The key to saving us from Gorsuch and Kavanaugh lies in an obscure law signed by George H.W. Bush

[turbinetree]

The Supreme Court needs adult supervision, Here's how to provide it.

IAN MILLHISER
DEC 5, 2018, 2:07 PM

If Democrats regain Congress and the White House, they will spend their time in power at war with an increasingly partisan Supreme Court. They can also learn a lot about how to fight such a Court from a law signed by Republican President George H.W. Bush.

As a U.S. Senate candidate in 1964, Bush took a deplorable position on civil rights, labeling the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — which banned employment discrimination and whites-only lunch counters, among other things — a “radical” piece of legislation that was “passed to protect 14 percent of the people.”

Bush soon abandoned these views. As a new congressman, Bush supported a ban on housing discrimination. And as president, Bush signed two significant civil rights laws — the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1991. While the first is better known, the second could offer a path forward to Democrats reeling from a stolen Supreme Court seat and the appointment of a man credibly accused of attempted rape to the same Court.

The Civil Rights Act of 1991 offered a swift corrective to the Supreme Court. In 1989, the Court handed down five decisions that “substantially eroded” the federal ban on employment discrimination. One of the major purposes of the law Bush signed was to override these decisions and replace them with rules more protective of civil rights (at the time, some members of the employer defense bar complained that the law reached “beyond a simple ‘restoration’ of prior laws” to enact a regime that was more protective of civil rights than the one that existed before 1989).

https://thinkprogress.org/the-key-to-saving-us-from-gorsuch-and-kavanugh-lies-in-an-obscure-law-signed-by-george-h-w-bush-e591232bb7f0/


November 3, 2020 cannot get here fast enough........................

[Sherman A1]

1. Interesting

thanks for posting.

[turbinetree]

2. Your welcome

[UpInArms]

3. January 3 cannot arrive quickly enough for me

That’s when Shitler will hit the fan

[turbinetree]

4. Yepper, spot on.................

[Ms. Toad]

5. This really has nothing to do witn a law (hardly obscure) signed by George H.W. Bush.

It has to do with the right of Congress to tell the Supreme Court, "No - we really meant it." It did this more recently with the ADA, after repeated decisions restricting the definition of disablities (to the point where it was very hard to establish that one was a person with disabilities, Congress passed a law making it clear that they really did intende the definition of disability to be broad.

[Jim Lane]

8. Exactly. It doesn't reach SCOTUS decisions based on (mis)interpreting the Constitution.

Another example would be the Lily Ledbetter Act. There was a gray area in the employment discrimination statute, the Court favored the interpretation that favored defendants, and Congress reacted by amending the statute to spell out the result more favorable to plaintiffs.

This would have nothing to do with, for example, Citizens United. Congress could re-enact the law that was struck down and the new law would again be struck down. The best Congress can do is to try to find a way to accomplish its objective within the limits set by the Court. Other than that, the only remedies are a change in the Court's membership (leading to an overruling of the earlier decision) or an amendment to the Constitution.

[Ms. Toad]

9. Yup. n/t

[niyad]

6. k and r

[bobbieinok]

7. Thank you for this. A way to mitigate present horrific SCOTUS!!