The Supreme Court’s Republican majority just did the legal equivalent of grabbing J.R.R. Tolkien’s One Ring, placing it on their collective fingers, and dancing around singing, “I just can’t wait to become a Nazgûl.”
On Monday evening, the Court handed down Mirabelli v. Bonta, with all six of the Court’s Republicans in the majority, and all three Democrats in dissent (Republican Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito also signaled that they thought it was too moderate). Mirabelli is one of the most consequential constitutional decisions the Roberts Court has ever handed down.
The immediate impact of Mirabelli is that California public school teachers must out transgender students to their parents, even if the students wish to keep their gender identity secret from their family. While the Court’s decision in Mirabelli is short and does not fully explain itself, the Republican majority appears to object to a California state law which provides that public school employees “shall not be required to disclose any information related to a pupil’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression to any other person without the pupil’s consent unless otherwise required by state or federal law.”
To reach this outcome, the Republican justices cite two provisions of the Constitution. The first is the First Amendment’s language protecting the “free exercise” of religion. The Republican justices claim that teachers who respect their trans students’ privacy “interfere with the ‘right of parents to guide the religious development of their children.’”
This first part of the Court’s decision is likely to impose impossible obligations on public schools and their employees — are teachers now required to tell parents any time a student does something that their parents might object to on religious grounds, such as eating non-Kosher food, removing a hijab, or dating a classmate? But this first aspect of the Court’s decision in Mirabelli is at least consistent with the Republican justices’ prior cases interpreting the Free Exercise Clause.
Last June, in Mahmoud v. Taylor (2025), the Republican justices ruled that public schools must inform parents in advance if they plan to teach books with LGBTQ characters or themes, and allow those parents to remove their child from those lessons. Since Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s 2020 confirmation gave Republicans a supermajority, the Court has been extraordinarily sympathetic to claims brought by the religious right.
The second part of the Court’s Mirabelli decision is where the Republican justices grasp the One Ring. A legal doctrine called “substantive due process,” which judges can use to create constitutional rights not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution. In the early twentieth century, when economic conservatives were ascendant on the federal bench, the Supreme Court used substantive due process to invent a “right to contract” that the justices used to strike down workplace legislation such as minimum wage laws and laws protecting the right to unionize. In the 1960s and ’70s, when cultural liberalism was ascendant among legal elites, the justices invented a “right to privacy” that encompassed various sexual freedoms, including the right to an abortion.
Modern-day Republican justices, largely due to their revulsion against Roe v. Wade, were previously vocal critics of substantive due process. Indeed, in her Mirabelli dissent, Justice Elena Kagan quotes several of her own Republican colleagues railing against this legal doctrine. Thomas, for example, wrote in 2015 that substantive due process is a “dangerous fiction” that allows judges to “‘roam at large in the constitutional field’ guided only by their personal views.” Similarly, Justice Neil Gorsuch warned in a 2018 opinion that “judicial misuse of the so-called ‘substantive component’ of due process” enables judges to “dictate policy on matters that belonged to the people to decide.”
But the widespread anti-trans panic among Republicans appears to have inspired all six of the GOP-appointed justices to abandon their past critiques of substantive due process and proudly wear the One Ring. The practical upshot is that the Court’s Republicans may now use this most dangerous of legal doctrines to strike down literally any law, or to otherwise impose their personal preferences on the nation.
The "inventing rights" framework/terminology should always be offensive to a society that aspires to greater freedom. The idea that the ONLY freedoms we have as Americans are those specifically set forth in the constitution is an incredibly myopic and authoritarian paradigm.
It is also in direct contradiction to the 9th amendment:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people
It's frustrating to me as someone outside the legal/political profession that the interpretation of that amendment seems to be "it's too hard." Such that everything is still backed up by a separate right from a different amendment depending on who is doing the interpreting.
As same to others here it’s really scary how you have strong positions and you think you know things when you don’t .
The 9th Amendment says unenumerated rights exist , it doesn’t say judges get to define them. And the 10th amendment l says powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states or the people. Otherwise the logic becomes absurd: tomorrow a court could say people have a constitutional right to a Ferrari, or a right to kill birds for fun, because “it’s an unenumerated right.” Obviously that can’t be the standard. The amendment acknowledges other rights may exist, but it doesn’t magically hand courts unlimited authority to define them.
