Thread by @JCNSeverino

This weekend marks the 15th anniversary of the confirmation of Justice Samuel Alito.

He has been an eloquent voice for the Constitution over the last 15 years, and #SCOTUS has been better for it. (1/X)

#SCOTUS has never been more protective of religious freedom in its history. Justice Alito’s consistency and leadership on that issue made that possible. He wrote the Court’s opinions in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014) & Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru (2020). (2/X)

In Our Lady of Guadalupe, which held that courts can’t second-guess a religious school’s determination as to who should teach religion, the Court adopted the standard he laid out in his prescient concurrence eight years earlier in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC. (3/X)

Justice Alito has also been a defender of political speech under the First Amendment and the individual right to bear arms under the Second Amendment, the author of the Court’s opinion in McDonald v. Chicago (2010). (4/X)

He has opposed freewheeling policy choices under the guise of deciding cases—see his strong dissent last year in Bostock v. Clayton County. Equally important, he has consistently respected federalism and the separation of powers, without which our freedom would be in peril. (5/X)

So let’s toast Justice Alito on 15 years of faithfully defending the Constitution! 🥂

May the Court and country be blessed with 15 more years—and then some! (6/X)