The Supreme Court allowed the lawsuit against the city to continue

Why the Supreme Court hasn’t given up on the notion of stare decisis, or why the judiciary should act boldly if it does, like in a case of Trans World Airlines

It took a group of justices to agree on a case, and it is not surprising that they found at least two of them as well. As if to remind justice Alito of the words he used, Mr. Groff filed a petition stating that Trans World Airlines v. Hardison was an egregious error.

The court is about to display bold activism during the moment. In the days when the justices professed respect for the doctrine of stare decisis, or adherence to precedent, the general understanding was that decisions that interpreted statutes should be harder to overturn than those that interpreted the Constitution. That may seem counterintuitive at first glance, but the reasoning went like this: Only the Supreme Court can issue a definitive constitutional interpretation, so only the court can revisit a constitutional precedent if the justices later perceive a problem with it. But Congress has the last word on the meaning of a federal law, so the court should stay its hand and let Congress repair an erroneous statutory interpretation.

The justices want to revisit the issue ofundue hardship on their own, and Congress has refused to revisit the meaning of it for decades. That was certainly the view expressed by Justices Gorsuch and Alito two years ago in dissent from the court’s decision not to hear an earlier case challenging the 1977 precedent. The two wrote that there was no barrier to the review and no one else to blame. It is time for the court to correct the mistake of its own making.

It may be just a coincidence, but the case that the justices decided to hear was brought by an evangelical Christian within the Protestant tradition. When the court doubtless rules for him later this term, the decision will not stand for a vindication of minority rights. It will instead signify the court’s complete identification with the movement in the country’s politics to elevate religion over all other elements of civil society.

The Supreme Court has the power to either help or hurt that movement. Religion is the lens through which the current majority views American society; as I have written, there is no other way to understand the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The endpoint of this project is not yet in view. Those of us not on board can’t see or understand what’s happening, and have to call the court out when additional steps are taken.

The Supreme Court was asked to intervene by the city of Ocala because they didn’t think the people had standing to bring the case. The city said the justices should reject the atheists’ argument for why they had been injured with the prayer ceremony, making it appropriate for courts to hear their case.

Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from the court’s decision not to take up the case. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote a statement but did not dissent from the court decision.

The request that the justices intervene was understandable, as the city expressed sympathy for its arguments. He saw no need for the Court to intervene at this time.

He wrote that most governmental actions offend someone. “But recourse for disagreement and offense does not lie in federal litigation.”

We are going to keep litigating the case. And we’ll raise – continue to raise the issue of standing and, of course, the Establishment Clause,” said Jay Sekulow, an attorney representing the city in the case.

“As opponents to the separation of religion and government continue their anti-democratic agenda in their attempts to obliterate the line between church and state, our work defending that separation becomes ever more important to ensure the religious freedom of all Americans,” said Sunil Panikkath, the group’s president.

Sekulow argued that Rojas and others do not have the legal right to bring the lawsuit. In court papers, he pointed to prior precedent, saying “psychological consequence presumably produced by observation of conduct with which one disagrees is insufficient to confer standing.”

But Monica Miller, a lawyer for Rojas, told the justices in court papers that the case “is about protecting prayer from government intrusion and the government from tyranny.” Miller said that “uniformed police personnel preached Christianity in a revivalist style to hundreds of citizens assembled at its behest for an hour in the heart of town.”