Court DA

1NC – UQ
Liberal rulings were lip service – they have no effect on his long-term goals
to gut reproductive rights
Economist 7/4/20 [The Economist. "Justice John Roberts joins the Supreme Court’s liberal
wing in some key rulings." https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/07/04/justice-john-
roberts-joins-the-supreme-courts-liberal-wing-in-some-key-rulings]
For a third time in as many weeks John Roberts , America’s conservative chief justice, has sided with his liberal
colleagues in a big case. After his votes on lgbt rights and immigrant protections, on June 29th he
was the linchpin in a 5-4 decision striking down a law that would have limited abortion access in
Louisiana. This brought cheers from liberals and howls from conservatives. Josh Hawley, a senator from Missouri and Chief Justice
Roberts’s former clerk, called June Medical Services v Russo, the abortion decision, a “disaster” and accused his old boss (without
naming him) of “perpetuat[ing] bad precedent while barely bothering to explain why.”
The precedent Mr Hawley deplores is Whole Woman’s Health v Hellerstedt, a decision in 2016 rejecting a Texas law that purported
Roberts is no
to protect women’s health while regulating about half of the state’s abortion clinics out of existence. Chief Justice
fan of Whole Woman’s Health, either: he was among the dissenting trio of justices in the 5-3
ruling. This week in June Medical he repeated his disdain for the earlier decision, but explained that
stare decisis —Latin for “let the decision stand”—required the court “to treat like cases alike”. Since the
Louisiana requirement that abortion providers must secure admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles was “nearly identical” to
the doomed Texas rule, and imposed a similarly “substantial obstacle” to abortion access, the outcome should be the same. The
court must not upend its own judgment a mere four years on.
the chief justice proceeded to undercut the very precedent he had
Yet, with an eye on future cases,
relied upon to reject Louisiana’s law. Whole Woman’s Health said judges should consider both the
benefits and burdens of a regulation. But weighing the two against each other, Chief Justice Roberts
wrote, is a job for the legislature, not the courts. If a regulation does not make it exceedingly
hard for women to procure abortions it would probably pass constitutional muster, no matter
how slight or illusory the benefit . This may be read as an invitation to Republican-run states
to cook up restrictive abortion laws as long as they can be pitched as not too burdensome
—and are not replicas of a law the court has already rejected.
A more radical opportunity to turn the tide on abortion lurks in the chief justice’s opinion. He emphasises that June Medical is not
about Roe v Wade, the ruling in 1973 that protects a woman’s right to abortion. Though Justice Clarence Thomas, in dissent,
charged that the court’s abortion jurisprudence “remains in a state of utter entropy” and ought to be thrown out in its entirety, Chief
Justice Robertsdemurred. “Neither party has asked us to reassess the constitutional validity ” of
the abortion right itself, he wrote. If plaintiffs come asking—as they are in Georgia and Alabama,
where near-blanket abortion bans are working their way through the courts—he might be
willing to reconsider Roe.
There are loopholes in the other liberal victories, too. Though Chief Justice Roberts joined the left
side of the bench (and Justice Neil Gorsuch) to bar workplace bias against gay and trans people, the
majority opinion leaves open whether employers with religious objections to hiring lgbt workers might, in some circumstances, have
And in the case halting President Donald Trump’s cancellation of daca (Deferred Action for
a licence to discriminate.
Childhood Arrivals), the chief justice noted that the merits of ending Barack Obama’s
programme were not the question. Mr Trump could still kill daca if he would only follow basic
standards of administrative law. The chief justice sent the president the same message a year
ago when he refused to bless the administration’s flubbed quest to add a citizenship question to
the 2020 census, but hinted it could try again.
Two other decisions penned by Chief Justice Roberts this week also came out 5-4—but with the
liberals in their more familiar position as dissenters . The first of these was Seila Law v Consumer
Financial Protection Bureau ( cfpb ), a challenge to the design of a federal agency set up after the
recession of 2007-09. The majority did not break up the cfpb but, dampening its independence,
gave the president the power to fire its director whenever he pleases. Then, on June 30th, the
chief justice anchored Espinoza v Montana Department of Revenue, requiring any state that
funds secular private schools to fund religious schools, too. Both rulings, cloaked as inevitable
outgrowths of earlier cases, were in fact profound shifts in the law.
Acting boldly through superficially small steps —and getting credit for aisle-crossing while
giving liberals at best temporary solace—seems to be panning out well for Chief Justice
Roberts . He is cultivating a reputation for non-partisanship at the Supreme Court while
advancing primarily conservative goals . And he’s winning: of the 53 cases decided so far this term, he has been in
the majority in 52. ■7
 2NC – AT: Court Cap Wrong – Roberts
Court capital is uniquely true for Roberts on reproductive rights issues
Barnes 6/30/20 [Robert Barnes has been a Washington Post reporter and editor since 1987.
He joined The Post to cover Maryland politics, and he has served in various editing positions,
including metropolitan editor and national political editor. "With abortion ruling, Roberts
reasserts his role and Supreme Court’s independence."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/john-roberts-supreme-court-abortion-
ruling/2020/06/29/64dd30a6-ba3b-11ea-80b9-40ece9a701dc_story.html]
Roberts has sought to defend the court’s independence , and his votes often seem intended to
keep the court from moving too quickly to the right , even if that is where he is more
comfortable . “I find it hard to explain his body of work without some theory that he’s playing a
long political game ,” said Daniel Epps, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis. “He wants to push
the law to the right, but is extremely careful not to do things that will make the court too much
of a political focal point , and thus hurt its ability to shape the law longer-term.” It seems
beyond dispute that Roberts is now the justice in the center, the role that retired justice Anthony M.
Kennedy once played. And, like Kennedy, Roberts is finding the middle can be a lonely place. No other justice joined his
opinion Monday, and his position brought little praise. Liberals searched his words with suspicion; conservatives expressed
exasperation. “What a disappointment Chief Justice John Roberts has turned out to be,” said Penny Vance, president of the
conservative Concerned Women for America.Louise Melling, deputy legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union, praised the
outcome but indicated it was a small favor. “How perverse that things are such we dance over the court not
overruling a precedent from just four years ago,” she said in a tweet. That precedent, Roberts wrote, is what
shaped his position in the current case. “The legal doctrine of stare decisis requires us, absent special
circumstances, to treat like cases alike,” Roberts wrote in concurring with the decision. “The Louisiana law
imposes a burden on access to abortion just as severe as that imposed by the Texas law, for
the same reasons. Therefore Louisiana’s law cannot stand under our precedents .”
 2NC – AT: Thumper – Top
His previous rulings are cynical and legalistic, not progressive – he will
lurch right when the opportunity presents itself
Donegan 6/30/20 [Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist. "Despite the supreme court
abortion ruling, John Roberts has not become a liberal."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/30/supreme-court-abortion-ruling-john-
roberts]
But Roberts is no ally to the liberal wing of the court , and those who wish to see the far
right’s social and legal agenda kept at bay by the judiciary should be wary of him . Like other
times he has joined the liberal wing of the court to uphold some decent decision – notably in the
recent Daca case – Roberts often finds himself begrudgingly on the right side of history
because the conservative legal thinking that he would prefer to side with is often sloppily and
stupidly executed.
In the Daca case, Roberts said that the Trump administration was wrong to remove protections from
Dreamers not because Dreamers had a legal or constitutional claim to dignity and due process, but because the Trump
administration had been too incompetent to properly justify the action on the bureaucratic
level. Likewise, in June Medical Services, Roberts finds himself siding with women’s rights not because he
believes in them – in his concurrence, he was careful to point out that he still thinks Whole Women’s
Health was wrongly decided – but because the lawsuit itself represented a cynical , lazy and
bad-faith attempt on the part of conservatives to exploit the new composition of the court.
His objections to the right wing’s cruelty are not based on principle , but on procedure . Once
conservatives adopt a more competent and rigorous strategy in their attacks on civil liberties, we
can expect Roberts to take their side.

