Samuel Alito may not be the most corrupt member of the Supreme Court—that distinction goes to Clarence Thomas—but he is easily its most openly homophobic, misogynistic, and histrionic. His latest meltdown came in an unusual “written statement” (the functional equivalent of a dissenting opinion) issued on February 20 in a case on jury selection that the court declined to accept for full review, called Missouri Department of Corrections v. Finney. Alito used the statement not only to set forth his deeply flawed legal reasoning on jury selection, but as an opportunity to reiterate his longstanding critique of the constitutional right to same-sex marriage, a stance that has aligned him closely with the Christian nationalist movement that has taken over the Republican Party.

Jean Finney, the plaintiff in the case, is a longtime employee of the Department of Corrections (DOC) and a lesbian who, court records state, “presents herself as masculine.” She sued her employer, alleging the agency had created a hostile work environment and retaliated against her after she began dating a male co-worker’s former wife. During jury selection in her 2021 trial, her attorney asked prospective jurors a question that went to their capacity to be fair and impartial: “How many of you went to a religious organization growing up where it was taught that people that are homosexuals shouldn’t have the same rights as everyone else because it was a sin with what they did?”

The question was designed to identify individuals who would be prejudiced against Finney, and was one any competent lawyer would have raised. The trial judge subsequently excused two prospective jurors, one a pastor’s wife, who answered that according to the Bible, homosexuality is a sin. The jury returned a verdict in Finney’s favor, awarding her $275,000 in damages.

It is religious doctrine, not the Constitution, that drives Alito’s jurisprudence.

The DOC appealed, but the Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment, holding the jurors had been properly dismissed for cause, not because of their Christian faith—that would have been unconstitutional—but because of their views on homosexuality.

After the Missouri Supreme Court declined to review, the DOC filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court. All nine justices, including Alito, rejected the petition.

Normally, the high court’s rejection would have been expressed in a one-sentence order. But Alito deemed it necessary to pen a five-page written statement complaining about the disposition. Although he agreed that the DOC had not properly preserved the jurors’ dismissal as an issue for appeal, he explained that, but for this technicality, he would have voted to grant the petition. His reasoning, however, was off the rails and holds dangerous implications for the future of marriage equality and gay rights.

“In this case,” Alito wrote, “the court below reasoned that a person who still holds traditional religious views on questions of sexual morality is presumptively unfit to serve on a jury in a case involving a party who is a lesbian. That holding exemplifies the danger that I anticipated in Obergefell v. Hodges… (2015), namely, that Americans who do not hide their adherence to traditional religious beliefs about homosexual conduct will be ‘labeled as bigots and treated as such’ by the........

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