The Court says emotional distress is no longer worthy of compensatory damages, further stripping marginalized peoples—the most frequent victims of discrimination—of their protections
In Cummings V. Premier Rehab Keller, P.L.L.C ., the Supreme Court addressed whether victims of discrimination can recover damages for emotional distress. The conservative majority, depressingly but unsurprisingly, said no. This might seem like a technical, somewhat dry distinction, but it radically limits how people will be able to get recourse when they’re discriminated against. That’s because much of the harm that results from discrimination is emotional. Now, victims will be limited to recovery only for compensatory damages, which means you can only get some money back for the actual economic loss you suffered.
How did the Court get to this terrible place? Easily. It starts with contract law and goes downhill from there. Also, it was yet another 6-3 decision, with all the conservatives happily ensconced in the majority and willing to deprive people of their remedies to discrimination.
It’s Court-Packin’ Time, Joe!
Yeah - it’s overdue. The Court won’t revisit this for a generation.
Congress needs to pass a national abortion rights bill. It’s the only option going forward to protect people across the country. A lot of states will keep their laws - but they’re going to try and outlaw it nationally after this.
And “gay” marriage, “gay” sex, probably interracial both too, if they can.
Fucking fascists need fighting back against. Hard. Now.
The fuckers are going to go after birth control as well.
For every “Both parties are the same, why bother voting at all, there is no difference” blow-hard out there, here is a big, huge FUCK YOU. Although, if I am being honest, it really is more of a “fuck us” because we are the ones who will bear the brunt. It starts with abortion, then LGBTQ rights, family planning, voting rights, and then wherever the fascists think they need to go next. Because one thing is certain, they need someone to other. Always. If their base is not frightened and angry, they will lose them. It’s Martin Niemöller’s poem lived out again.
I guess we found the leaker.
Darn, I was hopeful until I saw it was a Borowitz Report!
Adding another because 2 posts in a row already:
Seems like it’s always a Borowitz Report these days.
Kind of like how The Onion has nothing left to do.
They switched to investigative journalism a while ago, but so far few people have noticed.
Many of us screamed into the wind about the importance of voting, the cold danger of apathy, the sheer cruelty that would be unleashed, the searing reality that too late is too soon. But we can still reassemble our past and break our present—we have to.
We have been a polity incapable of imagining tragedy—and so tragedy is what we have become.
“Thomas, speaking to lawyers and judges at an 11th Circuit Judicial Conference in Atlanta, added: “We can’t be an institution that can be bullied into giving you just the outcomes you want. The events from earlier this week are a symptom of that,” he noted, Reuters reported Friday.
He was apparently referring to protests that erupted after the leak, though did not specifically refer to the draft opinion or demonstrations against it, The Washington Post reported.
Declining respect for the law and institutions “bodes ill for a free society,” Thomas warned, according to the Post.
Thomas also said he worries about a “different attitude of the young” that might not show the same respect for the law as past generations did.“
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SCROTUS Justice Thomas seeks to undermine the First Amendment and demands from Americans that he be exempt from criticism.
No, Clarence. Fuck that noise and fuck you. You don’t get to shut people up. And you don’t get to feign respect for institution’s you’re dismantling while shitting upon them.
Also - stop the bullshit talking point about it being young people. Everyone is fed up with your nonsense. You’re an embarrassment to the Court and should have retired after that disgusting nonsense with you not recusing yourself from cases involving your wife working to implement an insurrection.
Buckle up, it ain’t over.
