, while fit for some things, should not be used to overrule or revise existing law.' Through the end of the Supreme Court term that ended in June, the Roberts court overruled precedent an average of 1.5 times each term, according to Lee Epstein, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who oversees the Supreme Court Database. That compares with 2.9 times on average prior to Roberts, dating to 1953. An important outstanding question is which case challenging Humphrey's will make it to the Supreme Court – and when. The high court has already agreed to hear an appeal – possibly this year – that could overturn a 2001 precedent limiting how much political parties can spend in coordination with federal candidates. Democrats warn the appeal, if successful, could 'blow open the cap on the amount of money that donors can funnel to candidates.' In a lawsuit initially filed by then-Senate candidate JD Vance and other Republicans, the challengers describe the 2001 decision upholding the caps – FEC v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee – as an 'aberration' that was 'plainly wrong the day it was decided.' If a majority of the court thinks the precedent controls the case, they wrote in their appeal, 'it should overrule that outdated decision.' Republicans say the caps are hopelessly inconsistent with the Supreme Court's modern campaign finance doctrine and that they have 'harmed our political system by leading donors to send their funds elsewhere,' such as super PACs, which can raise unlimited funds but do not coordinate with candidates. In recent years, the Supreme Court has tended to shoot down campaign finance rules as violating the First Amendment. A recent Supreme Court appeal from Kim Davis, a former county clerk from Kentucky who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, has raised concerns from some about the court overturning its decade-old Obergefell decision. Davis is appealing a $100,000 jury verdict – plus $260,000 for attorneys' fees – awarded over her move to defy the Supreme Court's decision and decline to issue the licenses. Davis has framed her appeal in religious terms, a strategy that often wins on the conservative court. She described Obergefell as a 'mistake' that 'must be corrected.' 'If ever there was a case of exceptional importance, the first individual in the Republic's history who was jailed for following her religious convictions regarding the historic definition of marriage, this should be it,' Davis told the justices in her appeal. Even if there are five justices willing to overturn the decision – and there are plenty of signs there are not – many court watchers believe Davis' appeal is unlikely to be the vehicle for that review. Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University, wrote recently that there are 'multiple flaws' with Davis' case. People in the private sector – say, a wedding cake baker or a website developer – likely have a First Amendment right to exercise their objections to same-sex marriage. But, Somin wrote, public employees are a very different matter. 'They are not exercising their own rights,' he wrote, 'but the powers of the state.' Days after returning to the bench in October to begin a new term, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in one of the most significant appeals on its docket. The case centers on Louisiana's fraught congressional districts map and whether the state violated the 14th Amendment when it drew a second majority-Black district. If the court sides with a group of self-described 'non-Black voters,' it could gut a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. Three years ago, a federal court ruled that Louisiana likely violated the Voting Rights Act by drawing only one majority Black district out of six. When state lawmakers tried to fix that problem by drawing a second majority-minority district, a group of White voters sued. Another court then ruled that the new district was drawn based predominantly on race and thus violated the Constitution. The court heard oral arguments in the case in March. But rather than issuing a decision, it then took the unusual step in June of holding the case for more arguments. Earlier this month, the court ordered more briefing on the question of whether the creation of a majority-minority district to remedy a possible Voting Rights Act violation is constitutional. The case has nationwide implications; if the court rules that lawmakers can't fix violations of the Voting Rights Act by drawing new majority-minority districts, it could make it virtually impossible to enforce the landmark 1965 law when it comes to redistricting. That outcome could effectively overturn a line of Supreme Court precedents dating to its 1986 decision in Thornburg v. Gingles, in which the court ruled that North Carolina had violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the power of Black voters. Just two years ago, the court ordered officials in Alabama to redraw the state's congressional map, upholding a lower court decision that found the state had violated the statute. 