The NPR Politics Podcast - SCOTUS Allows Refusal Of LGBTQ Couples, Reinstates Student Debt

Episode Date: June 30, 2023

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 along ideological lines that the First Amendment bars Colorado from "forcing a website designer to create expressive designs speaking messages with which the designer disagrees." She did not want to make wedding websites for same-sex couples.In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote: "Today, the Court, for the first time in its history, grants a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class." The high court also struck down President Biden's plan for federal student loan forgiveness. Millions of federal borrowers will not see their debts decreased or erased by up to twenty thousand dollars.The podcast is produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, this is Precious, and I'm in my grandma's kitchen in Atlanta, Georgia, preparing dinner for her birthday celebration. This podcast was recorded at 1149 a.m. on June 30th, 2023. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but Graham is turning 102, so we are about to party. Okay, here's the show. Whoa, happy birthday. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House.

I'm Domenico Montanar, senior political editor and correspondent. I'm Nina Totenberg, and I cover the Supreme Court. And speaking of the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court's conservatives issued a decision this morning in favor of a web designer in Colorado who wanted to refuse service to same-sex couples looking for a wedding website. Colorado law forbids discrimination against gay people. The court ruled that making her serve a same-sex couple would be compelling her to voice a message that she didn't support. Nina, tell us more about this decision. Well, this is a major carve-out to public accommodations laws in about 30 states that protect LGBTQ people. But of course, in the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch

tried to portray it as a narrow decision because he said that we are not allowing discrimination against gay and lesbian people. They can't be discriminated for their status. But if there is a North Star in our Constitution, it is the freedom of expression and speech guaranteed by the First Amendment. And people have to be able to say, I don't want to carry your message. And so here, he said, the discrimination is against not the person, but the message, and that the individual who owns the business has the right to refuse to carry that message. That's kind of a little confusing slash complicated, possibly, because is it possible that this decision opens the door for some of that discrimination to exist

against people. Well, that's certainly what Justice Sotomayor said in her dissent. She said this makes a mockery of the law. We have resisted in other cases very forcefully people who didn't want to serve black people at restaurants and who said, we'll serve you out the back door, but you can't come into the restaurant. We've said that law firms can't discriminate against women in promotions. When the law firm said, this is our freedom of association under the First Amendment. And she said, and today we break with that tradition. So I'm going to read you both what the majority said, which Justice Gorsuch said from the bench,

and then Justice Sotomayor in a rare oral dissent from the bench. He said, tolerance, not coercion, is our nation's answer to those who want us to strike this down. The First Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands. So then Justice Sotomayor, in dissent, said, lesson of the majority opinion is this. What's mine is mine and what's yours is yours. The lesson of the history of public accommodations laws is that altogether different. It is that in a free and democratic society, there can be no social casts. And for that to be true, it must be true in the public market. For the promise of freedom is an empty one if the government is powerless to assure that a dollar in the hands of one person

will purchase the same thing as a dollar in the hands of another. So these are two cherished beliefs. One is freedom of speech. One is public accommodations, equal treatment of everybody in the public domain. And they clash often. And there have been a lot of Supreme Court cases, and each side cited the ones they wanted to cite. It's worth mentioning that this isn't exactly happening in a vacuum, though, because politically, this is something that has come up a lot, Domenico, as of late. Seven in 10 Americans now support the right to same-sex marriage. And this is happening as conservatives, in particular particular are targeting trans rights around the country. How do you expect this to play out amongst candidates, people in office, and how might voters respond? Well, certainly a huge part