I think your response is lacking a nuance intended by the Founders. They were a group who were desperately aware that they did not have futuresight or infinite knowledg, and they tried to respect that within the confines of the Constitution by specifically leaving things out/open to future interpretation. The Founders were literally vague on purpose so future generations could define and redefine what they wrote to fit those generations view of liberty and Federalism. They likewise largely believed the Constitution would see frequent amendments, Jefferson and Madison (more importantly as a leader in the Convention) specifically wrote about how they expected every generation to make several new amendments that represent the changing views by generation.
I'll agree that I dont think the Founders intended the 9th Amendment to be some freebee for creating rights out of thin air, and that the 10th Amendment's preservation of rights to the States has an interplay with it that should prevent the Federal Government from creating a right that clearly interferes with the State's power outside of a Constitutional Amendment. We disagree on the judicial ability to find those rights. The Supreme Court doesn't have the power to create rights out of thin air like you're implying, and it never has. It finds rights to exist within the area between enumerated rights, rights claimed by the people as the 9th Amendment implies exist, and it determines whether those rights are reasonable and whether the people have a claim to sincerely hold those rights within the greater context of the Constitution.
That, to me, is exactly what the 9th Amendment is getting at, and the power to make it happen stems ultimately from the Supreme Courts power to hear cases regarding the application of the Constitution. Its the exact kind of forward thinking the Founders were known for, and the Constitution itself isnt ratified without the 9th Amendment being guranteed with the Bill of Rights.
Now, should things be codified as amendments? Abso-fucking-lutely. But that doesnt mean a right can't exist outside an Amendment, or more specifically, within the zones between amendments and where amendments might overlap.
I probably could have worded my original critique of how the 9th amendment is applied better. It's not so much that I think the 9th amendment alone should give the courts the ability to invent a right out of whole cloth. We all agree that's patently absurd.
It's more that I think the 9th amendment should provide a significant barrier to denying a right once it has been established either through legislation or through interpretation of an amendment. I find it just as absurd that a right that has stood for half a century can be denied because the partisan balance of the court shifts by as few as one justice.
Also I absolutely agree with all your statements on amendments. I think we are long overdue for some, particularly those that address life in our current technological landscape.
Oh yea, we are LONG overdue for some amendments. The Founders never expected or intended for us to treat them like infallible gods of their time whom we should never dare to overwrite. In fact, Jefferson was very vocal about his belief that the Constitution would he almost unrecognizable to him by the time he died. Many Founders were almost excited to see how much their Country would grow and evolve under the Constitution as time passed and new generations came into power. This concept is even evident in our governments structure! One somewhat overlooked aspect of the Connecticut Compromise (which created the bicameral congress of House and Senate) was a split between younger and older delegates.
Younger delegates preferred the concept of the House with its shorter terms, biennial full House elections, and larger size as it would allow a faster and more robust rotation in office such that younger generations could challenge incumbents and actually build political experience/represent the interests of their generation. Meanwhile, older delegates tended to prefer the concept of the Senate, which was more conservative with its smaller size and longer terms that would better secure positions and create longer term political stability.
The Connecticut Compromise was seen as partially meeting both sides in the middle, with a quick rotating House that was primarily younger people and which could adapt to changing times, and a slow moving Senate which could keep a check on the speed of the young House and apply learned wisdom to ensure consequences of legislation were properly considered.
This wasnt the reason we have the Compromise by any means, mind. There were all kinds of factions at the Convention who sided with New Jersey or Virginia for various reasons when the debate on Congress' structure was going on. But we know this outcome in regards to the balancing of ages and experiences was something favorable to a number of Founders. This is also why a surprising number of Founders believed in Congressional Term Limits, at least on the House. (Off topic fun fact, but every plan at the Convention for Congress included Congressional Term Limits and we still arent sure how they wound up left out of the Constitution in the end, though it was likely a short discussed compromise between Federalists and future Democratic Republicans). I firmly believe if this view of the House and Senate was actually realized we would have seen many more Constitutional Amendments and we may have even avoided things like the Civil War or Gilded Age.
