Lil Nas X Says He’s Terrified At Prospect Of Another Conservative Supreme Court Justice
Following the sad news over the weekend of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing, Lil Nas X told a journalist the prospect of another conservative Supreme Court Justice was terrifying, TMZ reports.
As he left LAX, the rapper said he was worried that another conservative justice would set back LGBTIQ rights.
Lil Nas X urged people to get out and vote in response to the prospect that Trump pushes through a nomination prior to the election.
While known for championing women’s rights, Ginsburg was also a staunch ally of the LGBTIQ community using her position to strike down many laws that discriminated against the community.
Among the rulings she joined was Romer v. Evans in 1996, which struck down Colorado’s anti-gay Amendment 2, Lawrence v. Texas in 2003, which struck down state laws criminalizing sodomy. Both decisions were early indications the nation was beginning to head into a different direction to accept gay people.
Ginsburg also joined rulings that advanced same-sex marriage, including Windsor v. United States in 2013, which struck down the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act; Hollingsworth v. Perry in 2013, which restored marriage equality to California after Proposition 8; and Obergefell v. Hodges, which struck down state bans on same-sex marriage and extended full marriage equality throughout the country.
For each of these rulings on marriage, justices were split 5-4, so if Ginsburg weren’t on the court, the decisions may not have come out in favour of the LGBTQ community.
More recently, Ginsburg joined the decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which found anti-LGBTQ discrimination is a form of sex discrimination, thus illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The broad ruling grants protections to LGBTQ people wherever there are laws against sex discrimination, including employment, housing, health care and education.
Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Centre for Lesbian Rights, said although former U.S. Associate Anthony Kennedy and U.S. Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch were the authors of major LGBTQ rights from the Supreme Court, Ginsburg was “the most important voice for LGBT people.”
“As a civil rights advocate, she litigated and won the ground breaking cases that established strong constitutional protections for women,” Minter said. “As a Supreme Court justice, she authored key sex discrimination decisions that paved the way for the Court’s embrace of equality for same-sex couples in Obergefell and for LGBT workers in Bostock. She was our champion and the architect of an expansive vision of gender equality that was broad and capacious enough to include LGBT people. Without her influence and legacy, none of those landmark decisions would have been possible.”
Ginsburg herself became the first Supreme Court justice to conduct a same-sex wedding, marrying Kennedy Centre President Michael Kaiser and economist John Roberts in 2013.
