I’m 0 for 2. Earlier this year, I wrote of my fear that the U.S. Supreme Court would permit the warrantless search of arrestees’ cell phones and my hope that the court would reject a company’s faith-based challenge to the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act. As it happens, I feared for naught, but hoped in vain: With the court’s recent decisions in Riley v. California and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, both the secrets in our iPhones and the religious beliefs of our corporations are sacrosanct.
In June, the 18th-century British naturalist Gilbert White observed, “the tortoise grows elate and walks on the tips of his toes.” So, too, do the Nine Wise Souls in Washington. The court typically decides its most controversial cases after Memorial Day and the justices seem to hoard their zest for battle and their sharpest rhetoric for those oft-bitterly divided opinions.
