Top 10 Controversial Supreme Court Rulings

Courts are not without controversy, whether upholding a law or striking down a law and the reasoning, someone will rail against those 5 unelected judges who narrowly decided an issue. The Supreme Court is a wild card all its own. One thing is guaranteed, whether you’re liberal or conservative…the Supreme Court has let you down. There are a lot of decisions they make and they have the final say for better or worse. With that, here is my list of Top 10 Controversial Supreme Court rulings, and let me tell you it wasn’t easy to decide

10 Brown v. Board of Education, 1954

Kicking off our list is something that started with Plessy v Ferguson where Homer Plessy in a test case to repeal the Separate Car Act enacted in 1890 by the Louisiana State Legislature, he went all the way to the Supreme Court where separate but equal got its start. However, as time passed by segregation was anything but equal as black schools were underfunded, dilapidated and overcrowded. After Brown v. Board of Education was consolidated with cases from Ks, DE, SC, VA and DC, integration was not only opposed vigourously and adopted the Confederate flag as its cause, white flight gave us a major exodus from cities and gave an unofficial segregation its marching orders. We are still fighting to diversify our schools and get proper funding for school districts where they are predominantly of color

Some of the most notable battles to resist this ruling was AL Governor Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door to block federal troops from getting in, Ike Eisenhower had to call the National Guard to Little Rock and whites kept their kids from school in Virginia for 5 years, by the time the school was integrated, the white students had been in a private school and their parents given vouchers…how’s that for a post racial society?

9 Korematsu v. United States, 1943

The thing about rights is that they’re not supposed to be voted on or abridged without some compelling governmental interest. That interest in this case was making sure Japanese didn’t spy for the Japanese after the attacks of Pearl Harbor. This was a dreadful decision where it said that the government’s interest far outweighed Korematsu’s civil rights—Executive Order 9906 was the law that did this—and he was to go to the internment camps. The court ruled 6-3 in favor of the government and Korematsu was also convicted of evading internment, which was overturned in 1983.

Justice Frank Murphy in his dissent writes:

I dissent, therefore, from this legalization of racism. Racial discrimination in any form and in any degree has no justifiable part whatever in our democratic way of life. It is unattractive in any setting, but it is utterly revolting among a free people who have embraced the principles set forth in the Constitution of the United States. All residents of this nation are kin in some way by blood or culture to a foreign land. Yet they are primarily and necessarily a part of the new and distinct civilization of the United States. They must, accordingly, be treated at all times as the heirs of the American experiment, and as entitled to all the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.

8 Texas v Johnson (1989 Flag Burning Case)

It was 1984 and Reaganism was in full swing, he was about to be re elected by a wider margin than that which he was first elected and protests were in full swing. Gregory Lee joey Johnson, protested Reagan’s policies, marching, chanting and shouting . At one point a demonstrator gave him an American flag which he burned, no one was hurt. One witness buried the flag in his backyard as was military protocol. Johnson was charged with violating the Texas law that prohibits vandalizing respected objects (desecration of a venerated object). He was convicted, sentenced to one year in prison, and fined $2,000. He lost his appeals to the TX Supreme Court, TX Court of Criminal Appeals and later appealed to the Supreme Court, which later ruled 6-3 that flag burning was in fact free speech.

After this ruling, George Bush 1^st visited a flag factory and I’m sure a lot of people went out and bought flags that day. A later ruling was compared to this and Kennedy said simply “Life went on”

7 Engel v Vitale (1962) & Abington School District v. Schempp (1963)

School Prayer and Bible Reading Case

Religion and football…two things you don’t want to mess with in America, so when Engel v Vitale came along in 1962 and Abbington v Schempp came along in 1963, there was significant backlash among people who said that atheism was ruining this country. That sentiment can be found nearly 50 years later when Jerry Fallwell went on TV saying atheists and gays caused

9-11.This case has been linked to every social ill we face ever since, it’s the go to talking point for the Right and religious extremists

This case took school led prayer out of schools citing the Establishment clause of the 1^st Amendment as it was more or less mandated by the schools every morning. A year later The Supreme Court upheld Engel with Abbington School District v. Schempp that school supported Bible reading in school also violated the establishment clause. Religious Americans—mostly Christian blasted the Supreme Court and I’m sure impeachment was probably floated around. Engel and Abbington even reached into the 1980 Presidential election. Many people felt that the Supreme Court had gotten too liberal and the justices were getting older. Reagan won the election, nominated William Rhenquist as Chief Justice, Sandra Day O Connor as the first woman to hold the position of Associate Justice, Justice Anthony Kennedy the swing vote and Antonin Scalia the unfettered moron—2 of which remain on the court today.

