ParentsOf4
Well-Known Member
@seascape mentioned O'Hare Truck Service v. City of Northlake (1996).I have to agree. It's not so much a slam dunk for the state with a Trump appointee
as many here think there is. Conservatives in general are concerned about government overreach and/or the weaponization of government against its enemies as they see coming from the left at the Federal level. Now here is an issue that Disney is claiming is happening to them at the state level, although they filed in federal court over mostly 1st amendment issues.
It's one thing to reconstitute the RCID with a Gov-appointed board. Quite another to sue over development agreements that were still legal at the time, complain that they didn't notice meetings properly noticed (not Disney fault), and sign legislation targeting monorail inspections.
Any concern over Disney "wokeness" is best left to the consumer. Witness Bud Light and Target as examples. Disney's bottom line appears down at the moment in entertainment and parks. A coincidence? Probably not. But government getting involved in targeting a company is something completely different.
Yes, the majority opinion ruled for O'Hare Truck Service.
But this ignores the dissenting opinion from Associate Justices Scalia (perhaps the ultimate conservative judge) and Thomas (who still sits on the Supreme Court). In his dissent, Scalia (joined by Thomas) wrote:
There can be no dispute that, like rewarding one's allies, the correlative act of refusing to reward one's opponents - and at bottom both of today's cases involve exactly that - is an American political tradition as old as the Republic.
...
Government favors those who agree with its political views, and disfavors those who disagree, every day - in where it builds its public works, in the kinds of taxes it imposes and collects, in its regulatory prescriptions, in the design of its grant and benefit programs - in a million ways, including the letting of contracts for government business.
...
The First Amendment guarantees that you and I can say and believe whatever we like (subject to a few tradition-based exceptions, such as obscenity and "fighting words") without going to jail or being fined. What it ought [original emphasis] to guarantee beyond that is not at all the simple question the Court assumes. The ability to discourage eccentric views through the mild means that have historically been employed, and that the Court has now set its face against, may well be important to social cohesion. To take an uncomfortable example from real life: An organization (I shall call it the White Aryan Supremacist Party, though that was not the organization involved in the actual incident I have in mind) is undoubtedly entitled, under the Constitution, to maintain and propagate racist and antisemitic views. But when the Department of Housing and Urban Development lets out contracts to private security forces to maintain law and order in units of public housing, must it really treat this bidder the same as all others? Or may it determine that the views of this organization are not political views that it wishes to "subsidize" with public funds, nor political views that it wishes to hold up as an exemplar of the law to the residents of public housing?
...
Favoritism such as this happens all the time in American political life, and no one has ever thought that it violated - of all things - the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
The current Supreme Court has already overturned multiple prior Supreme Court rulings, including several that were considered "settled law".
Scalia's rulings are practically Bible to many in the Federalist Society. The judge now assigned to the Disney case (Winsor) has been a member of the Federalist Society since 2005.
The change in judges should make anyone cheering for Disney nervous.
Last edited: