For three decades, Anthony Kennedy was America's moral arbiter. He alone got to decide what was legal and what was illegal. Abortion, sodomy, gay marriage, and so on. In Dobbs, the dissenters waxed nostalgia about Justice Kennedy, along with Justices O'Connor and Souter, as "judges of wisdom."
In 303 Creative, Justice Sotomayor's dissent expressed a similar yearning for the Hercules's of the day.
Around the country, there has been a backlash to the movement for liberty and equality for gender and sexual minorities. New forms of inclusion have been met with reactionary exclusion. This is heartbreaking. Sadly, it is also familiar. When the civil rights and women's rights movements sought equality in public life, some public establishments refused. Some even claimed, based on sincere religious beliefs, constitutional rights to discriminate. The brave Justices who once sat on this Court decisively rejected those claims. Now the Court faces a similar test.
