Fulton v City of Philadelphia: In Which SCOTUS Takes 110 Pages to Accomplish Almost Nothing

Em Carpenter

Em was one of those argumentative children who was sarcastically encouraged to become a lawyer, so she did. She is a proud life-long West Virginian, and, paradoxically, a liberal. In addition to writing about society, politics and culture, she enjoys cooking, podcasts, reading, and pretending to be a runner. She will correct your grammar. You can find her on Twitter.

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22 Responses

  1. pillsy says:

    One question which I haven’t seen the answer to is whether CSS places children with couples where one or both parents have remarried after divorce. I don’t know whether this would change the Court’s calculus any, but it would shed a great deal of light on whether the promised denial really hinges on what marriages are recognized by the Catholic Church.Report

    • Em Carpenter in reply to pillsy says:

      Good question, I don’t know. That wasn’t mentioned and I didn’t see it in any other sources. They won’t place with unmarried couples though, and they will certify single lgbtq+ people.Report

  2. DensityDuck says:

    ” I feel compelled also to say this: If The Catholic Church, as an institution, is as concerned about associating itself with “sin” as it claims, one would think it would focus more on the horrific sexual abuse within its own walls.”

    ah-heh

    “well sure maybe this is an abuse of government power and in direct contravention of both an enumerated Constitutional right and black-letter Federal law, but let’s be real here, these aren’t angels we’re talking about, maybe if they acted properly then we’d consider showing them some sympathy”

    planet

    of

    cops

    “The City next contends that because its policy applicable to all its contractors…”

    oh hey look it’s the “we’re not BIGOTS, we treat EVERYONE THE SAME, if our policy happens to hit certain groups harder then that’s just those groups’ own fault” position, and didn’t we just hear a bunch of arguments about how that thinking was invalid?

    “The Court is also unpersuaded by the speculation of hypothetical lawsuits that the City has not faced but fears it may.”

    Which is in concurrence with Ricci v. DeStefano.

    “it is important to note that Smith is over 30 years old now and the worst case scenarios have not come to pass.”

    probably because they wrote a god damn law about it

    “one could speculate that Alito’s preferred interpretation would potentially permit child marriage”

    ahhehehh. Your response to a SCOTUS decision you disagree with is to accuse sitting Justices of being pedophiles.

    “Alito writes dozens of pages of argument against Smith…”

    Important to note here is that Smith was seen as a victory for right-wing white-male prudery, the Dominant Culture stomping on the practice of the downtrodden innocent indigenous Americans who just wanted to follow their non-harmful private religious worship practices — all the parts of that sentence are true and accurate, by the way — and that the RFRA was passed with enthusiastic bipartisan support. So writing as though Alito has some crypto-conservative Secret Spooky Catholic pro-pedophilia beef with the decision is obscuring the truth just a little bit.

    “In the end the Fulton decision is murky and not definitive in any meaningful way.”

    Eh. Maybe it isn’t definitive, but in light of Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo it didn’t really need to be? It’s pretty well established that SCOTUS considers a set of regulations and restrictions that only affects religious organizations (or such a set that is notionally applied generally but has exceptions and carve-outs except for religious organizations) to be a violation of the First Amendment.Report

    • Em Carpenter in reply to DensityDuck says:

      “ ‘one could speculate that Alito’s preferred interpretation would potentially permit child marriage’

      ahhehehh. Your response to a SCOTUS decision you disagree with is to accuse sitting Justices of being pedophiles.”

      And into human sacrifice. Don’t forget human sacrifice.
      (I never said I disagreed with the opinion, by the way.)Report

  3. Chip Daniels says:

    As American religious institutions decline and grow increasingly detached from the dominant culture, we will see more conflict.

    If a church wants only to meet and worship, they are unlikely to ever come in conflict with the dominant culture. But many churches, Christian ones particularly, have as their mission statement a broad engagement with society.
    They want to run hospitals, orphanages, schools, food banks, and various social services.