'Some opponents of the Voting Rights Act may urge the court to go further and overturn long-standing precedents, but there's absolutely no reason to go there,' said Michael Li, an expert on redistricting and voting rights and a senior counsel in the Brennan Center's Democracy Program. The case will not affect the battle raging over redistricting and the effort by Texas Republicans to redraw congressional boundaries to benefit their party. That's because the Supreme Court ruled in a landmark 2019 decision that federal courts cannot review partisan gerrymanders. What's at stake in the Louisiana case, instead, is how far lawmakers may go in considering race when they redraw congressional and state legislative boundaries every decade. Air Force Staff Sgt. Cameron Beck was killed in 2021 on Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri when a civilian employee driving a government-issued van turned in front of his motorcycle. When his wife tried to sue the federal government for damages, she was blocked by a 1950 Supreme Court decision that severely limits damages litigation from service members and their families. The pending appeal from Beck's family, which the court will review behind closed doors next month, will give the justices another opportunity to reconsider that widely criticized precedent. The so-called Feres Doctrine generally prohibits service members from suing the government for injuries that arose 'incident to service.' The idea is that members of the military can't sue the government for injuries that occur during wartime or training. But critics say the upshot is that service members have been barred from filing routine tort claims – including for traffic accidents involving government vehicles – that anyone else could file. 'This court should overrule Feres,' Justice Clarence Thomas, a stalwart conservative, wrote earlier this year in a similar case the court declined to hear. 'It has been almost universally condemned by judges and scholars.' Thomas is correct that criticism of the opinion has bridged ideologies. The Constitutional Accountability Center, a liberal group, authored a brief in the Beck case arguing that the 'sweeping bar to recovery for servicemembers' adopted by the Feres decision 'is at odds' with what Congress intended. But the federal government, regardless of which party controls the White House, has long rejected those arguments. The Justice Department urged the Supreme Court to reject Beck's case, noting that Feres has 'been the law for more than 70 years, and has been repeatedly reaffirmed by this court.' Prominent religious groups are taking aim at a 25-year-old Supreme Court precedent that barred prayer from being broadcast over the public address system before varsity football games at a Texas high school. In that 6-3 decision, the court ruled that a policy permitting the student-led prayer violated the Establishment Clause, a part of the First Amendment that blocks the government from establishing a state religion. But the court's makeup and views on religion have shifted substantially since then, with a series of significant rulings that thinned the wall that once separated church from state. When the justices meet in late September to decide whether to grant new appeals, they will weigh a request to overturn that earlier decision, Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe. The new case involves a Christian school in Florida that was forbidden by the state athletic association from broadcasting the prayer ahead of a championship game with another religious school. The Supreme Court should overrule Santa Fe 'as out of step with its more recent government-speech precedent,' the school's attorneys told the high court in its appeal. 'Santa Fe,' they said, 'was dubious from the outset.' It is an argument that may find purchase with the court's conservatives, who have increasingly framed state policies that exclude religious actors as discriminatory. In 2022, the high court reinstated a football coach, Joseph Kennedy, who lost his job at a public high school after praying at the 50-yard line after games. Those prayers, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court at the time, amounted to 'a brief, quiet, personal religious observance.' Kennedy submitted a brief in the new case urging the Supreme Court to take up the appeal – and to now let pregame prayers reverberate through the stadium. The school, Kennedy's lawyers wrote, 'has a longstanding tradition of, and deeply held belief in, opening games with a prayer over the stadium loudspeaker.'
