That’s my understanding. Or for teaching about (for example) racist incidents. I’d guess it would also include reproduction &/or evolution in science classes.
ETA: my recollection is that Amish communities already have an exception where they can opt out, but not (or, not only) for the reasons given in the lawsuit (in their case, they maintain that nothing in their lifestyle necessitates learning anything beyond 8th grade).
This is how school was when I went there, like, thirty odd years ago now. Kids opted out of any class their parents felt objectionable. Definitely had a couple of jw kids that left the room a lot. I always thought this was fine. Maybe too bad for those kids but whatever. At least it doesn’t let them hold the rest of the class hostage.
I was literally yelling this out loud to my TV this morning when Trump was giving a press conference about this moaning about his victimhood in how he keeps getting stopped by the judiciary. The intellectual dishonesty here is just staggering.
From Sotomayor’s dissent:
“This Court endorses the radical proposition that the President is harmed, irreparably, whenever he cannot do something he wants to do, even if what he wants to do is break the law.”
I think the problem with this is that it’s going to allow states to enforce that, and it’ll likely change how classes are taught. If more than half a class is opting out of tons of class work, then there will be more pressure to just change the curriculum.
I think this is just a way to ensure that a particular worldview dominates. But this is, again, something that will negatively impact primarily red states, although the large states often dominate the production of textbooks.
A way to think about this is how only southern states passed Jim crow laws, but this had national implications.
Justice Jackson’s dissent is really good. Here’s a bit of it, but I encourage everyone to go read the whole thing:
The pillar upon which today’s ruling rests is the majority’s contention that the remedial power of the federalcourts is limited to granting “complete relief ” to the parties. And the majority’s sole basis for that proposition is the practice of the High Court of Chancery in England. But this cramped characterization of the Judiciary’s function is highly questionable when it comes to suits against the Executive. That is, even if the majority is correct that courts in England at the time of the founding were so limited—and I have my doubts, see ante, at 18–20 (SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting)—why would courts in our constitutional system be limited in the same way?
The Founders of the United States of America squarely rejected a governing system in which the King ruled all, and all others, including the courts, were his subordinates. In our Constitution-centered system, the People are the rulers and we have the rule of law. So, it makes little sense to look to the relationship between English courts and the King for guidance on the power of our Nation’s Judiciary vis-à-vis its Executive.
The other thing that jumps out about the stupidity of this decision is that, and the court damn well knows this because it’s been argued in front of them, is that if the current government decides that someone isn’t eligible for birthright citizenship, the current government is also renditioning people immediately to torture prisons. So the people who would be harmed may never get a chance to file a lawsuit, because they’re no longer here, no longer can communicate with lawyers, and may be tortured or dead by the time a court could hear their case. The other side of the case is the United States Government. They have no particular urgency that would require them to avoid a preliminary injunction. They will continue to exist, to still be here, and to not be tortured or killed prior to a regular court hearing about citizenship.
So the court also forgot their basic law that injunctive relief is meant to prevent immediate harm before the case can be heard in full, and is supposed to be determined not just by law and precedent but also by the criteria of harm and urgency.
Ok, Justice Jackson and I are on the same wavelength. I swear I hadn’t read her dissent when I wrote the above:
But their claim is that Executive Order No. 14160 violates the Constitution. If the court agrees with them, why on Earth must it permit that unconstitutional government action to take effect at all?
I hadn’t made my mind up about Justice Jackson yet, but I really like this dissent. It doesn’t wade neck deep into legal arcana. It just uses common sense, logic, basic history, and plain language.
Just saw this in an email I received from LDF:
In response to today’s Supreme Court ruling that potentially opens the door for partial enforcement of the executive order, LDF has joined immigrants rights’ advocates in filing a new nationwide class-action lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship.
Oh he can fuck right off. Exactly which side and which branch of government and which DOJ and whose followers are threatening judges? This isn’t a “both sides” thing!
“The danger, of course, is somebody might pick up on that, and we have had, of course, serious threats of violence and murder of judges just simply for doing their work,” said Roberts, who was speaking to a conference organized by the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals. “I think the political people on both sides of the aisle need to keep that in mind.”
Oh, they are, on both sides. On the left with horror, on the right with glee, but both keeping it in mind. Some day these guys will realize they cannot intellectualize away getting into bed with fascists. I only hope it is soon enough for the rest of us.
The activities of the Supreme Court that wrapped up this week give us enough evidence to answer the question: No. It’s time to cross the courts off the list of Potential Saviors of the American Democratic Experiment. The court’s ruling in Trump v. CASA, limiting the ability of lower courts to issue national injunctions that stop bad laws from going into effect while they are being litigated, contains enough information for us to draw the reasonable conclusion that it is time to look elsewhere for hope.
This is not so much because of the legal reasoning of the case (which some of those legal analysts insist is not so bad!). Nor is it even because of the tangible negative impact of the ruling, which in practical terms is going to allow the administration to declare that it is going to do wildly unconstitutional things like “end birthright citizenship” and then just do them while the slow and imprecise gears of litigation grind on for years and years. It is because of the fact that the Supreme Court knows the political situation, understands the risks of handing Trump power, and, with that knowledge, continues to decline to stop him. The court’s insistence that it is a source of philosophical legal reasoning rather than dirty politics has always, of course, been bullshit, but that makes this case even scarier—because it means that the Republican justices on the court stared Trump’s rising dictatorial nature in the face, considered the possibility of restraining him, and decided not to do it.
They are checking out of the game. If Trump has not crossed a red line sufficient for the Supreme Court to rein him in already, then the red line is so far away that we will all be in prison before he reaches it.
Worse yet, they twisted themselves into pretzels to find ways to excuse it.
I read the linked article. Jesus. It’s written by a Harvard Law professor who acknowledges that the decision is wrong, points out exactly why and how it’s wrong, but then goes on to argue that “Well, it’s not really so bad because there are probably ways around it. Maybe. Unless the majority agrees with Alito’s concurrence.” There is no end to some people’s insistence on continuing to view Trump and his allies as if they are just normal politicians and all of this is just normal partisan politics.
The whole ideology of “it can’t happen here” is pretty strong. But institutions are man-made things, and institutions can fail if people let them…
[ETA] It strikes me as part of that is based on the problem that many academics and people elite enough to get a voice in papers like Bloomberg, etc tend to have (which is often a criticism of academics and isn’t entirely wrong) in that they often view events through the abstract rather than the material. It’s a problem that many leftist academics try to correct for by employing a materialist worldview, but that’s not always a guarantee against that kind of abstraction.