Never Thought I'd Say This, But We Could Use A Few More Gorsuches Right Now

There is a deeply rooted tradition of the U.S. interfering with Native folks. It's a bloody one too.

GorsuchWith Jesus’s six Disciples sitting on the Court doing what they do — impartially praying with litigants who won shortly after and likely gutting the power of Black voters with a J. Thomas-penned opinion that promises not to see color (colour rather — at least I think that’s how I think a person whose whole career is LARPing as a contemporary of the Founding Fathers™ should spell it), it is easy to get lost in the civil rights rollbacks that are to come. The curbing of the 1965 Voting Act was a polite slide into discrimination to come and Dobbs is the white bonnet on top to prepare you lady folk for the Handmaid’s Tale-sponsored drip that will be mailed to your house once the Court rules that the Establishment Clause means that states have to fund both Chick-Fil-A and whatever compelled religio-variant of Foreman Mills will be cranking out those stylish Marthas dresses. We can’t let these cases occlude awareness of the rollbacks Castro-Huerta threaten.

The snowflakes have done a pretty good PR job of defanging words that once meant something — slavery became being asked not to kill grandma and genocide became treating Loving v. Virginia like the promise of Cthulu to come. They’ve done such a good job that when you talk about actual instances of slavery, like prison labor, folks think you’re wearing a tinfoil hat. Say that people trying to force a 10-year-old rape victim to give birth or declining cancer treatments because it would give a religious minority the big sad is tyranny and you’ll get waved off as some oddball who needs to pay attention to the real threat toward our liberties — school doors.

The truth is that whatever cloak for protecting White Life the Supreme Court is trying to pass off as legitimate — right now, they’re going with “deeply rooted in the nation’s history and traditions” — will very likely have bad consequences for Blacks, Natives, Women, Jews… you know, basically everyone whose civil rights have not been deeply rooted in the nation’s history and traditions. Germans are probably fine; they’ve been here for so long that most people don’t even register that kindergarten is a German word. But for Native children who have parents that remember when they weren’t able to share their language in kindergarten, we ought to stay vigilant.

The nature of law is such that it lends itself to abstraction. It is easy to smile and sing of liberty and justice. But those credos don’t mean much if we’re silent when the pipelines come and sovereignty is swept aside piece by piece. Though unexpected, it seems like it clicked for Gorsuch. Will it click for you?


Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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