Fresh off his landmark victory at the Supreme Court in the “Independent State Legislatures” case in which Republicans sought to strip state and federal courts of their oversight of State Legislatures actions to change election laws – perhaps to the point where they can overturn the will of voters in casting electoral votes – former Obama Solicitor General Neal Katyal appeared on Michael Steele’s MSNBC show today to assert that in light of new evidence that the Colorado web designer who brought the 303 Creative case, and who in fact does not design web-sites, willfully misrepresented the basic facts of her complaint, that the Attorney General of Colorado can force SCOTUS to rehear matter.
“Based upon new evidence that a landmark Supreme Court case on religious and 1st Amendment rights was based upon a bogus claim, former Solicitor General Neal Katyal claimed that Colorado’s attorney general has a duty to ask the court to rehear the case and that a justice on the court could also ask the court to review the new information.
Speaking with fill-in host Michael Steele, the legal expert cited a report from the New Republic that website designer Lorie Smith made the claim that, “I will not be able to create websites for same-sex marriages or any other marriage that is not between one man and one woman. Doing that would compromise my Christian witness and tell a story about marriage that contradicts God’s true story of marriage—the very story He is calling me to promote,” which she bolstered by claiming she had received an inquiry from a same-sex couple named Stewart and Mike.“
However, upon being contacted by the New Republic’s Melissa Gira Grant, Stewart stated no such thing had happened and that he was not gay, was married to a woman and happens to be a website designer himself.
With that in mind, and after host Steele said everything about the case and how the conservative majority handled it “reeks,” Katyal suggested there is a legitimate reason for the court to revisit their controversial ruling.“
Talk about having no standing. Lorie Smith, who has never designed a wedding website for any couple – straight or gay – is now shown to have never been approached to do so for the client on which the complaint and case are based.
Watch Neal square up this cheese ball and hit it out of the park:
Pardon the mixing of metaphors, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser but the ball is now in your court.
What some others are thinking:
Theoretical Lawyer here. I'll pretend I have a law license, if you pretend you have a case. We'll invent some fake religious fear to sue someone about. We'll take this fictional lawsuit straight to SCOTUS, where 6 people pretend they are honest ethical judges. Fix is In, We Win.
— Bryan Cooper…😎 (@fbcooper1) July 2, 2023
That’s the gist of it.
Holy shit. The whole thing was based on that one Adam Sandler movie. pic.twitter.com/s4VZWU0fr0
— Lyle Scout (@fartyowls1) July 2, 2023
🤣🤣🤣
I can't believe this incident didn't even happen.
— Tabitha Stevens8 (@TabithaStevens8) July 2, 2023
😂😂😂
I'm thinking of a right just now my great great grandson might be denied, sometime in the future. Can I get a SCOTUS decision?
— Rand Johnson (@2ANDVS) July 2, 2023
Probably… if you gift enough to The Heritage Foundation.
I’ve seen several news reports that she only wanted to know what her rights would be IF she faced this situation. Kind of a beta test. I thought that was pretty outrageous. I’d love to know if she really had any standing in any court of law if no specific conflict was faced.
— Jan (@madamejanrenee) July 2, 2023
Yup
If conservatives didn't make shit up, there would be nothing from them to be triggered about. @HouseGOP #Maga #cult #Bullshit
— Lumpy_Space_Prince (@LumpySpaceTim) July 2, 2023
Exactly
The conservatives the Robert’s Court have no shame,it is true, but if this malfeasance becomes widely enough known they may have to reopen the case.
And perhaps there is some merit in the argument that a creative should not be forced to sell his craft to further a cause he or she does not agree with, I certainly would not want to write or do portraiture for a Nazi.
Not that the two are remotely the same, but you get my drift.
It’s a complex issue.
But we deserve a case based in reality to be heard by the court before they render a judgement.
Let’s wait until an actual gay couple wants a homophobe to design their wedding web-sight, or a Nazi wants me to write for them to decide this matter.
Here’s to hoping the Colorado A.G. does the right thing and takes this info to the s.c. Not sure if they will reverse the abomination of a ruling they pulled out of their butts. If they don’t, it will put on display for the world to see–this court legislates from the bench BIG TIME.
Um, the whole world already KNOWS the court legislates from the bench. They’ve been doing it for decades now. Even as their “conservative” members keep denouncing such actions and promoting “original intent” as their alleged basis for ruling, we’ve seen the conservatives on the court gladly establishing laws that THEY want (pretty much every case involving gun control legislation for the last 15 years has deliberately ignored the “original intent”; one of the cases–I can’t recall which one at the moment–effectively erased the Second Amendment’s opening clause about the “well-regulated militia”) while their legislative fellows go about denouncing any and all “left-wing legislating from the bench.”
