Court Opinion

ID: 9460868
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:01:51.634918+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:48.664096
License: Public Domain

GOLDBERG, Circuit Judge
(specially concurring):
We have determined that the uncertainty shrouding plaintiffs’ constitutional position justified the trial court in denying plaintiffs’ pleas for temporary in-junctive salvation. This constitutional uncertainty will survive our decision. See Smilow v. United States, 2 Cir. 1972, 465 F.2d 802, 804, vacated on other grounds, 409 U.S. 944, 93 S.Ct. 268, 34 L.Ed.2d 215. No such uncertainty obscures the fact that the SDEC could have amended the party rules to avoid the serious and sincere objections voiced by plaintiffs. And I shall let no uncertainty mantle my nonconstitutional opinion of the SDEC’s incredible refusal to do so.
State and local governments and political parties, ever ready to decry and denounce Federal judicial invasion of their bailiwicks, should display some sensitivity to the letter of the Constitution. But even when they have committed no transgression of the letter, they ought also to be sensitive to the precious spirit embodied in the Constitution. The intrusion on religious practice here was aleatory : it was coincidental, not purposive, transitory, not permanent. The intrusion on religious sensibility was less evanescent — it was, in fact, a grievous trampling on the feelings of these plaintiffs and their co-religionists. The utter obviousness of this fact might have provoked the SDEC to go an inch beyond the constitutional last mile in order *1311to accommodate the convention date to the religious scruples of the minority.
This Court cannot say that the trial court was in error in not forcing the SDEC to live up to its platform shibboleth of religious freedom and equality. But if this is a case in which the law stays the Court’s arm, the judicial restraint should be no cause for jubilation. When members of a respected religion are, even temporarily and unintentionally, excommunicated from an important part of the political process, all citizens sensitive to the rights of minorities and to the precious freedoms vouchsafed in the Constitution should weep. Objectively the injury to the political process may here be epidermal; subjectively we know the wounds are far deeper.
The judicial arm does not have the muscle to lift every stone cluttering the political pathway. Other arms of our political system do have the strength. Unless they exercise their muscles, democratic atrophy will surely follow.