The court is still on balance very conservative

Bonventre 6/21/20 [Vincent Martin Bonventre is a frequent lecturer and widely quoted
commentator on courts, judges, and public law. "It's Roberts' (somewhat less right-wing) Court
(Part 1)." http://www.newyorkcourtwatcher.com/2020/06/its-roberts-somewhat-less-right-
wing.html]
Sure, let's not go overboard . Despite some recent decisions welcomed by political liberals, the
Supreme Court has hardly turned liberal . Indeed, most decisions of the past year --let alone of
the last few decades--have been those favored by political conservatives . Whether in civil
rights and liberties , the rights of the accused, employment and labor law , war and foreign
affairs, and other crucial areas that define the nation's principles, the Court has largely rendered
rulings that conservative Republican politicians would reach if up for a vote in their elected
representative chambers .

Roberts is still willing to enforce conservatism – recent liberal rulings are

administrative legal questions, not politics
Robert Barnes and Seung Min Kim 6/19/20
Trump has no patience for legal intricacies. The Supreme Court is all about them.; The
Washington Post; https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/daca-trump-john-roberts-
supreme-court/2020/06/19/1c41e1e6-b240-11ea-8758-bfd1d045525a_story.html
 Roberts, 65, has played the pivotal role in rescuing two of former president Barack
There’s no denying that
Obama’s proudest achievements: the Affordable Care Act and DACA. And the past week at the Supreme Court left
some on the political right wondering what they had achieved with a majority of Republican-appointed, ideologically conservative
justices. Roberts and Justice Neil M. Gorsuch joined the liberals in reading Title VII of the Civil Rights Act as protecting LGBTQ
workers from being fired solely because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. It passed up another immigration case,
regarding California’s so-called sanctuary laws. And without explanation, the court disappointed gun rights groups by refusing to
But the most recent Supreme Court action
take up a host of challenges to gun-control laws across the country.
tends to obscure what has come before . Roberts , for instance, also played the pivotal role in
Trump’s biggest triumph at the Supreme Court. It found that he had the authority to impose a
travel ban on those from mostly Muslim countries. And those who praise Roberts for joining the
majority opinion finding federal protection for workers look past the fact that he does not believe
the Constitution provides gay couples with a right to marry. He was on the losing side of Obergefell
v. Hodges, and felt so strongly that the court was making the wrong decision that he read part of
his dissent from the bench, the only time he has done so since he joined the court in 2005. Stephen Vladeck, a
constitutional law professor at the University of Texas who watches the court closely, said in a New York Times opinion piece this
week that the court “quietly” enables the Trump administration. The president’s lawyers have
sought 29 emergency stays from the Supreme Court — including 11 during the current term alone — far
more than previous administrations. Most of the time, the court grants relief. In that way, the court
allowed the administration to put much of its travel ban in place before determining its legality,
allowed the president to divert military funds to pay for the U.S.-Mexico border wall, and implemented
several controversial changes in refugee and immigration law while lower courts were hearing legal
challenges. After the DACA decision, Vladeck tweeted: “It’s not that Chief Justice Roberts is a closet
progressive. He’s not. It’s that the Trump administration is *really bad* at administrative law.”

