Public attention is rightly focused on the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade—which established the constitutional right to abortion. This decision has not only shredded a basic right to be treated as full human beings that women and society overall have counted on for 50 years. It has served as a spear point for tearing open a whole different way that society will now be governed. This decision goes with a much broader and rapidly unfolding assault on basic constitutional rights and the imposition of fascist rule.

By the end of the Supreme Court’s 2021-22 session, it had issued full decisions in 58 cases. Many of these decisions will have very bad consequences immediately, and have even more damaging significance as legal precedents and indicators, greasing a path to full-out fascist theocracy.

Taking advantage of their 6-3 “super majority,” Christian fascists and other extreme right-wing “justices” have moved aggressively to break down the barriers separating church and state (and specifically to empower right-wing Christian fanatics); to create more space for violent, gun-wielding reactionaries to terrorize oppressed and progressive people, including in major urban centers; and to cripple the ability of regulatory agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and others to regulate or restrain the unfettered pursuit of profit by U.S. capitalist enterprise, even if they make the planet unlivable in the process.

David Cole, National Legal Director of the ACLU, summed up the session with these words: “This time, the doomsayers got it exactly right, as the court traded caution for raw power.”

But this rampant fascist extremism on the Court also holds the potential for big problems for the Court and for the system as a whole. The Court is a mainstay of the whole system, providing a cover of “legitimacy” to this oppressive society and to the violence the authorities (of both parties) wield to defend it. What happens when that legitimacy starts to erode… or even evaporate?

On a number of crucial questions—abortion, regulations to combat global warming, and gun control—the Court’s decisions were wildly at odds with public sentiment. The abortion ruling has given rise to massive protests involving tens of thousands, and public confidence in the Court has dropped to 25 percent—the lowest in history!

Tara Leigh Grove, a University of Texas professor who studies the Court, noted that “When you lose enough institutional legitimacy, people just aren’t going to obey your decisions. We’re not close to that point yet. But we could get to that point.”

Below we go into a few of the most important issues and cases.

Greasing the Path to Christian Theocracy

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution says that the government “shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.” Known as the “establishment clause,” this means that while people have the right to their private religious beliefs and practices, these cannot in any way be endorsed, funded or promoted by governmental authority.

In several cases this term, the Supreme Court tore huge holes in this “establishment clause.”

First, they voted 6-3 in Carson v. Makin to compel the state of Maine to subsidize tuition at religious schools for students in rural areas where there are no public schools nearby. Maine’s position was that it would subsidize tuition for private secular (non-religious) schools, which perform the same basic function as public schools—providing children with a basic education.¹

But as a result of this decision, Maine will be forced to subsidize Temple Academy, which the New York Times reports “expects its teachers ‘to integrate biblical principles with their teaching in every subject’ and teaches students ‘to spread the word of Christianity.’” Maine will now also be supporting Bangor Christian Schools, which “seeks to develop ‘within each student a Christian worldview and Christian philosophy of life.’” According to a dissenting opinion, both schools “have admissions policies that allow them to deny enrollment to students based on gender, gender identity, sexual orientation and religion, and both schools require their teachers to be born-again Christians.”

In a nutshell, the state of Maine is now legally required to support the indoctrination of children into the worldview of a religion—Christianity; this is legally in direct opposition to the principle of the separation of religion and the state.

A week later, the Court voted 6-3 to support an assistant football coach at a public school in Washington state who left his job because he was not allowed to conduct post-game prayer on the 50-yard line (Kennedy v. Bremerton School District).

In 1962, the Supreme Court barred prayer in school, even if it was supposedly “voluntary,” because—obviously—there is enormous pressure on children to join in when their teacher and classmates are praying, including potential ostracism or worse if they do not. The Court has reaffirmed this position many times since 1962.

In the Kennedy case, the coach deceitfully argued in lower courts that he was just quietly murmuring a few words of thanks to “God,” and not imposing his religious views on others. Then it came out (through video) that at times coach Kennedy would gather players from his own and other teams, as well as news media, as he knelt in prayer (or as he put it, gave God “the glory… on the field of battle”).

Ultimately, even one of the fascist “justices” acknowledged that there is no way that a team coach—who holds considerable power over, as well as influence on, student athletes—can do something like this without it having a coercive impact. And this truth was further driven home by the fact that school officials who insisted he stop this practice “received threats and hate mail” and in one case were confronted by someone screaming obscenities.

Fascist “justice” Gorsuch declared that the Court rejects “the view that the only acceptable government role models for students are those who eschew any visible religious expression.” Translation: It is “acceptable” for “governmental role models” to actively proselytize their religion to children they are responsible for—the very thing the establishment clause forbids.

These two decisions immediately affect only a few school districts, but they are establishing dangerous precedents, and everyone knows it. In fact, the day after the Kennedy ruling, a right-wing legal organization (America First Legal) called on the Supreme Court to look for the opportunity to “disincorporate” the establishment clause and “allow states ‘to decide whether and to what extent they will establish religion within their borders.’” (Emphasis added) And here is what Colorado congresswoman Lauren Boebert proclaimed: “The church is supposed to direct the government, the government is not supposed to direct the church. I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk.”

Unleashing Reactionary Gun Violence

In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the Court struck down a New York state law that placed strict limits on people’s right to carry guns outside their homes, establishing a broad right for Americans to arm themselves, and inviting the overturning of similar laws in five other states with a total population of around 70 million people.

