{"id":186116,"date":"2014-05-05T20:23:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-06T01:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/05\/05\/not-dredd-scott-bad-but-maybe-plessy-v-ferguson-bad\/"},"modified":"2014-05-05T20:23:00","modified_gmt":"2014-05-06T01:23:00","slug":"not-dredd-scott-bad-but-maybe-plessy-v-ferguson-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/05\/05\/not-dredd-scott-bad-but-maybe-plessy-v-ferguson-bad\/","title":{"rendered":"Not Dredd Scott Bad, but Maybe Plessy v. Ferguson Bad"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a 5-4 vote the Supreme Court just <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/supreme-court-upholds-legislative-prayer-at-council-meetings\/2014\/05\/05\/dc142ede-cf9d-11e3-b812-0c92213941f4_story.html\">ratified sectarian prayer at government meetings<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">A divided Supreme Court ruled Monday that legislative bodies such as city councils can begin their meetings with prayer, even if it plainly favors a specific religion.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The court ruled 5 to 4 that Christian prayers said before meetings of an Upstate New York town council did not violate the constitutional prohibition against government establishment of religion; the justices cited history and tradition.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cCeremonial prayer is but a recognition that, since this Nation was founded and until the present day, many Americans deem that their own existence must be understood by precepts far beyond the authority of government,\u201d Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the court\u2019s conservative majority.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The ruling reflected a Supreme Court that has become more lenient on how government may accommodate religion in civic life without crossing the line into an endorsement of a particular faith. All nine justices endorsed the concept of legislative prayer, with the four dissenters agreeing that the public forum \u201cneed not become a religion-free zone,\u201d in the words of Justice Elena Kagan.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">But there was sharp disagreement after that, and the majority ruling could encourage public bodies to give more leeway to religious expression in their ceremonial prayers and less deference to the objections of religious minorities.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The court\u2019s five conservatives said legislative prayers need not be stripped of references to a specific religion \u2014 the prayers at issue often invoked Jesus Christ and the resurrection \u2014 and said those given the opportunity to pray before legislative meetings should be \u201cunfettered\u201d by what government officials find appropriate.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It is stupid, petty, small minded, and bigoted ruling.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m disappointed, but not particularly surprised. <\/p>\n<p>I will say the fact that the bigotry-deaf Kennedy is now the &#8220;moderate vote&#8221; on the court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a 5-4 vote the Supreme Court just ratified sectarian prayer at government meetings: A divided Supreme Court ruled Monday that legislative bodies such as city councils can begin their meetings with prayer, even if it plainly favors a specific religion.The court ruled 5 to 4 that Christian prayers said before meetings of an Upstate &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[971,970,1051,972,1021],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-rights","category-corruption","category-hypocrisy","category-justice","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186116"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}