No shift in Roberts ideology- recent “liberal” rulings are technicalities

Nathan Robinson 6/19/20
Editor at current affairs and opinion writer at the guardian; Don't be fooled. The US supreme
court hasn't suddenly become leftwing; The Guardian;
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/19/us-supreme-court-leftwing-daca-lgbt-
gorsuch-roberts
Everyone knows that there are liberal US supreme court justices and there are conservative supreme court justices, and usually
in a politically charged case you can pretty well predict the way the justices will vote by where they
stand on the left-right spectrum. But not always: the decision upholding Obamacare’s individual mandate was written by Bush-
appointed Chief Justice John Roberts, and the decision legalizing same-sex marriage throughout the United States was written by
Reagan appointee Anthony Kennedy. In the last week, progressives have notched two more supreme court
victories with unexpected votes by the conservative justices. In Bostock v Clayton county, the Trump-appointed justice Neil
Gorsuch wrote in a majority opinion that discriminating against LGBTQ+ employees violates the
1964 Civil Rights Act. And in Department of Homeland Security v Regents of the University of California, in a 5-4 decision,
the court decided that the Trump administration could not proceed with its plan to eliminate
Daca, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that protects certain immigrants from deportation. Donald Trump has
been apoplectic over the decisions, calling them “shotgun blasts to the face” of conservatives. If your theory of judicial
behavior is a purely political one, these results might seem mystifying. Why is Gorsuch siding with the
liberals? Donald Trump’s “shotgun to the face” is one he himself loaded and fired, by appointing Gorsuch to the court. Was Gorsuch
while the court is extremely
a Trojan horse, a person of secret left-ish sympathies? No, of course not. Because
political, it’s not completely political, and sometimes judges do in fact make rulings for
reasons other than where they stand on the left-right spectrum . And that’s important, because it
means we shouldn’t really think of the court as having made “progressive decisions ” at all. They were
rulings that had progressive outcomes. But the justices’ politics haven’t changed, and we can’t assume
there is any kind of pattern here. The court is still fundamentally conservative, and these
rulings are more the product of luck than any kind of shift in the “hearts and minds” of
Neil Gorsuch and John Roberts . Do not be surprised if next year, they rule in ways that
hurt LGBTQ+ people and immigrants just as much as this week’s rulings have helped
them . We can celebrate the outcome, but we certainly shouldn’t treat Roberts and Gorsuch as champions of the rights of the
oppressed.
 2NC – AT: Thumper – Abortion Rulign
The abortion ruling was about precedent not correctness – it’s irrelevant
Donegan 6/30/20 [Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist. "Despite the supreme court
abortion ruling, John Roberts has not become a liberal."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/30/supreme-court-abortion-ruling-john-
roberts]
Even before oral arguments were held in early March, much of the attention in this case was focused on
Roberts . A Bush appointee and ideological conservative, Roberts has felt the court lurch
dramatically to the right underneath him during his tenure as chief justice, and is said to worry
about the political pressures on the court from Republicans and the potential to politicize and
delegitimize the institution as a result. In June Medical Services, the conflict between Roberts’
sincerely held conservative, anti-woman views and his calculated desire to preserve the legitimacy of
the court , and hence his own power, came into stark relief. He had dissented in Whole Women’s Health and
sided with the conservatives to uphold the restrictive abortion law; would he hold the same
line again , undoing the ruling of his own court? For a while, both women’s right to access abortion and the court’s own
continued respect for precedent hinged on the answer to one question: is John Roberts capable of shame?Evidently, he is, at least
somewhat. Instead of joining the liberals in declaring the Louisiana law unconstitutional on the merits, Roberts
issued a narrow concurrence based on stare decisis , the legal principle that requires the
court to defer to precedent – in this case, the extremely recent precedent of Whole Women’s Health. In
siding with the liberals, Roberts rejected the most cynical and opportunistic of rightwing arguments,
and signaled that conservatives will need to be more tactful and less brazen in their attempts
to manipulate the court into delivering their policy ends.

