ON PRISONS Recent Supreme Court decisions make our Union less perfect

By ANTHONY EHLERS

In the past year we have witnessed the Supreme Court change the very fabric of our country.

Last year, the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade and stripped women of their bodily autonomy. This year, we have seen the courts strip away affirmative action, allow businesses to discriminate against the LGBTQ+ community, and deny millions of Americans (most of whom are Black and Brown people) relief from usurious student-loan debt.

This Court has abrogated its responsibility to the most vulnerable in our society. Instead, its right-wing majority chooses to protect white Republican evangelicals. The court is packed with members of the far-right movement who are using their position to push their political beliefs onto the American people.

According to the Pew Research Center, in 2022 a full 61 percent of American adults polled were in favor of abortion being legal in all or most cases. Yet here we are, with abortion access curtailed in accordance with a minority opinion.

We are being held hostage by a Supreme Court that is out of touch. We are supposed to have what the Court calls “evolving standards of decency,” which means the Court should be attuned to the morals of the times. Yet, this Court seems to be regressing back to the

1950s, where women were kept in their place, Black people couldn’t eat at the same restaurants or attend the same schools as whites, and LGBTQ+ people were relegated to the shadows.

This is not the will of the American people.

The Supreme Court was so eager to make a ruling attacking LGBTQ+ people that it ignored over 150 years of tradition and precedent in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis. They allowed the lawsuit to proceed without standing.

With the help of a conservative Christian law group, Lorie Smith challenged Colorado’s antidiscrimination laws, claiming they infringed on her right to refuse graphic-design services to gay and lesbian couples on religious grounds. Never mind that Smith hadn’t been impacted by the state’s antidiscrimination laws at all, since there was no actual website, no real customer, and no actual harm. In short, Smith had no dog in the fight. The Court went ahead anyway, asserting its power in an unprecedented manner.

Let’s call it what it really is: a victory for those who would discriminate against marginalized people. The First Amendment is being used as a shield for bigotry and as a weapon, a bludgeon to force small-minded religious views on others.

For many years, white racists in the south also used religion to justify bigotry. They claimed segregation was ordained by the Bible, and the Bible called for separation of the races. My mother can remember a time when there were “Whites Only” signs posted in many public places in the south. We are not even a generation removed from such treatment of Black people in this country.

A rmative action was an attempt to level the playing field somewhat. Now, in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the Court has overturned that precedent as well. All the while, justices tout equal protection under the law. It’s disingenuous and ignorant. Equal protection requires that we look at race.

How can it be that in this century, instead of coming to grips with the nation’s past, and working to build a better country, we are heading back toward Jim Crow? How is it a free speech right to discriminate? This court has shrunk back from its duty to protect people, and instead allows people to be treated as second-class citizens.

Justice Clarence Thomas’s reference to our “colorblind” Constitution in his concurring opinion in Students is ridiculous. How, precisely, is the constitution colorblind when it stated that Black people were only threefifths of a person? Justice Thomas’s hypocrisy knows no bounds.

So-called colorblindness allows lawmakers and the courts to argue that the absence of racism in the law means Black people cannot claim racial harm. The politics of “colorblindness” is used to shroud not only racism, but poverty as well. This is what Justice Thomas is signaling: he is resurrecting the old code words and dog whistles of segregationists.

The fact is, the economic problems of Black America cannot be understood without taking account of racism. Black Americans have been and remain underemployed, unemployed, poorly housed, and poorly schooled because of racist policies. Decades of disinvestment and underresourcing have left African Americans surrounded by substandard housing, poor job options, and underfunded schools, not to mention the school-to-prison pipeline and terroristic policing. Only a massive financial investment can begin to repair this.

In a 1967 speech to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Now, in order to answer the question, ‘Where do we go from here?’ . . . we must fi rst honestly recognize where we are now.”

Until those on the right, including those on the Supreme Court, stop trying to take us back to the days before the civil rights movement, and we actually recognize that systemic and structural racism exists in this country, we will never be able to answer the question that Dr. King posed.

In his 1965 commencement address to Howard University, then-president Lyndon Johnson said, “But freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: ‘Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please.’ You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.”

President Johnson’s words are as true today as they were then. Clarence Thomas and the other far-right Justices would do well to revisit them. Johnson’s words acknowledge structural inequality and underscore the need for a rmative action.

President Johnson continued, “It is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.” The Supreme Court is taking away that ability.

