The Supreme Court decided Thursday that the city of Philadelphia’s decision to stop contracting with a Catholic foster care agency unless it placed children with same-sex couples violates the First Amendment.
Everyone agrees teh gays are getting a bit tiresome. Everyone. Go ahead. Just ask. Your Dad. He’ll tell you.
Religious freedoms
Using publlic money to discriminate against a group of persons isn’t religious freedom, it is discrimination.
You don’t get to walk down the street punching people in the face because your “religion” requires it and stopping you from doing that would be suppressing your religion.
The case was seen as a clue for how the conservative Court will treat LGBTQ rights in the future…
If it’s a unanimous decision, how is it a reflection of the conservative side of the Court? Maybe the the city of Philadelphia’s decision was just plain wrong and had no legal standing. Simply because it was about an LGBTQ issue doesn’t mean that Philadelphia had the right to do it.
There’s nothing to prevent Phillie from pulling it’s contract from the Catholic org when the contract expires, so public money is only involved if they decide to continue with the contract. Residents can let their local reps know how they feel about that.
Exactly - it will be interesting when the info is published.
The justices were splintered in their rationales, though, with multiple concurring opinions.
The decision was very narrowly drawn, and required some legal gymnastics.
It should not be interpreted as giving religious groups free rein to discriminate against the LGBT community.
Yeah, I just dove into the syllabus and came away with the same impression. Basically, it sounds like the Phillly law was not neutral and generally applicable because it allowed discretionary exceptions at the sole discretion of some commissioner. If the commissioner can decide that somebody else is worthy of an anti-LGBTQ exemption for secular reasons, they can’t deny it on religious grounds. I’m okay with that. Just make your damn rule equally applicable to everyone, problem solved.
Hobby Lobby already cleared the way for that.
That was my non-lawyer reading of the decision.
The fact that it was unanimous pretty much shows that the Philly set-up was the problem, and that it really wasn’t about religious discrimination per se.
Bullshit. On a contract non-renewal the catholic org can sue on the basis that they were discriminated against on religious grounds, citing this very decision as precedent.
public money is only involved
Public money is already involved. Would you be ok with firemen deciding which fires to put out based on the sexual orientation of the property owners, and then to on to make the ridiculous claim that this is not discrimination because it could be resolved at the firemen’s next annual review?
Doubtful.
The case revolved around a contract already in place.
It does not address contract renewal, nor does it preclude denying a contract to any group.
Religious freedom trumps all other Constitutional freedoms?
Maybe, but I doubt the city loses all of its rights to determine who it does business with on behalf of its residents. Is there a precedent for the situation you describe?
Of course public money is already involved. The question is what the city will do now that this ruling has come out. Maybe they’ll end the contract, maybe they’ll change the discretionary exception and sue again.
JFC.
TYPO Alert: TPM, you misspelled “Religious Bigotry”.
More that the city can’t deny an exception to an institution that has religious reasons for deciding not to work with LGBTQ foster parents if the city has discretion to grant exceptions for groups making the same decision for secular reasons. It’s only because of the discretion that the denial becomes prohibited religious viewpoint discrimination.
To put it in terms of Employment Division v. Smith – the peyote case where Scalia correctly held that there is no First Amendment right to a religious exemption to a neutral law of general applicability – if the Division’s rules said that the head of the department could grant exemptions that allowed people to stay employed even if they consumed an illegal drug, it would be unlawful discrimination to deny an exemption to a person whose reason for seeking it was religion. So this is indeed a pretty narrow rule.
Unless the city has a secular reason for turning them down that doesn’t involve their religious views on LGBTQ matters, this is correct. And even if the city does come up with a different reason, the Catholics can still sue on a claim that it’s pretextual. Much better to just eliminate the availability of exemption for any groups that won’t work with LGBTQ foster parents.
That the church of the eternal pedophile has a right to anything but scorn is hard to understand.
If they cancelled the contract before its term was out that would have been a “harm” to CSS. They could choose not to renew the contract at its expiration.
Supreme court values myth over people, every fucking time.