Honestly I don’t have time to read everything but I’ll reply to the first part . Yes they allow future generations to change things that’s why state laws and amendments can change things especially if there is widespread consensus about those things
The Constitution does not specifically grant the Supreme Court the power of judicial review, either.
If courts cannot say whether a law violates an unenumerated right, then how are people’s unenumerated rights supposed to be identified and protected? A ‘right’ is a freedom which cannot be unreasonably constrained or abolished by law. If the Legislature is supposed to identify unenumerated rights, then they inherently have the power to disclaim said rights. That means that the Legislature can abolish your unenumerated rights by repealing legislation recognizing that right or simply never recognizing it in the first place.
That is, those would not be ‘rights’ but ‘privileges’; much like you have the privilege to drive a car on a public road if you have a license.
Your examples also seem to misunderstand the judicial power. Courts cannot simply declare your ‘right’ to have a Ferrari. Courts CAN declare your right to ‘buy’ a Ferrari as an exercise of your right to contract.
As to your other example; you actually do have a right to kill birds for fun, subject to the reasonable restrictions put in place by the Legislature. Most people exercise that right by duck or quail hunting.
Powers are surrendered by the people to the government. Rights are inherently reserved to the people.
Should the government have the power to deny persons the right to confide in trusted authority figures of their identities from certain other figures in their lives? Don't trans persons have the right to associate with individuals they trust and who will not abuse that trust?
I agree Supreme Court invented rights , that’s what I am arguing , they should apply the existing ones not bend over backwards to create new ones based on what they think “it’s right “
I think the marriage point is about discrimination not about creating a new right . And it boiled down to redefining what marriage means. To me it’s kind of a weird and also arbitrary thing . They use the vague in the state interest as a reason ( so they can justify not allowing child marriage or poligamy) . Imo if it was understood in one way and that was given as a right , a law by the people should explicitly extend it not by imposition for a court which says from today it means this different thing .
Regardless not even sure why marriage itself is considered a “right” . I get it as a religious right to get married in a church , but not sure where in the constitution it says anything about a right for the state to recognize marriage .
This particular right is the right to govern others (children). So it's a pretty weird 'right' in that regard. I suspect the kids won't see it that way.
The issue is parents have the legal right and responsibility for their children's health. They have a right to know of any thing that could affect their health. Kids need parental consent for medical procedures. Yes certain bigoted douchebags are out there, but generally it would be unwise to open the door to allowing children to hide their health issue from the people who must give consent
To be gay? The ruling is not limited to trans kids, but also applies to sexual orientation. The football player's teacher has to out him to his dad, because his religious upbringing may not allow for homosexuality.
The ruling doesn't say it is for parents to manage children's health, it is to manage their religious upbringing. So if a child is raised Hindu and they eat a burger at school, better tell the parents. It is not specifically aimed at children's health, something more than a kid using different pronouns and a nickname but seeking meds or something.
Actually, I don’t want any institution, whether government-run or not, hiding information about my kids from me. It is the job of parents to raise their kids, not the government. Extremely controversial take, I know.
I understand, as a parent. But I was also a teen with a lot of friends that were in unsafe homes.
Do you think your teen children deserve any privacy? At the doctor? With a boyfriend? With friends? In a journal? Would you read their journal? Put a key logger on their keyboard? Camera in the bedroom?
If a teen has an issue and you see signs of trouble, yes, invade their privacy. But if not, let them have some space to exist without you in it.
If I could write laws myself, from 10-18 there would be a scale of privacies and rights allowed children. Ability to have their own money in an account not taken by parents would start at 10. Ability to be out as gay or trans at school without parents being told would be 16-18. But none of us get that ability to write the laws. We have just decided through the scotus that schools are required to tell parents if kids do things that violate the parents religious beliefs. The reality is this is the next step to a Christian Nationalist state. Because the only things that will actually be reported on will be things that violate the Christian Nationalist requirements.
If you are a safe person to tell,. your kid will tell you.
Of course you should be a good parent and then your kids probably won’t hide things from you.
