Decided on narrow technical grounds to appease certain powerful institutions SCOTUS failed to debate the key Constitutional issues raised by these cases
The defining feature of the current crisis is that nearly all bourgeois institutions and so-called "experts" (the media, government, academia, science and medicine, to name a few) have failed in response to a problem that is relatively straightforward. This suggests that the scale of the corruption and intellectual rot in our society is so much greater than most of us thought. For the Supreme Court to then decide these matters in the interests of institutions over individuals, is to misunderstand the fundamental nature of this crisis entirely.
Every member of the Supreme Court was focused on what the (OSHA or CMS) authorizing statute said (or didn't say). But the Constitution trumps the statute every time and the Supreme Court did not discuss the Constitution at all. Which is bizarre given that their job is to interpret and apply the Constitution.
I just want to speak a bit about the consequences of this CMS mandate. We were fortunate. Our hospital granted us exemptions. But we never should have had to submit requests for exemptions. A simple no should have been sufficient.
We are devastated. We realize we have been relatively fortunate but our plans for the future are gone. At any moment, we can walk into work and be told to be injected or leave. We had wanted to buy land, eventually build a small retirement home. Who goes into the slightest debt when you have no job security?
Meanwhile we work. Someone has to. Our vaccinated and boosted colleagues are home with Covid. Our medical center has travel nurses everywhere. We are still short. The hospital is offering > $10k bonuses for signing up for a series of extra shifts. $20k sign on bonuses in multiple departments. Offers by the center to pay of school loans. On and on.
Please understand - I donāt want anyone to feel sorry for us. My fury at the medical community is boundless. This uncertainty, this destruction of our ability to plan and do, the utter vindictiveness by the public and by so very many in the health care community has shocked me and weighted down my heart.
I used to feel so comfortable in the hospital. Loved it. Loved taking care of patients, their families. Now it is foreign. Dark. And fake.
Anyway - I thank all of you for caring about these mandate issues. I apologize that the medical community didnāt defend the concept of informed consent. It was the foundation of everything we did. Our expertise was never supposed to make us authorities over the public. Healthcare was never supposed to become weaponized.
Jan 19, 2022Ā·edited Jan 19, 2022Liked by Toby Rogers
Excellent! Exactly! If SCOTUS affirmed our fundamental, God-given, inalienable right to sovereignty over our own body, aka "informed consent," then the ruling should be straight forward and "no finding of fact" is needed.
However, if SCOTUS was going to consider and even allow the violation of our fundamental right of body sovereignty, a violation of "informed consent," then there is an obligation of SCOTUS to determine the facts. And, those facts include:
1/ Why is the vax is necessary?
2/ Do alternative treaments exist?
3/ What is in vax?
4/ What studies show the vax is safe & effective?
5/ Is the vax FDA approved?
If I were an attorney litigating this, I would bring up the fundamental argument that renders the vax mandates unconstitutional, but also include ALL other arguments that show how EGREGIOUSLY these vax mandates are illegal. In their totality, these arguments conclude that sinister & corrupt motives are at play. Vax mandates are illegal:
a/ Basic right of sovereignty over our own body
b/ Violate laws on medical privacy & discrimination
c/ No justification, rona flu 99+% survival
d/ No FDA approved vax available for distribution
e/ Vax cause injury/death
f/ All above imply sinister motives of tyranny/dep0pulat!on
Goodness -- the points you make seem so obvious. And so glaringly absent, now that you name them--esp re no finding of facts or addressing of individual autonomy.
Love your energy and openness to learn from others! Not to mention that I always come away with so much great food for real thought and discernment rather than just argument to protect ego. Thank you and great work!!
Beautiful article and agree on all frontsā¦but Iām still puzzled. This is an experimental drug, nothing FDA approved is available to the public. Why wouldnāt they simply interpret existing consent laws under US Code Title 21, section 360? Itās just bizarre and a bit concerning. The court upheld a mandate for something completely experimental!
As has become obvious over the past few decades, the court does not decide issues such as these on their legal and constitutional merits. What they essentially do is wrap the majority policy preferences in legal mumble-jumble. They find ways to twist the law to produce the preferred outcome ā they legislate.
Itās inconceivable that bodily autonomy was nowhere mentioned because thatās the very basis of popular objection to forced medical ātreatmentsā.
Sadly, the Supreme Court is nothing more than yet another indicator that moral bankruptcy has sabotaged another civilization.
