(TheLibertyRevolution.com)- A denial of an emergency request issued by Republicans in North Carolina last March had some legal experts thinking that the Supreme Court may not end up being as conservative as they once though it might.
With the arrival of Amy Coney Barrett on the bench making the high court tilted 6-3 in favor of conservatives, the fear from liberals was that many heavy conservative policies and ideologies would be locked into law.
The March case didn’t show that, though, giving liberals everywhere some hope.
That was only a temporary victory, though. After all, it was only a denial of an emergency request the North Carolina GOP had filed. They wanted the Supreme Court to allow them to use a new electoral map they drew up that was invalidated by a lower court because they said it disadvantaged Democrats unlawfully.
In commenting on the denial of the emergency request, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a conservative who was nominated by former President Donald Trump, said the justices could take up the bigger legal dispute underlying the emergency request.
In June, the high court announced that it would hear that full case during its new term, one that began Monday. It was a reminder to liberals that the conservative-led majority on the Supreme Court is willing to take up potentially divisive issues, in an apparent aggressive move to the right.
The justices returned this week to court after their typical summer recess. It was a much-needed break after a term that saw the conservative court undo federal protections to abortion and expand gun rights, among other measures — two huge blows to liberal agendas.
In addition to the case involving electoral maps in North Carolina — that could have wide-reaching consequences across the country — the Supreme Court is set to take up a few other big cases.
One could make it easier for a business to refuse to serve members of the LGBT community based on their rights to free speech. One could curtail the effects of the federal Voting Rights Act. Another could put an end to affirmative action policies that universities and colleges currently use as a way to increase racial diversity on campus.
While not a foregone conclusion that the court would rule this way in each of these cases, it’s at least a possibility — one that many liberals are now very fearful of.
As one of conservative Justice Samuel Alito’s former law clerks, attorney Megan Wold, explained to Reuters recently:
“The justices are taking things that are causing real conflicts around the country. They’re taking issues even if there’s a lot of media attention, even if it’s a hot-button issue, and they’re going to decide it anyway.”
Among the three conservative justices nominated by Trump — Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett — Kavanaugh holds outsized influence over how far and how fast the court will shift to the right. That’s because, as the executive director of the Supreme Court Institute at the Georgetown University Law Center, Irv Gornstein, said, Kavanaugh is the “median justice” among them.
Kavanaugh isn’t as far right as Alito, Barrett, Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas. To his left are the three liberal justices — newly-installed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — as well as Chief Justice John Roberts, who’s technically a conservative.