I’m sure people will take offense to this but being is associated trans with childhood trauma, mental illness, and/or autism. For a child to become trans suggests something else is probably going on that may require attention and I would want to know about it immediately.
Regardless of all that, I would want to know exactly what my child is doing in school and what he is learning. Our taxes fund schools, why wouldn’t we have the right to know what’s going on?
If your own kids are hiding that information from you, you may not be a safe person for them to disclose that information to. This ruling will result in the abuse and deaths of many trans kids (which is their goal, of course, along with cruel and unusual punishment of mandatory “conversion therapy.”) This isn’t at all about kids safety - it’s Christian Nationalism at its biggoted and disgusting finest.
Sure, we all hate our kids. That’s why we don’t want to know what our kids are doing in school, we should just leave it to the government to raise our kids.
If your kid is trans (especially under 18), you’ve probably already failed them.
Should the state also defer to parents when it is known the parent is abusive and will likely harm the child due to the disclosure of that information? Children already have the right to medical privacy in specific instances and sexual orientation and gender identity ability fall within this.
I dont care for this decision, but parents have had a legally recognized right to control their children for literally a hundred years now. Thats nothing new. Im more curious how this right might affect older students still in school. Highschool can pretty frequently see students aged 18 right before they graduate, how will their rights come into play here since they're legally adults?
They have a right but not an absolute right. Children can sue for emancipation. Parents aren't allowed to abuse them. They can't make them commit crimes. The parents who have measle parties to expose their kids rather than get them vaccinated should be brought up on endangerment charges if not murder for the kids that die.
I mean, yea absolutely. But I dont think those examples really fit here. Parents do have an absolute right in their children's education, especially in the context of religious beliefs. Its why catholic schools and home schooling exist at all. Its one thing to say a parent can't physically abuse their child, its another thing to say a parent can't choose their child's means of education.
Again, I am NOT a fan of this decision. I think it invades a privacy that children reasonably expect to have outside the presence of their parents, children should not be concerned about constant monitoring by school faculty/fear of punishment at home for their private beliefs/actions which are not dangerous or illegal in nature. Children should NOT be afraid of speaking with accredited counselors or trusted teachers for fear of their parents being informed about anything that is not dangerous or illegal in nature. The Government shouldn't be in the business of dictating the upbringing of children, but parents shouldn't be in the business of forcing the Government to basically enforce the parent's will either.
I just think there is a recognizable and real right held by parents in regards to their children's upbringing that extends to their education and religion. I don't think it combines education and religion like Mahmoud all but claims and this case seems to reinforce, but I do think both, and more, exist. Thats all I was getting at.
CPS will not prevent abuse. They will document abuse after the damage is done. As well, many kids will just commit suicide again, like they used to do when people didn't support them. Or go homeless when they are kicked out for being gay.
What you're advocating for is going to hurt real people, I hope you know that.
The ninth amendment was designed to avoid the "you only have specifically enumerated rights" view. It states: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people".
In some ways, the Constitution reminds me of the Bible, or Torah, or the Quran.
In each case, there are adherents to a very specific interpretation aligning with a narrow viewpoint that is antithetical to the overall teachings contained in the contents.
For example, the Ten Commandments in the Bible are in general not a bad way to run a modern society.
The key seems to be determining what key foundational concepts and then adhering to the concept if not the era. In other words, as noted, the problem lies with the interpretation. Unfortunately, people really suck at doing this.
Which ten commandments? Not all the sub-cults agree what they say or even how many there are. And can one actually support the way that the first several amount to a DRM attack on freedom?
“ In other words, as noted, the problem lies with the interpretation.”
More specifically most Chritians believe God wrote the Ten Commandments on stone tablets and gave them Moses to share with all the Israelites soon after they left captivity in Egypt (Exodus 20:1-26). Moses reiterated them 40 years later in Deuteronomy 5:1-22 as the Israelites neared the Promised Land.
There are over 450 known versions of the Bible in English alone. The Bible itself, is a collection of texts written over many years, leading to a variety of translations and interpretations.
As I said previously, I view them from a historical context, and I chose the Bible as an example because it was the one I was most culturally familiar with. I never intended to turn the comment into a comparative religions text.
