European here so it may not be clear to me, but I thought discriminating against religious movements like the church or trump supporters is still illegal. Correct?
It's complicated and the implications and scope are not entirely clear.
The court stated that creative works such as web design qualify as a form of speech, and that the first amendment does not allow the government to use law to force creators to speak any message — especially one with which they disagree. Essentially, any business with something that might be considered speech as its product or service may be free to discriminate against protected classes. We aren't sure how far this will extend in practice, but I expect many will test it.
In this case of this post, it depends on what is being sold.
Edit: wrote this before my coffee and thus neglected to point out what replies said: political affiliation is not a protected class in America and these signs are a bit misleading. See replies.
These signs are surely in response to the recent US Supreme Court ruling which allowed a website designer to refuse to make websites for same-sex weddings.
First, churches are religious; Trump supporters are political, and not religious. In the US, religion is a "protected class", but political alignment is not. But traditionally, political alignment or part affiliation is not discriminated against, even if it is federall legal to do so. (Various states may have their own clauses making political alignment a protected class in certain contexts, I'm not sure.) Also important to this discussion is that sexual preference is not a protected class federally, although I know that many states have enshrined protection for sexual preference in their own state laws.
If a case were brought about discrimination against Trump supporters because of these signs, in a jurisdiction where politics was not a protected class, I should expect that that case would fail, under current law. But just like SCOTUS is highly political right now, lower courts are, too, especially lower federal courts. It's anybody's guess as to whether a given judge would actually adhere to existing case law.
For the religious side of these signs, it gets interesting. As above, SCOTUS has ruled that a religious business owner can discriminate against customers based on the business owner's "religious disagreement" with a position held by the customer, presumably where that disagreement does not overlap with a protected class.
And there's the rub. Religion is a protected class, so it should be prohibited to discriminate against someone for their religious position. This, however, really tips the scales in favor of the religious: the religious business owner can discriminate on the basis of their own religious belief, but no one can discriminate against them because of that same religious belief. To me, this seems to tread very heavily on the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the US Constitution:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion ...
"Congress," in this context, has been interpreted by the courts to mean more generally "the government," at any level. The recent SCOTUS ruling gives a religious business owner the right to discriminate on the basis of their religion, but the right of other people to discriminate against that business owner on the exact same basis remains prohibited. Again, I am not a lawyer, but that seems to be clearly in opposition to the Establishment Clause.
All of this is interesting, but none of it is cause for concern.
What is cause for concern is the foundation of Obergefell, which made same sex marriage legal in all of the US. That basis is that the only difference between opposite sex and same sex marriages is the sex of one of the people in the couple. An argument I recall from the time was that prohibiting same sex marriage is unconstitutional, because to do so would be discriminating against someone on the basis of sex - which is a protected class. However, that does not appear to have been mentioned in the court's ruling.
No matter the reason, if it is unconstitutional to discriminate against same sex couples in the context of their getting married in the first place, it should stand to reason that it would be unconstitutional to discriminate against those same sex couples in any other context. Reason does not appear to be this court's strong suit; they have decided that the rights of religious people to discriminate on the basis of their personal and individual beliefs "trumps" (pun intended) the rights of people (religious or not) to not be discriminated against.
This is a "canary in a coal mine" to overturn all manner of previous courts' rulings: Obergefell (same sex marriage), Loving v Virginia (interracial marriage), Griswold (access to contraception), Lawrence v Texas (legalization of homosexuality), and certainly others.
Again, all of this seems to prioritize religion, which is in clear opposition of the Establishment Clause.
Political affiliation is not a protected class. You are permitted to discriminate based on politics. Religious affiliation is a protected class. You cannot discriminate solely on the basis of religion... Until now.
Conservatives love to discriminate, but their new rulings are also making it easier to discriminate against them.
Political affiliation is not protected, religious affiliation is. It’s true that the Right has been doing their level best to politicise their religious feelings into public life, so that barring Trump supporters effectively excludes Evangelicals and a majority of Catholics. This may not be their desired outcome, but perhaps they shouldn’t have tied their religious sentiment to political causes.
Religions are protected classes under the constitution, political groups are not. Free speech is also protected. The combination of these factors means that weather the shop keeper in OPs photo is breaking the law is entirely dependant on how you interpret the constitution, which is what the supreme court is supposed to do.
