I don’t know what’s in her heart. And I cannot read her mind. But the reporting on that is fake news. I will copy here much of a prior post about it. I’m a lawyer and I’ve read it.
Remember that good judges address only arguments brought to them. In our system, they do not go fishing for their own (incidentally that’s why Sullivan is so wrong on Flynn).
So the ruling is limited to the arguments made. The plaintiffs did not make broad arguments that lockdowns are unconstitutional. The Pennsylvania case that held them unconstitutional was based on a different argument—a line of argument not made at all in the IL case.
The narrow question in the IL case was whether the fact that religious activity was carved out for PREFERENTIAL treatment under the lockdown orders renders the rest of the orders unconstitutional. That is, the complaint was about UNEQUAL treatment of religion and other speech.
The court rejected that argument. First of all the court stated it was afraid that holding the orders wrongful for being unequal (religion better than other speech activity) would mean the IL governor could just fix the problem by further restricting religion, instead of looser rules for everything else. The judges hated that idea.
But more importantly the court simply held that religion DOES enjoy special status under the Constitution, and therefore there is nothing wrong about treating it better than general “speech.”
Direct quote: “ A careful look at the Supreme Court’s Religion Clause cases, coupled with the fact that EO43 is designed to give greater leeway to the exercise of religion, convinces us that the speech that accompanies religious exercise has a privileged position under the First Amendment, and that EO43 permissibly accommodates religious activities.”
Thanks for posting this. Based on this, it does sound like she has a constitutional jurisprudence and was ruling based on the specific arguments of the case. The more I think about it, the more comfortable I feel about the pick. How many times have we seen insane rulings that take into account items not even mentioned in the case arguments?
I don’t know what’s in her heart. And I cannot read her mind. But the reporting on that is fake news. I will copy here much of a prior post about it. I’m a lawyer and I’ve read it.
Remember that good judges address only arguments brought to them. In our system, they do not go fishing for their own (incidentally that’s why Sullivan is so wrong on Flynn).
So the ruling is limited to the arguments made. The plaintiffs did not make broad arguments that lockdowns are unconstitutional. The Pennsylvania case that held them unconstitutional was based on a different argument—a line of argument not made at all in the IL case.
The narrow question in the IL case was whether the fact that religious activity was carved out for PREFERENTIAL treatment under the lockdown orders renders the rest of the orders unconstitutional. That is, the complaint was about UNEQUAL treatment of religion and other speech.
The court rejected that argument. First of all the court stated it was afraid that holding the orders wrongful for being unequal (religion better than other speech activity) would mean the IL governor could just fix the problem by further restricting religion, instead of looser rules for everything else. The judges hated that idea.
But more importantly the court simply held that religion DOES enjoy special status under the Constitution, and therefore there is nothing wrong about treating it better than general “speech.”
Direct quote: “ A careful look at the Supreme Court’s Religion Clause cases, coupled with the fact that EO43 is designed to give greater leeway to the exercise of religion, convinces us that the speech that accompanies religious exercise has a privileged position under the First Amendment, and that EO43 permissibly accommodates religious activities.”
Thanks for posting this. Based on this, it does sound like she has a constitutional jurisprudence and was ruling based on the specific arguments of the case. The more I think about it, the more comfortable I feel about the pick. How many times have we seen insane rulings that take into account items not even mentioned in the case arguments?