of the Republican primary right now, which is going to get most of the attention until the general election takes place. And it's taking place with another series of issues that are outside the mainstream of what's happening more generally in the country. I mean, if you think about same sex marriage, you know, the latest Gallup survey showed 71 percent of people are in favor of same sex marriage. That includes 78 percent of independents, almost half of Republicans, 49 percent, only 41 percent of weekly churchgoers. Now, certainly the Supreme Court isn't taking into consideration, you know, this kind of politics, but the candidates who are running are going to have to because they're running on things related to the culture war when it comes to same-sex marriage in this case, abortion rights, trans rights. And a lot of these things, like I was saying, are outside of where independents are in this country who largely decide general elections. Do you think that this case, like that framing of this is a First Amendment issue, do you think that comes up with conservatives who are trying to make an

argument that clearly most Americans don't actually really agree with? It's a very fine line. You know, when you hear about a case like this, it's very rare that it translates to, oh, this is really a First Amendment issue, as opposed to a lot of people saying this is really an LGBTQ rights issue. Now, that is the tension, right? And that's the tension that this Supreme Court has been dealing with since it has become a really supermajority conservative court. Justice Sotomayor said in her dissent that this is a backlash that happens every time a new group gets rights. And she said the court in the past has upheld those rights, and this time it shrinks. Yeah, I mean, I think that

the piling over of a bunch of these different kinds of issues has really raised the importance of the Supreme Court, maybe for a lot of people who didn't necessarily realize just how consequential the Supreme Court can be in picking a president and the real power that a president has on two of the issues that I think are really the key foundational things that a president can really do, which is foreign policy, one, because they can really start wars without really needing Congress's support. But they also pick Supreme Court justices who have a real lasting impact on the social fabric of the country for generations to come. Right. And this is something that has continued to happen in this term where a lot of the decisions that are coming out are not really in line with what the American public thinks. It's not new. Not new. Nina, when we talk about this case, what are the broader implications here?

Do you think this has an impact to maybe open the door for other cases that might be similar or pushing a similar argument? Well, I don't know about other cases, and I don't even know what the implications are writ large. Justice Sotomayor, in her dissent, cited a number of instances in which people, for example, couldn't be served at a funeral home that was close to home and had to go an hour away, or at the burial, the owner of the cemetery would refuse to say, and beloved partner of. I don't know whether there are going to be a lot of those cases or not. I think this is so trite, but time will tell. All right, Nina Totenberg, thank you so much for being here.

We'll take a quick break and we'll be back in just a second. And we're back with Corey Turner from NPR's education team. Hey, Corey. Hey, Deepa. So the Supreme Court has also thrown out Biden's student loan forgiveness effort. They said that the $10,000 or $20,000 of loan forgiveness that had been granted was ruled unconstitutional. Corey, this was another big decision along the court's ideological lines here. Catch us up on this decision. What should we know?

Yeah, I mean, it's hard to imagine a decision, at least a recent decision, that will have such an immediate impact on the pocketbooks of so many Americans, or at least the hopes of so many Americans. Ultimately, this decision was really about who holds the power of the purse. Traditionally, constitutionally, it's Congress. It's always been Congress. But the Biden administration had argued in favor of its plan to erase federal student loan debt for most borrowers, that this law that was written back in 2003 in the wake of the 9-11 attacks called the HEROES Act, they argued that this gave the president and his education secretary the authority to waive and or modify, those are the words in the law, waive or modify the rules around the student loan program in times of

emergency. Now, obviously, in 2003, there was no COVID. But the administration argued, look, COVID was an emergency. And that is the authority they use to justify this widespread cancellation of student debts. And it's clear this morning in the court's opinion, the court's super majority of conservatives just didn't buy it. The opinion was written by Chief Justice John Roberts, and he said the secretary, the education secretary, asserts that the HEROES Act grants him the authority to cancel $430 billion of student loan principal. It does not. We hold today the act allows the secretary to waive or modify existing statutory or regulatory provisions, not rewrite that statute from the ground up.