Irish Times
3 days ago
- Politics
- Irish Times
Irish abroad returning home: ‘It's been hard ... I didn't probably know the Ireland I was coming back to'
Ireland has undergone huge changes over the last number of decades. From the legalising of divorce, same-sex marriage and abortion , to boom and bust economics, increasing immigration, a housing crisis and the impact of the Covid pandemic, people living here have witnessed enormous social shifts. For Ireland's returning expats, however, home can look very different to the one they remember. The most recent figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show that, in the year up to April 2024, 30,000 Irish citizens returned to our shores for various reasons, in some cases after many years abroad. So, what do these recent returnees make of the Ireland of today? Is there really no place like home? Or does it even feel like home any more? We spoke to four people who made the move back in recent years. READ MORE Kate Gleeson (39) from Waterford returned to Ireland from London in 2024 when her father became ill. She had been in London for nine years and also lived there for a time in the early 2000s. As a gay woman, Kate initially found it easier to live in London. 'because it's a bigger city'. She said: 'In that perspective, I found it easier to be who I was, because there was less judgment around. I felt in Waterford, everyone knew me and I was always scared that eyes would be on me and they'd be judging me. It was still very taboo here at the time.' Now, things are completely different. 'I probably feel safer here than I do back there, to be honest.' This, she says, is due to having lived in an area where she encountered people with a 'negative outlook on the LGBT community'. She feels these views stem from their religious beliefs. 'I wouldn't feel as safe walking down the high road holding my girlfriend's hand, because I know that I would probably get a few tuts and a few sighs over there.' Still, Kate loved the 'anonymity' of London. She has a close group of friends there and admits she has found adjusting to living in Ireland again 'very hard'. 'When I used to walk into town years ago, I'd know 10 people in the space of five minutes. Now I don't know anyone.' Kate Gleeson feels safer back at home in Waterford after nine years in London, but it has been a big adjustment. Photograph: Patrick Browne She notes the increased number of non-nationals living in Waterford, saying it 'doesn't bother me in the slightest'. 'I think it's a natural progression in this world and that's how it should be. We've been taken in all over the world, why shouldn't we take people in?' However, she thinks 'the community spirit ... that we used to have is gone', adding: 'You don't have people knocking on your door any more, like you used to – 'hi, I'm just calling for a tea or a coffee'. People have to ring you in advance and it's kind of 'I might come around on Tuesday next week'.' People say a passing hello, but don't stop for a chat in the same way as before, she observes. Some good things remain, though. After her father died recently, she says the enduring traditions around the way Irish people treat death continues to be a comfort to the bereaved. Kate works for a charity remotely. She is not certain she will stay in Ireland. Healthcare is a factor. She was diagnosed with a 'neurological muscle condition a couple of years ago'. 'And I get free treatment in London, like everyone else does', on the National Health Service (NHS). [ Are home-buying grants available to us as returning emigrants? Opens in new window ] She also points to the housing crisis here and her difficulty finding somewhere to rent. All of which has her wondering if leaving Ireland again is the only option. Alan Gleeson (no relation to Kate) is 51. He moved home to Cork in September 2024 after 25 years in Britain. Returning to Cork after 25 years in London, Alan Gleeson admits to feeling like something of an outsider. Photograph: Michael Mac Sweeney/Provision As a younger man, he went to London on a graduate programme following his commerce degree, before working in digital marketing. He lived in suburban London with his wife and children. 'There was a local GAA club two minutes away that the kids would have played for, so it's quite an Irish feel to the area,' he said. 'Obviously London is very cosmopolitan, but there's a nice Irish feeling too, in terms of a bit of a community.' Alan returned to Ireland for a mixture of reasons. 'We were both working remotely ... And then quality of life and being close to family were probably the main drivers in returning.' He admits to finding Cork 'quite different to the Cork we left, even though we'd have been back a bit over the years'. He says: 'You partly feel an outsider when you're in the UK. But then you're partly an outside when you come back ... We have to rediscover things and we're out of the loop.' He observes Cork to be a very 'busy' city now. 'Very cosmopolitan, as well. Lots of young people, lots of energy. You've got great choices of restaurants. The kids were looking for Lebanese one night, like you would do in west London, and we found one, which you certainly wouldn't have done a few years ago.' Alan is happy with his decision to come home but adds: 'You'll always miss London. It's a very vibrant city, but then we're fortunate it's so close.' The LGBT communities, they are accepted in Pakistan. They're part of the culture — Sister Rebecca Conlon He thinks there has been a change in the sense of community that he remembers, suggesting it 'probably isn't as strong' as before. He admits there has been a lot to arrange. 