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Ken Peabody's avatar

I see a number of issues here. The first is that the rights established under the "privacy" guarantee rights to all citizens. Returning these to the states would mean depriving citizens of some states rights that citizens in other states enjoy, making them a different class of citizen depending on the state in which one lives. Secondly, I think these rights could be defended on religious freedom grounds. Some, like Obergefell, could be defended on contract law as marriage in the eyes of the state is a contract that 2 people enter into. The defenders of these rights have to become more aggressive on creating cases to challenge these decisions of the Robert's court. Also, the Supreme Court could be expanded to 13 to keep the number of justices equal to the numer of circuit courts. All I can say is I'm glad I live in NJ and not in TX, MS, and other red states!

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CapeJ's avatar

Excellent piece. I think too many are drawing comfort from Alito’s supposedly self-limiting statements, when all those statements effectively say is that those other cases will stand or fall on their own merits if/when challenged. Hard to see why this same five-person majority would not apply the same legal reasoning as in Dobbs to overturn those other cases, unless perhaps one or more of those other four justices were only persuaded to join in Alito’s opinion because of the inclusion of the self-limiting statements and because such justice(s) actually would not use the same legal reasoning to strike down those other cases. (Right up until doing so, of course.)

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