The Fourth of July is a time of national celebration and commemoration. We rejoice in our liberty and remember those who won our freedoms and have preserved them at great cost. Yet underlying these things is a foundation that must remain strong for “liberty and justice for all” to mean anything.

It’s the rule of law. Law that is fair and impartial, consistent and understandable. Without allegiance to the rule of law, we become a nation where those in power can do what they want without accountability. And in this 244th year of our independence, I fear we are on the brink of that happening.

Last month, the court ruled in the case of Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia that the 1964 Civil Rights Act opposing discrimination based on the biological sex of an individual now must mean that “discrimination based on homosexuality or transgender status necessarily entails discrimination based on sex.”

Justice Neil Gorsuch, who wrote these words, even acknowledges in his decision that the meaning of “sex” in 1964 was not even vaguely connected to homosexuality or transgenderism. In his words, the court “proceeds on the assumption that ‘sex’,” in 1964, referred “only to biological distinctions between male and female.”

America has never been a perfect nation and never will be. But with all our problems, we have made tremendous progress in securing the God-given rights we too often take for granted.

But the exercise of those rights will be increasingly diminished and put in jeopardy if Congress refuses to safeguard them and, instead, allows the Supreme Court to rule however its justices prefer, regardless of the text of the Constitution and the law itself.