Jan 19, 2022Ā·edited Jan 19, 2022Liked by Toby Rogers
To be honest, I did not follow the whole event in detail, but the few quotes I heard from one of the justices left me speechless for how uneducated and ill-informed she was. Either they are deliberately ignorant or simply playing a role. I don't know which. Hard to imagine they have reached that level in this country and have such limited thinking ability and logic seems completely absent. Perhaps they are facing such heavy political pressure it prevents their brains from fully functioning.
Was individual sovereignty part of what was presented in the suit? What I mean, doesn't the court have to make it's decision based on what the two parties presented to them? To my knowledge, at no point did either the States nor the Feds present the Constitutional aspects of personal sovereignty.
Feds said: We have the right because we're the Feds.
States said: Feds can't trample on States' Rights.
If the Feds can't trump States' Rights on OSHA, they can't trump States' Rights on CMS, so I still don't understand how they could rightly justify their split decision.
Personal rights didn't come into question because that wasn't the issue that was brought forth. Having said that, as someone who was fired because the CMS Mandate was already in the pipeline and my exemption requests were denied - they absolutely SHOULD have been mentioned, by someone at some point. But since SCOTUS refused to even HEAR the personal rights cases from other states, it could be that's why the States that did file used the arguments they did.
Over all, though I loved this analysis and it gives one a lot to think about. Thank you for writing it up!
Beautiful summation of the key questionāthe constitutional issueāthe Court seems intent on avoiding, even though that is their one job. But this is a mischaracterization of the pro-lfe/Republican abortion dilemma: "...when it comes to abortion, Republicans want the state to have the power to make these decisions rather than individuals." The ONLY reason Republicans believe the state has any role or responsibility is because when it comes to abortion, there's more than simply "my body, my choice." Abortion involves the interests of two separate, individual human beings. Their interests are in conflict. And only one of them has a voice. The unborn child is alive and growing. Aborting that process obviously kills him or her.
Does the law and constitutional provision protecting an individual's right to their life include a human being not yet born at any point prior to birth? That moral questionānot power over women's bodies or sovereigntyāis what animates those who think Roe was a poorly reasoned and wrongly decided case.
Thanks for trying to puzzle through this, Toby. I too was frustrated with the Court's failure to, at least, grapple with Jacobson. (Even a single pointed comment to the effect that 'a lot has happened in the Court's jurisprudence since 1905' might have helped undermine the Covidians' unwarranted confidence in its current authority.) However, in my own modest experience litigating constitutional issues in the appellate courts, judges and justices are all too human and tend to rationalize backwards from the conclusion. Thus, as you say, the 3 Democrats buried their utterly incoherent positions - arrived at via hair-on-fire emotionalism - in feigned deference, while the rest hunkered down behind the relative jurisprudential safety of states rights & bureaucratic 'overreach.' Though the OSHA result came out right, this intellectual cowardice left a trail of future vulnerability.
When I was very young & naive, I thought that the Justices on the Supreme Court read the Constitution, knew the Constitution they took an oath to uphold, and made decisions based upon the tenets of the Constitution. Since G.W. "Dumya" Bush said it was just an old piece of paper, it seems that ALL the Justices have stopped referring to it and now go by what their political party and corporate owners tell them! I want to fire the entire court and start all over again!
For an imperfect article I thought it was well-written and made many salient points. It is disappointing that the textualists didnāt appear to consult the text. Gorsuchās Choices are the classical logical fallacy of false dichotomy, as you rightly point out. Thanks for this article - I think Iāll have to read it again tomorrow.
This was an especially great analysis. It was very disheartening to read the opinions and the glaring absence of anything addressing the constitutionality of the principle issue. Who decides indeed. Apparently not the individual.
When I was much younger I remember coming to the quiet realization that there is no such thing as an exact science. I think the belief (or want for a belief) in exact science is a fundamental problem that leads to deference to expertise, and politicians. It is often scary to make decisions for yourself, because in doing so you also assume the responsibility for any mistakes made therefrom. It is infinitely easier to let the state, the experts, the doctors, the scientists decide than to research, formulate, and make our own decisions. Our outsourcing of these decisions to governments and so-titled experts has been the long and slow erosion of individual freedom. It is appalling that the Supreme Court cannot seem to fathom making a decision that burdens them with the responsibility they are charged with assuming; they canāt even do their own jobs.
What is the solution though? Minds and ideas must change. And change is just as difficult as accountability.
