My thought is you can’t school liberal minded zealots in anything. You beat them down, stomp them and cut off all avenues of petty response. In my opinion, it was a mistake.
In school, how do you best deal with a disobedient, recalcitrant child? Tell just him that he was wrong and fix the problem for him ... or make him stay after school writing “I won’t disregard SCOTUS rulings” three hundred times on the chalkboard?
IMHO what SCOTUS did here was a lot more humiliating to the 7th Circuit than if they’d just overturned the ruling.