As punishment for failing to follow instruction, a Texas federal judge recently ordered three attorneys for Southwest Airlines to attend eight hours of religious liberty training. Now, regardless of whether the punishment was actually warranted, inclusion training is always a welcome undertaking for any professional. You know, I think it’s great, especially for those working in the law. But not in this case. 

US District Judge Brantley Starr, who, yes, was appointed by Donald Trump, ordered those Southwest attorneys to complete this whole religious liberty training with the ADF. Alliance Defending Freedom. Yeah, that’s the far right Christian extremist group that has long been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. ADF is the hallmark of bias as far as I’m concerned. This is the organization behind challenging the access to the abortion drug mifepristone, and also advancing many other white Christian nationalist objectives. 

Yet this federal judge is certain that those three attorneys representing southwest could learn a thing or two about respecting religion from this wholly biased institution that again, has been designated a hate group. Now this may be just one case, but this case is contributing to an indicative of a far greater problem. That is the de-munition of public confidence in the courts. Without the courts democracy dies, as much as the three branches of government are all supposed to be equal with the whole checks and balances thing? No, I believe the judiciary is far more important, because they decide what law and order is even encroaching upon the legislature’s territory in the process at times, as much as they’re not supposed to do it legislating from the bench has happened and quite often, and for the betterment of our society. 

How do you think we got racial integration when separate but equal was the law of the land for more than, what, half a century? Where do you think Miranda warnings came from? Or your right to counsel? What about your right to use contraceptives? Or even, what, to enjoy sex in the privacy of your own home without government interference? Yeah, Brown v Board, Miranda, V. Arizona, Gideon v. Wainwright and so on. Those are court cases, and throughout history, the courts have reinterpreted the law so that they could craft these pivotal rights for a citizens because our legislature, well, they could muster the collective integrity to bring us out of the dark ages. Lawmakers were too busy pandering to the highest bidder and pushing their agenda for backdoor paydays. 

Today, not much has changed in the halls of Congress or in state assemblies, but so much has changed behind the bench. With reports of Supreme Court justices on billionaire payrolls, Trump appointees blatantly ignoring precedent to do the former president a solid, jurists openly ordering lawyers to learn from designated hate groups and so on. While in the past, the courts are, what, at least outwardly aspired to be impartial and unbiased, well, that’s clearly no longer a priority. And it shows public competence and the Supreme Court has hit a record low last year. Its lowest since 1973, when the associated presses research engine began recording the data.

And of the recent data, well regardless of whether they were serving a man, a woman, a Democrat or Republican, while their faith in the judiciary has fallen, and far, the gatekeepers of justice have become a joke to the American people — and at an especially vulnerable time, when we can’t count on either of the other two branches of government to do what’s right. Whether that’s expanding the Supreme Court or maybe actually holding rogue members of the bench accountable by way of impeachment. That’s just not going to happen. And we may simply just have to accept that the future of our democracy is now as promising as justice is blind.