I should also say in her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan took issue with a few things, but interestingly, really took the majority to task for what she considered playing politics here, shooting down the debt relief plan, because politically speaking, the justices just didn't agree with it, even though there were very real reasons, she thought, why the plaintiffs in these cases hadn't even proved that they would be hurt by the program. Student loan debt is something that doesn't equally impact people at the same rate. There are people who are benefiting from this. There are people who are really hurt by a decision like this. Talk me through some of the dynamics of that. Well, I mean, let's be clear. First of all, there are more than 40 million Americans who have federal student loan debt. And for many of them, it is a lot of debt. And they are all, after a three-year pause on payments, they're all now going to be expected to resume repayment. We know from the department that interest is going to resume September 1st. Payments are going to start

in October. I can assure borrowers, because the department assured me, they're not going to be expected to make a payment until they have heard from the department, letting them know that they will be expected to make payments. But now is the time borrowers really need to, if they haven't logged into their loan portal in a year or two, they need to do that. You know, politically, how this plays out, it's really going to be a question of blame, because this was a pretty bold and risky move by the Biden administration. I think a lot of legal scholars thought that this was something that could eventually get thrown out. But you get a lot of people's hopes up with a particularly important demographic for the Democratic Party. And we're talking about young voters and young voters in our latest NPR, PBS NewsHour, Marist poll only had a 38 percent approval rating of President Biden. They've looked very skeptically upon him for a number of different reasons. And really, the trick in politics, as we know, is to under promise and over deliver. But Biden has had the opposite problem of over promising and under delivering because he really can't get this

stuff done on his own. Now, maybe he'll try to say that it's Republicans in this conservative court who are trying to take away these rights and an ability to have this student debt relief. And he'll be able to say or try to say who's fighting for you in a general election. But that's tough, again, because these younger voters have really been looking skeptically on Biden and really got their hopes up. And he's going to be in a tough position and have to really rely on a lot of activists to be able to say to make that case for him, why he needs another Supreme Court justice or two or three to change the complexion. Right. There was a lot of enthusiasm from younger voters, younger voters of color, I think, in particular, that this announcement was really going to be a game changer. And you're right, this is falling short for a lot of people. Well, and let me also add to that. You mentioned not only younger voters, but voters of color, borrowers of color. I think there's going to be real pressure brought to bear on Biden to own this and try to do something else. the NAACP President and CEO Derek Johnson not that long ago where he wrote,

let me be very clear, even if the Supreme Court issues an unfavorable ruling, which they now have, the Biden administration is still on the hook to deliver. The NAACP remains steadfast in demanding meaningful progress in this vital area on behalf of Black America. I think the real question is reading through the opinion from the Chief Justice. I don't see a lot of wiggle room here for the administration trying to find some other way to justify erasing more than $400 billion in federal student loans. Right. And then also just like broadly, I mean, this is all kind of happening as Biden recently announced that he and his administration are going around the country for weeks touting his economic agenda, right, trying to put money back in the pockets of Americans. And this is something that's kind

of doing the opposite here for so many people who have that debt and have not been having to pay those monthly payments. You know, building on what y'all have been saying about, you know, whether voters, especially young voters, voters of color, are going to blame Biden, I think it is not inconsequential that the student loan system right now, the call center systems, the operators who are going to be waiting to field questions from millions of borrowers who haven't had to think about repaying their loans in several years, this system is not ready. It has been underfunded. It has been starved. Some would argue it has been poorly managed. And I think it's important if we see over September, October, November, if we see borrowers calling and being on hold for hours, being confused, not getting answers to their questions, that may be just as important as this decision, too. That will play into this

perception that Biden overpromised and under-delivered, and now there isn't even a system capable of getting borrowers back into the system, if that makes any sense. I think it'll just compound the headache for the president. All right, we're going to take another quick break. Corey and Domenico, thank you so much for being here. Yeah, thanks for having me. No problem. And when we get back, a very special Independence Day. Can't let it go. And we're back. And since it is nearly Independence Day, we're going to pick up our longstanding tradition. That means Scott Detrow and Tamara Keith are here. Hello, friends. Hello. Scott, explain to me and the audience, but also specifically me because I've never done this.

