Will the Shift in Supreme Court Affect LGBTQ+ Rights?

     On Sept. 18, 2020, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, often called RBG, passed away due to pancreatic cancer. RBG spent 13 years on the Supreme Court and began her career advocating for women’s rights. A lot of issues that she focused on were to advocate for the minorities in America. 

     Influential cases included United States v. Virginia in 1996, which allowed for the Virginia Military Institute to become gender-inclusive as compared to before due to the equal protection clause in the 14th amendment of the constitution. As well as the famous Obergfell v. Hodges which allows for same-sex couples to be a legal right nationally instead of it decided upon state legislatures. 

     Before RBG’s death, her last wish was to not fill her seat before the election of 2020, but Republicans in Congress seem to want to fill the seat immediately with Amy Coney Barrett, who was elected to enter the Supreme Court by President Trump. Her views politically are uniformly Conservative due to her stances on gun control, abortion, discrimination, and immigration.  

     One surprise that Donald Trump wanted to instill in the Supreme Court was that he wanted to overrule the Roe v. Wade court case where abortion is ruled to be legal nationally, and this has been a huge issue due to women’s rights. In addition, she did not state that Obgerfell was ruled correctly and many times had sidestepped the issue of LGBTQ+ discrimination.

     A lot of people in the community have been very nervous about her going into the Supreme Court because it is a huge issue currently. Our own president decided to go against certain rights towards LGBTQ people already, such as how transgender people not being allowed in the military as well as discriminatory rules to not accept hospitalization and treatment for transgender people as well.

     As someone who is transgender, this issue scares me as well. A lot of the actions requested by this shift will involve my own rights to be served and treated. Before Trump’s presidency, there was so much advancement for our rights and then with this new president and Congress, things suddenly flipped and our rights are being taken more and more. While the normal person might not care as much as these things. It is a huge issue for many people not to be able to obtain certain rights which creates it more and more difficult to live well. 

     In my opinion, we need to wait until after the election to get a more justified ruling because putting in Amy Coney Barrett tips the Supreme Court to the favor of the Conservatives which, while it’s not necessarily a bad thing to be Conservatives, she’s going to dismantle rights that were given through progressivism. 

     Minority rights will be hurt due to this new switch if it will go through. It is very important to not let this happen because it will transfer us back from the progressive culture RBG had helped instate in our country and will affect a large portion of the country in a negative matter.