The “logic” of this decision clearly exposes the hypocrisy of the fascists on the Court. In overturning Roe v. Wade, they insisted that under the legal theory or “originalism,” only those rights that are specifically listed in the 14th Amendment (passed in 1868) really exist, and since abortion isn’t mentioned, it isn’t valid. But when it comes to the Second Amendment (the “right to bear arms,” approved in 1791), they take an “expansive” view. “Arms” to people back then meant primitive rifles, daggers, and bayonets. But the Court has no problem claiming that today it covers AR-15s that can tear a dozen people to shreds in seconds, or silencers, or body armor, all of which were simply unimaginable when the Second Amendment was written. This is again a case of the fascists having their objectives, and then coming up with the necessary “legal logic” to justify them.

There are two important things to understand about this ruling. The first is that its objective effect will be to empower and unleash the already heavily armed fascist forces—both actual militias and individual reactionaries—to attack and terrorize the oppressed. The proliferation of “open carry” laws at the state level has already created a situation in which heavily armed fascists are a standard feature at right-wing protests like the anti-Covid shutdown protests at state capitols in 2020; at school board meetings discussing curriculum issues; at public health board meetings, etc. They also stalked, and in some cases murdered people during the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests in 2020.

And there have also been many individual racists and misogynists who have carried out horrific massacres of women, gay people, Latinos, Black people, Jews, and others that the fascists consider to be sub-human and/or enemies. And now we see “Proud Boys” and other militia types showing up armed at LGBTQ Pride events, at events featuring men in drag, and so on. This is meant to create an extremely chilling effect on people who do not support and/or “fit in” with this system or with the fascist direction things are heading.

This Supreme Court ruling is going to dramatically loosen the already minimal restraints on these fascists, particularly in major urban centers that are currently both the “strong points” of oppressed, progressive and more radical forces in in society, and the main places with (until now) significant laws against publicly carrying and displaying weapons.

The second thing is that no matter what “the law says” about the right to bear arms in any given jurisdiction, as Bob Avakian points out in “Something Terrible, OR Something Truly Emancipating,” the reality is “that for white supremacists and fascists generally the Second Amendment, the ‘right to bear arms,’ has been regularly upheld and given the backing of the law and the courts, and the support of the police and other institutions of the state; while for Black people, other oppressed people, and generally those opposing the oppression and injustice of this system, the ‘right to bear arms,’ even in self-defense, has been actively opposed and suppressed.”

Think about it: Philando Castille was killed in Minnesota as he calmly explained to a cop that he was legally in possession of a registered firearm. Alton Sterling was murdered by cops in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, because he had a pistol in his pocket—even though Louisiana is an open-carry state. Twelve-year-old Tamir Rice was shot dead by cops for having a toy gun… in his waistband.

Yet the teenage white vigilante Kyle Rittenhouse brought an AR-15 to a BLM protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, shot two unarmed men to death, and then shot a third, claiming justification because that man had a pistol! Then he was allowed to walk calmly through police lines. And none of the above murders resulted in any criminal punishment.

This Supreme Court decision is going to lead to a further escalation of reactionary gun violence, while the authorities will continue to criminalize and violently repress any “right to bear arms” on the part of the oppressed.

“Unchaining” Capitalism-Imperialism from Any Restraint in the Ruthless Quest for Profit and Power

In West Virginia vs. Environmental Protection Agency (the EPA), the Court struck down EPA regulations aimed at reducing carbon emissions which are a major cause of global warming/climate change. The case was brought by West Virginia—a state in which the coal industry exerts massive political and economic power. The state’s attorney general hailed the ruling, saying that “E.P.A. can no longer … exercise broad regulatory power that would radically transform the nation’s energy grid and force states to fundamentally shift their energy portfolios away from coal-fired generation.” For the fascists, this represents a major victory in further removing any restrictions to the unrestrained rule of capital, to its “dominion”—domination and rule over—and ruthless exploitation of the planet and its environment. 

We cover this ruling in more depth here, including its far-reaching implications—not only for cutting greenhouse gas emissions and other horrific effects to the environment, but to the role and limits of “government regulation” overall. With this ruling, they have significantly restricted the scope of government agency regulations—from public safety to health and environment, saying that if agencies are going to issue “highly consequential” (i.e., significant and effective) regulations, then the power to do that has to have been specifically spelled out by Congress.

This would leave agencies permanently years or decades behind the regulations needed, as new technologies and problems emerge. And due to the intense splits in the ruling class, Congress is completely paralyzed. So this “major questions” doctrine is just a cover for radically restricting all but the most elementary regulation of industry, agriculture, public health, transportation systems, etc. This is part of the overall fascist agenda of what they see as “curtailing the power of the administrative state.”

Coming Next Year?

These reactionary decisions and the precedents they establish will be reverberating through society, and the courts, from here on out. But not content with that, the fascists on the Court have already stated that they are just getting started. In his Opinion supporting the overturning of Roe, Clarence Thomas called for challenging the legality of birth control, of same-sex marriage, and of gay people having sex! In addition, the Court has announced its intent to hear cases about whether a web designer can refuse to work on projects involving gay weddings; a challenge to affirmative action in higher education; and perhaps most important, a case that could result in empowering state legislatures to ignore their state’s popular vote in a presidential election and give the state’s electoral votes to the losing candidate.

The fascist takeover of the Court and its rabid rush to turn the clock back a century or more, is rocking society, and causing millions of people to ask profound questions about the nature of the U.S. and whether this is actually a society they want to live in, or bequeath to their children. As such, this is a concentrated expression of the two possibilities posed by Bob Avakian in Something Terrible, Or Something Truly Emancipating. It is true that what is most horrifically staring us in the face (and we should not look away) is the “Something Terrible” part. But the other possibility, the possibility for the emergence of a revolutionary people, a revolutionary seizure of power, and the forging of a wholly different and vastly better society is also becoming discernible, and needs to be seized on, and developed, with the urgency commensurate with the stakes, and with the speed of events, wielding the political tools forged by the revolutionary leadership.

To fail to read and engage this analysis, particularly in this rapidly unfolding situation, is unconscionable.