The Supreme Court today issued a 6-3 ruling stating that those within the LGBTQ community are now protected within the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Many conservatives across the country are shocked and appalled at this ruling from these Activist judges.
Justifying this decision, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote, “An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.”
Here’s the problem: Justice Gorsuch and the other 5 justices who ruled in this way are behaving like activist judges, not originalists. You see, when a judge at any level rules on a case, they are supposed to be applying justice based on the laws of the land, not creating or changing the laws on a whim. To change a law, you need the legislative branch to write and vote on a bill, the executive branch signs it into law and enforces it, and the judicial branch interprets the law into individual cases. Once any of the branches of government overstep their bounds, as often happens, the rule of law is wiped out.
There’s a reason why the House and the Senate are supposed to debate laws before passing them: The law is intended to be whatever they voted on. The judicial branch does not have the authority to then, after it’s been passed and signed into law, change the intended meaning into something that was never there to begin with.
This is what is happening in relation to this ruling. In 1964, the Civil Rights Act was not intended to protect those within the homosexual community. So for the Supreme Court to rule that it is protected is to literally go back in time and change history. This needs to stop.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his dissension, “The Court tries to convince readers that it is merely enforcing the terms of the statute, but that is preposterous. Even as understood today, the concept of discrimination because of ‘sex’ is different from discrimination because of ‘sexual orientation’ or ‘gender identity.’”
If you are going to make the case that, in 1964, the framers of the Civil Rights Act intended to include the LGBTQ community, you’d have to provide some sort of documentation. The fact is, there is no evidence of this. The framers of the act were very specific about who this was protecting, and sexual orientation was not a specified “protected class.”
Now, many conservatives and libertarians have made a compelling case that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 should be overturned altogether, since laws are supposed to be written to protect all Americans, not just those of particular groups. In addition to that, discrimination by a private business owner is a moral issue and many would say that it shouldn’t be a legal issue.
I can understand that line of thinking, since we could allow the free capitalist system provide the proper checks and balances. Especially today with social media, if you hear of a bigoted business owner, I think the more appropriate response would be to stop doing business there. I’d rather let the American people run someone out of business than to have the government step in and force someone to comply.
We should be free to conduct business as we see fit. If we treat people poorly, word will get out and the public and protest, boycott and take away your income in response. However, on the positive side, a business owner should be allowed to conduct business with whomever they want for whatever reason they want.
If someone wanted to hire only African-Americans, the left would applaud. If someone wanted to hire only those within the LGBTQ community, progressives would cheer. But the second that anyone who finds themselves a part of a perceived “targeted” group of people within the hierarchy of the Oppression Olympics and they get fired, now they have the ability to sue their former employer.
We live in a free country. This Supreme Court ruling is nothing but an activist court making our nation more progressive. If you want to change the law, do it the right way.
We must never forget President Reagan’s core reminder that he shared with us often that “freedom is but one generation away from extinction.” He meant this as a timeless warning and reminder that the freedom and rights that we think are secure in our way of life are not, in reality, secure, but rather have to be worked at, nurtured, cultivated, and, yes, sometimes fought for, as we have to do for the important things in life. I would hope we place liberty and representative governance at the top of our list always. If we don’t, the restrictions, dictates, edicts, and arbitrary shut-downs of economic and personal life imposed by governors will seem small and inconsequential, indeed.