The democratic process is what has established the human rights conventions. These people are just using what we've established in attempt to protect their rights.
The fact that statutes and courts are used for other purposes than originally envisioned does not justify those purposes or actions. It is quite likely that this tactic will eventually be used to push through policies which go against "progressive" doctrine, some of the more likely areas for this to happen are migration and criminal justice.
Given your nick I assume you're from the USA (and/or work for Intel...) so there are already some examples of this happening in both directions, e.g. first the establishment of a federal 'right to abortion' in Roe vs. Wade which was then withdrawn when the supreme court decision on Roe vs Wade pushed abortion legislation back to the state level. The laws are in place - both on state as well as federate level - for forcing your state and federal government to restrict migration and clamp down on district attorneys who are unwilling to prosecute criminals, all it takes is for some entity to manage to get a case in a 'friendly' court. Will you see such decisions in the same light as you're portraying this decision?
I'm Western European so this kind of thing does not have the partisan colouring you seem to read into this, at least to me. I chose this nick because I've always liked the Intel codenames. :-)
What I'm arguing here is that we've democratically elected leaders that have put the system in place that allows citizens to bring grievances when they have no other recourse to protect their rights. You can't then turn around and say that's an abuse of democracy, I feel it's the result.
What I think you're really arguing against is the existence of 'friendly' courts. Lady Justice should be blind and so whether progressive or conservative, if a court does its job and applies the law as our democratically elected leaders have written them I honestly don't care. Even if that means it will sometimes rule in a way I disagree with.
