While the Religious Right and the talk show hosts that cater to them were celebrating yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling that found a wedding cake baker is not required by law to provide services for a same-sex wedding ceremony, they were missing two very important aspects of that decision. One, that it very narrowly applies to this one case only–and two, it all but kills any chance that immigration reform will happen during the Trump Administration.
On the first point, the 7-2 majority found that it was not a matter of anti-discriminatory laws governing protections for same sex couples unfairly violate another person’s First Amendment rights to practice their religion. Instead, the judgment is based solely on comments from two members of one of the three committees that reviewed the baker’s case. Those commission members called the baker’s religious views “despicable pieces of rhetoric”–comparing them to beliefs that led to slavery and the Holocaust (Godwin’s Law!!). To the Justices, that represented unfair bias in the decision-making of the commission and allowed the baker’s objections to stand.
Those high-fiving each other over the ruling and thanking God for “delivering his justice in this case” should know that yesterday’s ruling does not mean that anyone who opposes same-sex marriage has free rein to deny services to gay people. So long as non-elected commissions and committees designated to hear and issue rulings upon such claims of discrimination don’t engage in the blatant bias displayed in this one case in Colorado, their decisions still hold the power of law.
So how does this affect immigration policy? Just review the speeches and twitter comments of President Trump in reference to people attempting to immigrate–legally and illegally–to this country. Any change designed to limit the numbers of immigrants from any country the President has already labeled as “s%#$les”–or that have large percentages of Muslim populations–will be met with a legal challenge that should be able to use the same arguments laid out in the gay wedding cake case.
Even if the immigration legislation was conceived by a member of Congress and approved through the legislative process before going to the President to sign, Trump has already laid the groundwork for arguments that its enforcement will be based on racial and religious bias–even if the President is the only one that may hold those beliefs. To borrow another legal phrase, by running his big mouth with no filter, President Trump has “poisoned the well” of immigration reform for the rest of his term.
As CNN learned when it mistakenly reported that the Supreme Court had struck down the Affordable Care Act because somebody only read the summary pages before going on the air with the “BREAKING NEWS!!!!”–it pays to read through entire Supreme Court rulings before declaring “victory”.
