Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! The October Term 2020 of FantasySCOTUS is now in session

Predict all of the biggest cases at the Supreme Court

I am honored to open up the 11th Season of FantasySCOTUS. I launched the site back in 2009 when I was still clerking. Now, a decade later, thousands of Court Watchers have made their predictions. Sign up today at FantasySCOTUS.net to predict the outcome of all the blockbusters this term, including Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, California v. Texas (standing and severability), and Jones v. Mississippi. Plus many more to come. At least for the start of the term, only eight Justices will be on the bench.

 

Comments

[Sarcastr0]

Thomas (joined by Alito) wrote a helluva rant taking direct aim at Obergefell and suggesting that SCOTUS must overturn the right to marriage equality in order to protect free exercise.

You want to delegitimize the SCOTUS and make people OK with court packing, I can't think of a more direct way to do it than that kind of short-sighted re-fighting the culture war nonsense.

[Dilan Esper]

Thomas says a lot of dumb stuff. You can do that when you don't care about counting to 5.

There are many things that SCOTUS gets wrong. But promoting weird Thomas dissents as if they pose some sort of threat does not accurately portray what the Court has been doing.

[Sarcastr0]

Yeah, thanks for the perspective. They'll have 3 at max for this.

[nystateofmind]

I would not be so sure. Pavan v. Smith was 6-3 and 2 of the Justices in the majority (Kennedy and Ginsburg) are no longer on the Supreme Court. That being said, Obergfell could be read narrowly that the majority only held that the civil benefits of marriage could not be denied because the two spouses happened to be of the same sex. Having a particular vendor is not a civil benefit of marriage. That is why I am not sure I see the parade of horribles that the dissent focused on or you see in Justice Thomas's temper tantrum. Even in a case like Masterpiece Cakeshop you do not have to rely on Obergfell to create a bright line rule. The most important question, as I see it, was whether the patron was asking for something generally available off your shelf with no customization or did he/she/they ask for something more. According to the record there appears some disagreement about what exactly was requested of the baker. If it was the latter I see that as a clear implication of the baker's First Amendment rights and he/she can't be compelled to do that. However, with generally available products you can't limit who can have access to them and for what purpose.