By Michael Schwarz | Commentary, Western Journal
Conservatives have learned the hard way that the phrase “experts agree” really means “shut up and obey your liberal overlords.”
On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a Tennessee law, Senate Bill 1, banning transgender procedures for minors.
And if that ruling did not prove satisfying enough, Justice Clarence Thomas, part of the 6-3 SCOTUS majority, wrote a concurring opinion in which he blasted the idea that voters and courts should defer to “so-called experts” and their alleged medical “consensus.”
Plaintiffs had based their argument against SB1 partly on the opinion of “so-called experts.”
“The Court rightly rejects efforts by the United States and the private plaintiffs to accord outsized credit to claims about medical consensus and expertise,” Thomas wrote.
The conservative justice went on to identify “several problems with appealing and deferring to the authority of the expert class.”
These problems included the supremacy of “legislative choices” over expert opinion; the absence of actual “medical consensus on how best to treat gender dysphoria in children;” the right of states to decide whether “young children can provide informed consent to irreversible sex-transition treatments”; and the reasonable suspicion that experts “have relied on questionable evidence, and have allowed ideology to influence their medical guidance.”
“Taken together,” Thomas added, “this case serves as a useful reminder that the American people and their representatives are entitled to disagree with those who hold themselves out as experts, and that courts may not ‘sit as a super-legislature to weigh the wisdom of legislation.’ Day-Brite Lighting, Inc. v. Missouri, 342 U. S. 421, 423 (1952).”
That final line about courts not sitting “as a super-legislature to weigh the wisdom of legislation” echoed the majority opinion.
Indeed, Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote that majority opinion, emphasized judicial restraint.
“Our role is not ‘to judge the wisdom, fairness, or logic’ of the law before us, Beach Communications, 508 U. S., at 313,” Roberts wrote, “but only to ensure that it does not violate the equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment. Having concluded it does not, we leave questions regarding its policy to the people, their elected representatives, and the democratic process.”
That, of course, is exactly what Thomas championed and what liberals despise. The people’s representatives voted to ban those barbaric procedures on children, and “expert” opinion cannot invalidate that vote.
“To hold otherwise,” Thomas wrote, “would permit elite sentiment to distort and stifle democratic debate under the guise of scientific judgment, and would reduce judges to mere ‘spectators … in construing our Constitution.’ 83 F. 4th, at 479.”
Moreover, courts have authority to consider only constitutional questions, not policy.
“When legislation does not cross constitutional lines,” Thomas wrote, “States must have leeway to effect the judgment of their citizens — no matter whether experts disagree.”
In short, the conservative justice delivered a master class in how to refute authoritarian liberals’ reliance on “experts.”
READ THE FULL COMMENTARY AT THE WESTERN JOURNAL
Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.