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Path: ...!weretis.net!feeder9.news.weretis.net!news.quux.org!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv Subject: Re: Two cases asserting free exercise of religion heard at Supreme Court Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2025 20:04:20 -0000 (UTC) Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 111 Message-ID: <vugps4$ntd8$1@dont-email.me> References: <vu906d$1dt5c$1@dont-email.me> Injection-Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2025 22:04:27 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="548e72a6de81589a0d7a64f88081552c"; logging-data="783784"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18gkrywJFclCVs+ufm/V5nTpLenVrS1F7E=" Cancel-Lock: sha1:9DFBCPFGGxuWrUObLj8tQh1I80I= X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test77 (Sep 1, 2010) Bytes: 6285 Adam H. Kerman <ahk@chinet.com> wrote: >. . . >I'm a lot less concerned about the other case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, which >is about parents objections to school curriculum and that it's become >mandatory for public school children to be instructed in LGBTQ+ themes. >I've argued before that it's a freedom of the press issue if parents >seek to remove books on subjects they don't approve of from school and >public libraries to "protect children". I don't see parental objections >to curriculum as censorship. Libraries offer reading material as a >choice but curriculum is imposed. >My guess is that the Supreme Court will side with the parents. >https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/04/supreme-court-considers-parents-efforts-to-exempt-children-from-books-with-lgbtq-themes/ If you don't want to listen to the oral transcript (easily findable in the C-SPAN archives), here are two clips. Gorsuch, in his pleasant voice and low-key manner making the attorney for the board of education squirm, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, not letting the parents' attorney go off topic, complain that the plaintiffs seeking injunctive relief didn't prepare an adequate record and that this is, therefore, the wrong case for the Supreme Court to make a landmark ruling on. Despite her complaint that counsel went off topic to raise inflammatory facts from a similar case but inapplicable here, she then offered a series of hypotheticals of her own. In the first video, in my opinion, Gorsuch builds toward the "crisis" by eliciting a number of reasonable points from the Q&A, but his "crisis" question, er, assumes facts not in evidence in trying to get at strict construction (which he doesn't literally say). If the state is discriminating against religion, what is the secular purpose? Whoa. This isn't segregation in which equal protection must be considered. This is about academic freedom and parents rights to raise their kids, competing First Amendment interests. Even if the board of education could expect a parent to object to curriculum, I don't feel they have any obligation to review it for conflict with religion (Gorsuch even lists large religious groups). Gorsuch sure as hell is not thinking about consequences for academic freedom here. He's getting it wrong. Make the decision about the parent's right to raise his own kid superior to academic freedom, that the kid can skip the lesson WITHOUT the board considering conflict with religious teaching before offering it in the first place. This is why I also find it so troubling if the right of free exercise is made superior to the right of free speech. The attorney answered, not falling into Gorsuch's logic trap, that discrimination on its face, favoring one religion over another, is coercion and therefore a burden. I think "coercion" is being used as a legal term as part of strict scrutiny analysis, which I haven't studied adequately. Gorsucg got this wrong and the opinion should not touch upon this, which is far removed from the facts of the case. In the second video, it's from a YouTube channel that typically does video clips of congressional hearings making conservative (often Sen John Kennedy (R-LA)) look brilliant. For what it's worth, the attorney for the parents avoided Brown's logic traps in her hypotheticals. Brown completely gets off track by referring to a case (that I've never heard of and she only mentioned the name of one party making it difficult to look up; maybe BTR1701 knows) by question whether there's a religious burden at all given that parents didn't choose to send their children elsewhere. Yes, I always argue that the consumer has the power to make a different choice, but having made a choice, the consumer then isn't precluded from asking for a better product or service. But public education is government, not a consumer product. Public schools cannot prevent enrollment like private or religious schools and certainly cannot refuse enrollment by inability to pay tuition. She's wrong here in concept. What about her comment, In so many other constitutional doctrines, we don't focus on whether people can actually afford to protect their rights. There's one I can think of off the top of my head, the Sixth Amendment right to counsel in a criminal case. The defendant may ask the judge for counsel and the judge will see that counsel is appointed without charge to the defendant. But yes, there are numerous other rights that people cannot afford to protect without paying for counsel and going through expensive trials, pretty much every case taken on by ACLU and Institute for Justice, or post-trial exonneration cases, etc. How much justice can one afford? She pointed out that there is a right to counsel in civil litigation regardless of whether fees are affordable. She asked, given that parents may send their children to school elsewhere, are the schools being coerced to change curriculum? In response, the parents' attorney cited cases in which schools weren't coerced but pressured but he didn't have time to give an elaborate explanation as to where the bright line is. We'll find out if she was persuaded. Gorsuch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dEDuM-_f1I Brown https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLbd0OdH0EU