SCOTUS Blog tells us that during this term the court’s most liberal justice, Sonya Sotomayor, was in the majority 70 percent of the time. But that includes cases interpreting federal statutes, where conservatives won some victories. These included Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (pdf), upholding Arizona’s election integrity law, and Pakdel v. San Francisco (pdf), helping landowners sue for compensation when government seizes their land. …When “progressives” dominated the Supreme Court, they engaged in what the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynahan (D-N.Y.) labeled “defining deviancy down.” Later Supreme Court majorities have continued, rather than reversed, the trend. For example, last term in Bostock v. Clayton County (pdf) the justices ruled that the category of “sex” in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was intended to mean men and women, also extended to persons displaying homosexual and transgender behavior. This massively extended the scope of the law, and reduced the right of free association—all without a congressional vote. …In Conclusion …The current court is not conservative. As this term’s constitutional cases show, the court applies, and sometimes extends, the anti-constitutional jurisprudence developed during its most liberal era.