The Court has become politicized, with unelected o cials making themselves the arbiters of policy, acting as a super-legislature, and exercising more power than any elected o cial in government.

We are witnessing a larger pattern of removing rights from marginalized communities. Justice Thomas wants to revisit gay marriage; right-wing operatives are attacking LGBTQ+ rights in many states, and these cases are sure to go to the Supreme Court. There is a war being waged on how people live their own lives, and we see it in some of the broader issues like “Don’t Say Gay” bills, bans on books and drag performers, and attacks on trans people. This so-called war against wokeness (whatever that means) is really a cover to take away more rights from already marginalized people.

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union,” starts the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. These recent SCOTUS decisions make our union less perfect. v

Anthony Ehlers is a writer incarcerated at Stateville Correctional Center. Find out more about in carcerated journalists at the Prison Journalism Project (prisonjournalismproject.org).

@prisonjourn

Attention

ATTENTION ALL HCV PROGRAM PARTICIPANTS, PUBLIC HOUSING RESIDENTS, & RAD PBV RESIDENTS

If you listed Lawndale Complex or the Lawndale Community Area on your Housing Choice Survey as a place you would like to permanently live, please read the information listed below.

Proposed Updates to the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Administrative (Admin) Plan and to the Public Housing Admissions and Continued Occupancy Policy (ACOP)

The Draft Tenant Selection Plan (TSP) and Lease for Ogden Commons, a mixed-income community is available for review. The Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) has worked with its development partner to develop a Draft TSP and Lease for use at the private development known as Ogden Commons (previous site of the Lawndale Complex). The units within this development will be used as replacement public housing units for Lawndale Complex and the Lawndale Community area. If you listed Lawndale Complex/Lawndale Community area on your Housing Choice Survey as a place you want to live or maintain a right to return to new CHA replacement housing per the Relocation Rights Contract (RRC), you can comment on the Draft TSP and Lease during the 30-day public comment period.

The Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) is releasing proposed updates to the FY2024 HCV Admin Plan & Public Housing ACOP for public comment.

The 30-day public comment period begins July 20 and ends August 21, 2023. While CHA encourages and welcomes all program participants, residents, and the community-at-large to review the proposed updates to the FY2024 HCV Admin Plan & Public Housing ACOP you are not required to view or attend the public comment hearings to submit comments. Your presence or absence at the hearing does not a ect your housing.

The 30-day public comment period will be held for CHA to receive written comments starting April 7 through May 7, 2021. The Tenant Selection Plans (TSP) will be available on CHA’s website beginning April 7, 2021.

CHA will host two public comment hearings—one livestream and one in-person:

Due to COVID-19, CHA has suspended all in person public meetings and instead, CHA will livestream one public comment hearing. The date and time of the public comment livestream hearing is as follows:

• Livestream: Tue, July 25, 2023, at 11:00 am, www.thecha.org

• In-person: Mon, Aug 7, 2023, at 6:00 pm, FIC 4859 S Wabash

(Sign and Spanish interpreters will be present.)

Tue, April 20, 10:00am: https://youtu.be/QBGG47BHXMg

We ask that comments pertaining to the TSP & Lease be submitted electronically to commentontheplan@thecha.org at least 48-hours prior to the comment hearing. Comments will be read live during the time outlined above. Comments received after the hearing will be added to the comment grid.

A Summary and the full Proposed FY2024 HCV Admin Plan & Public Housing ACOP will be available on CHA’s website at www.thecha.org beginning July 20. You may also mail or fax comments for the Proposed FY2024 HCV Admin Plan & Public Housing ACOP. All comments must be postmarked and received by August 21, 2023.

Mail, E-mail or Fax comments to: Chicago Housing Authority

If you require translation services, please read the attached notice or check with your property manager for more details. Do not mail comments to CHA.

E-mail or Fax comments to: commentontheplan@thecha.org

Fax 312. 913.7837

Attention: Proposed FY2024 HCV Admin Plan & Public Housing ACOP 60 E. Van Buren Street, 12th Floor Chicago, IL 60605

Email: commentontheplan@thecha.org | Fax: 312. 913.7837

Ifyouhaveaquestionaboutthisnotice,pleasecalltheCHAat312.913-7300.

Torequestareasonableaccommodation,pleasecall312.913.7062.

If you have a question about this notice, please call 312.913-7300. To request a reasonable accommodation, please call 312.913.7062.

TTY 866.331.3603

TTY 866.331.3603