Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito spoke at a conference promoting religious liberty in Rome last week, marking his first public appearance since robbing Americans of our constitutionally protected right to safe and legal abortion.
Video has now been released of Alito’s speech and it’s despicable. Alito dives into what seems to be an attempt at a comedy routine, all at the expense of women and impregnatable people who now live in fear of being denied necessary medical care.
In his Rome speech on religious liberty, Justice Alito mocked “foreign leaders” who condemned his opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, including Boris Johnson, Macron, Trudeau, and … Prince Harry.
— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) July 28, 2022
Of Boris, Alito quipped: “He paid the price.” https://t.co/NPqalw0KA6 pic.twitter.com/xC0qguZ31n
“I had the honor this term of writing I think the only Supreme Court decision in the history of that institution that has been lambasted by a whole string of foreign leaders who felt perfectly fine commenting on American law,” Alito said, referencing the many foreign leaders who spoke out against the Dobbs decision. “One of these was former [UK] prime minister Boris Johnson. But he paid the price.”
Johnson announced his resignation recently over a string of scandals that, obviously, had nothing to do with Samuel Alito or his comments on a SCOTUS ruling.
Weirdly, Alito also took aim at Prince Harry, quipping sarcastically: “But what really wounded me—what really wounded me—was when the Duke of Sussex addressed the United Nations and seemed to compare the decision whose name may not be spoken with the Russian attack on Ukraine.”
Focusing on the issue of religious liberty, Alito said, “The problem that looms is not just indifference to religion, it’s not just ignorance about religion. There’s also growing hostility to religion, or at least the traditional religious beliefs that are contrary to the new moral code that is ascendant in some sectors.”
That is a ridiculous thing to say given that over the previous session, the Supreme Court repeatedly took a sledgehammer to separations of church and state, from multiple angles. Just in the last few months, it ruled that taxpayers should be forced to fund religious education, a high school football coach should be allowed to make players pray with him on the field after games, and—oh yeah—extreme Christian ideals should get to supersede our right to bodily autonomy. This isn’t about “hostility to religion,” it’s about not wanting a few unelected extremists to be able to turn the U.S. into a Christo-fascist nation.
Boy, Alito is the conservative’s conservative: in a position of near-total power, with zero accountability, getting everything he wants, but still aggrieved, still whining, and still taking every opportunity to get in nasty, graceless jabs at his opponents. What an asshole.
— David Roberts (@drvolts) July 29, 2022
The Supreme Court has long tried to convince us that it is an apolitical institution. That’s always been false but the current court really doesn’t seem to care about letting the facade drop. Clarence Thomas, once known for his perpetually zipped lips, has been giving aggressively partisan, full-on “us vs. them” speeches in recent months. (He’s also been seeing questions about his potential role in the far-right MAGA conspiracy theorist machinations of his wife Ginni.)
There is no question that this court is a strong arm of the political right. At least they’re not trying to hide it anymore.
What I actually like about stuff like this from Alito and co is that it proves once and for all – including to liberal institutionalists who still naively believe in Supreme Court impartiality – that these people are rightwing political actors and aren’t even trying to hide it. https://t.co/wCNCgHNmzd
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) July 28, 2022
(image: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
