In 1932, Supreme Court Justice Lewis Brandeis indirectly coined the phrase, “laboratory of democracy” to describe America's state legislatures by writing, “It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.” Since the 2010 midterms, it appears that these metaphorical laboratories have initiated numerous experiments with America's most basic ideals.

Two states now prohibit state employee's unions from participating in collective bargaining, apparently denying American citizens in those states the right to enter into contracts if they choose to exercise their freedom of association and freedom of speech at the same time. America's challenging economic climate has led nineteen states to allow state government to forcibly intervene in local finances. Michigan even allows transferring the power and duties of municipal representatives elected by the People to an “emergency manager” appointed by the governor. Angry citizens soundly revoked this law at the ballot box by citizen initiative, but a “lame duck” session of the state legislature that originally passed the law reinstated it. When a US District Court failed to issue an injunction, Detroit's approximately 700,000 citizen's came to live under the “orders” of Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, rather than a democratic government of their own, duly elected representatives.

If state laws limiting American citizens' rights to vote, elect, contract, associate, and speak seem unconstitutional, consider the more than 300 laws passed by state houses (in 2013 alone) restricting American citizens' rights to control their own reproductive processes. Since attempts to regulate human reproduction usually stem from religious beliefs, these laws also appear to restrict many American's First Amendment right to religious freedom.

Eleven states have criminalized abortion after as little as six weeks. Eight states have passed “personhood” laws, granting a fused sperm and egg (even if the product of rape or incest ) the same rights as a fully developed human being. Personhood laws appear to criminalize all abortion, many forms of birth control, and mere “reasonable suspicion” triggers the investigation of miscarriages (about 50% of all pregnancies) as homicides. These laws prohibit abortion to save the life of the mother, forcing physicians to choose between letting the mother and her “person” die, or performing an abortion to save the mother's life and being prosecuted for the murder of her “person.”

No matter what the Constitutionality of these laws (if any), they may force us to ask, who is to control the reproductive and religious freedoms of the People of the United States: citizens and their physicians in the privacy of personal medical confidentiality, or politicians, religious leaders, and corporations in the harsh glare of the uniquely public modern American media?

States pass laws prohibiting collective action and granting governors the power to overrule municipal elections. Other states pass anti-abortion restrictions so sweeping that miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy could lead to prosecution for murder. Although they appear to be occurring in an “economic and social laboratory” “enabled by a happy incident of our federal system,” can these legislative “experiments” with democracy, human freedom, and the very lives of the American People occur “without risk” if the American People are not informed of them?

Laboratory of Democracy

by Groff Schroeder