6 Bush v Gore, 2000

What do you get when you get Florida run by the brother of one of the candidates, a voter purge and a coordinated voter fraud campaign run by the state? Bush v Gore…this was one other time in recent history that there were 4 written dissents in the Supreme Court. It basically called off the recount and gave Bush Jr 271 Electoral Votes and is still being talked about as one of the most controversial and worst decisions the Supreme Court has ever issued.

Four justices (Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, Souter and Breyer) dissented as to stopping the recount. Two of those four dissenters (Justices Breyer and Souter) acknowledged that the counting up until December 9 had not conformed with Equal Protection requirements. However, Souter and Breyer favored remanding the case back to the Florida Supreme Court for the purpose of crafting specific guidelines for how to count disputed ballots, in contrast to the majority's decision to halt the recount altogether.^[36] The actual counting had ended with the December 9 injunction issued by the same five-justice majority, three days before any deadline

If there was any case for strongly worded dissents this was it

The dissenting opinions strongly criticized the five justice majority for involving the Court in state-level affairs. They were more than confident that the state court could come up with a way to make every vote count and that the judges shouldn’t be the ones basically deciding what it is up to the American people to decide where no Civil Rights were broken or violated. They lamented that the Court would now see people lose confidence in it as an impartial and independent judiciary…
Scalia’s response? It was so long ago, get over it

5 King v Burwell & National Federation of Independent Business NFIB v. Sebelius hereafter referred to as The Obamcare cases

After The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act known as the Affordable Care Act BEST known as Obamacare was signed into law, it went right to federal court

The first challenge National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius was over the Individual mandate and whether it was constitutional. Court watchers felt that they would overturn the law based on the tone of the questions presented. People knew it would be a 5-4 decision but we wondered how it would go. Would the individual mandate be overturned and thus a government option as many other people were in favor of be instituted? Would the law be overturned as a whole?

On June 28, 2012, the Supreme Court ruled on a 5–4 vote that the individual mandate is constitutional under Congress's taxation powers, although the law could not be upheld under Congress's regulatory power under the Commerce Clause

Chief Justice Roberts joined with the 4 liberals on the court and memes like this began popping up But the challenge wasn’t done entirely. If they couldn’t weaken the entire law, they could in fact make a lie out of the Affordable part of the Affordable Care Act. In the NFIB v Sebelius case the Supreme Court ruled that the states could choose not to take Medicaid expansion dollars without jeopardizing federal monies that were already in place for them. The states could set up an exchange if they expanded Medicaid or the federal government would run it for the states that didn’t. A small hiccup in the rollout website caused a furor but it all died down after the website was operable once again

So now, another challenge came regarding the exchanges in order to void out the subsidies. They seized on a passage that wasn’t well written in the law and said that the  STATE had to set up the exchange, not the federal government. The Court rejected this with Roberts and Kennedy stating that the passage if read to be consistent with the law when written was to help the health market not to weaken it. To strike it down would be inconsistent with the intent of the law. So now the subsidies which sustain Obamacare remains the law of the land and those who took Medicaid expansion dollars get to keep their care. That was a close one

4 Windsor v. United States & Obergefell v Hodges

In 1996 the federal government said that for all intents and purposes marriages of same gender couples will not be recognized for purposes of federal law. This meant that even after Massachussetts legalized such marriages spouses couldn’t get inheritance benefits without being taxed on it and a host of benefits the federal government gives to straight couples. After Thea Spyer died, Edie Windsor got a $363,000 bill she wouldn’t have had to pay if she had married Theo. After that ruling, state bans fell until the 6^th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld their state constitutional bans. Obergefell then swept those state marriage bans put in place to stop ANY state from recognizing those marriages. These rulings were expected especially with the precedents established by Romer v Evans, Lawrence v Texas and post-Windsor a 9^th Circuit case called Glaxo Smith Kline which established a strict scrutiny basis to sexual orientation claims, which has not yet been adopted by other federal courts.

