In that post I mocked Justice Sotomayor’s characteristically dumb questions, but even Sonia came around to see a First Amendment violation when it was staring her in the face. Eight Justices joined to strike down the Colorado law. Not Justice Jackson! Free speech in this case would “open a can of worms,” she wrote. Funny how free speech does that.

“It would be far better for the majority to simply silence such dissenting voices in the name of science,” is how Professor Turley characterized her “reasoning.” Turley goes on to document what he calls “the chilling jurisprudence of Justice Jackson,” including a pronounced dismissal of free speech values. By “chilling” he means “incompetent.”

These laws always have been viewpoint-based bans on speech because various authorities disagreed with them. NPR, a reliable mouthpiece of the totalitarian Left, stated, “Conversion therapy is generally defined as a treatment used to change a person’s attraction to individuals of the same sex or to ‘cure’ gender dysphoria. The therapy has been forcefully repudiated by every major medical organization in the country, on grounds that the therapy doesn’t work and often leads to deep depression and suicidal thoughts and actions in minors.” “Speech is violence,” I believe, is how the woke like to put it.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority (or against Jackson) said that the Colorado law “impermissibly regulated [the plaintiff’s] speech by forbidding her from doing anything in her counseling that attempts to change a client’s sexual orientation or gender identity.” The First Amendment, Gorsuch went on, “reflects … a judgment that every American possesses an inalienable right to think and speak freely, and a faith in the free marketplace of ideas as the best means for discovering truth … any law that suppresses speech based on viewpoint represents an ‘egregious’ assault on both of those commitments.”

Many commentators have noted, as I havem the apparent hypocrisy of Jackson and her partisan allies endorsing the drug and surgical “conversion” of minors’ sexual identities after encouragement by teachers and others (she refused to define what a woman is, in her confirmation hearing, you’ll recall) but calling talk therapy “harmful.”

Turley is uncharacteristically harsh in his criticism of the DEI Justice, but she deserves it, as does the party that inflicted her on us. He writes in part…

“Justice Elena Kagan could not withhold her frustration with her colleague, noting that “[b]ecause the State has suppressed one side of a debate, while aiding the other, the constitutional issue is straightforward.” She added that Jackson’s view “rests on reimagining—and in that way collapsing—the well-settled distinction between viewpoint-based and other content-based speech restrictions.”…

“Of course, we just went through a pandemic when censorship and orthodoxy were dressed up as science. Leading scientific figures were canceled and harassed. That was the case with Jay Bhattacharya, who co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration and was a vocal critic of COVID-19 policies. Bhattacharya was targeted due to his dissenting views on health policy, including opposing wholesale shutdowns of schools and businesses.

“He and other scientists were later vindicated. European allies that did not shut down their schools fared far better than we did, including avoiding a national mental health and learning crisis. We simply never had that debate…

“…[M]any questioned the efficacy of those blue surgical masks and supported natural immunity to the virus — the government later recognized both positions.

“Others questioned the six-foot rule, which shut down many businesses, as unsupported by science. In congressional testimony, Dr. Anthony Fauci later admitted that the rule “sort of just appeared” and “wasn’t based on data.” Yet not only did it result in heavily enforced rules (and meltdowns) in public areas, but the media further ostracized dissenting critics….”

“All of it was orthodoxy masquerading as science. Yet, Jackson sees the protection of dissenting scientific and professional views as a “can of worms” that the courts should avoid in favor of state and assocational imposed truths. She wrote that allowing such opposing views “ultimately risks grave harm to Americans’ health and wellbeing.”…

“Ironically, Colorado has now succeeded in dramatically strengthening free speech in its repeated failures to curtail it. The Democratic legislators have made the state arguably the most hostile to free speech in the nation.

“Colorado’s Supreme Court sought to bar President Donald Trump from the ballot. Notably, while many of us viewed Trump’s views on the 2020 election to be protected speech, Colorado treated it as conduct and advocacy of insurrection.

“It was Colorado that sought to force bakers, photographers, and web designers to produce work in favor of same-sex marriages despite their religious objections. Each effort was supported by the Tenth Circuit and each failed in spectacular fashion before the Supreme Court.

“As many of us celebrate this victory for free speech, these advocates are denouncing the ruling in apocalyptic terms.

“What is most chilling is that Jackson is now routinely called the model for new nominees, including the push to pack the Supreme Court with an instant liberal majority.

“If so, Jackson’s radical views on constitutional interpretation could be replicated on a new packed Court.”

In his last lines, Turley has provided a practical solution to my query, “Now what?” Now American voters who are not positively inclined toward single party rule and an ideology that has brought us open borders, law enforcement break-downs, anti-white racism, looming socialism and Ketanji Brown Jackson need to be civically engaged and responsible, and vote against the party that has decided to embrace all of this and more.

If the apathy of the U.S. public is such that it can’t rouse itself to better than a 40% participation in this November’s election, it will deserve what it gets, and what it gets will not be the republic that has so far been the light of the world.

That’s “what.”