The defining feature of the current crisis is that nearly all bourgeois institutions and so-called "experts" (the media, government, academia, science and medicine, to name a few) have failed in response to a problem that is relatively straightforward. This suggests that the scale of the corruption and intellectual rot in our society is so much greater than most of us thought. For the Supreme Court to then decide these matters in the interests of institutions over individuals, is to misunderstand the fundamental nature of this crisis entirely.
Every member of the Supreme Court was focused on what the (OSHA or CMS) authorizing statute said (or didn't say). But the Constitution trumps the statute every time and the Supreme Court did not discuss the Constitution at all. Which is bizarre given that their job is to interpret and apply the Constitution.
I am a nurse. My husband is in healthcare.
I just want to speak a bit about the consequences of this CMS mandate. We were fortunate. Our hospital granted us exemptions. But we never should have had to submit requests for exemptions. A simple no should have been sufficient.
We are devastated. We realize we have been relatively fortunate but our plans for the future are gone. At any moment, we can walk into work and be told to be injected or leave. We had wanted to buy land, eventually build a small retirement home. Who goes into the slightest debt when you have no job security?
Meanwhile we work. Someone has to. Our vaccinated and boosted colleagues are home with Covid. Our medical center has travel nurses everywhere. We are still short. The hospital is offering > $10k bonuses for signing up for a series of extra shifts. $20k sign on bonuses in multiple departments. Offers by the center to pay of school loans. On and on.
Please understand - I donāt want anyone to feel sorry for us. My fury at the medical community is boundless. This uncertainty, this destruction of our ability to plan and do, the utter vindictiveness by the public and by so very many in the health care community has shocked me and weighted down my heart.
I used to feel so comfortable in the hospital. Loved it. Loved taking care of patients, their families. Now it is foreign. Dark. And fake.
Anyway - I thank all of you for caring about these mandate issues. I apologize that the medical community didnāt defend the concept of informed consent. It was the foundation of everything we did. Our expertise was never supposed to make us authorities over the public. Healthcare was never supposed to become weaponized.
Excellent! Exactly! If SCOTUS affirmed our fundamental, God-given, inalienable right to sovereignty over our own body, aka "informed consent," then the ruling should be straight forward and "no finding of fact" is needed.
However, if SCOTUS was going to consider and even allow the violation of our fundamental right of body sovereignty, a violation of "informed consent," then there is an obligation of SCOTUS to determine the facts. And, those facts include:
1/ Why is the vax is necessary?
2/ Do alternative treaments exist?
3/ What is in vax?
4/ What studies show the vax is safe & effective?
5/ Is the vax FDA approved?
If I were an attorney litigating this, I would bring up the fundamental argument that renders the vax mandates unconstitutional, but also include ALL other arguments that show how EGREGIOUSLY these vax mandates are illegal. In their totality, these arguments conclude that sinister & corrupt motives are at play. Vax mandates are illegal:
a/ Basic right of sovereignty over our own body
b/ Violate laws on medical privacy & discrimination
c/ No justification, rona flu 99+% survival
d/ No FDA approved vax available for distribution
e/ Vax cause injury/death
f/ All above imply sinister motives of tyranny/dep0pulat!on
Goodness -- the points you make seem so obvious. And so glaringly absent, now that you name them--esp re no finding of facts or addressing of individual autonomy.
Love your energy and openness to learn from others! Not to mention that I always come away with so much great food for real thought and discernment rather than just argument to protect ego. Thank you and great work!!
Beautiful article and agree on all frontsā¦but Iām still puzzled. This is an experimental drug, nothing FDA approved is available to the public. Why wouldnāt they simply interpret existing consent laws under US Code Title 21, section 360? Itās just bizarre and a bit concerning. The court upheld a mandate for something completely experimental!
As has become obvious over the past few decades, the court does not decide issues such as these on their legal and constitutional merits. What they essentially do is wrap the majority policy preferences in legal mumble-jumble. They find ways to twist the law to produce the preferred outcome ā they legislate.
Itās inconceivable that bodily autonomy was nowhere mentioned because thatās the very basis of popular objection to forced medical ātreatmentsā.
Sadly, the Supreme Court is nothing more than yet another indicator that moral bankruptcy has sabotaged another civilization.
The judges that voted to deprive health care workers of their most basic rights should be allowed to go to Nuremberg gallows in their robes
Yeah it's bizarre how the elephant in the room - bodily sovereignty - just was not discussed.
