supreme court

But what if I want to show people how much I “care” about them as they’re trying to get into the voting booth?

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

clinic protesters

The Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision today in McCullen v Coakley, finding that Massachusetts’ 35 foot buffer zone around abortion clinics violated the free speech rights of protesters to harangue and intimidate uh “counsel” women entering them. It looks like the court bought the plaintiffs’ carefully constructed image of kindly “plump grandmothers” being the typical sort of protesters patients would encounter outside clinics rather than the actual intimidating people known to be there. I’m certain that the Justices weren’t thinking about these people when they rendered their decision.

SCOTUS was concerned about the free “transmission of ideas”.

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Women’s lives aren’t an olive branch for a truce in the culture wars

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Imagine living in a country with same-sex marriage equality, legalized marijuana, and women of childbearing age relegated to ward-of-the-state status because abortion is banned and fertilized eggs have been granted legal status as human beings. If that seems a bit incongruous – a bit one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-others to you, then I hope you’re paying careful attention to the Hobby Lobby case.

Read Ian Millhiser’s excellent coverage on the Hobby Lobby oral arguments before the Supreme Court to understand why pro-choice activists are deeply worried about the pending decision.

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What happened to not wanting to subsidize people’s sex lives?

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After spending most of the morning being deluged with tweets by an angry anti-choice man letting me know that birth control is wrong and unnatural (as he typed his words into a computer in a climate controlled room), I see that the Supreme Court has ruled that school vouchers, that is public tax dollars for tuition, are legal in Arizona (and presumably everywhere else) even if they are for religious schools.

On paper, the lawsuit dealt only with a small-scale version of vouchers, one enacted in 2011 for students with special needs.

But the decision effectively ratifies the decision of lawmakers to expand eligibility to any student enrolled in a school rated D or F.

Potentially more significant, it removes any legal hurdle from a legislative effort this year to remove virtually all limits on who can get a voucher. A bill to do just that is awaiting a House vote.

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