What is it exactly that we are doing? First of all, I just want to say having less than a month ago had a tearful goodbye to this podcast. It is thrilling to be back weeks later. We barely missed you. This could be tearful. It is a to be back weeks later. We barely missed you. This could be tearful. It is a very emotional speech. So here's the backstory for you and for any listeners who have not had this wondrous experience before. First year of the Politics Podcast, I thought we should do something that focuses on an important part of American culture and history and that swells equal emotions and pride and patriotism. And that is the speech

delivered by Bill Pullman at the culmination of the 1996 classic movie Independence Day. Yes, 100 percent. And it is genius. And every year that we have done it, it has just brought emotion into my heart. It is it just makes, um, it just makes me so happy. Uh, Deepa, it feels like there's something you want to say. It's okay. It's a safe space. First of all, I'm sweating. I don't know why I'm so nervous about this. And I think it is partly rooted in the fact that I have never seen this film. And so I, I, I'm excited to say that Scott is going to start us off because I'm going to need some energy to figure out how I match this vibe. Let me just say it is easier to read than the American Declaration of Independence by a lot. I believe that. So sorry slash thank you if I, you know, bungle this.

If you need some motivation, just think that aliens have attacked the world. Okay, thank you. We are on our heels, but deep in the desert, we have figured out a way to counterattack. We have harnessed the energy of Will Smith. Okay. 1996 Will Smith. Thank you. Okay.

Jeff Goldblum and many others, and we are about to launch a counterattack that will free humanity and forge bonds that were not yet there before. That's inspiring. I think so. I think so. So it's pre-dawn hours. We're all assembling. Okay.'s inspiring. I think so. I think so. So it's pre-dawn hours. We're all assembling. Okay. You ready? I think so. Scott, kick us off. All right. Good morning. In less than an hour, aircraft from here will join others from around the world,

and you will be launching the largest aerial battle in the history of mankind. Mankind. That word should have new meaning for all of us. We can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests. Perhaps it's fate that today is the 4th of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom, not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution, but from annihilation. We're fighting for our right to live, to exist. And should we win today, the 4th of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but it is the day when the world declared in one voice, we will not go quietly into the night. We will not vanish without a fight.

We're going to live on. We're going to survive. We did it. Today we celebrate our Independence Day. Woo! Oh my goodness. And now let's go take out those aliens that don't exist. I'm ready.

I'm ready to take on this day, and I'm also ready to watch this movie. I think I should add this to my weekend plans. You should watch it every year. Every year, clearly. I hope I get invited back to do this again next year.

Especially now that you cover the White House which gets blown up in the movie. Oh my God. Spoiler alert! Spoiler alert! It is on the poster

of the movie from 1990s. It happens very early. Don't worry. To be fair, I was one year old when this movie came out so I think I need some leeway.

Oh good God. Oh my gosh. Can I,. To be fair, I was one year old when this movie came out, so I think I need some leeway. Oh, good God. Oh, my gosh. I don't know if I've credited on the air before. I need to give a production credit to my friend from college, Tim Smith, who gave me this initial idea years and years and years ago because every year he did a Twitter thread of this speech on the 4th of July. I like our version. No, this was really nice. That was very beautiful. Thank you for ending the week with us that way. Scott, obviously a very grand welcome back for you.

Good to be back. Of course. And that is a wrap for today. Our executive producer is Mathoni Maturi. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our producers are Elena Moore and Casey Morrell. Research and fact-checking by our intern, Lee Walden. Thanks to Krishna of Kalamore, Megan Lada Gupta, and Lexi Schipittel. I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House. I'm Tamara Keith. I also cover the White House. Oh, do I still get to say my name? Yes. Oh, all right. Wow.

I appreciate that. Read the script. And I'm Scott. I don't have the script. It says you're here. I'm Scott Detrow, and I'm here for a good time. I'm Scott Detrow. I'm just visiting. And thank you for listening to the NPR Apologies Podcast.