Chief Justice John Roberts has sided against the predominant conservative position in some of the most substantial cases up until now decided by the Supreme Court this term, including on hot button problems over LGBTQ rights, migration and monetary policy. This trajectory culminated in his unexpected vote Monday to concur with Justice Stephen Breyer’s choice that overruled a limiting Louisiana abortion law.
Roberts’ vote in June Medical Solutions v. Russo wasn’t his very first heresy during the Trump administration, and numerous prominent conservatives were lastly driven to hysteria by Roberts on Monday.
” Today the liberal justices, led by Chief Justice Roberts, when again selected themselves members of our nation’s de facto medical board,” Judicial Crisis Network President Carrie Severino tweeted
” Chief Justice Roberts is at it once again with his political gamesmanship,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) tweeted
However Roberts isn’t a liberal, let alone a veiled liberal like former Justice David Souter, as some conservative voices appear to believe. And there is no proof that he has had some abrupt change of heart. He’s still calling balls and strikes, he would argue. It’s just that the size of the strike zone keeps altering based upon the country’s shifting viewpoints, political calculation and on his own desire to set the rate.
The primary justice’s 2020 apostasies began on June 15, when he joined Justice Neil Gorsuch’s 6-3 choice in Bostock v. Clayton County, ruling that the 1964 Civil Rights Act safeguards LGBTQ workers from workplace discrimination. Thanks to the ruling, companies will no longer be able to fire somebody just for their sexual preference.
Even here, Roberts is following a securely, if recently developed, social standard. Americans supported overturning laws that discriminate based upon sexual orientation by 57%to 34%, according to a 2019 Marquette Law School survey This reality is perhaps best expressed by Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s dissent, which went out of its way to applaud LGBTQ activists– “They have advanced effective policy arguments and can take pride in today’s result,” he wrote– even as he ruled versus them.
As conservative activists have actually stacked the federal courts in current years, they have actually come to expect judges and justices who will robotically authorize their arguments, no matter how sloppy or repeated they are. Roberts