He explicitly said he’d overturn Roe – Louisiana was only about precedent
Savage 6/29/20 [David G. Savage has covered the Supreme Court and legal issues for the
Los Angeles Times in the Washington bureau since 1986. "Supreme Court liberals, with
Roberts, strike down Louisiana abortion law." https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-06-
29/supreme-court-louisiana-abortion-case]
Roberts, in a 16-page concurring opinion for June Medical Services vs. Russo, said he did not agree with the legal
reasoning in Justice Stephen Breyer’s ruling, joined by the three other liberal justices, which said that
the court should balance the health costs and benefits of each abortion regulation. A similar
argument was used to strike down the Texas law. But Roberts concluded nevertheless that the court should honor the outcome of
stare decisis requires us , absent special circumstances, to treat like
the Texas decision. “The legal doctrine of
cases alike. The Louisiana law imposes a burden on access to abortion just as severe as that
imposed by the Texas law, for the same reasons. Therefore Louisiana’s law cannot stand under
our precedent ,” he said. Roberts’ decision to cross the ideological divide to support a liberal
precedent is in keeping with his stated concerns that the court is increasingly viewed by
Americans through a partisan lens . In public statements, Roberts likes to say the justices do not decides cases as
Republicans or Democrats. Some Senate Republicans turned their ire on the chief justice. “If the court cares about
preserving its legitimacy as a non-political institution, then it shouldn’t make decisions based on how its judgments will be
perceived politically,” said Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.). “The problem with today’s decision is absolutely terrible jurisprudence. Simply,
bad lawyering.” Roberts’ opinion on Monday suggested he would uphold some abortion regulations, but not those that greatly
hamper women. Roberts also described as precedent the court’s 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, which reaffirmed
the central principle of Roe vs. Wade that states may not put a “substantial obstacle” in front of women seeking abortions. But in a
line that might worry abortion rights advocates, Roberts also noted that in the Louisiana case,
“neither party has asked us to reassess the constitutional validity of that standard.” That left
open the possibility that he would be open to overturning Roe vs. Wade and the right to
abortion if that question were squarely presented to the court.

He was in line with precedent – his end goal is removing Roe

Chotiner 6/29/20 [Isaac Chotiner is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he is the
principal contributor to Q. & A., a series of interviews with major public figures in politics, media,
books, business, technology, and more. "What John Roberts’s Surprise Abortion-Rights Ruling
Means for the Future of Roe v. Wade." https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/what-john-
robertss-surprise-abortion-rights-ruling-means-for-the-future-of-roe-v-wade]
In the short term, it pauses the death of abortion rights . We have also seen the emergence of a new swing
Justice on abortion, in John Roberts. But I think people are going to read this as a win for abortion rights to a
much greater extent than it is . Roberts’s opinion was unambiguously skeptical of abortion
rights. He made the point that the correct reading of the undue-burden standard, which is still the doctrine that applies to abortion,
only resulted in one restriction being struck down in the original Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision, in 1992. And I think that
pretty much captures what Roberts thinks is right in terms of how protected he thinks abortion
rights should be. But Roberts, I think, unlike Brett Kavanaugh, wants to look as if he cares about
precedent . And he couldn’t in good conscience do that while voting to uphold this law. So it
means that respect for precedent will carry some kind of weight with this majority. But it also means
that, if there is some way to convince Roberts that he can save face and still undo abortion
rights, he will probably take it.

He's waiting to rule in line with precedent and against Roe

Chotiner 6/29/20 [Isaac Chotiner is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he is the
principal contributor to Q. & A., a series of interviews with major public figures in politics, media,
books, business, technology, and more. "What John Roberts’s Surprise Abortion-Rights Ruling
Means for the Future of Roe v. Wade." https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/what-john-
robertss-surprise-abortion-rights-ruling-means-for-the-future-of-roe-v-wade]
That’s the challenge for abortion opponents. Roberts is clearly an abortion-rights skeptic, as he made
apparent today, but he also has an investment in precedent . And to your point, Roe and Casey are
precedents, too. I think the most obvious strategy, if you are an abortion opponent, is to gut abortion rights
without gutting abortion precedents . In other words, to say that women still have a right to an
abortion but to functionally eliminate access to abortion. That is much more likely. There is nothing
stopping someone like Roberts from doing that, and I think, if anything, the tools for doing that
are already present in Casey and the decisions following it.
 2NC – AT: Thumper – DACA

DACA proves our argument- was a legal technicality, not a liberal decision
over DACA itself
Marcia Coyle 6/18/20
Chief Justice Roberts Leads Ruling Against Trump's Effort to End DACA;
https://www.law.com/nationallawjournal/2020/06/18/chief-justice-roberts-leads-ruling-against-
trumps-effort-to-end-daca/?slreturn=20200607132501
Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. led the court in ruling 5-4 that the Trump administration had failed to
address important factors bearing on its decision to wind down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
program and that failure violated the federal law known as the Administrative Procedure Act. “Here the agency
failed to consider the conspicuous issues of whether to retain forbearance and what if anything to do about the hardship to DACA
recipients,” wrote Roberts. “That dual failure raises doubts about whether the agency appreciated the scope of its discretion or
The court did not decide whether “DACA or its
exercised that discretion in a reasonable manner.”
rescission are sound policies ,” Roberts wrote. He continued: “We address only whether the
agency complied with the procedural requirement that it provide a reasoned explanation for its action.”
The court said the “appropriate recourse” was to remand the question of DACA rescission to the
Department of Homeland Security “to consider the problem anew.” Although all nine members of
the court agreed that the executive branch has the authority to rescind the program , Justice
Clarence Thomas, joined by Justices Samuel Alito Jr. and Neil Gorsuch, dissented in part, writing, “Today’s
decision must be recognized for what it is: an effort to avoid a politically controversial but legally
correct decision. The court could have made clear that the solution respondents seek must come from the Legislative Branch.”
Alito also wrote separately, dissenting in part, as did Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Recent DACA ruling wasn’t liberal- based on procedural technicality-

