MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews said that the current Supreme Court is so ultra conservative that he wonders if the court would have voted in favor of keeping schools desegregated, would have ruled that desegregation was okay in public spaces, and would have kept prayer in the schools.
Matthews made his comments yesterday after the court voted to uphold the most onerous part of Arizona’s immigration law—the statute allowing police to stop someone they suspect may be an undocumented immigrant.
“I wonder if this court would have backed desegregation in the Brown case. I doubt this pack of conservatives, which includes Chief Justice John Roberts, Sam Alito and Anthony Kennedy, would have voted to knock down ‘separate but equal’ in the 1950s,” Matthews said.
“Let me proffer a tougher judgment: would this court – voting as it does today – have upheld the 1964 Civil Rights Bill, which declared it illegal to refuse access to someone because of race to a restaurant, hotel or a gas station restroom?” Matthews continued.
“The fact is that we have the most conservative court since the early 1930s, and maybe more conservative than that. These justices, led by Scalia, believe in original intent. They want to judge cases the way the Founding Fathers would. Well, the Founding Fathers – need I remind us all – wrote slavery into the Constitution. It took a Civil War and the 13th Amendment to get it out.”
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