The events in McKinney make a stronger argument than could almost any lawyer for why the court should affirm the importance of racially and economically integrated residential areas.
There is a lesson in the past fifty years of litigation. When the fight for equal rights for women narrowed to a fight for reproductive rights, defended on the ground of privacy, it weakened. But when the fight for gay rights became a fight for same-sex marriage, asserted on the ground of equality, it got stronger and stronger.
The reason that this case is so important is because it invites the Court to create a new legal landscape surrounding the constitutional rights to same-sex marriage—and protection from state laws that discriminate by treating same-sex couples unequally. Whatever the Court decides in its ruling expected this June will likely hold for many years—at least until the Court’s conservatives are replaced.
Successive High Court decisions have done more than enfranchise corporations at the expense of the rest of us. The same logic in the same cases now defines public corruption down: that a direct and palpable quid pro quo must be seen to operate. Absent that smoking gun, the financial elite has no limits on bankrolling campaigns whose candidates then vote their interests. To the nation's founders, that untrammeled influence was the essence of public corruption.
Today, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in King v. Burwell, a case that threatens to yank the tax credit away from millions of people.If the Court goes for King, Obamacare as we know it might end. Most people who will be affected by this case do not realize they will be.
The court case could pose a major threat to public-sector unions whose clout grew in the 1970s after the high court upheld laws requiring all employees who benefit from collective bargaining to contribute to the union. Although teachers and other public workers may refuse to pay dues used to support a union's political activities, they can still be forced to pay a so-called "fair share" fee that covers operation costs.
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