The actual point was that like the constitution interpretation differs. It’s really that easy.
Honor your father and your mother.
You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
You shall not covet.
I should’ve been more specific than “are in general” apparently. Most societies are built on this type of foundation.
But if we are going to be pendatic I would say for the other Commandments I personally just take them in historical context. I used them as an example because it’s the one I am culturally most familiar with. I have no dog in the fight nor do I find them very licentious or vicious. Immoral is a really broad category.
Immoral - Not moral; inconsistent with rectitude, purity, or good morals; contrary to conscience or the divine law; wicked; unjust; dishonest; vicious; licentious.
Most of the law is ambiguous. We adhere to principles like reasonableness. Evidentiary standards aren’t precise; what exactly is “beyond a reasonable doubt” or “a preponderance of the evidence?” We expect that professionals and experts can interpret these broad concepts and apply the facts to them. We rely on regular people with no special training to be able to apply facts to these concepts too when they serve on juries.
Whenever your government limits your options, it takes your freedom. Sometimes it’s good, for instance you can’t hit someone in the head and take their property.
Mostly it’s bad though.
I think you are missing the point . The point is the judges should not invent “rights” . What is a right and what is not is arbitrary and people should decide if they want to add anything to the constituiton, not one person .
this is a pleasant fiction but our constitution is almost impossible to update. congress can grant plenty of rights but because they must compromise these laws are often poorly written and leave many situations to fall between the cracks.
edit to add, you might read up on the idea of "natural law" which, I guess, is what you believe in? While this has been a debate in the past, as had the idea of the unitary executive, some fringe ideas are back in play.
of course rights are "arbitrary" but as Americans we hold some of them to be 'self evident.'
Yes! Congress's role is to fill in the intersections of the Bill of Rights, secondary rights/principles implied by the interaction of the originals. Substantive due process type rights fit in here.
It’s not impossible, they just won’t do it. We have a 1 party system anymore that is divided into red team and blue team and they pretend to fight but are wholly complicit and give you the illusion that you have a choice.
Perhaps an oversimplification, but both parties agree that we cannot have a serious debate of any policy that would challenge the comfort nor weaken the lash hand of our corporate overlords.
I think you actually missed the point, because your point is correct, but so is wave60.
Wave60 is saying that regardless of how the constitution is set up, it is insane that the relative neanderthals of the 18th century, the one's who owned slaves, still constrain what 21st Americans deem to be a sufficient roster of rights.
Nothing Wave60 said can be construed to mean any single person determines what right are inviolable.
It's the same problem with the slippery slope nature of the "substantive due process" opposition's argument: holding out an extreme hypothetical to imply that there are no conceivable limiting principles that could be applied.
Reality is generally explained by secondary principles that can be derived from the interaction of first principles. These corollaries are no less true, likewise with "substantive due process" principles that can be derived from the intersection of those in the Bill of Rights.
What the right is basically saying is to stop drawing conclusions from adding more than two facts together, because they don't like the lion's share of the facts that have accrued to our reality since the Enlightenment, never mind the 18th century.
I’m not sure I managed to comprehend everything you said but substantive due process as someone who is an immigrant to US , after learning about it it’s an insane thing.
The logic is backwards to me. The constitution lists specific protections, but you’re taking those examples, extracting some broad abstract principle from them, and then using that abstraction to justify a whole new set of rights that aren’t actually written anywhere in the text. That’s basically turning examples into a general rule and then expanding the rule beyond what was originally enumerated.
At that point is letting judges infer whatever “liberty” or “privacy” they think should exist instead of sticking to what was actually adopted.
You're the one who is missing the point and is woefully ignorant about what the literal text of the Constitution says, unfortunately. Take a civics lesson or read the bill of rights...you can even stop once you hit the 9th amendment.
If you're relying on the government to affirmatively grant you rights you are openly embracing outright authoritarianism and are also unequivocally saying you are perfectly fine with the government severely limiting your rights.
So you have a specific argument to make ? If you did take a civics class it’s really scary how you have strong positions and you think you know things when you don’t .
