Supremely Entitled White Guys vote to favor Supremely Entitled White Guys

Ladies, you're next

Roger Taney was the first Catholic appointed to the Supreme Court By Andrew Jackson. He delivered the majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) which stated African Americans can’t be citizens and Congress could not prohibit slavery in the expanding territories of the US. Most historians view it as the worst Supreme Court decision ever.

Now, with 6 Catholics and 3 Protestants sitting on the Supreme Court, who could have guessed they would drive a stake through the heart of the Voting Rights Act? African Americans represent just 3% of American Catholics.

A religion that grants primacy to men and subordinates women still might not be very good at seeing things from other’s points of view, especially the views of Black Americans, Asian Americans and Native Americans. 93% of American Catholics are White (59%) or Latino (34%).

The country is 46.6% Protestant. People without a preferred faith, mostly atheists and agnostics, make up 22.8% of the public. Catholics are in 3rd place, at 20.8% but this minority represents 66.7% of the SCOTUS.

(Graphic from Pew Research Center)

The Catholics chosen, too, don’t even reflect the majority political views of American Catholics, who have liberal views on issues like human rights, abortion, and climate change. 5 of the 6 Catholics on the court are conservative Catholics. The 6th is the only Latino one.

And those five plus 1 of the 3 Protestants were chosen specifically because they were known to be conservatives. The pretense remains that the justices are wholly impartial but nobody in touch with reality believes that any more.

Looking beyond whether their religions inform their judicial views, we can see plenty of other distinctions between the justices and the average American. 7 of the 9 were raised in uupper middle class homes, the top 20% in income. Only the Latino one was raised in a relatively poor home. 7 of the 9 - at least - are millionaires.

And 7 of the 9 were appointed by Presidents who didn’t receive 50% of the popular vote. 6 of the 9 were appointed by two presidents who lost the popular vote.

By any measure then - religious preference, economic class, ideological preference or the popularity of the presidents who nominated them - the SCOTUS as it is today does not represent Americans very well.

So nobody should gasp in surprise that they saved this miserable decision on the last day of the court in 2021. The only surprise is they didn’t insist that the 3 women justices serve the guys coffee throughout this term. Even though women are the majority of the adult population, they’ve never made up more than 33% of the court.

This decision will go down as yet another really really bad one, completely in denial of the ongoing efforts to restrict the voting rights of Black Americans.

Institutionalized entitled white guys can’t represent people marginalized due to institutionalized racism? Who woulda guessed that?

Disclaimer: I don’t have an anti-Catholic bias as I was raised Catholic (though am now agnostic). I do disagree with the ongoing patriarchal hierarchy of its chief administrators but retain many Cathoic friends and family who I love dearly.