    There isn’t any practical way to be both deeply engaged in the workings of society while also incapable of accepting the structure of society.Report

    • Igrek in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      As new religions arise, we see more conflict — settled religions at least have a settled dogma.
      In the old days, the creators of new religions were generally schizos (see The Patriarchy).
      Nowadays, they’re narcissists (see: “My Sexuality Is Specialer Than Yours, and You Must Acknowledge It”)Report

    • LeeEsq in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      I think this is really going to be the source of a lot of future conflicts. Until very recently, it was natural to assume that Americans were at least going to profess certain religious beliefs in public. You couldn’t be an openly atheist or at least non-religious politician until recently Sometime in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the number of publicly non- or even anti-religious people started to increase exponentially. Social teachings that churches could not approve of, especially really big massive ones like the Catholic Church that has to deal with the fact that it’s members cover a wide range of beliefs and reform was going to cause schism, was going to run into trouble.

      America is somewhat more unique than Europe in that our secularization rate is a lot less even both demographically and geographically. The North East and West might be really secular along with the blue metropolitan areas but the Evangelicals and other religious people old firm in the South and Great Plains. This creates a bigger source of political conflict than Europe’s more even secularization.Report

  4. Saul Degraw says:

    As things go, this is probably the best outcome liberals could have hoped for but as mentioned the other day, it is interesting to see how Employment Division went from a decision that everyone hated and is now seen as important for liberals especially when it comes to LBGT rights.Report

  5. 77 pages of argument that’s irrelevant to the case at hand. Alito really is the worst.Report

    • CJColucci in reply to Mike Schilling says:

      It’s the judicial equivalent of virtue signalling. Several Justices are spoiling for a fight over Smith and religious exemptions from generally-applicable laws, whether the case before them calls for it or not. John Roberts has, once again, saved them from themselves, and they damn well want people to know where they stand.Report

      • Looking for an excuse to find more exceptions to anti-discrimination law is vice signaling.Report

      • JS in reply to CJColucci says:

        Somehow I think not all religious would qualify for a generalized religious exemption.

        Perhaps I’m cynical, but I’m pretty sure any sect of Christianity, be it ever so small, would — but everyone else would be SOL.Report

        • CJColucci in reply to JS says:

          Pre-Smith, free exercise claims against generally-applicable rules didn’t generally fare well. Cute, non-threatening folk like the Amish were allowed to keep their kids away from all but the most rudimentary education (Ultra-Orthodox yeshivas that turn out male graduates who learn only what they need to become freelance rabbis rely on Yoder.) and religious folk didn’t have to take jobs that interfered with their religious obligations but still got their unemployment benefits. But Jews couldn’t wear yarmulkes under their helmets.
          As I’ve said on another occasion, the cases seemed to be largely unprincipled, and the accommodations were mandated only when they were small potatoes. Alito et al. are looking to bag bigger game, which would allow widespread disobedience to the laws if religiously motivated.Report

          • InMD in reply to CJColucci says:

            I think it’s inevitable we would run into these conflicts with the pace of social change around religion in particular. For example, sodomy was still technically criminal in most of the country when Smith was decided. Now we have gay marriage nationwide. The issues have changed from what level of accommodation is owed to small groups on the margins to navigating a major sea change away from historical, mainstream religious and cultural beliefs.

            And I’m not arguing against that evolution, only saying that exempting the Amish from selective service or letting orthodox Jews run their own education systems, while important in principle, had very low stakes for most of society. That just isn’t the case with Catholicism and mainline Protestant sects.Report

    • Pinky in reply to Mike Schilling says:

      Huh? If this article is correct, and the ruling will lead to more cases, why shouldn’t Alito lay out his argument for replacing Smith?Report

  6. It’s unreal that any state or court would trust the Catholic Church with children in any capacity. It just goes to show how fundamentally bone deep the rot really is.Report