SCOTUS manages to crap on 20% of the Bill of Rights in one day

Posted on: Mon, 05/05/2014 - 17:58 By: Tom Swiss

In a rare two-fer, the Supreme Court managed to disregard two-tenths of the Bill of Rights in one day. It allowed the town of Greece, New York, to continue its unconstitutional establishment of religion via prayers at public meetings:

U.S. Supreme Court backs prayer before government meetings (Yahoo News)

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday gave local government officials across the United States more leeway to begin public meetings with a prayer, ruling that sectarian invocations do not automatically violate the U.S. Constitution. The court said on a 5-4 vote that the town of Greece in New York state did not violate the Constitution's ban on government endorsement of religion by allowing Christian prayers before monthly meetings.

and it allowed the state of New Jersey to continue to arbitrarily deny people's right to keep and bear arms. (I'm not opposed to setting objective standards for CCW permits for public safety purposes -- though those same standards must apply to cops -- but allowing the opinion of a local police chief as to whether someone has a "justifiable need" to determine whether someone has access to the tools of self-defense is unconscionable.)

Strict N.J. rule on gun permits stands, as Supreme Court refuses case (Yahoo News)

The challenged New Jersey statute prohibits state residents from obtaining a permit to carry a handgun in public unless they can demonstrate a “justifiable need” for such a weapon.

...

Under the New Jersey law, an application must be submitted to the local police chief. If the chief approves the application, it is then forwarded to a state judge, who also must approve the application.