If Samuel Alito decides to call it quits this summer – and there are good reasons for him to do so that have nothing to do with his stellar performance as a justice on the US Supreme Court – last week’s dissent in one of the most appalling court decisions in recent memory – which is saying something – should shoot Judge Lawrence Van Dyke to the top of President Trump’s SCOTUS shortlist. We need a straight shooter. We need a fearless fighter. We need someone who’s willing to call a… well… let me explain.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which I had the dubious pleasure of arguing in front of back when I was still doing law, recently chose to refuse to review a decision that allowed Washington state to essentially force young girls – and I mean, like thirteen years old – to come face-to-face with naked perverts who get off on exposing themselves to women and children.
The court didn’t put it that way, of course. The courts rarely put things forthrightly when they do something that seems like madness to normal people, but which leftist ideology demands. Instead, they deflect and distract, employ euphemisms and clichés, and ignore precedent and common sense to avoid actually describing the reality of what their decisions mean.
Well, not Judge Van Dyke. Not by a long shot.
Let’s take a look at his opening salvo in dissent in Olympus Spa v. Armstrong. Caution – it’s a little bit vulgar, but that’s intentional, and I’ve truncated the key word at issue to keep in line with Townhall‘s family-friendly focus.
This is a case about swinging d***s. The Christian owners of Olympus Spa—a traditional Korean, women-only, nude spa—understandably don’t want them in their spa. Their female employees and female clients don’t want them in their spa either. But Washington State insists on them. And now so does the Ninth Circuit.
You may think that swinging d***s shouldn’t appear in a judicial opinion. You’re not wrong. But as much as you might understandably be shocked and displeased to merely encounter that phrase in this opinion, I hope we all can agree that it is far more jarring for the unsuspecting and exposed women at Olympus Spa—some as young as thirteen—to be visually assaulted by the real thing.
Sometimes, it feels like the supposed adults in the room have collectively lost their minds. Woke regulators and complicit judges seem entirely willing, even eager, to ignore the consequences that their Frankenstein social experiments impose on real women and young girls.
As you can see, Judge Van Dyke has had it. He’s had it with a judicial system that is focused not even on the needs of weirdos, losers, and mutations but on the base and disgusting desires of weirdos, losers, and mutations. We see this all the time in cases where we’re expected to simply tolerate hobos defecating on our streets, criminals stealing and killing, illegal aliens illegal aliening, and, here, adult men who are either mentally ill because they believe they are women, or, more likely, are flat-out perverts who get off on exposing themselves to little girls. It’s not the creepy deviant who has to bear the limited burden of not wagging his genitals in front of horrified women and girls– again, some as young as thirteen. No, it is we, normal people, who must bear the burden by swallowing our dignity and violating our faith in order to accommodate these degenerates.
And again, this isn’t some necessity. They’re not going to die if they don’t get to expose themselves to children. They want to expose themselves to children because they derive sexual satisfaction from doing so. It’s all about these creeps getting off. What these judges are saying, as Judge Van Dyke unforgivably points out, is that not only are we normal people expected to be punching bags, subsidizers, and tolerators of every kind of aberrant human behavior, but now we’re expected to be involuntary participants in the grody onanism of these disgusting sickos.
Of course, to the majority, the real problem isn’t that they would force normal people to be active actors in the personal psychodramas of these skeevy creeps. The real problem is that Judge Van Dyke described exactly what the court is doing without hiding it under a heap of euphemisms and clichés. These judges are saying that if you want to engage in a personal and private cultural activity, like a Korean spa, you’ve got to let some naked dude join in. You know, just like the Founders intended.
But liberal judges don’t want to contend with that reality or speak that truth clearly, and there’s a good reason. It’s either insane or evil – or both – and they know it. They don’t want normal people to realize what they’re doing. It must be obfuscated; otherwise, that’s how conservatives end up getting elected, to put a stop to this perversion of the law and everything else. So, they fall back on the Margaret Dumont maneuver of “Oh, well, I never!” upon being confronted with the indisputable truth of their appalling position. How dare you use such uncouth language to describe the bizarre sexual freak show we just mandated!
And their allies are joining in the pile-on, not that Judge Van Dyke cares. At the garbage blog AboveTheLaw.com, they got really mad that Judge Van Dyke stood up to the perverts and called him “an unqualified hack.” They also noted how the American Bar Association rated him “Not Qualified.” Of course, he has a stellar legal record, which includes having been a solicitor general in two states and graduating from Harvard Law – maybe they had a point. So, he is not unqualified in the sense that normal people might understand the term “Not Qualified.” He’s unqualified in their eyes because he’s conservative. Proudly so. Uncompromisingly so. And, most offensive to the left, unapologetically so.
Of course, the American Bar Association is a joke. It’s not actually a governing body that licenses lawyers; it’s a leftist organization that pre-based Republicans used to consult with on judicial appointments until they finally figured out what the ABA’s rigged game is. If you want to understand the state of the ABA, it is currently insisting that the Equal Rights Amendment, which failed to be ratified, actually was ratified because Joe Biden said so.
In any case, Judge Van Dyke should wear the contempt of his loser enemies like a badge of honor. When someone makes these people mad, you know he’s on the right track.
Judge Van Dyke has become a notorious dissenter on the Ninth Circuit, which has been improved slightly by his and some other Trump appointees’ presence, but still remains an oft–overturned circuit that’s reliably eager to embrace the worst of woke using the most dubious of legal arguments. He has been particularly good about standing up to the Ninth Circuit’s unbroken record of upholding every single gun control law that’s come before it, no matter how blatantly it offends the Second Amendment. It’s also home to a notorious maneuver that outright ignores the law and precedent by automatically staying immigration deportation orders upon filing a habeas corpus petition instead of after individually reviewing the claim, thereby effectively giving illegal aliens months or years more in the country.
No wonder that, in such an environment, Judge Van Dyke is best known for writing in dissent, but dissenting is important. Without his dissent in Olympus Spa, we would barely be aware of this latest judicial atrocity. But with a simple four-letter word, he has thrown a spotlight on this disgraceful legal abomination. And you can tell he’s drawn blood by his opponents’ howling about him using a dirty word to describe the dirty concept they fully support.
And that’s exactly what we need on the United States Supreme Court. Justice Alito has been a stalwart conservative, with uncompromisingly honest jurisprudence, unflappable patriotism, and a standing rejection of leftist legal Calvinball in favor of constitutional truth. Justices Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch get some grief, yet they generally perform adequately. But adequate isn’t enough anymore. We need a superstar to replace a superstar. That’s why, when that next vacancy comes open, President Donald Trump should consider making Judge Lawrence Van Dyke into Justice Lawrence Van Dyke.
