On SCOTUS and personal liberties

In response to Phillip Verleger’s letter regarding “The common good over personal liberties,” (The Aspen Times, Sept. 11) this is the same Supreme Court that sat in Cumming vs. Richmond (1899).

When three Black families in Richmond County, Virginia, faced the closing of the area’s only public Black high school, they petitioned the court to allow their children to finish their education at the white high school instead. It only took the Supreme Court three years to violate its own “separate but equal” standard by establishing that if there was no suitable Black school in a given district, Black students would simply have to do without an education.

In conclusion, I feel the precedent(s) set in your referenced (1904) court ruling are no more resolved now nor holding strong to modern challenges as they were perceived then. Personal liberties do hold legal value, and with a weaker modern Supreme Court, I can potentially see the legal challenges to this weigh heavy on the SCOTUS. Nothing was “resolved” in 1899 nor 1904.

P.S. — Get vaccinated.

Charles Bailey

Carbondale