In a stunning move, so-called “conservative” Supreme Court Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and John Roberts sided with the leftists on the court to rule against a motion to block collectivist Maine Governor Janet Mills’ (D) mandate that all medical workers in the state (and many others termed “first responders”) be injected with an mRNA gene serum.
The dissenting three were Justices Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito, and their dissent is like reading a lightning bolt.
The case, entitled, “JOHN DOES 1–3, ET AL. v. JANET T. MILLS, GOVERNOR OF MAINE, ET AL.” was a move for injunctive relief to block Mills’ command that all healthcare workers take an mRNA injection by October 29 or be fired.
On October 19, left-wing Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer ruled against the first appearance of the filing for injunctive relief, passing it down to the First Circuit Court of Appeals. But, given the October 29 jab deadline, he “kindly” allowed for a reappearance before the full SCOTUS if the First Circuit ruled and the plaintiffs could get in an appeal, or if the First Circuit Court had not ruled by the 29th.
If that sounds lame, that’s because it is.
On October 27, a panel of the First Circuit ruled against the plaintiffs, and so they and their counsel, the pro-Christian Liberty Counsel, had to scramble and bring the case back to the SCOTUS for an “Extraordinary Injunctive Relief” ruling.
Thanks to Barrett, Kavanaugh, Roberts, and the liberals, they did not get the injunction, which they sought to allow them to continue working until the case could fully be heard by the SCOTUS months from now.
So, the plaintiffs, many of whom opposed the jab due to the abortion implications, will be out of work -- because nothing says “scary pandemic” more than firing medical workers when politicians tell us that hospitals could be overwhelmed with sick people.
And nothing says, “infringement of rights” and “unmerited on a practical basis” than Mills’ mandate of the jabs.
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Let’s see if we can lay out Janet Mills’ points and their validity.
She is commanding health care workers to take a gene-vector jab euphemistically called a “vaccine” that has not gone through the typical testing procedures of real vaccines. These jabs were created through taxation, created without reference to any enumerated power in the Constitution. Many of them can be tied to aborted fetuses, and they offer scant to nonexistent protection against infection. And she is ordering this for a virus with a survivability rate over 99 percent averaged across all cohorts, when some studies show naturally acquired immunity is better.
Even if Mills were right about the usefulness of the mRNA jabs…even if they had not been created by expropriating tax money from people…even if they could be disconnected from the moral abyss of abortion…even if they were fully protective and safe…Janet Mills has no more right to command people to get fluids injected into them than a rapist attacking a victim in an alley. Period.
And these plaintiffs (described in the dissenting SCOTUS opinion, sans names, as a doctor who owns a practice and eight healthcare workers) have every right to ask the SCOTUS for injunctive relief.
Yet Barrett barely used any ink to dismiss their call because she said that the overall case would not hold on “the merits.”
If you’re wondering how someone can say that a case would not succeed on the “merits” when it has not been allowed a full trial and hearing of evidence and arguments, you’re in good company. Enjoy fighting for your rights against government attack when your appeals and “their merits” are heard…by agents of the government – and you STILL have to pay them.
Barret wrote, in part:
When this Court is asked to grant extraordinary relief, it considers, among other things, whether the applicant ‘is likely to succeed on the merits.’ Nken v. Holder, 556 U. S. 418, 434 (2009). I understand this factor to encompass not only an assessment of the underlying merits but also a discretionary judgment about whether the Court should grant review in the case.
And she added:
Were the standard otherwise, applicants could use the emergency docket to force the Court to give a merits preview in cases that it would be unlikely to take—and to do so on a short fuse without benefit of full briefing and oral argument.
If you see the circular illogic of that, you have good eyes and a logical brain. How does one know if the court would be unlikely to take a case unless it looks at the so-called merits? And if it looks at the merits, why not issue a “merits preview?"
The truth that seems to come out when reading her opinion is that she just doesn’t think the case has merit, and she doesn’t want to address the arguments of merit.
Gorsuch, with Thomas and Alito joining, blew that childish nonsense to bits:
Maine has adopted a new regulation requiring certain healthcare workers to receive COVID–19 vaccines if they wish to keep their jobs. Unlike comparable rules in most other States, Maine’s rule contains no exemption for those whose sincerely held religious beliefs preclude them from accepting the vaccination. The applicants before us are a physician who operates a medical practice and eight other healthcare workers.
Right there, the case can end.
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As I have noted for MRCTV, the U.S. Constitution has in it what is called “The Contract Clause.”
The clause prohibits any state government from infringing on the fulfillment of an existing private contract. As a result, Mills cannot tell a doctor and his staff to change their working arrangements and the agreements they already have. Mills cannot tell patients with appointments that the parameters of their agreement are different, per HER order.
That’s called FASCISM, and is understood as such among economists and political philosophers, but, evidently, Mills doesn’t grasp that or seem to care.
Gorsuch adds:
(W)ith Maine’s new rule coming into effect, one of the applicants has already lost her job for refusing to betray her faith; another risks the imminent loss of his medical practice. The applicants ask us to enjoin further enforcement of Maine’s new rule as to them, at least until we can decide whether to accept their petition for certiorari. I would grant that relief.
And to justify his argument:
Maine does not dispute that its rule burdens the exercise of sincerely held religious beliefs. The applicants explain that receiving the COVID–19 vaccines violates their faith because of what they view as an impermissible connection between the vaccines and the cell lines of aborted fetuses. More specifically, they allege that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine required the use of abortion-related materials in its production, and that Moderna and Pfizer relied on aborted fetal cell lines to develop their vaccines. Complaint ¶¶61– 68. This much, the applicants say, violates foundational principles of their religious faith. For purposes of these proceedings, Maine has contested none of this.
This was a direct violation of the First Amendment, and Gorsuch, Thomas, and Alito understand this fact. To think that such an objection was “without merit” as Barrett stated, is linguistic fraud.
Gorsuch also noted that the Maine jab mandate DOES allow for “medical exemptions," and this purge of people who ask for religious exemptions is an unequal treatment of the plaintiffs’ request.
Again, he is correct.
There is a great deal more to read in this, and to understand on the First Amendment level. But the plaintiffs never made the argument on the Contract Clause level and never explored its ramifications tied to due process under the Fourteenth Amendment, which requires states to provide due process before punishment.
Perhaps because the U.S. government and the states have not really upheld the Contract Clause or noted that prior restraint on trade is a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, many people allow Mills to get away with her malfeasance.
But it is important to note that, for a multi-decade stretch in the U.S., state meddling with private businesses through aggressive tactics like licensing laws and “regulations” were shot down under what was called the Lochnerian standard, based on a 1905 Supreme Court ruling against the 1895 Bakeshop Act.
As Georgia State University’s ConLawPedia notes:
In a 5-4 decision, the court declared that the Bakeshop Act of 1895 violated the liberty of contract protected by the 14th amendment due process clause. This commenced the ‘Lochner era’, a period of court decisions that used substantive due process to interpret the 14th amendment.
Evidently, Amy Coney Barrett is unaware of, or does not care to consider, this ruling and the clear rules of her U.S. Constitution.
That’s a shame, because Mills and many other despotic tyrants in the U.S. are crushing the rights of people each day, and Barrett could do something to stop it, while upholding her so-called ruling document.