As I said for Number 8, Kennedy said like the flag burning case…people will get over it. After we fight out the “religious freedom” crowd we will settle into life and tackle other issues that can further us as a nation

3 Citizens’ United v Federal Elections Commission

The Supreme Court as I said is no stranger to controversy but money as speech? With one devastating blow, the Supreme Court turned campaigns into legalized bribery with SUPER PACs and the Koch Brothers are enjoying it as now ads don’t have to say who paid for them. They undid hundreds of years of campaign law and have made it even worse with McCutcheon v. FEC…this is one of the most damning Supreme Court decisions in recent history along with Bush v. Gore in a long line of terrible rulings…notice I didn’t say “judicial activism”

2 Roe v Wade

Norma McCarvey, the ROE being Roe v. Wade was pregnant with her third child and was unable to get an abortion after finding out that the site had been closed by TX police. She later lawyered up and as the case was being argued, she gave birth to her child. The District Court ruled in McCorvey’s favor and other similar cases were resolved during the delay. Finally on December 13, 1971 it was argued, then the case was reheard on October 11, 1972 and on January 22, 1973 they decided the case arguing a right to privacy and that the state can only interfere after the period of viability.

Numerous laws, and government shutdowns at the federal level have been put in place over abortion and coverage, people on news programs constantly use anything they can to talk about abortion and trying to defund Planned Parenthood and other women’s health services. Other cases coming down the pike were Planned Parenthood v Casey which is the most known but also a Webster v. Reproductive Health Services

Perhaps the most notable opposition to Roe comes from Roe herself; in 1995, Norma L. McCorvey revealed that she became pro life and is now a vocal opponent of abortion. She tried to overturn Roe v Wade and in 2002 even appealed to the Supreme Court which denied her hearing in McCorvey v Hill which left the 5^th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling final. The reasoning was that she hadn’t filed in a timely manner to overturn the ruling it now being nearly 30 years later. She still speaks on behalf of pro life causes. An in depth article gives us a glimpse into McCorvey’s life (http://www.vanityfair.com/news/politics/2013/02/norma-mccorvey-roe-v-wade-abortion)

Even now the ability for women to get a safe and legal abortion is under attack in many states that went deep red in the 2010 wave.

Honorable…or dishonorable based on who you ask mentions

Shelby v Holder

This case said that Section 4 which provided a formula for which states needed preclearance to changes in election laws was in fact old, and there are new developments and changes that can be made to the formula to make it more fair to the 9 states. I say make the preclearance nationwide so that voter turnout can be the highest it can be

Dredd Scott v. Sandford, 1857

“The Constitution does not consider slaves to be U.S. citizens. Rather, they are constitutionally protected property of their masters.”

Chief Justice Roger Taney authored this opinion— one of the most important and scorned in the nation’s history. Dredd Scott, a slave, had moved with his master to Illinois, a free state. He moved again to a slave state, Missouri, and filed suit to gain freedom, under that state’s law of “Once free, always free.” Taney held that Scott had never been free at all, and cited Constitutional grounds for placing the slavery decision in the hands of the states. In trying to put an end to the slavery controversy, Taney instead sped the nation toward civil war. The decision was later overturned by the Thirteenth Amendment

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1 Marbury v Madison  

The most controversial Supreme Court case is in fact Marbury v. Madison. I can understand blasting the court for making a terrible decision, but I don’t understand  blasting the Court for making ANY decision.

So what happened is: The case resulted from a petition to the Supreme Court who had been appointed Justice of the Peace in the District of Columbia by President John Adams but whose commission was not subsequently delivered. Marbury petitioned the Supreme Court to force the new Secretary of State James Madison to deliver the documents. The Court, with John Marshall as Chief Justice, found firstly that Madison's refusal to deliver the commission was both illegal and correctable. Nonetheless, the Court stopped short of ordering Madison (by writ of mandamus) to hand over Marbury's commission, instead holding that the provision of the Judiciary Act of 1789 that enabled Marbury to bring his claim to the Supreme Court was itself unconstitutional, since it purported to extend the Court's original jurisdiction beyond that which Article III established. The petition was therefore denied.

The other thing it did was establish judicial review which allowed them to take a look at a law, the purpose of it, and whether or not it can stand constitutional analysis. The Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land and the Court has sworn an oath to uphold it, therefore the principle of judicial review.

Some say that the Court has no right to strike down laws…especially those they favor, then rail against unelected judges in this case…especially conservatives. However, for the sake of our system of checks and balances the Legislature and Executive branch can't be left unchecked. I'm glad about the fact that the court had established this for better or for worse and as the nation grew and the controversies did as well the Court has expanded appellate law and doctrines to make sure there can be consistent application of law as well as careful scrutiny to the different cases that arise

Well, that's my Top 10 list, is there anything I missed? What would you include?

Thanks for reading!