proves that formal precedent is still the key internal link
Nathan Robinson 6/19/20
Editor at current affairs and opinion writer at the guardian; Don't be fooled. The US supreme
court hasn't suddenly become leftwing; The Guardian;
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/19/us-supreme-court-leftwing-daca-lgbt-
gorsuch-roberts
In the Daca case, too, there is more going on than simply “John Roberts being favorably disposed toward
immigrants .” Roberts himself wrote in his opinion that the decision had nothing to do with
the merits or justice of Daca, but was purely about a procedural issue : “We do not decide whether
Daca or its rescission are sound policies… We address only whether the agency complied with the procedural requirement that it
provide a reasoned explanation for its action.” Of course, judges always say that what they’re doing isn’t political, even when it is,
but there are justices with fetishes for procedural regularity, whose loyalty to the process far
exceeds their loyalty to any kind of “justice” or political value. The ostensible issue in the Daca case was
whether, under the Administrative Procedure Act, the Trump administration’s had undergone the proper process for presenting its
justifications for ending the program, and whether the administration’s judgments about Daca’s legality had undergone the correct
amount of deliberation. This is a rather dull question of administrative law, and the issues being argued about have
very little to do with whether or not Daca is a good thing. Of course, it could be that John Robert’s
subconscious sympathies for immigrants are influencing his judgment on the administrative law question. But it could also be that
they aren’t, and that he’s genuinely committed to ensuring that executive branch agencies undergo a particular series of steps in
order to make or rescind new rules. If that’s the case, under a Democratic administration, progressives might
find that Roberts proves just as much an obstacle to the accomplishment of progressive goals
as he is currently proving to the accomplishment of Trump’s goals. The law that is applied in our
favor one day will be applied against us the next. Judges make decisions for all kinds of reasons, ranging from
their ideals of justice to whether or not they have had lunch. Sometimes partisan political values guide a judge,
but sometimes the desire to avoid looking like a political partisan guides them. The point is: we
can’t rely on the justices’ conscience to improve the world. Even “progressive” justices like Ruth
Bader Ginsburg often turn out to have unexpectedly conservative streaks, and while a conservative
may look like a lefty from time to time, it’s frequently because of an obscure procedural issue
that nobody except lawyers understands or cares about. Justice is sometimes served at the
supreme court, but when it is it’s often by chance. The court won’t save us, and conservative
justices are still not our friends.
 2NC – AT: Thumper – Trans Ruling
The work ruling was lead by Gorsuch and it was in line with textual
precedent
Shear 6/15/20 [Michael D. Shear is a White House correspondent. He previously worked at
The Washington Post and was a member of their Pulitzer Prize-winning team that covered the
Virginia Tech shootings in 2007. @shearm “Gorsuch, Conservative Favorite Appointed by
Trump, Leads Way on Landmark Decision.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/15/us/politics/gorsuch-supreme-court-gay-transgender-
rights.html]
WASHINGTON — Justice Neil M. Gorsuch is a profoundly conservative jurist and one of the two
appointments President Trump has made to the Supreme Court that Republicans expected would fundamentally shape
it to their liking for a generation. But on Monday, Justice Gorsuch, 52, led the way on one of the most sweeping
L.G.B.T. rights rulings in the court’s history, protecting gay and transgender people from workplace discrimination
and confounding those who thought he would be a reliable conservative on those issues. Justice Gorsuch took the place of Justice
Antonin Scalia, who died in February 2016 but whose seat was kept open by Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, until
President Barack Obama had left the White House. Mr. Trump then made Justice Gorsuch his first appointment to the court less
than two weeks after his inauguration. Justice Scalia left a legacy as one of the court’s most fiercely conservative members, and
while more courteous and mild mannered than his predecessor, Justice Gorsuch has largely echoed his legal philosophy from the
Gorsuch led a 6-to-3 majority in declaring that gay and transgender workers
bench. Until now. Justice
are protected by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, religion, national
origin and sex. His ruling was joined not by his usual conservative allies, but by the court’s four
liberals and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. “In Title VII, Congress adopted broad language making it illegal for
an employer to rely on an employee’s sex when deciding to fire that employee,” Justice Gorsuch wrote for the majority. “We do not
hesitate to recognize today a necessary consequence of that legislative choice: An employer who fires an individual merely for being
gay or transgender defies the law.” Justice Gorsuch has repeatedly said he is a staunch believer in
“ textualism ,” in which judges look only at the written words of a statute rather than the intent of
the lawmakers who wrote them. In Monday’s opinion, he said the words of the Civil Right Act were
clear.

