Conservative justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch were prepared to issue a sweeping decision...To avoid a sweeping outcome that likely would have forced the court's liberal justices into dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts appears to have settled on a narrower ruling against the city of Philadelphia — one that could secure their support. That kind of consensus-building on the high court, with a potentially divisive case decided narrowly and with the broadest possible consensus, is a welcome model of how to govern in a dangerously polarized time.But the larger reason why the decision deserves praise is that it upholds a key principle of political liberalism. The First Amendment protects the free exercise of religion.
This is the same point I was making about Manchin the other day, only applied to the conservative side trimming its wings in order to have a more prudential (and less destabilizing) outcome.
I think the Court has also adopted this model because of the Biden court-packing scheme: unanimous decisions undercut the case for court-packing. If you believe you could add 2 or 4 new Justices and win every time, the non-prudent but tempting move is to pack the Court. If they're producing 9-0 decisions even on controversial social issues, it suddenly looks less realistic as a way of ensuring you get your way.
Prudence is one of the Aristotelian virtues, and in these unstable times we can see why it is. In more stable times it can seem like the vice of irresoluteness, a lack of firmness in pursuing a just cause. Yet here we stand on the verge of civil war, and these little acts of prudence help hold things together for a while longer. Perhaps, in the end, they will save things; but even if not, they gave us a chance to save things.
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We hope for sweeping decisions and great changes, and these feel frustrating, as in "what's the point of having a conservative court if they won't be conservatives? This isn't going to last forever." But this might be a softer (yet more effective) use of that same power. The liberal justices are somewhat backed into a corner and have to work with Roberts, too.
And a 9-0 ruling on anything is powerful down the road. There will be more attempts to try and punish groups for any of a dozen offenses against the liberal orthodoxy, but now there is at least one solid wall that no one is going to overturn in the foreseeable future.
Although, looking at it more closely, if the city just changes its own law, there's nothing stopping it from excluding CSS. Yes, it's a victory, but the 9-0 ruling was just that the city wasn't following its own law. It seems like we're just cycling through one legal detail after another without actually resolving anything.
I mean, Jack Phillips just lost a court case after taking a similar case all the way to the USSC. This one may go there, too, and why? Because the court is (at least it seems to me) focused on petty legal details instead of resolving issues.
Here's a direct link to the Politico article on the Philadelphia ruling:
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/17/supreme-court-same-sex-couples-foster-care-catholic-church-494999
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