To be honest, I did not follow the whole event in detail, but the few quotes I heard from one of the justices left me speechless for how uneducated and ill-informed she was. Either they are deliberately ignorant or simply playing a role. I don't know which. Hard to imagine they have reached that level in this country and have such limited thinking ability and logic seems completely absent. Perhaps they are facing such heavy political pressure it prevents their brains from fully functioning.
Was individual sovereignty part of what was presented in the suit? What I mean, doesn't the court have to make it's decision based on what the two parties presented to them? To my knowledge, at no point did either the States nor the Feds present the Constitutional aspects of personal sovereignty.
Feds said: We have the right because we're the Feds.
States said: Feds can't trample on States' Rights.
If the Feds can't trump States' Rights on OSHA, they can't trump States' Rights on CMS, so I still don't understand how they could rightly justify their split decision.
Personal rights didn't come into question because that wasn't the issue that was brought forth. Having said that, as someone who was fired because the CMS Mandate was already in the pipeline and my exemption requests were denied - they absolutely SHOULD have been mentioned, by someone at some point. But since SCOTUS refused to even HEAR the personal rights cases from other states, it could be that's why the States that did file used the arguments they did.
Over all, though I loved this analysis and it gives one a lot to think about. Thank you for writing it up!
Beautiful summation of the key questionāthe constitutional issueāthe Court seems intent on avoiding, even though that is their one job. But this is a mischaracterization of the pro-lfe/Republican abortion dilemma: "...when it comes to abortion, Republicans want the state to have the power to make these decisions rather than individuals." The ONLY reason Republicans believe the state has any role or responsibility is because when it comes to abortion, there's more than simply "my body, my choice." Abortion involves the interests of two separate, individual human beings. Their interests are in conflict. And only one of them has a voice. The unborn child is alive and growing. Aborting that process obviously kills him or her.
Does the law and constitutional provision protecting an individual's right to their life include a human being not yet born at any point prior to birth? That moral questionānot power over women's bodies or sovereigntyāis what animates those who think Roe was a poorly reasoned and wrongly decided case.
Thanks for trying to puzzle through this, Toby. I too was frustrated with the Court's failure to, at least, grapple with Jacobson. (Even a single pointed comment to the effect that 'a lot has happened in the Court's jurisprudence since 1905' might have helped undermine the Covidians' unwarranted confidence in its current authority.) However, in my own modest experience litigating constitutional issues in the appellate courts, judges and justices are all too human and tend to rationalize backwards from the conclusion. Thus, as you say, the 3 Democrats buried their utterly incoherent positions - arrived at via hair-on-fire emotionalism - in feigned deference, while the rest hunkered down behind the relative jurisprudential safety of states rights & bureaucratic 'overreach.' Though the OSHA result came out right, this intellectual cowardice left a trail of future vulnerability.
When I was very young & naive, I thought that the Justices on the Supreme Court read the Constitution, knew the Constitution they took an oath to uphold, and made decisions based upon the tenets of the Constitution. Since G.W. "Dumya" Bush said it was just an old piece of paper, it seems that ALL the Justices have stopped referring to it and now go by what their political party and corporate owners tell them! I want to fire the entire court and start all over again!
For an imperfect article I thought it was well-written and made many salient points. It is disappointing that the textualists didnāt appear to consult the text. Gorsuchās Choices are the classical logical fallacy of false dichotomy, as you rightly point out. Thanks for this article - I think Iāll have to read it again tomorrow.
This was an especially great analysis. It was very disheartening to read the opinions and the glaring absence of anything addressing the constitutionality of the principle issue. Who decides indeed. Apparently not the individual.
When I was much younger I remember coming to the quiet realization that there is no such thing as an exact science. I think the belief (or want for a belief) in exact science is a fundamental problem that leads to deference to expertise, and politicians. It is often scary to make decisions for yourself, because in doing so you also assume the responsibility for any mistakes made therefrom. It is infinitely easier to let the state, the experts, the doctors, the scientists decide than to research, formulate, and make our own decisions. Our outsourcing of these decisions to governments and so-titled experts has been the long and slow erosion of individual freedom. It is appalling that the Supreme Court cannot seem to fathom making a decision that burdens them with the responsibility they are charged with assuming; they canāt even do their own jobs.
What is the solution though? Minds and ideas must change. And change is just as difficult as accountability.