Only about precedent and not tied to Roberts

Wolf 6/16/20 [Richard Wolf covers the Supreme Court and legal issues for USA TODAY and
the USA TODAY Network. He previously covered the White House and Congress over a 30-
year career in Washington. This is his last branch. "Ruling on LGBTQ rights once again reveals
precarious nature of Supreme Court's conservative majority."
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/06/16/supreme-court-conservatives-
including-gorsuch-and-kavanaugh-odds/3193790001/]
Fast forward eight months, and Gorsuch's concern for what he called "judicial modesty" went out the
window. His ruling for three workers fired because they were gay or transgender was based on
his fierce adherence to the literal meaning of words and laws . Roberts and the court's four liberal
justices were not put off by that reasoning, joining the opinion in full. "When the express terms of a statute give us one answer and
extratextual considerations suggest another, it’s no contest," Gorsuch wrote. "Only the written word is the law, and all persons are
entitled to its benefit." 'Trying to follow the law' It
wasn't the first time Gorsuch veered from the
conservative course most of his advocates expected. Folksy and self-deprecating, the court's lone Westerner
came from Colorado in 2017 and amply filled the late conservative Associate Justice Antonin Scalia's seat on the bench. It took
him only two terms to lead his colleagues in dissents . At the same time, Gorsuch has made peace
with the court's liberals , often siding with Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg
in defense of the "little guy" being surveilled, accused, tried or convicted of a crime. In a span of
seven weeks last term, Gorsuch dissented twice from the court's refusal to hear Sixth Amendment
challenges to criminal prosecutions. He was joined both times by Sotomayor, perhaps the court's most liberal justice.
Still, he
has been a reliable member of the court's five-man conservative majority in most major
cases over the past three terms. Those include 5-4 decisions upholding Trump's ban on
travel from several majority-Muslim nations, barring public employee unions from collecting " fair share"
fees from nonmembers and removing federal courts from policing even the most extreme
partisan election maps . "What I’m doing is not my preference. I am trying to follow the law," he said during an interview
with USA TODAY last September. "Nobody's telling me what to do."

The Bostock decision relied on a literalist interpretation- did not break

precedent or signal a liberal shift
Nathan Robinson 6/19/20
Editor at current affairs and opinion writer at the guardian; Don't be fooled. The US supreme
court hasn't suddenly become leftwing; The Guardian;
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/19/us-supreme-court-leftwing-daca-lgbt-
gorsuch-roberts
To think about what the decisions imply about the court itself, it’s helpful to understand the justices’ actual reasoning in each case.
In Bostock, Gorsuch’s reasoning was very simple: the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits
discrimination on the basis of sex, and while it does not specifically prohibit discriminating against people for being
LGBTQ+, in practice there is no way to discriminate against a person for being LGBTQ+ without
discriminating against their sex. After all, if I fire a man for being attracted to men, but I would not fire a woman for being
attracted to men, what is making the difference in my conduct? The sex of the employee. Gorsuch said that it doesn’t
matter whether Congress intended to prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ+ people, because
the thing they did prohibit covers acts of anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination. It’s very straightforward
reasoning. It’s also quite “conservative”, in the sense that Gorsuch is applying a form of
judicial interpretation usually associated with conservatives , most notably Antonin Scalia. Scalia was
an advocate of textualism , meaning that the words of a statute matter far more than what the lawmakers writing it intended for
it to do. If applying the law in its most literal form has a negative unintended consequence, tough
luck. Gorsuch felt that a consistent application of textualism required ruling in favor of LGBTQ+
rights. But if Gorsuch’s vote resulted from his highly literal interpretive theory, there’s no reason to expect he will
be progressive in cases involving LGBTQ+ people more generally . The Human Rights Campaign
opposed Gorsuch’s confirmation originally citing worrying past decisions, and while there is evidence that he is not personally
homophobic, if the “textualist” reading of a statute goes against LGBTQ+ people next time, they are unlikely to find Gorsuch so
friendly to the cause.
Aff
 2AC – Thumper – Top
Roberts went full lib in the last month – nothing is unique
Liptake 6/30/20 [Adam Liptak covers the Supreme Court and writes Sidebar, a column on
legal developments. A graduate of Yale Law School, he practiced law for 14 years before joining
The Times in 2002. "Supreme Court Strikes Down Louisiana Abortion Law, With Roberts the
Deciding Vote." https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/29/us/supreme-court-abortion-louisiana.html]
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday struck down a Louisiana law that could have left the
state with a single abortion clinic , dashing the hopes of conservatives who were counting on
President Trump’s appointments to lead the court to sustain restrictions on abortion rights and,
eventually, to overrule Roe v. Wade. Instead, conservatives suffered a setback , and from an unlikely
source. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. added his crucial fifth vote to those of the court’s four-member liberal wing, saying
that respect for precedent compelled him to do so, even though he had voted to uphold an essentially identical Texas law in a 2016
dissent. In the past two weeks, thechief justice has voted with the court’s liberal wing in three major
cases : on job discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender work ers, on a
program protecting young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers and now on abortion .
While he has on occasion disappointed his usual conservative allies, notably on the Affordable Care Act
and adding a citizenship question to the census, nothing in his 15-year tenure on the court
compares to the recent run of liberal votes in major cases. Conservatives reacted with fury .
“Chief Justice Roberts is at it again with his political gamesmanship ,” Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas,
said on Twitter. “This time he has sided with abortion extremists who care more about providing abortion-on-
demand than protecting women’s health.”
 1AR – Thumper – Top
Roberts went left three times in 2 weeks
Savage 6/29/20 [David G. Savage has covered the Supreme Court and legal issues for the
Los Angeles Times in the Washington bureau since 1986. "Supreme Court liberals, with
Roberts, strike down Louisiana abortion law." https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-06-
29/supreme-court-louisiana-abortion-case]
WASHINGTON — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined the Supreme Court’s liberal justices to deal a
surprising setback to abortion opponents on Monday, striking down a restrictive Louisiana
abortion law and reaffirming the court’s past rulings that have upheld a woman’s right to
choose. By a 5-4 vote , the court threw out a Louisiana law that would have required abortion doctors to have
admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. If put into effect, it was expected to result in the closing of all but one of
the state’s abortion providers. It came as no surprise that the four liberal justices opposed the
law since they struck down a similar Texas law four years ago. But the chief justice , a conservative who has consistently
opposed abortion rights in the past and had voted to uphold the Texas law, cast the fifth vote with them, citing
precedent as his reason. It was the court’s first abortion ruling since President Trump’s two
appointees took their seats, and it dashed hopes of abortion opponents who expected the
more conservative court to move to repeal Roe vs. Wade, or at least give states more power to
narrow it. It also marked the third major decision in the past two weeks in which the chief
justice joined with the court’s four liberals . The court extended workplace protections for
LGBTQ employees and blocked Trump’s repeal of the Obama-era policy that protected so-
called Dreamers from deportation. A statement from the White House press secretary called the
decision “ unfortunate ,” adding that “unelected justices have intruded on the sovereign
prerogatives of state governments by imposing their own policy preference in favor of abortion
to override legitimate abortion safety regulations.” Anti-abortion advocates cast the loss in
political terms , saying the ruling underscored the need to reelect Trump in November so he
could appoint another conservative justice to provide the fifth voted needed to repeal Roe vs. Wade. “Today’s
ruling is a a bitter disappointment ,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, which
opposes abortion. “It is imperative that we reelect President Trump and our pro-life majority in the
U.S. Senate so we can further restore the judiciary, most especially the Supreme Court.”

