By the all-too-familiar 5-4 split, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled yesterday that workers cannot sue state governments for monetary damages when denied the unpaid time off guaranteed by the Family and Medical Leave Act.

The 1993 law provided those with full-time jobs at private companies of more than 50 employees and employees of federal, state, and local public governments up to 12 workweeks of unpaid, job-protected leave annually for family and medical reasons.

But the Supreme Court’s plurality in this case, Coleman v. Court of Appeals of Maryland, said that citizens can only sue state governments for damages when Congress finds “a pattern of constitutional violations” and tailors “a remedy congruent and proportional to the documented violations.” This sovereign immunity means that, while state employees have the right to take the leave, if the state blocks their exercise of that right, their only recourse is to get a judge to reverse the potential violation, in advance. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the opinion of the court for himself, Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Clarence Thomas, and Justice Samuel Alito; Justice Antonin Scalia concurred with Kennedy’s result but not his reasoning.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, on behalf of Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, took the rare step of reading her dissent aloud in court. She called the result “regrettable” and observed that the Kennedy opinion “pays scant attention to the overarching aim” of the law, which was “to make it feasible for women to work while sustaining family life.” Ginsburg said that the law was a reasonable effort by congress to ensure the equal protection guaranteed by the 14th amendment for public employees facing discrimination.

While the law remains in full force for employees of private employers, the court’s ruling significantly weakens the law’s protections for hundreds of thousands of public employees. With anti-worker rulings like this, it’s no wonder a mere 28 percent of likely voters like the job the Supreme Court is doing.

Conservative conspiracy theories have had a fun ride since President Obama took office.

First, Barack Obama was a Muslim. Then, he was born in Kenya instead of the United States and only served as president via a forged birth certificate. Then, his decisions as president can only be understood through the frame of “Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior”.

Now, according to the latest tale, courtesy of House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA), President Obama wants to “convert [our Constitution] to some South African Constitution.”

Issa made the curious accusation Friday at the California Republican Party’s Spring Convention in Burlingame:

ISSA: We’re going to establish a very different policy. One, that we have a president who will respect the Constitution, not try to convert it to some [inaudible] South African Constitution. [Applause]

Listen to it:

Issa likely conflated the erroneous accusation that President Obama wants “some South African Constitution” with and equally erroneous accusation that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg prefers the South African Constitution that has recently infected right-wing commentary.

Earlier this month, Ginsburg told an audience in Egypt that other countries’ constitutions may be better models for their burgeoning democracy than the United States Constitution because more recently drafted constitutions are often more precise in laying out individual rights. If Issa had bothered to the entire interview, however, he would have heard her stirring praise for the First Amendment, her references to the “genius” of our Constitution, and her statement about how powerful it is that our Constitution places power in “We the People.” Moreover, if Issa paid attention to the views of Ginsburg’s conservative colleagues, he would know that conservative Justice Antonin Scalia made a similar point when he testified at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that the Soviet Union’s bill of rights “was much better than ours.”

Yet, even if Ginsburg had claimed that South Africa’s legal traditions are inherently superior to ours, her comments are hardly indicative of President Obama’s views because Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is actually an entirely different person than Barack Obama. To help Issa understand this difficult concept, ThinkProgress has prepared the following visual aide:

Hat-tip: @lhfang

During a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, conservative Justice Antonin Scalia said that U.S. Constitution is vastly inferior to that of one of our long defunct enemies:

The bill of rights of the former evil empire, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was much better than ours. I mean it literally. It was much better. We guarantee freedom of speech and of the press, big deal! The guaranteed freedom of speech, of the press of street demonstrations and anyone who is caught trying to suppress criticism of the government will be called to account.

Watch it:

Scalia’s casual disregard for our Constitution proves that he is manifestly unfit to interpret it. If Scalia would rather live under the Soviet constitution, than he should move to Russia and see how he likes trying to get a job as a judge there. Clearly, ThinkProgress has no choice but to call for this communist infiltrator to immediately resign from the federal bench.

Except that such a call would be completely dishonest, which will be clear to anyone who takes half a minute to watch the entire video embedded in this post.

Sadly, a small army of right-wing legal groups and commentators are perfectly willing to levy an equally unfounded attack against left-of-center Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Last week, Justice Ginsburg told an Egyptian audience that she would not recommend using the United States Constitution as a model for the new Egyptian Constitution. Ginsburg suggested that Egypt should learn from the full experience of the world in drafting constitutions, and because we have the world’s oldest enduring Constitution, its drafters did not benefit from all that humanity has learned about constitution drafting in the last 200 years.

It was no doubt predictable that these comments would inspire right-wing editorials headlined “Justice Ginsburg Should Resign,” but those editorials are just as ill-considered as a suggestion that Scalia must resign because of his comments about the Soviet Union. If Ginsburg’s opponents had actually bothered to watch her entire statement to the Egyptians, they would have heard her stirring praise for our First Amendment, her references to the “genius” of our Constitution, and her statement about how powerful it is that our Constitution places power in “We the People.”

But, of course, Ginsburg’s critics aren’t interested in actually doing their homework, they just want an excuse to go on the attack.

In a speech yesterday at Southern Methodist University law school, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg offered a grim assessment of the judicial confirmations process. If she were nominated to the Supreme Court today, her background as a civil rights attorney would likely prevent her from being confirmed:

Ginsburg said that to practice for her Senate confirmation hearings, White House staffers in mock hearings grilled her on her work for the ACLU. During those mock hearings she told them: “There’s nothing you can do to get me to bad mouth the ACLU.”

Such grilling, though, did not happen, she said. She was confirmed 96-3.

“Today, my ACLU connection would probably disqualify me,” she said.

It’s worth noting exactly what kind of work Justice Ginsburg did for the ACLU before she was confirmed to the federal bench. As director of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project, Ginsburg was literally the single most important women’s rights attorney in American history. She authored the brief in Reed v. Reed that convinced a unanimous Supreme Court to hold for the very first time that the Constitution’s guarantee of Equal Protection applies to women. And her brief in Craig v. Boren convinced the Court to hand down its very first decision holding that gender discrimination laws are subject to heightened constitutional scrutiny. It is possible that modern doctrines preventing gender discrimination would simply not exist if Ruth Bader Ginsburg hadn’t done the work she did for the ACLU.

And yet, in today’s era of rampant right-wing filibusters, that alone would disqualify her for a seat on the federal bench.