Alito’s Plan to Repeal the 20th Century
If the conservative justice’s draft opinion is adopted by the Court, key advances of the past hundred years could be rolled back.
By Adam Serwer

The right-wing majority’s radical repurposing of the so-called shadow docket to set precedents and nullify constitutional rights rather than simply deal with time-sensitive matters foreshadowed this outcome. In the Court’s religious-freedom decisions related to the coronavirus pandemic, and in its choice last year to allow Texas to nullify the right to an abortion, you can see the outlines of this new legal regime: On the grounds that it constitutes a form of religious discrimination, conservatives will be able to claim an exemption from any generally applicable rule they do not wish to follow, while imposing their own religious and ideological views on those who do not share them. Although the right-wing justices present this rule in the language of constitutionalism, they are simply imposing their ideological and cultural preferences on the rest of the country. Roe itself left those opposed to abortion free not to have one; striking it down allows states to prevent those seeking abortions from obtaining them.

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