Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Supreme Court RIPS ITSELF APART with DECISION

Episode Date: June 22, 2024

2 years ago the MAGA right wing of the Supreme Court sent out an invitation to states to tear down the wall separating church and state and to ignore the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment. The result: states like Louisiana forcing that the Judea-Christian 10 Commandments be taught in public schools with taxpayer dollars. Michael Popok explains how we got here and the hypocrisy of the MAGA 6-3 majority. Head to https://TryFum.com/legalaf and get a FREE GIFT with the JOURNEY PACK today when you use code LEGALAF Visit https://meidastouch.com for more! Visit https://meidastouch.com for more! Join us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/legalaf Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So Michael Popak, Legal AF, you've heard about the Louisiana law forcing the 10 commandments to be installed and taught in public schools, but where did that come from? Where did the attempt to establish a theocracy in America come from? It came on the back of two United States Supreme Court decisions from June 2022 that were issued about six days apart. We reported on those decisions on Legal AF at the time, but now we see the ramifications. That was an invitation by the right-wing MAGA led by Gorsuch and Alito and Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett and the rest. It was an invitation to completely ignore and destroy the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. James Madison's ideal that there not be religion in the public life in America,

especially in education. That went out the window in 2022 with the destruction of a major super, super precedent that was taken off the books by Gorsuch and the right-wing MAGA, and now it's a free-for-all. And we have the attempts by states like Louisiana to reestablish and establish this country as a Christian country, whether you like it or not. That's what we're seeing with the United States Supreme Court with the six to three majority. The only reason they're ripping these super precedents

off the books and pointing instead to history and tradition. Let's go back to old timey times. Let's go back to the 1800s. Let's go back to the 1700s. Let's ignore the fact that during the 1800s and 1700s, women were second class citizens as they have rapidly become under the Trump administration and this court again,

that slaves were slaves and not even Black citizens, that women were treated as chattel, that they didn't have the right to vote, nor did Black Americans who were barely Americans. But forget all that. What is this country's history and tradition as it relates to fill in the blank? And when you hear the Supreme Court majority, supermajority like Gorsuch and Alito and Thomas start talking about history, run for the hills. That is their tell. They're telling you that they're about to rip down 40, 50, 60 years of constitutional protections

around your and my civil rights. And they're going to, now that they have the numbers, and for no other reason, they're gonna shove Christianity down our throats. Not just religion in the going to shove Christianity down our throats. Not just religion in the public place, Christianity down our throats and states are listening. Especially, I'm surprised it's taken states like Louisiana this long. Now the two cases that we talked about at length at the time but it's important now that are the foundation for everything we're about to see. And again, James Madison, who's the primary framer

of the First Amendment, including its establishment clause, is spinning like a rotisserie in his grave, I assure you. He made it known in all of his writing, including the Federalist Papers, that there should be no religion suffused and infused within our civics, within our politics, within our federal government, right? You're free to worship as you choose,

but the government should not be helping to establish a religion. The two cases I'm talking about, Carson versus Macon, a six to three decision, and then Kennedy versus Bremerton. In both, Justice Sotomayor wrote scathing, scathing dissents about the destruction of the wall between the church and state, not chipping away at the complete wholesale assault on and destruction of that by the right wing majority. In fact, her opinion in Kennedy versus Bremerton, 35 pages, was longer than Gorsuch's majority decision.

I'm gonna read to you from it because she was so right on point. Here's what Judge Sotomayor warned us in the summer of 2022. She said, the decision, and I'll just tell you what the decision was, Joe Kennedy, not related. Joe Kennedy was a football coach who for years forced his team, his football team, public high school football team, to pray. He would do prayer stretches. They'd be stretching for their football game and he'd be doing prayers. And then he got sideways with the school board

because he kept going to the 50 yard line and doing what effectively was compelled mandatory prayer with his players in a public setting. And the school board said, enough is enough. You can go do your private exercise of your religion somewhere else. I mean, think of it this way. If somebody who practices,

who's a Muslim, who worshiped Islam, took their prayer shawl, prayer rug, in the middle of, you know, football practice, but also forced the rest of the team to go by, or he would hand out prayer rugs and do their prayers with him, there would be an outcry. And do you think this United States Supreme Court would be like, that's okay, that seems all right with us. Doesn't seem compelled. No, no, but because he's Christian and he's praying and they basically threw away the entire factual record

and ignored the complete entire factual record, which is totally bogus, totally made up. Joe Kennedy lied during his testimony and that came out in the appellate record, which is totally bogus, totally made up. Joe Kennedy lied during his testimony and that came out in the appellate record, but they ignored it because they wanted to make new law. And they wanted to throw away a test that had been on the books for over 40 years, which we used to refer to as the lemon test, which is a test to see to make sure that government doesn't get too entangled with religion. It was as important of a test as in the Dobbs decision in terms of precedent, throwing away 50 years

of a constitutional right of a woman to choose by throwing away the Dobbs decision, like it was the morning trash. They did the same thing in the Lemon Test and they did the same analysis under history and tradition. Let's not use the Lemon Test that served as well for 40 years, named after a case. Let's just use what we now sitting here in 2022, 2023, we think history

says about a certain thing, religion in life, religion in public life. And Justice Sotomayor had enough in her 35 page decision at the time. And she said, this decision about Joe Kennedy forcing people to kneel at the 50 yard line does a disservice to schools and the young citizens they serve, as well as to our nation's longstanding commitment to the separation of church and state. And then listen to this part.

In doing so, the court set us further down a perilous path in forcing states to entangle themselves with religion, with all of our rights hanging in the balance. Well, states like Louisiana, and they won't be the last, have decided to take and stand on the precedent of Kennedy vs. Bremerton and Carlson vs. Macon, and force religion down the throats and purposefully actively entangle themselves in religion using public dollars. There's no other way to put it. If that's not a violation of the establishment clause

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The First Amendment's Establishment Clause prohibits the government from making any law respecting an establishment of religion. Right? It prohibits government actions that unduly favor one religion over another. And the government can't establish an official religion. Well, what are they doing here? Listen, I'm a 10 Commandment guy. I'm a Judeo-Christian person. You know, I have a Bible. It stops after the first part, but the first chapters, but I have a Bible,

but it's not about me and my personal beliefs and my ability to worship as I please in this country. But I shouldn't, if I don't practice that religion or I practice no religion, I shouldn't walk into a school and see the Ten Commandments. We already had Supreme Court precedent about the 10 commandments being established in a public square, right? And the use of it. It's okay to me, it's not okay to somebody who's Muslim, who's Hindu, who's Baha'i, fill in the blank or no religion at all, or agnostic, or atheist,

and they shouldn't have that, or their children shouldn't have that shoved down their throat. Pardon me, by the United States government or any state. In the Carson versus Bacon case, which was also a 63 decision, these were like a week apart, you know, they gang up on us as a Supreme Court, they shove down our throat in two big helpings, these cases destroying the wall between church and state. And we said at the time, uh-oh, we had a more elaborate legal analysis than that, but it was uh-oh. Carlson Carlson versus Macon was a case in which Maine was using public dollars or people were, religious families were trying to force Maine to use public dollars to supply and provide religious instruction in rural areas

where there was no public high school. So where there was no public high school, they had to like get on a bus and go somewhere or they had to do home instruction. And there was, oh, a parochial school nearby, a Christian school, Catholic school, fill in the blank school nearby. They wanted the state to pay home instruction. And there was, oh, a parochial school nearby, a Christian school, Catholic school, fill in the blank school nearby. They wanted the state to pay for that. Well, that's our education of choice. Well, if it's your education of choice, you should go do home

instruction or go figure out a way to pay for it. The state shouldn't pay for your religious exercise. But not to that six to three majority of the United States Supreme Court. And they basically said, bye-bye, James Madison, bye-bye establishment clause and founding of religion and forcing religion into the public square and into education in particular, because we're going to force Maine to pay for Christian studies in rural areas. And we thought that was breathtaking. And then the sucker punch to the solar plexus came in with the Kennedy versus Bremerton decision six or seven days later. And then we saw the new change landscape and

all the Christian nationalists in this country who I am not against, not against any body's particular religion. You want to live your gospel, whatever it is, more power to you. Just don't do it in a way that makes me feel bad about me, my personal choices about religion one way or the other, or my children. And that's where we're at. So I wanted to kind of do like a little X-ray exam,

like how did we get here with Louisiana and other states that are going to be coming with a long line of precedent about the Ten Commandments, by the way, about the Ten Commandments, which prior Supreme Court precedent would have barred from being installed in public schools, but not under this right-wing majority. And every time, again, I'm going to leave you with this, I'm going to give you a special decoder ring. Every time the United States Supreme Court says history and tradition, we need to look to history, tradition.

We're not gonna establish a judge made test, which is what was paid to do as judges. We're gonna look to history, we're gonna become historians. We're gonna be Mr. Peabody in the way back machine and go back to our version of history, our distorted version of history without any context, completely unmoored, untethered, without recognition of other people in that society that were second, third, and fourth class citizens, including half the society in the form of

women. Well, ignore all that. How did they treat religion? What would they have done with the Ten Commandments? Who cares? What do I care what some old timey guy, or yeah, it would be a guy, old timey white guy in 1800s

would think about the Ten Commandments? What about gun control? I'm sure he couldn't fathom, you know, driverless cars running around China and people being able to have military grade weapons in their backyard. I thought when I was in law school, and they're one of the reasons I went into this profession,

is that the constitution as I was taught was a living breathing document, whose precepts and principles guide us, but evolve with time based on the mores of our particular culture. I thought that was the document, not this brittle, rigid owner's manual. It's not an owner's manual.

That's the problem with the United States Supreme Court. The United States Constitution, it's not an owner's manual, right? It's not like, oh, here we go, carburetor gets connected and then what do we do? You can't run a car from it. It's precepts, it's principles, it's guiding principles. There's some requirements and restrictions and there's the way that the federal government is arranged

and its relationship with the people and its relationship with the states. Yeah, sure, that's all there, but it's supposed to be interpreted appropriately through the United States Supreme Court. I mean, the United States Supreme Court isn't, didn't even have those interpretive powers under the very constitution that it's interpreting. Let me repeat that. The United States Constitution does not have, by way of the Constitution itself, the powers to interpret the Constitution.

It came from a series of interpretations of the Constitution by judges like Chief Justice Marshall by judges like Chief Justice Marshall in 1807, and Marbury versus Madison. If we didn't have a case called Marbury versus Madison, there would be no modern Supreme Court. Isn't that ironic? The interpretation of the then relatively young 10, 20 year old document laid the foundation

for a Supreme Court to make its decisions because it's not in the literal text of the Constitution. That should be a head-exploder for those that are originalists and textualists because their own position, their own function is not in the literal text of the constitution. Try that on for size. We'll continue to follow everything related to the United States Constitution and this United States Supreme Court

right here on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF. Join me on Wednesdays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Eastern time at the intersection of law and politics where we bring it to you uncensored, unfiltered, unhinged, unplugged, all the uns. Wednesdays I do it with Karen Freeman at Knifilow, Saturdays with Ben Mycelis, and then on hot takes like this about every hour on the Midas Touch Network. And then you can follow me, Michael Popak, go over to playlists and contributors under the Midas Touch YouTube channel where you

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