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Suprak the Stud posted...

In less good Supreme Court news

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/17/politics/supreme-court-fulton/index.html

I havent read arguments for this one but I have no clue how it was unanimous

The Court's rationale seems to be as follows (skimmed, I didn't read all 110 pages this time lol):

Because the city's foster care contract allows for exceptions "at the sole discretion" of the Commissioner wrt to the requirement that the agency provide services to prospective foster parents wrt sexual orientation the city is therefore no longer able to deny relgious exceptions through that mechanism. Basically, in allowing for the possibility of exceptions to the rule, they cannot deny them against a claim of "religious hardship." (Alito points out in his concurrence in judgment that the city can merely close this loophole and claim they've fixed the problem but the case will likely run its way back up to them - more on this later)

Also, the broader non-discriminatory act of the city doesn't apply because, and I'm summarizing here, "qualifying as a foster parent is pretty complicated and obtuse" and the act only specifies things readily available to the public.

The more potentially alarming thing here is in the concurring opinions. Yeah, they somehow got the three liberals to agree in the end result here but you have a 1990 SCOTUS case - Employment v Smith - underpinning much of this which in summary says that a law that is neutral and applies to everyone equally (i.e. isn't targeting religion specifically) does not run afoul of religious free exercise.

Barrett, joined by Kavanaugh and Breyer, argues that Smith should probably be overturned but doesn't have a good replacement idea ready and says "Well, we've got a unanimous ruling here, so overturning Smith or not is moot so yeah thanks for reading my TED Talk."

Alito, joined by Thomas and Gorsuch, says "We should have overturned Smith and regrettably my colleagues refused to do so."

So there's up to 6 votes that want to upend the prevailing court opinion on this that protects these non-discrimination laws. If you want to put on your conspiracy hat I guess you could say Kagan and Sotomayor joined in the judgment to make this unanimous to placate the 3 softer anti-Smith votes and prevent them from very probably overturning the prior case law in its entirety. But eh who knows.

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xp1337: Don't you wish there was a spell-checker that told you when you a word out?