'When you do first come back, there's an awful lot of jobs to do that are hidden. You're trying to get schools sorted ... get housing sorted. In my case, keep clients.' He's a consultant who helps tech companies grow. 'We definitely miss it, but we're very happy to be back in Ireland.' Sister Rebecca Conlon (78), from Clare , returned to Ireland in 2023 having lived and worked as a missionary in Pakistan for 33 years. She is now living in Dublin . 'I loved it,' she says of Pakistan . 'No place like it'. Sister Rebecca Conlon returned to an unrecognisable Ireland after 33 years as a missionary in Pakistan Sr Rebecca is an occupational therapist. She worked in a psychiatric hospital and a women's jail. 'The Christians are a minority. They are oppressed,' she says. 'We started a tuition centre specifically for Christians. Education for our Christian community over the years was not a value as such, because you needed food on the table.' She was in her 40s when she left Ireland and found it to have changed 'drastically' on her return. 'Somebody said one time that a missionary, you've no place. You're a stranger in your father's house ... You've missed out on all the years of growing up in Ireland, of working in Ireland.' She compares it to feeling like a stranger 'in your own culture'. Sr Rebecca explains her life in Pakistan prepared her for some changes. 'One thing about all of that, is we that we lived with the people. And the people have the same problems. The LGBT communities, they are accepted in Pakistan. They're part of the culture. [ When you return home to Ireland from abroad, you notice that everyone is a little changed Opens in new window ] 'Being a missionary, and in such a volatile situation, life was a mess all the time. Life is an absolute mess and you just try to get on with it and accompany people in their mess and our mess and the whole lot.' What did she make of changes such as divorce, marriage equality and repealing the eighth amendment? 'Ireland wanted it,' she replies. She hasn't 'adjusted yet', to being home. 'I'm trying to navigate my road really and truly. When I go into town, I feel very attracted to go over and talk to the Muslims at their table in front of the GPO. Because we had such a good experience as a group of Islam I've come back here now with a feel for these people. I've been changed.' Reflecting her experience of what Ireland used to be like, she says of Islam: 'we were afraid of it'. Ireland feels very different now, she says, 'but I also see the problem of housing and I appreciate what's going on, the struggle and the pain on both sides. On the Irish side and on the migrant side'. She finds it difficult to witness some of the more negative responses to immigrants, although she adds: 'The influx was too much at one time, I would believe.' [ This homesickness is not a yearning for return but rather for reconnection Opens in new window ] The hardest thing for her to adjust to, since her return, is the loss of young people to the Church. She has been sad to see the fall-off in faith in Ireland, but has hope for the future. Ireland has become 'more international, with all the travel,' she says. 'The emigration of the young professionals ... that to me is a huge lacuna in carrying on anything from the past.' Richard King, project manager at Crosscare Migrant Project , says it can be a challenge for those returning to Ireland to find that their friends and previous networks have moved on significantly in life. People leave Ireland having friends they can easily socialise with at night and the weekend, he explains, and then return 'to people who've got kids, they are carers, they've got jobs. And that reintegration of lifestyle can be very different'. Richard King of Crosscare Migrant Project says having a job to come home to can make the settling-in process much more manageable He suggests that if possible, people 'test the waters a little bit' by returning for a period that is more than 'just a holiday'. He points to the excitement of short holidays, during which people living here will make themselves available to meet because those living abroad are home for a short while, as opposed to the full return reality – 'well now you're here we're not going to be dropping everything to head out and do stuff'. He also explains that how people feel about the return can depend on whether they returned by choice or as a result of changed circumstances. It takes a good few years to get used to it, but I think we're just probably culturally more Australian than Irish — Breda* When it comes to emotional preparations 'there are great online support groups and networks out there', he advises. 'In terms of the practicalities ... very, very strongly lean on whatever family and friend networks you have to try to get accommodation and things like that sorted in advance. 'Returning with a structure in place, like returning to a job ... automatically creates the structure in your life that helps you do the other things.' Breda*, who is in her 40s and lives in a rural area, left Ireland when she was 26. She met her Irish husband in Australia and lived there for 15 years before moving home four years ago with him and their children. 