I think the shop in question could get in trouble over the church statement if they are not doing something “free speech” related, that is the only way the new ruling applies. Though what the free speech bit means is gonna depend on what the fedsoc six want, and they will steer it to the GOP always.
That’s the ridiculous thing about this entire case. This was a web designer and bigot who made websites for married couples. There were no homosexual couples asking the designer to make them a wedding website. She had one fake web request, and the Illegitimate Court said she had a right to discriminate against imaginary people.
This opens the floodgates to the rest of the bigots who want to protest the existence of people they hate by denying them services.
This case is bullshit, as you already stated. The problem is that the purpose of it is to lay the groundwork for medical professionals to deny service to "ungodly" people.
She*, and she stole a real (straight, married, with children) man's identity to use as hypothetical. The whole thing should be absolutely thrown out by a higher court - the court of the people.
Also, what happens if a scotus judge is assassinated? Like for real, what if a terrorist straight up murders one? If it's the president, the vice president takes over, and if them.... There's like a power list for that. But, what about a scotus? Does the standing president just get to pick one again? Or is there a list of rank? Or is it like monarchy where the judge has a written will or a say over who replaces them? Goddamn; why do we even have this shitty system.
I’m actually surprised, I thought the reason they were reluctant to endorse the so-called Independent State Legislature Theory because they didn’t want to erode their already fragile credibility in light of the seemingly endless corruption scandals. Then they go and basically ignore the entire concept of standing and make a ruling based on literally nothing! I think I need to reexamine how smart I think they are…
I’m actually surprised, I thought the reason they were reluctant to endorse the so-called Independent State Legislature Theory because they didn’t want to erode their already fragile credibility in light of the seemingly endless corruption scandals.
An argument I’ve seen to explain this decision was that it detracted from the judiciary’s influence/power by instead empowering state legislatures. Take that as you will, but I wouldn’t put it past them.
I guess? But like, if the Independent State Legislature of California decided to go along with the decision and become the People’s Republic of California then the Court could just say “no but not like that tho” and then ban California from doing that. They must still care somewhat about credibility/legitimacy, but I guess they just couldn’t help themselves when the chance to attack The Gays was available.
You don’t actually know that, though to be fair, an actually principled stance would be to refuse to serve all Republicans and not specifically Trump supporters. In some ways Trump is becoming the lesser evil of the Party when compared to some of the other monsters running against him.
Wtf are you talking about… Inflation is through the roof on everything since Biden came into office. Grocery bill has doubled, gas has doubled and my paycheck looks worse thanks to all of the money he’s sending to Ukraine so he can launder it back to himself and his buddies. As far as morals go any man who inappropriately touches and sniffs every young girl in arms reach doesn’t have any. Either you’re in severe denial of who Biden is or you know but refuse to accept it. We know who Trump is and we know he’s not perfect, but he helped out this country and ALL of its people more than any president since JFK.
this is absolutely wild. where do you live? we go to the “emagine” theater chain and have been able to get the front row “cuddle seats” for 12$. it sits two of us to one loveseat. bring a friend/partner or have a giant seat to yourself. i think emagine is only in a few states tho (USA).
I don’t believe so but I do think they will see continual decline after this. I’m envisioning more of a repeat of MySpace where everyone just loses interest.
They are falling for the same logical missteps that cable took. Losing customers = rate hikes. Pushing more away leading to more rate hikes. Instead they should be lowering costs and finding ways to encourage people to come back
Don’t forget the shitty product too. TV and movies are mind numbingly bad these days. Sure there’s the occasional good/great show or movie, but the vast majority are just shit. Add that to everything else you pointed out and it’s no wonder they’re in trouble and keep hiking the fees.
I live near an Alamo Drafthouse in Colorado and never went to movies more since they started doing $7/ticket Tuesdays in like February which I believe was only meant to be limited time originally but SO MANY people kept coming and getting food/drinks/popcorn/etc they’re still doing it. It’s very smart on their part that they may be losing money on the movie ticket but getting their staff paid more so it works out.
Yep, people like going to a show. It’s a simple equation of cost vs reward. As the other response mentioned, movies just aren’t worth 20 bucks plus 15 for food. They aren’t good enough. For 7, I would totally go.
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