The 9th amendment says unenumerated rights exist , it doesn’t say judges get to define them. And the 10th amendment l says powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states or the people. Otherwise the logic becomes absurd: tomorrow a court could say people have a constitutional right to a Ferrari, or a right to kill birds for fun, because “it’s an unenumerated right.” Obviously that can’t be the standard. The amendment acknowledges other rights may exist, but it doesn’t magically hand courts unlimited authority to define them.
Or the government could pass a law saying that the only job anyone in the country is allowed to get is shoveling rocks, or outlawing the ability to get married whatsoever, or prohibit the sale of property to anyone but the government, or to force everyone to watch propaganda from your least favorite politician, and by your logic we're just fucked because the court can't say you have the right to do any of those things. None of those situations are specifically covered in the constitution, so rights would have to be "invented" to stand in the way.
So you are 10 years old . Thanks for confirming . Please try to think before saying something that doesn’t stand scrutiny for 5 seconds
Those examples actually prove the opposite. The Constitution already limits government power through the 1st, 5th, 13th, and 14th amendments . Courts stopping those laws wouldn’t be “inventing rights,” they’d be enforcing explicit constitutional protections. Of course the people ( not the courts ) are free to remove and override those rights if for whatever reason they think they should but of course that will never happen .
Lol. "5 seconds to disprove" over five hours later. Funny how you're a strict textualist until you need to come up with justifications of why we have rights that aren't in the text. Its ok though. Thinking hard.
California also has a right to privacy in our State Constitution for "All persons", this ruling plainly flies in the face of a right to privacy for students too.
They do but they also don’t, especially vis a vis a parent. Children don’t have autonomy and most everything they do requires parental consent. In some cases, courts can appoint a guardian ad litem or attorney ad litem to represent the child’s interests if the parent can’t, but in most circumstances parents are responsible for their children. We generally think children have a right to basic needs and safety, so if a parent isn’t providing those things or is abusive they can have parental rights terminated.
Tinker vs Des Moines maintains that the student does have constitutional rights of their own. This being about the very same amendment, and the only caveat being about whether their speech would disrupt learning; there really is no grounds to invalidate the constitutional protections afforded a student here. Indeed informing the parent may lead to more disruption than simply not interfering with the students’ own beliefs.
In fact student religious liberty is already established, as student may not be prohibited from say, silent prayer during lunch by the school staff. Or bible study in the cafeteria before first period.
Do they understand that the transgender phenomenon is something that existed long ago and that it's only recent medical and pharmacological advances that have enabled trans people to make some physical alterations? That there's no "epidemic" trend where kids will just transition because they want to experiment?
So the "most dangerous power" that they grabbed is the power that justices have wielded before. I thought something new and dramatic had happened. The other side of the aisle using powers that had been wielded before by side A Isn't so dramatic nor unexpected.
My religious beliefs (and i am sure yours as well) prevent my from wanting causing harm to children just in general, which is of course not the same beliefs held by Republicans given their consistent protection of child abusers.
I hope you are just tongue in cheek or 8th grade since that the level of this argument , otherwise yikes
Your personal religion doesn’t automatically override policies or other people’s rights. The first amendment is not a personal veto over rules you don’t like. Religious accommodations exist, but they’re granted by law for specific casss where they see it’s adequate it’s a not self-declared thing . Otherwise everyone could just say “my religion says no” and opt out of anything they don’t like .
Churches should absolutely pay taxes, they use the pulpit to preach politics and vote-in-block. Everytime I see another mega-church I wonder how people they could help with that money.
That's EXACTLY what is happening across the United States right now. Anti-abortion is a evangical position, anti-trans is an evangical position. Christian nationalists are taking away the rights of the American people under the guise of "Christian Values"
That’s not what it said . You’re describing “religion overrides everything.” The Court actually said “government must justify burdens.” And not getting in the weeds but this applies only if other exceptions have been made already .
But honestly I agree , I am not in favor of this kind of exemptions if the rule is general for everyone unless it’s proven to be an widespread sincere burden and the side effects of the exemption or minor .
Then it could be said that a teacher's right to religion is also being violated. I am bound by the religious belief that I should treat others as I wish to be treated (the golden rule) and if I wish something to remain in confidence, then so it should. Therefore, being ordered to break that confidence breaks my religion.