'It's been pretty hard,' she says. 'We didn't probably know what we were coming back to as much. I read the papers ... so I knew what was going on. But it's very different when you live here, as to what to expect. 'It takes a good few years to get used to it, but I think we're just probably culturally more Australian than Irish.' Many of the things Breda considers important now that she's a parent weren't on her radar, she explains, during her early years in Australia. 'In your 20s, you don't care about healthcare. You don't care about anything. You really don't think of much else other than your salary and going out for the week. So we didn't probably know what we were coming back to as much.' Living overseas gave her an insight into 'how different societies function,' she says, adding she never realised 'how much of a nation of rule breakers we are in Ireland'. She feels a lack of services in Ireland means 'everyone's in it for themselves ... Everyone has to fight to get something they should be able to access, like proper healthcare and the likes. Everyone calls in favours. There's no such thing as meritocracy. Everyone's skipping the queue and pushing everyone else's waiting back'. [ Brianna Parkins: I'm the one who sought a life elsewhere, who am I to feel homesick? Opens in new window ] 'This is why we can't have nice things in this country. We can't because no one follows the rules.' In Australia, Breda says she could access healthcare with relative ease. She adds of Ireland: 'We got a rental because we knew someone. That means someone else who is desperate for a rental didn't get it. We came back in a housing crisis. We haven't been able to purchase a house, we've been cut off so many times from other people that it's hopeless now. And moving to Dublin is hopeless.' Breda and her husband commute to work. 'There is no commuter train that gets us into an office for nine o'clock in the morning. There is no road infrastructure to get there ... All the companies are around Dublin, Cork and the likes, generally, so it has impacted your professional choices. I'd really like if I worked part-time around the kids. But that flexibility isn't available. You see corporates talking about how everyone has to come back into the office now.' Breda says they have decided to return to Australia later this year. 'My husband and I both worry excessively about our ageing parents [in Ireland]. It's a real concern. 'Australia's not perfect. It's just that we had curated a life that was pretty close to it ... and we hadn't realised you can't create that everywhere.' *Name has been changed
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Sudden Panic That SCOTUS Might Overturn Marriage Equality Misses the Real Threat
Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Over the past few days, a long-shot request for the Supreme Court to overturn marriage equality has snowballed into a major news story. Influential media outlets have covered it closely, and prominent politicians have seized upon it to warn that same-sex marriage is still under attack. It is certainly true that no one should take this hard-won right for granted. But any panic about this particular challenge—brought by former Kentucky clerk Kim Davis—is unwarranted. There is essentially no chance that the court will entertain Davis' plea to abolish gay people's constitutional right to marry; the odds round down to zero. And although apprehension about the justices' hostility toward LGBTQ+ equality is justified, marriage does not yet appear to be in their crosshairs. The most important thing to understand about Davis' appeal is that it has a small likelihood of being taken up in the first place. Her lawyers have merely asked the court to consider it, filing what's known as a petition for certiorari. (They did so in July, and it's unclear why the request is garnering so much attention now.) SCOTUS receives about 8,000 of these petitions every year and grants just a tiny number of them—in recent years, fewer than 70. Anyone can ask the court to hear their appeal. And while it is technically accurate to say that the justices will consider her request, that does not mean they will resolve it on the merits. It simply indicates that they will have the opportunity to take it up, an opportunity that they are unlikely to accept. Why? Most obviously, Davis' petition does not center on the question of marriage equality. It stems from a long-running battle over her refusal to grant a marriage license to a same-sex couple shortly after the Supreme Court affirmed their right to wed in 2015's Obergefell v. Hodges. Davis, then a county clerk in Kentucky, claimed that her antigay religious beliefs did not allow her to provide the license. A federal judge briefly jailed her for contempt of court, and the couple later sued her for violating their rights. The two men prevailed at trial, and a jury awarded them $100,000 in damages. It is this judgment that Davis now asks the high court to overturn: She argues that she should've been allowed to raise the First Amendment's free exercise clause as a defense against the couple's lawsuit. Davis' lawyers devote almost all of their petition to this topic. Only at the end do they tack on a request—almost an afterthought—for the Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell altogether. But, again, the actual legal question in the case is not whether Obergefell was rightly