Monday night’s leak of a draft opinion showing that the Supreme Court is ready to fully overturn Roe v. Wade has prompted many a conservative to show their retrograde, bigoted asses and confirm that the end of Roe will also affect many, many other rights and freedoms.
One conservative, in particular, took to the alt-right social media site Gab to call for the court to overturn Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 case that struck down racial segregation in public schools.
Peter Brimelow is a former editor at the conservative National Review (a relatively mainstream publication!) who now runs a white nationalist website called VDare; the site’s tagline is “we inform the fight to keep America American.” Brimelow shared the story about the leak on Gab, per extremism reporter Nick Martin, and seemed excited about the prospect of legal public segregation: “Next stop Brown vs. Board!”
Brimelow also called for the court to overturn New York Times v. Sullivan, a landmark press freedom case that required people suing for libel to prove that false statements were maliciously made. We should note that Brimelow is currently suing the Times for referring to him as a white nationalist (he prefers “civic nationalist”).
Brown is the case that overruled Plessy v. Ferguson and its odious “separate but equal” doctrine because the court said it violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, which holds that states can’t “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
(Dozens of federal judges appointed by President Donald Trump refused to say during their confirmation hearings if Brown was correctly decided, and some only started doing so after complaints from the only Black Republican Senator, Tim Scott of South Carolina.)
Not only is it disgusting to call for the court to overturn Brown, it’s a bit awkward for the more “mainstream” conservatives who have touted the case as a righteous example of the Supreme Court overruling precedent. People including Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Justice Brett Kavanaugh have cited the vile decision in Plessy in their long campaign to undermine Roe.
So now Brimelow, and other people who think like him, are openly admitting that not only do they want to end protections for abortion, they want to legalize segregation. Just great.