48 Hours

[Arthfach]

It's shocking how fragile human rights can really be.



Across three decisions over two days, the Supreme Court, with justices that have no effective remedy against their decisions, have done the following:

* Ended affirmative action. This means that no entity can, as a matter of policy, use race to help compensate for structural, historical, and institutional disadvantages faced by minorities in the US.

* Allowed for discrimination based on "free speech" without defining what, if any, restrictions that has. This opens the door to discrimination against anyone who can even make a half-assed argument that they are discriminating because to do otherwise would be creating speech they disagree with. (For example, a racist can now deny service to black people because they believe racial equality is wrong and forcing them to serve a black person would be "compelling speech" by making them act in a way that supports equality - yes, that's as backwards and fucking evil as it sounds.)

* Allowed for US states to sue the federal government to block any spending they wish. This means that any tax reductions for the poor or middle class, expenditures on social welfare systems, or any number of other socialist ideas could be challenged and struck down, even if the authority for the spending comes from statutory law (after all, debt relief came from the HEROES Act, an actual written and passed law).



We are now on par, in the United States, with the early 1950s in terms of human rights. Protections have been rolled back and stripped away to the point where women are not considered people, it is now completely legal to discriminate against anyone for "speech," institutional discrimination against minorities is now codified into law, and the highest court in the United States has declared that the rule of law is more of a suggestion by ignoring fundamental, foundational legal principles in order to achieve specific, harmful political goals.