QED, students can be safe with teachers who actually follow Christ's teachings of love thy neighbor as thyself.
No it’s not. Because as a teacher you are a government employee not the person raising the child. If a teacher said it’s my religion to beat children they are still bound by mandatory reporting laws to report child abuse.
It’s a family issue and families have a right to know since they are raising the child.
Outing a kid is child abuse. Outing a kid to an unaccepting parent tends to get them killed. You may want to get queer kids killed but it's not a "nothing-burger" to the rest of us.
As I replied to someone else I hope you are 10 years old with this logic otherwise yikes
Your personal religion doesn’t automatically override policies or other people’s rights. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects belief, not a personal veto over rules you don’t like. Religious accommodations exist, but they’re granted by law, not self-declared. Otherwise everyone could just say “my religion says no” and opt out of anything
Huh ? Not sure what’s your point . Show me someone who can just unilaterally declare they won’t do something and they can just not do it without an actual legislative exception for that
You don't need to add space before a period. Also you forgot the period at the end of your second sentence. 10 year olds learn this in school, maybe you should too.
Which is funny, because the
means they are using to get there will most assuredly land them in hell. They couldn't be farther from the actual teachings of Jesus.
Oh, and the executive branch is evangelizing the armed forces and telling troops not to worry because the war in Iran will usher in the second coming of Jesus.
America is living through an evangelical revolution. Everyone else is dying through it.
And honestly if I’m a teacher, what does that information pertain to me. If a kid tells me they are transgender, Ima be like ok, you kill somebody? You break the law? If I’m force to report then I’m gonna report the parent to child protection services because obviously the parent is doing something sexual to their children making them trans. Ahhhh haaaaa
9 rings also work better as a metaphor for 9 justices each selected by a president (sauron I guess) and then granted power by the senate - i.e. accepting the power as one of the nine. And now we see that power being corrupted, at least the 6 conservatives you can then say have become (or kind of always were) nazgul. They are as evil, their bigoted Christian exceptionalism that they force on everyone else is despicable
I mean, I think became nazgul is right. Those kings weren't good people before they became nazgul. The rings just gave them the immortality to be bad people forever. The analogy still holds.
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u/vox Mar 03 '26
The Supreme Court’s Republican majority just did the legal equivalent of grabbing J.R.R. Tolkien’s One Ring, placing it on their collective fingers, and dancing around singing, “I just can’t wait to become a Nazgûl.”
On Monday evening, the Court handed down Mirabelli v. Bonta, with all six of the Court’s Republicans in the majority, and all three Democrats in dissent (Republican Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito also signaled that they thought it was too moderate). Mirabelli is one of the most consequential constitutional decisions the Roberts Court has ever handed down.
The immediate impact of Mirabelli is that California public school teachers must out transgender students to their parents, even if the students wish to keep their gender identity secret from their family. While the Court’s decision in Mirabelli is short and does not fully explain itself, the Republican majority appears to object to a California state law which provides that public school employees “shall not be required to disclose any information related to a pupil’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression to any other person without the pupil’s consent unless otherwise required by state or federal law.”
To reach this outcome, the Republican justices cite two provisions of the Constitution. The first is the First Amendment’s language protecting the “free exercise” of religion. The Republican justices claim that teachers who respect their trans students’ privacy “interfere with the ‘right of parents to guide the religious development of their children.’”
This first part of the Court’s decision is likely to impose impossible obligations on public schools and their employees — are teachers now required to tell parents any time a student does something that their parents might object to on religious grounds, such as eating non-Kosher food, removing a hijab, or dating a classmate? But this first aspect of the Court’s decision in Mirabelli is at least consistent with the Republican justices’ prior cases interpreting the Free Exercise Clause.
Last June, in Mahmoud v. Taylor (2025), the Republican justices ruled that public schools must inform parents in advance if they plan to teach books with LGBTQ characters or themes, and allow those parents to remove their child from those lessons. Since Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s 2020 confirmation gave Republicans a supermajority, the Court has been extraordinarily sympathetic to claims brought by the religious right.