Tons of thumpers – Roberts went left

Barnes 6/30/20 [Robert Barnes has been a Washington Post reporter and editor since 1987.
He joined The Post to cover Maryland politics, and he has served in various editing positions,
including metropolitan editor and national political editor. "With abortion ruling, Roberts
reasserts his role and Supreme Court’s independence."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/john-roberts-supreme-court-abortion-
ruling/2020/06/29/64dd30a6-ba3b-11ea-80b9-40ece9a701dc_story.html ]
Every Supreme Court decision seems to confirm Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s pivotal role at the
center of the court, and Monday’s ruling on abortion showed that restrictions on a woman’s right
to the procedure for now will go only as far as the chief justice allows . In a remarkable
stretch of decisions over the past two weeks, Roberts has dismayed conservatives and the
Trump administration by finding that federal anti-discrimination law protects gay, bisexual and
transgender workers and stopping the president from ending the federal program that protects
und ocumented immigrants brought here as children. In Monday’s decision, he said the court’s
allegiance to honoring its past decisions meant striking down a Louisiana law almost identical to
one from Texas that the court said in 2016 was unconstitutional. The twist is that Roberts was a
dissenter then. [Supreme Court strikes down restrictive Louisiana abortion law that would have closed clinics] The votes do
not mean that Roberts, nominated by President George W. Bush, has had an ideological conversion. But they do serve as a
reminder of his 2018 rejoinder to President Trump that “we do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton
judges.” Roberts’s admirers speculate he was turned off by the attempt to have the court’s 2016 decision overturned because the
court’s membership had changed with Trump’s two appointments. Too soon, said Richard Lazarus, a Harvard law professor who
has known Roberts since law school days and who has taught summer courses with the chief justice. “The chief’s clear message is
that is not how justices do their work,” Lazarus said in an email. “It is a shot across the bow at
presidential candidates who campaign with lists of nominees based on the assumption that, if
confirmed, they will of course necessarily vote based on the preferences of the majority who
supported that candidate.”
 2AC – Thumper – Louisiana
Roberts is breaking with conservative majorities and precedent – Louisiana
Barnes 6/30/20 [Robert Barnes has been a Washington Post reporter and editor since 1987.
He joined The Post to cover Maryland politics, and he has served in various editing positions,
including metropolitan editor and national political editor. "With abortion ruling, Roberts
reasserts his role and Supreme Court’s independence."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/john-roberts-supreme-court-abortion-
ruling/2020/06/29/64dd30a6-ba3b-11ea-80b9-40ece9a701dc_story.html ]
Ilya Shapiro of the libertarian Cato Institute was another who thought Roberts was sending a message, but not in a good way.
He said that Roberts was applying a “capricious” application of stare decisis and that overturning
previous decisions had not stood in his way in other cases, such as Citizens United v. Federal
Election Commission, which opened unlimited election spending by corporations and unions. “But a very
recent 5-4 decision in which he dissented apparently carries more weight,” Shapiro wrote in a statement. “Maybe
Roberts ought to stop playing 87-dimensional chess and just call the legal balls and strikes .”
Epps, the Washington University professor, said the court’s other conservative justices don’t have the same
incentives for compromise as Roberts does, or the same inclinations. “They vote for the outcome they
prefer in each case as it comes, as I read them,” he said. Carol Sanger, a law professor at Columbia who closely follows abortion
jurisprudence, said Roberts’s opinion was a “civics lesson.” But in giving abortion rights activists a win, he took a little back, she
said. He rejected the liberals’ approach of weighing the burdens and benefits of restrictions in deciding whether a law is legal, she
said, something that had been helpful for those fighting restrictions. And Roberts noted that this case did not call on the court to
reconsider its cases that established and then reinforced the constitutional right to abortion. “I don’t think he was inviting one,”
Sanger said of the passage. “I don’t think he wants to offer an invitation yet.” The sharp divisions in the decision provide motivation
to both sides of the issue. Democrats pointed out the closeness of the win, and the importance of the coming presidential election.
Two of the justices in the majority — Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer — are in their 80s. Abortion opponents vowed to
Dannenfelser , president of the antiabortion Susan B. Anthony List, called the decision
redouble their efforts. Marjorie
a “bitter disappointment.” “Today’s ruling reinforces just how important Supreme Court judges
are to advancing the pro-life cause,” she said in a statement. “It is imperative that we reelect
President Trump and our pro-life majority in the U.S. Senate so we can further restore the
judiciary, most especially the Supreme Court.” Lazarus, the Harvard professor, said he found Roberts’s
decision to be the opposite of that . “What I expect put the chief off is the idea of one political
party — and again it could have been either one — so overtly trying to manipulate the court as
if the justices were partisan legislators ,” Lazarus wrote in the email. “Here, the notion that as soon as
they replace Kennedy off the court, they will go right back to the court and confidently expect
that the vote will be different . As would be fair to expect if the court were a legislature.”
 1AR – Thumper – Louisiana
He just balanced left – if the DA is true, then Roe reversal is inevitable
Savage 6/29/20 [David G. Savage has covered the Supreme Court and legal issues for the
Los Angeles Times in the Washington bureau since 1986. "Supreme Court liberals, with
Roberts, strike down Louisiana abortion law." https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-06-
29/supreme-court-louisiana-abortion-case]
Roberts’ decision to cross the ideological divide to support a liberal precedent is in keeping
with his stated concerns that the court is increasingly viewed by Americans through a partisan
lens . In public statements, Roberts likes to say the justices do not decides cases as Republicans or
Democrats.
Some Senate Republicans turned their ire on the chief justice. “If the court cares about preserving
its legitimacy as a non-political institution, then it shouldn’t make decisions based on how its
judgments will be perceived politically ,” said Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.). “The problem with today’s
decision is absolutely terrible jurisprudence. Simply, bad lawyering.”

