THREE BAD RULINGS

The Supreme Court hit the trifecta yesterday: Three cases involving
the First Amendment. Three dismaying decisions by Chief Justice John
Roberts's new conservative majority.

Chief Justice Roberts and the four others in his ascendant bloc used
the next-to-last decision day of this term to reopen the political
system to a new flood of special-interest money, to weaken protection
of student expression and to make it harder for citizens to challenge
government violations of the separation of church and state. In the
process, the reconfigured court extended its noxious habit of casting
aside precedents without acknowledging it -- insincere judicial
modesty scored by Justice Antonin Scalia in a concurring opinion.

First, campaign finance.

Four years ago, a differently constituted court upheld sensible
provisions of the McCain-Feingold Act designed to prevent corporations
and labor unions from circumventing the ban on their spending in
federal campaigns by bankrolling phony "issue ads." These ads purport
to just educate voters about a policy issue, but are really aimed at a
particular candidate.

The 2003 ruling correctly found that the bogus issue ads were the
functional equivalent of campaign ads and upheld the Congressional
restrictions on corporate and union money.

Yet the Roberts court shifted course in response to sham issue ads run
on radio and TV by a group called Wisconsin Right to Life with major
funding from corporations opposed to Senator Russell Feingold, the
Democrat who co-authored the act.

It opened a big new loophole in time to do mischief in the 2008
elections.

The exact extent of the damage is unclear.

But the four dissenters were correct in warning that the court's hazy
new standard for assessing these ads is bound to invite evasion and
fresh public cynicism about big money and politics.

The decision contained a lot of pious language about protecting free
speech.

But magnifying the voice of wealthy corporations and unions over the
voice of candidates and private citizens is hardly a free speech victory.

Moreover, the professed devotion to the First Amendment did not extend
to allowing taxpayers to challenge White House aid to faith-based
organizations as a violation of church-state separation. The
controlling opinion by Justice Samuel Alito offers a cockeyed reading
of precedent and flimsy distinctions between executive branch
initiatives and Congressionally authorized spending to deny private
citizens standing to sue. That permits the White House to escape
accountability when it improperly spends tax money for religious purposes.

Nor did the court's concern for free speech extend to actually
allowing free speech in the oddball case of an Alaska student who was
suspended from high school in 2002 after he unfurled a banner reading
"Bong Hits 4 Jesus" while the Olympic torch passed.

The ruling by Chief Justice Roberts said public officials did not
violate the student's rights by punishing him for words that promote a
drug message at an off-campus event.

This oblique reference to drugs hardly justifies such mangling of
sound precedent and the First Amendment.