decided; it is whether state officials can wield religious liberty as a shield when they engage in unlawful discrimination. The answer to this question is plainly no. Two conservative judges appointed by Donald Trump have already explained that a state official cannot hide behind the First Amendment to justify discrimination when acting as an agent of the government. It is highly doubtful that the court will reconsider that conclusion, which rests on the fundamental principle that the government has no right to infringe on people's rights. SCOTUS can take up Davis' appeal only if four of the justices vote to hear it. And it's difficult to envision four members of the current court agreeing to do so given the open-and-shut failure of Davis' main argument. But even if they did, the court would still have no grounds to consider her shoehorned assault on Obergefell itself. Reevaluating that precedent is entirely unnecessary to resolve the real dispute. And as the appeals court pointed out, Davis' lawyers actually forfeited their argument against Obergefell by declining to raise it in the district court. Their failure to preserve this issue gives SCOTUS one more reason to ignore it. So even if this Supreme Court were eager to put marriage equality in its crosshairs, Davis' appeal would be a terrible vehicle for it. But the court doesn't seem to have much of an appetite to kill off Obergefell right now. That assurance may ring hollow in light of Roe v. Wade's demise just three years ago. A handful of clues from the conservative supermajority, however, indicate that there are not currently five votes to end marriage equality. Or, perhaps more accurately, there are not five justices who want to eradicate same-sex couples' fundamental right to wed. At least three members of this supermajority have dropped hints that they do not wish to revisit Obergefell. Just two years after the decision, Chief Justice John Roberts seems to have quietly joined a follow-up ruling affirming its protections for same-sex parents, suggesting that he had made his peace with marriage equality. Justice Brett Kavanaugh has called same-sex marriage a 'very important right' and declared that gay Americans 'cannot be treated as social outcasts or as inferior in dignity and worth.' In his most important opinion about precedent, Justice Neil Gorsuch went out of his way to signal that Americans have 'reliance interests' on their ability to marry. Roberts and Gorsuch, of course, also voted to protect gay employees from workplace discrimination in 2020's Bostock v. Clayton County. And while Kavanaugh dissented from that decision, he did so apologetically, offering a sentimental tribute to gay Americans' 'extraordinary vision, tenacity, and grit.' The justice also took pains to note that the death of Roe v. Wade 'does not threaten or cast doubt on' marriage equality. The point here is not that these three justices think Obergefell was correct; they almost certainly don't. But it seems safe to conclude that they are not preoccupied by an unrelenting desire to harm gay people—or that they, at a minimum, understand that overturning Obergefell would be massively unpopular. Like every justice, this trio has an agenda. They know that their court has limited time, resources, and political capital to effectuate it. So they have to prioritize. And overturning marriage equality does not appear to be anywhere close to a top priority. Savvier anti-LGBTQ+ groups, like Alliance Defending Freedom, recognize this fact. It's presumably why these organizations have not directly asked SCOTUS to reverse Obergefell. (Davis is represented by the far smaller and less prestigious Liberty Counsel.) That's not to say that gay rights are safe at this Supreme Court. Far from it: They are under active attack, albeit in a subtler way. In the past several years, the conservative supermajority has weaponized the First Amendment to legalize discrimination against same-sex couples in the marketplace. It has forced public schools to censor LGBTQ+ books and compelled states to fund private schools that discriminate against LGBTQ+ students. Next year, it will probably strike down state bans on LGBTQ+ 'conversion therapy' for minors. Rather than take aim at Obergefell itself, the Republican-appointed justices have settled on curtailing gay rights in the name of religious liberty and free speech. They have also blessed overt discrimination against transgender people, cruelly denying them equal protection under the law. These rulings merit far more attention and scorn than a long-shot bid to take down marriage equality. Obergefell is not Roe v. Wade. It did not unite the Republican Party in a tireless crusade to change the law. Indeed, Trump has expressed no interest in ending marriage equality, even as his administration has enacted other anti-LGBTQ+ policies. A couple of sitting justices would likely leap at the opportunity to cast Obergefell into the dustbin of history. But it is pretty clear that they haven't yet secured a majority for their mission. And in the unlikely event that they do, Kim Davis' case will not be the vehicle they use to eradicate the equal dignity of same-sex couples. Solve the daily Crossword
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6 days ago
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10 years after same-sex marriage became legal, could the ruling be at risk? Here's where things stand, in 7 charts.