Forgot to note, especially, Thomas’s constant belittling of a right to privacy because the Constitution doesn’t directly address the matter but you CANNOT have “free speech” or a “free press” or “freedom of religion” if there’s not an unwritten right to privacy. (Just go back and read about the Spanish and Portuguese conversos who were routinely “inspected” to ensure they weren’t publicly promoting Christianity/Catholicism and privately practicing Islam or Judaism. Their *privacy* was continually invaded in order to ensure they were abiding by a state-mandated religious law.)
I wonder how long it will be until someone presents the argument that the teachings of Jesus (the basis of Christianity) are inclusive. If you are using exclusivity as a basis for your position, you aren’t being a Christian.
Also, how long until a Texas like bounty is proposed to catch ‘Christians’ doing things that are against their stated religion? It’s too easy, I know, when racism, homophobic, anti-immigration are all NOT beliefs of Christianity.
According to the texts, Jesus was threatened, hassled, lied about, misunderstood, and eventually killed for performing miracles, healing folks, driving out evil spirits and the like. Early in Luke he goes to the temple in Nazareth, his hometown, reads from Isaiah, and has everyone saying nice things about the hometown hero. They had heard of his miracles in a nearby town. When he told them he wasn’t going to do the same in his hometown, the very same folks became enraged, took him by force to the top of a cliff to throw him off. The story doesn’t explain how he escaped but he did. It’s all there in Luke 4. If Jesus couldn’t convince people to act right…good luck. Oh, and before certain Jewish folks start in on how it’s all made up…I suggest they reread the Torah to list all the improbable miracles claimed within. Oh, and before they accuse Chrstians of hypocrisy, maybe the Jews should start following the ten commandments, claimed by THEM to be written by Yahweh. Whatever happened to THOU SHALL NOT KILL? Oops!
I can’t understand how this ‘case’ ever reached the Supreme Court to begin with. Aren’t these things vetted? The Court only takes a small number of the cases brought to them and supposedly looks at them carefully to see which ones are worth their time. I would have thought someone would have done their homework and kicked it to the curb before it ever got to the Court. Now that we know one more thing that the RWNJ’s are willing to pull, hopefully everyone keeps an eye out for this sort of charade in the future.
Had RBG lived another few months we wouldn’t be where we are. Many conservatives including The Federalist Society (in particular) and Heritage Foundation (and a couple of other lesser known groups) chafed at times over Roberts’ incremental (usually but as we know not always) incremental approach to enshrining conservative (including really hard-core stuff) into the law of the land that would last for a half dozen or more generations and probably longer. A careful, insidious plan to remake the federal (and states too) judiciary and even SCUTUS was conceived, crafted and implemented by the mid 1980s. The knew it would take decades and a bit of luck but they never lost their focus or will along the way. Steady progress was more than enough to sustain them. But Roberts cared about his legacy and with only a 5-4 majority he was hesitant to do too much too fast most of the time. Of course sometimes even he couldn’t resist taking a huge bite of the apple as we saw with his Citizen’s United ruling and gutting of the Voting Rights Act.
The death of RBG changed the calculus. It wasn’t long after having a 6-3 majority with all six being Federalist Society approved that the two old timers (Alito and Thomas) and the new gang of three Trump appointees made it clear that the time for waiting was over. Yes, even they knew a series of 5-4 rulings overturning precedent and doing all manner of things to do so would look bad but Roberts seems to have decided if they couldn’t be restrained then he might as well join in with them rather than suffer not only the loss of the legacy he’d worked so hard to build but the humiliation of having been run over roughshod by the other five. For decades cases have been percolating in the federal system, and lest we forget most law is made not by SCOTUS but by appellate courts. But SCOTUS can put a huge stamp on big changes and you can go back to Bush v Gore to see that there are and have for decades been Justices willing to make up sh*t if they need to in order to advance hard-core conservative goals. There’s been more and more made up/bogus stuff SCOTUS has accepted and ruled on since 2000 but now? They know longer care. It doesn’t have to be a special, put them on the spot case like the one RBG got that appellate ruling on (a minor until then tax law case) that was the basis for the movie On the Basis Of Sex. Nope. Even when they know the case is a steaming pile of excrement bigger than a dino spoor if it gives them an EXCUSE to impose a conservative agenda that Republicans can’t do via the ballot box they (including Roberts) no longer care. That’s how you get a case like the religious “freedom” case or the one overturning Affirmative Action where the plaintiffs literally lacked standing to even have the case heard at the District Court level!