I'll also add that, after reading/watching news on the financial indiscretions of certain SCOTUS judges, I feel a bit dubious about any ruling coming out of that court. It's not too hard to imagine that kind of "pampering" of judges happens on both side of the political divide. I'd be completely unsurprised to find out at least one liberal judge had a liberal fundraiser taking them on million dollar eco-tours, for example. I do think it's significant that the (in my opinion) compromised judges currently being scrutinized are both conservatives in a majority conservative court, btu I wouldn't be surprised to find the problem isn't isolated to conservative judges.
Before I criticize the rulings I didn't like, I do want to say that I appreciated the ruling(s) against racially motivated redistricting/gerrymandering. Is it sad that it's 2023 and we still have people who want to minimize the voices and votes of others due to race? Of course. It's outright sickening. But since we don't live in a timeline where humans treat other humans like....you know...humans, it's good to have the court at least protect voters rights.
Now on to everything else (i.e.; the massively disappointing rulings).
1) The ruling against Affirmative Action with regards to university application processes was massively disappointing. My hope is that, similar to the fallout from the equally disappointing overturning of Roe V. Wade, states will find ways to keep race as a consideration in the application process. The harsh truth is that universities, by and large, are not true meritocracies. They never were, they aren't now, and "race neutrality" (doesn't exist) isn't going to usher in a world where race plays no role in education and access to education (college or K-12). Anyone who thinks university (or K-12) is a meritocracy has either only attended schools with one race, is a racist, or dropped out in 3rd grade and never applied to a university. .
I'm going to add more to this particular case later, but for now...I'll leave it at the above.
2) Ruling against the $400 billion student loan debt relief (for COVID era student loans) was a total mistake. It's especially hypocritical is businesses who received relief for their COVID era loans aren't asked to pay those loans back. The hit of the student debt relief is (sort of) difficult for the taxpayer, sure. But what's achieved if loans are getting defaulted on anyway? Not only does the debt remain unpaid, but the cost of processing all the debt (and cost of possible legal expenditures that go with defaulting on loans) also gets eaten by tax payers. This is just another step in the anti-intellectualization of America. We're becoming a stupider and stupider country. We're already at a point where people just go to college to get any old degree so they can get any old job and become mindless consumers paying off debt instead of becoming innovators in any certain field. . I'm writing another post about work, school, and how we view those things in the modern context, and I'll probably end up talking about student loans in that post.
3) The rolling back of LGBTQ+ rights was absolutely disgusting. It's disgusting in it's own right, because it's just absolutely wrong to discriminate against someone for finding affection with another consenting adult. Hiding behind your deity's skirts instead of just saying "I refuse your business because I'm a bigot" is even more disgusting.
I also have a problem with this ruling because it opens the doors, by way of setting precedent, for other forms of discrimination. If you can legally openly discriminate against people based on sexual preference, legal racial discrimination (for example) probably isn't far behind. And what's to stop someone with anti-war sentiments from refusing services to armed forces veterans if they can find the right "free speech" argument to validate the refusal? What's to stop a misogynist from saying "My freedom of speech rights protect my religious view that women can't work, therefore I will not hire any women"? It's frightening.
This ruling is terrible in both the immediate, anti-LGBTQ context and in the precedent it sets for the (probably inevitable) future cases of a similar nature that will/may arise (ordering of will & may intentional based on likelihood).
I believe this is a really frightening time for America, and I believe this is sort of the crux of the American experiment; do we right ourselves and embrace a modern world of acceptance and equality where we all work together to better society, or do we fall off the edge because we're too scared to let go of the comfort blanket of outdated and outmoded ideals? I'll be honest, I'm not very optimistic. If America continues going down this route of ehtno-religious based intolerance and non-libertarian conservatism (free markets alone do not a libertarian make), we might be ok for a few generations, but we will begin a downward slide. And the steepness (and associated velocity) of that slide will be exponential. We're already turning politics into reality teevee. Sassy (but substance-less) personalities and elimination rounds...sounds like American politics to me. You'll forgive me if the general trend towards politics-as-peak-trash-teevee, and the way we eat it up, doesn't fill me with optimism.