Louisiana was a huge break with the conservative court

Liptake 6/30/20 [Adam Liptak covers the Supreme Court and writes Sidebar, a column on
legal developments. A graduate of Yale Law School, he practiced law for 14 years before joining
The Times in 2002. "Supreme Court Strikes Down Louisiana Abortion Law, With Roberts the
Deciding Vote." https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/29/us/supreme-court-abortion-louisiana.html]
In his concurrence, Chief Justice Roberts questioned whether that opinion had imposed an amorphous
balancing test not warranted by the court’s precedents . But he said the test announced in the
Casey decision was enough to decide the case. “I agree with the plurality that the determination in Whole
Woman’s Health that Texas’s law imposed a substantial obstacle requires the same determination about Louisiana’s law,” he wrote.
“Under those same principles, I would adhere to the holding of Casey, requiring a substantial obstacle before striking down an
Alito Jr., joined by Justices Gorsuch , Kavanaugh and Clarence
abortion regulation.” In dissent, Justice Samuel A.
Thomas , wrote that the Louisiana law protected the health and safety of women seeking
abortions and that the requirements for obtaining admitting privileges helped ensure the
competence of doctors. The facts on the ground in the two states, he wrote, were enough to
require a different conclusion. “There is ample evidence in the record showing that admitting
privileges help to protect the health of women by ensuring that physicians who perform
abortions meet a higher standard of competence than is shown by the mere possession of a
license to practice,” Justice Alito wrote. “In deciding whether to grant admitting privileges, hospitals
typically undertake a rigorous investigative process to ensure that a doctor is responsible and
competent and has the training and experience needed to perform the procedures for which the
privileges are sought.” Chief Justice Roberts disagreed . “Appreciating that others may in good
faith disagree ,” he wrote, “I cannot view the record here as in any pertinent respect sufficiently
different from that in Whole Woman’s Health to warrant a different outcome.”
 1AR – AT: No Roe Reversal
Precedent means he won’t overturn Roe
Chotiner 6/29/20 [Isaac Chotiner is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he is the
principal contributor to Q. & A., a series of interviews with major public figures in politics, media,
books, business, technology, and more. "What John Roberts’s Surprise Abortion-Rights Ruling
Means for the Future of Roe v. Wade." https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/what-john-
robertss-surprise-abortion-rights-ruling-means-for-the-future-of-roe-v-wade]
I think Roberts respecting precedent is a real thing . I think it is also different for someone who
cares about the Court’s institutional legitimacy and legacy to be the guy who voted to overturn
Roe. It is different to say Roe is wrong and complain about it and write endless dissents about it, versus to be the person who pulls
the trigger. And so, if you were going to get something hopeful about today’s decision from Roberts, it
is that he is uncomfortable with that—and the idea that precedent matters resonates with him up
to a point. That is a pretty powerful weapon for pro-choice people going forward. They are just going to have to wield it with a
Justice who doesn’t really believe in abortion rights. That’s the bad news. In terms of the underlying
substance , they have nothing. But that has been enough before. There have been lots of
Justices who have been skeptical of abortion rights who have hesitated when the moment
came to get rid of Roe, and there is some hope, after this case, that Roberts will be the same .