text: Alphabet Soup- Build your own personalized projects with letters & numbers cut with the Hex N More & Super Sidekick rulers, all with no Y seams! The book includes full color directions for all letters of the alphabet, numbers 0 to 9, coloring pages, full size templates and eight projects that you can make with the personalized blocks of your choice. Projects include: Letter & Number Tiles for Banners & Frames, Monogram Pillow, Table Runner, Signs, a Baby Quilt & a Tote Bag. The possibilities of what you can make with Alphabet Soup are endless!
  
  NO. 83 SHORELINE MARKERS - "This tablet marks the shoreline of San Francisco Bay at the time of the discovery of gold in California, January 24, 1848. Map reproduced above delineates old shoreline."
  One plaque is in the sidewalk, NE corner of Bush and Market Sts, San Francisco. A second plaque is in the sidewalk on the SE corner of Bush and Market Sts.
  
  This blog is part of a series paying tribute to the life and legacy of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who passed away in September of 2020. To read the rest of the series, click here.
  In March 2014, I wrote an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times encouraging Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to retire at the end of that term of the Supreme Court.[1] I explained that it appeared likely that the Republicans would take the Senate in the November 2014 elections, and it was uncertain what would happen in the 2016 presidential election. I wrote that if Justice Ginsburg wanted someone with her values and views to take her place, she should step down and let President Barack Obama pick her successor when there was a Senate with a majority of Democrats.
  I received intense criticism for suggesting this, especially from those with whom I usually agree. Justice Ginsburg made clear she had no intention of retiring.
  It was a gamble that she would remain on the Court until there was a Democratic President to replace her. The country lost that gamble when she died on September 18, 2020. Eight days later, President Donald Trump nominated Seventh Circuit Judge Amy Coney Barrett to replace Justice Ginsburg. The Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings the week of October 12th and on October 26th, the Senate voted to confirm Barrett by a vote of 52-48. Every Democratic Senator voted against the confirmation, and every Republican Senator except Senator Susan Collins voted to confirm.
  Barrett had an extensive “paper trail” as a law professor based on the articles she wrote and the speeches she delivered. She also spent two years as a federal court of appeals judge, and her opinions and votes also provide an indication of her views. Simply put, Barrett was as conservative as any federal judge in the country. In 2018, when Justice Anthony Kennedy retired, conservatives pushed for her, not Brett Kavanaugh, to be nominated.[2] No one disputes that President Trump selected Barrett because of her very conservative views. Republican Missouri Senator Josh Hawley said of her, “For the first time in decades, religious conservatives had a strong voice in the process. And the result was the most openly pro-life, pro-faith nominee of my lifetime.”[3]
  In this essay, I discuss the likely effects of replacing Justice Ginsburg with Justice Barrett. Initially, I focus on areas where this shift is not likely to change the outcome of the decisions but will make the vote margin 6-3 rather than 5-4. After all, in so many crucial areas, Justice Ginsburg had been in dissent. I then look at the implications in areas where Justice Ginsburg was in the majority and more generally, the difficulty for the liberals in attracting two votes in any ideologically defined areas of law. Finally, I discuss the long-term implications of this shift on the Court.
  Justice Ginsburg, a very liberal justice, has been replaced by Justice Barrett, a very conservative justice. What is it likely to mean for the Court? I neither want to overstate nor underestimate its importance. Last term, October Term 2019, there were fourteen 5-4 decisions out of fifty-three cases with signed opinions. In ten of the fourteen, the majority was composed of Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh. In these ten cases, the result likely would have been 6-3 rather than 5-4 with Barrett rather than Ginsburg.
  In many important areas, there already were five votes for a significant conservative shift in the law and Barrett simply provides a sixth vote. For example, it seems highly likely that there already was a majority before Barrett’s confirmation to dramatically change the law with regard to affirmative action and to interpret the equal protection clause to require the government to be color-blind. In its last decision on affirmative action, Fisher v. University of Texas, in 2016, the Court, 4-3, upheld the University of Texas’s affirmative action program and reaffirmed that colleges and universities may use race as one factor in admissions decisions.[4] Justice Kennedy wrote for the Court, and his opinion was joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor. Justice Kagan recused herself, likely due to her involvement with the litigation as Solicitor General of the United States. Justice Alito wrote a dissent, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Thomas. It was the year that Justice Scalia died, and there were only eight justices.
  But the three Trump appointees, Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, together with the three dissenters from Fisher, create a clear majority to eliminate affirmative action. Chief Justice Roberts has been explicit in expressing this objective.[5] Over a decade ago, he declared that “[t]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”[6] Replacing Justice Ginsburg with Justice Barrett is not likely to change the outcome, just the vote count, when affirmative action comes back before the Supreme Court.
  Another area where Justice Barrett bolsters the conservative majority concerns the Constitution and religion. Before Barrett joined the Court, there already were five justices who rejected the idea of a wall separating church and state and who believe that the government violates the Establishment Clause only if it coerces religious participation.[7] In the last several years, there were Supreme Court decisions allowing overtly Christian prayers before town board meetings over a long period of time,[8] and permitting a forty-five-foot cross on public property at a busy intersection.[9] Justice Ginsburg dissented in these cases.
  At the same time, even with Justice Ginsburg on the Court, there also were five votes to provide much greater protection for free exercise of religion. The last term of the Court demonstrates this. Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue involved a Montana law that allowed those giving money to private school tuition organizations to receive up to a $150 tax credit.[10] In Montana, almost all of the private schools are religious. The Montana Supreme Court invalidated the tax credit law as violating the Montana state constitution which forbids direct or indirect government aid to religion.
