The idea of “checks and balances” was drilled into those of us who took civics in high school. Now, an emboldened Supreme Court of the United States may be about to end those very checks and balances that keep our system in, well, balance.

Checks and balances enshrined in the Constitution work in six ways. Legislatures check and balance executives by passing bills and funding the executive. Legislatures check and balance the judiciary by confirming judicial appointments and funding the courts. Executives check and balance legislatures by proposing and by vetoing legislation and they check and balance the judiciary by nominating judges. The judiciary checks and balances the other branches by reviewing and interpreting laws as to constitutionality, equity, conflicts between laws, etc.

It’s a simple idea that, like just about anything involving lawyers, gets complicated.

In two cases heard this week, the Court’s right-wing — I distinguish between right wing and conservative just as I distinguish between left wing and liberal — majority indicated it is leaning toward allowing businesses to discriminate against customers based on the business owner’s religion and that it may accept an outlandish constitutional interpretation called “the independent state legislature” that would ban courts and governors from any role in elections.

The first case, Creative LLC v. Elenis, comes from a web designer in Colorado who refused to set up a website for gay couples, citing her religious beliefs. The web designer has positioned it as a freedom-of-speech case, even though her religious opposition to same-sex marriage is the core of her case. This is the second such case from Colorado, and SCOTUS may extend the precedent it set when it allowed a baker to refuse to bake a wedding cake for two gay men.

Allowing businesses to discriminate against customers could signal a retreat to the 1950s or before. If a business owner can refuse to serve a customer based on the customer’s sexuality or any other characteristic counter to the business owner’s idea of religion, we may be looking at SCOTUS eventually reversing the Public Accommodations Act of 1964, which stated, in essence, that if you set up in a public business you cannot refuse anyone service.

After the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision last summer canceling the right to abortion, two justices (Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito) said they can see the court overturning such decisions as the right to marry whom you love (Loving v. Virginia, and no, that’s not a pun) and the right to contraception (Griswold v. Connecticut). Has the retreat to the ‘50s already begun?

In Moore v. Harper, which SCOTUS heard on Wednesday, the court could end checks and balances in the drawing up of legislative districts. SCOTUS barred (in 2019) federal courts from ruling on legislative maps. Under the “independent legislature theory,” it would bar state courts and governors from participating. State legislatures could even be able to annul election results they didn’t like, since no court would have review and no governor would have veto power.

Moore v. Harper stems from North Carolina Republicans drawing congressional district lines so tortured that they might go around a single block likely to vote the “wrong” way. In 2020, Republicans had drawn districts that gave them 10 of 13 seats in the House of Representatives, even though the state is evenly divided among independents, Republicans and Democrats. The Republican who drew the map defended it by saying he couldn’t figure a way to give his party 11 of the 13.

The state supreme court rejected such a map in 2022, and Carolinians voted in November to send seven Republicans and seven Democrats to Washington. (The 2020 census added a district.)

Foreboding. Three justices have indicated they favor the “independent state legislature” theory. They are Neil Gorsuch, Alito and Thomas. Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts seem less enthusiastic. As The Washington Post reported Wednesday night, “Roberts and Barrett said the court’s precedents do not support such an absolutist view. Roberts (said) the court held decades ago that a governor may veto the legislature’s redistricting plan.”

Roberts said on Wednesday, “The power to veto the actions of the legislature significantly undermines the argument that it can do whatever it wants.” Cross your fingers that at least two of those three join the three liberals to keep our electoral checks and balances in balance.

Chickens, after all, come home to roost. They did on Nov. 8, when voters, angry at SCOTUS’s ending women’s right to abortion, denied Republicans the usual big gains of off-year elections.

Even before the ruling on Creative LLC v. Elenis, chickens came home to roost in Richmond, Virginia. The Family Foundation, an anti-gay organization, booked a room at a restaurant. When some restaurant employees learned of FF’s anti-gay work, they protested, and management canceled the event. The FF protested, apparently unaware of the irony. Or hypocrisy.

It’s not a perfect equivalence. The restaurant employees were acting on their political beliefs while the anti-gay web designer in Colorado says her politics (refusing to do business with gays) came from her religion. But the lesson is the same. And the chickens are roosting in Richmond.

If you want to imagine where this might take us, imagine Iran, where the guiding ideology is “my way or the highway” and “my way” belongs to the Supreme Leader, a Shia Ayatollah.

Bob Neal took (required) civics in summer school when his family returned to Missouri from Tennessee, which didn’t require civics. He’s grateful for that start in learning about our system. Neal can be reached at [email protected].