Editor:
Outraged by the Supreme Courts 5-4 decision upholding the Affordable Care Act, Republicans are calling the ruling unconstitutional and Justice Roberts a traitor. I thought it was the prerogative of the Supreme Court to determine the constitutionality of laws. This singular power of the court was established when our government was first being formed.
Such Republican outrage would have been justified over the courts 5-4 ruling granting personhood to corporations for the purpose of making unlimited, undisclosed contributions to political action groups. But this one they cheered. If any Supreme Court decision was ever unconstitutional, this one is. It repudiates the very principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence and given specificity in the various provisions of the Constitution. It violates the equal protection of the laws doctrine of the 14th Amendment by shrinking the worth of one persons vote. Corporate entities are not persons. This Citizens United ruling carries with it the same political stench that permeated Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842) upholding the fugitive slave law of 1792, the Dred Scott case of 1857, and Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) reaffirming the discriminatory doctrine of separate but equal. It was 60 years before the Warren court overturned the separate but equal doctrine, ruling that it violated the 14th Amendment (ratified 1868).
For some time now, Republicans have raised a fuss about activist judges, who in their view are making law instead of interpreting law. They apply the term only to judges who render decisions unfavorable to the privileged groups republicans are beholden to. Their narrow partisan outlook prevents them from seeing the blatantly political decisions by conservative judges like those Supreme Court justices who vote to grant personhood to corporations and thus make money more than ever the major determinant in the outcome of elections. Presently, House Republicans are mounting a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act, even though the great majority of Americans favor the act. Instead of this enterprise in futility, they should be drafting jobs bills to rescue the millions of unemployed Americans. Shame on them!
Denton May
Cortez