  But the Supreme Court, 5-4, concluded that the Montana Supreme Court violated free exercise of religion in invalidating the Montana program. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion for the Court and said that the Montana constitution prevented parents from receiving aid if they sent their children to religious as opposed to secular private schools. This, the Court concluded, violated free exercise of religion. The Court said that the government must have a compelling reason and no other alternative any time it denies benefits to religious institutions that it allows to secular ones.
  The practical effect of this decision, which follows from the Court’s 2017 ruling in Trinity Lutheran of Columbia, Missouri v. Comer, is that whenever the government gives benefits to secular private schools it must provide them to religious schools unless it can be shown that doing so would violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.[11] Justice Ginsburg dissented in both of these cases.
  In Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey Beru, the Court held that a religious school cannot be held liable under employment discrimination laws for the choices it makes as to its teachers.[12] Earlier, in Hosanna-Tabor Lutheran Evangelical School v. EEOC (2012), the Court concluded that a fifth-grade teacher who had been ordained as a minister in the faith could not sue a religious school for employment discrimination. [13] The question was whether this case extended to teachers who were not ministers in the faith.
  In Our Lady of Guadalupe School, the Court, in a 7-2 decision, with Justice Alito writing for the majority, held that religious schools are exempt from employment discrimination laws for the choices they make with regard to their teachers. This means that religious schools are free to discriminate on the basis of race, sex, religion, sexual orientation, age, and disability in hiring and firing teachers. Again, Justice Ginsburg was in dissent. Replacing her with Justice Barrett would have changed the vote count, but not the outcome.
  Of the fourteen 5-4 decisions in October Term 2019, there were two where the majority was Roberts, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan. These likely would have come out differently if Barrett rather than Ginsburg were on the Court when they were decided.
  The DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival) program created by President Barack Obama program applies to individuals who were brought to the United States before the age of 16 and who were under the age of 31. The person must be in school or have graduated high school or be in the military or have been honorably discharged from it. The individual must not have a conviction for a felony or a serious misdemeanor. Pursuant to federal immigration law, these individuals are given deferred deportation status for a period of two years, which can be renewed. This means that they do not need to fear deportation during this time and are eligible for work permits. There are many Dreamers in my law school and on my campus.
  President Trump repealed this program as part of his strong anti-immigrant policies. In Department of Homeland Security v. University of California, the Supreme Court found, 5-4, that President Trump’s rescission of DACA violated the Administrative Procedures Act.[14] In an opinion by Chief Justice Roberts and joined by the liberal justices, the Court held that there was not an articulated, legitimate justification that considered alternatives when DACA was rescinded and put over 700,000 individuals in danger of deportation. If the case were decided this term with Barrett on the bench, it likely would have been 5-4 in favor of President Trump.
  The other case where Roberts joined with the four liberal justices powerfully shows an area where replacing Justice Ginsburg is likely to make a huge difference: abortion rights. In June Medical Services LLC v. Russo, the Court declared unconstitutional a Louisiana law that required a doctor to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles in order to perform an abortion.[15] In one sense, this was not remarkable because just four years earlier in Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt (2016), the Court struck down an identical Texas law. Justice Breyer wrote for the plurality in June Medical Services and said that the Louisiana law, like the Texas one, would do little to protect women’s health, but would significantly decrease access to abortion in that state.
  In Whole Women’s Health, Justice Kennedy was the fifth vote in the majority joining justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan.[16] What is most notable about June Medical Services is that Chief Justice Roberts was the fifth vote to invalidate the Louisiana law. Roberts concurred in the judgment and said that although he dissented and disagreed with the decision in Whole Women’s Health, he felt bound to follow precedent. This is the first time since joining the Court in 2005 that Roberts has voted to strike down an abortion restriction.
  But with Barrett and not Ginsburg, this would almost surely have come out 5-4 the other way to uphold the Louisiana law. Indeed, I predict that there are now five votes to overrule Roe v. Wade and constitutional protection for abortion.[17] Before Justice Ginsburg died, I would have said that I thought that there were four votes to overrule Roe: Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh. I thought Roberts likely would have voted to uphold most restrictions on abortion, but I was uncertain that he would be a fifth vote to overrule Roe, especially given his recent emphasis on stare decisis in June Medical Services. Now, though, I have little doubt that such a majority exists.
  More generally, replacing Ginsburg with Barrett makes the chance of liberal victories far less likely on the Supreme Court. With four liberal justices, they needed to attract only one conservative justice. Occasionally, as in the two cases last term, they could attract Chief Justice Roberts as a fifth vote. There were other notable instances of this in prior years, such as in the Court’s decisions upholding the Affordable Care Act,[18] and in preventing President Trump from adding a question about citizenship to the 2020 census.[19] And there have been occasional instances where another justice joined the liberals to create 5-4 majorities, such as Justice Gorsuch being the fifth vote in McGirt v. Oklahoma, holding that members of the Creek Nation in Oklahoma could not be tried in state court.[20]
  Without Justice Ginsburg, it will be much more difficult for Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan to be in the majority. It is not simply the challenge of getting two rather than one vote. It is that there are five staunch conservatives and one moderate conservative; getting two votes from this group for a liberal result will be daunting and, I fear, rare.
  The ideological composition of the current Court is the crowning achievement of a conservative political movement that began with Richard Nixon’s campaign against the Warren Court in 1969. By the early 1980s and the Reagan presidency, conservatives openly articulated the goal of gaining control of the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary. Republican Presidents became ever more careful to select justices with proven conservative ideologies and to pick individuals young enough to likely be on the Court for decades.