Joe Biden Stares Down Supreme Court As He Quotes Dobbs Back At Them

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(Photo by SHAWN THEW / POOL / AFP) (Photo by SHAWN THEW/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

If you didn’t play along with last night’s State of the Union drinking game, you probably missed the fireworks when Joe Biden called out the Supreme Court. If you did play along with our game, you’re probably not reading this until they finish pumping your stomach.

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Abortion and the subsequent Alabama Supreme Court decision functionally outlawing IVF earned attention early in the national address and Biden did not shrink from laying the blame directly upon the United States Supreme Court.

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The rhetorical beatdown was on as soon as Biden uttered “with all due respect, justices,” because nothing good ever follows the phrase “with all due respect.” It’s enshrined in international law…

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Superficially, Biden actually cited the Court approvingly. The Dobbs opinion reads, in relevant part:

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Our decision returns the issue of abortion to those legislative bodies, and it allows women on both sides of the abortion issue to seek to affect the legislative process by influencing public opinion, lobbying legislators, voting, and running for office. Women are not without electoral or political power.

As Biden said, the Court is going to find out how right they were about that.

But everyone correctly understood Biden’s statement as a dig because the passage itself is disingenuous nonsense. Gun owners are also not without electoral or political power but they don’t have to abide by the electorate because that’s how rights work. The Dobbs majority fully intended the decision to spill over into further efforts to circumvent reproductive rights and it does not plan on honoring any “will of the people” that runs counter to that mission. It already started with the Alabama decision.

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If you were to take the Dobbs majority at their word, the Alabama legislature’s bid to pass IVF protections will stand up to the Alabama court’s stance that the Bible and the state constitution combine to render such laws void. But, to borrow from Eric Cartman, just like those embryos, we weren’t born yesterday either.

Presumably Justices Sotomayor and Kagan didn’t mind the scolding tone since they dissented in Dobbs anyway and Justice Jackson wasn’t even on the clock yet. So Biden’s heat fell mostly on the Chief Justice, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh.

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And, perhaps most harshly upon Justice Anthony Kennedy, who joined former Rep. George Santos in showing up to the speech despite literally not a single soul wanting them there. Kennedy, whose vote held back decisions like Dobbs for years, decided to throw his judicial legacy in a grinder so he could fuck off into the sunset and let Gropey McKeggerton have his seat. With Kennedy on the Court, would the Chief have managed to cobble together an opinion that didn’t gut Roe and lay the groundwork for future assaults on personal freedoms? We’ll never know!

But the answer is yes.

Alito, who drafted the Dobbs opinion — and then absolutely did not leak it to the press in order to stymie efforts to rein it in *wink* *wink* — did not attend the proceedings. He’s avoided the State of the Union ever since he got caught mouthing “not true” after Barack Obama explained the very, very true constitutional law of campaign finance prior to Citizens United. Without further details, we’ll just play the odds and assume he was lounging on a superyacht paid for by someone with business before the Court.

Presumably one of the others can leak him the message.

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Topics

Abortion, Courts, Joe Biden, State of the Union, Supreme Court