Same-sex marriage has become more common and more accepted. The Supreme Court is now being asked to overturn the case that legalized it nationwide. The Supreme Court is being asked to reconsider its landmark ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges that legalized same-sex marriage across the country 10 years ago. The challenge comes from Kim Davis, a former county clerk in Kentucky who was jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 2015. Davis is appealing a verdict that ordered her to pay $360,000 in damages to a couple who sought a license at her office. Lower courts have rejected her appeal, so she is now petitioning the Supreme Court to not only vacate the decision against her, but to vacate Obergefell entirely. The ruling marked an enormous victory for the marriage equality movement, which steadily gained popular support and increased legal recognition in the preceding decades. 'The right to marry is a fundamental right inherent in the liberty of the person … couples of the same sex may not be deprived of that right and that liberty,' Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion. It's unclear whether the Supreme Court will even choose to consider Davis's case, let alone decide to overturn a major precedent that's barely over a decade old. But her petition marks the first real challenge to the ruling and comes at a time when opposition to same-sex marriage has been slowly gaining steam on the right. Read more: Could the Supreme Court overturn same-sex marriage? This case hopes to roll back the ruling that made it legal. A lot has changed in the ten years since Obergefell was decided. The number of married same-sex couples has nearly doubled, and a strong majority of Americans believe same-sex marriages should be legal. Here's a snapshot of where things stand on same-sex marriage in America as the court considers whether to take up a case that aims to revoke nationwide marriage equality. More marriages, more acceptance From a purely practical sense, the Obergefell decision really only impacted the laws in a dozen states. The remaining 38 states and Washington, D.C., had already legalized same-sex marriage by that point, starting with Massachusetts in 2004. For that reason, the ruling didn't lead to a major spike in the number of same-sex marriages as much as it allowed an already growing trend to continue uninterrupted. As of 2023, the most recent year with available data, there were more than 770,000 married same-sex couples in America, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. While that's more than twice as many as there were in the year before Obergefell, it still represents just over 1% of all married couples in the U.S. Legalization has changed the nature of same-sex partnerships. In 2008, there were three times as many unmarried same-sex households as married ones. When Obergefell was decided in 2015, it was essentially an even split. Today, 60% of same-sex couples who live together are married. A persistent trend over the past 10 years has been women marrying other women at a higher rate than men marrying men. Though the difference isn't huge, it has resulted in 50,000 more lesbian marriages than gay marriages as of 2023. As a group, people in same-sex marriages have some distinct differences from their heterosexual counterparts. They are about five years younger, on average, and earn about $10,000 more per year than opposite-sex couples, in part because they are more likely to both have college degrees and both be working. The biggest divide involves children. Just 17% of same-sex married couples have kids living at home, less than half the rate of opposite-sex couples. Beyond simply making marriage more equal, legalization has had an 'unambiguously positive' impact on same-sex couples, according to a study published last year. That study found access to legal marriage has made same-sex couples healthier, more successful and more accepted by the communities around them — all of which also improves the lives of their children. They also found no evidence of negative impacts on opposite-sex marriages, despite longstanding warnings from opponents that same-sex marriage would somehow 'undermine' traditional partnerships. Changing views There are few issues in American politics that have seen such a dramatic shift in public opinion as same-sex marriage. It wasn't that long ago that the sitting president, George W. Bush, called