2018-06-26
by
Eleanor Goldfield
I will be among the last to defend the Supreme Court. An archaic, authoritarian council that has no accountability to the people they lord over is hardly a democratic institution. Indeed, it’s more in line with the creepy oppressiveness represented by the nine wraiths, or Nazgul, in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. But I digress.
Today, Tuesday June 26th, was a dark day thanks to SCOTUS. In a one-two punch to both the soul and the ovaries, the court upheld Trump’s travel (cough, Muslim) ban and sided with religious zealots in California with regards to women’s reproductive rights. Give us your tired, something something, separation of church and state, something something else. Eh, whatever.
And while both the existence and the majority of decisions handed down by SCOTUS are corporatocratic, bigoted and supportive of the white supremacist, patriarchal system – last week, they actually took a progressive step.
In what Chip Gibbons of Defending Rights & Dissent called an important but narrow decision, the court ruled that cops need a warrant in order to search a phone’s location data, rather than simply getting that information from a third party that stores that data.
For a deeper dive into the precedent this sets and what it means for the ongoing fight against the surveillance state, check out the video below!