for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage to prevent 'weakening the good influence of society.' In the 2000s, voters in dozens of states — including deep blue California and Oregon — approved ballot measures defining marriage as between one man and one woman. According to long-running polls by Gallup, support for same-sex marriage started steadily increasing in the late 1990s and has continued to trend upward ever since. It became the majority opinion for the first time in 2011 and kept ticking upward, to the point where 60% of Americans agreed with the Obergefell decision when it was handed down. That trend has continued over the past decade, though overall support may have peaked in the early 2020s and has even dipped slightly over the past few years. Gallup's polling reveals huge partisan differences in opinions about same-sex marriage. Less than half of Republicans support it today, which marks a substantial drop from just a few years ago, when 55% of GOP voters said they were in favor. Still, the long-term story is that support for same-sex marriage among Republicans has nearly tripled over the past three decades. Those differences in opinion also show up geographically. Same-sex marriage enjoys majority support in 48 states — the only exceptions being Oklahoma and Arkansas, where it's a 50/50 split — but there are massive gaps between the most and least supportive states. How big is the risk to same-sex marriage? Despite the clear legal and cultural progress that has been made on same-sex marriage, there are still concerns that Obergefell may be at risk of being overturned. If that were to happen, the legality of same-sex marriage would go back to being a state issue. In the past few years, four states — California, Hawaii, Colorado and Nevada — have eliminated their dormant bans so that same-sex marriage would still be legal if that were to happen. There's also some uncertainty about how the laws in a handful of states would operate in the absence of nationwide protections, but the overall result of Obergefell's reversal would be same-sex marriage instantly becoming illegal in dozens of states. But how real is the risk that Obergefell might go away? In addition to Davis's challenge, there have recently been some other headline-grabbing calls from conservatives who want that to happen. Republican lawmakers in at least nine states have introduced bills aimed at chipping away at marriage equality, though none of those would have any legal heft as long as Obergefell stands. Despite those state-level moves, opposing same-sex marriage doesn't appear to be a priority for the GOP as a whole. President Trump has given varying answers on the issue over the years, including saying that he's 'fine' with same-sex marriage during his 2016 campaign. In order to overturn Obergefell, the Supreme Court would have to be willing to hear Davis's case. Despite the court's rightward shift in recent years, many legal experts are skeptical that her petition poses a real threat to Obergefell. 'This just isn't the right vehicle for challenging a constitutional right to same-sex marriage,' Paul Collins, a professor of legal studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told Newsweek. Five of the nine justices who ruled in Obergefell are still on the court today. That includes Chief Justice John Roberts, who opposed the majority's decision in the case, writing in his dissent that 'The fundamental right to marry does not include a right to make a State change its definition of marriage.' Two other dissenting justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, are also still in their seats. It's unclear how the other three conservatives on the court would rule if a challenge to Obergefell came before them. It's also not guaranteed that Roberts or Alito would land in the same place they did 10 years ago, especially given the implications of reversing a decision that has been the law of the land for a decade. Thomas is the only conservative justice who has explicitly called for reconsidering same-sex marriage, which was one of several rights that were established in cases decided under the same legal reasoning as the now-defunct abortion protection in Roe v. Wade. So far, none of those other precedents — which include the right to privacy, the right to access contraception and the right to interracial marriage — have faced a serious challenge before the court. Solve the daily Crossword
