The liberals & textualists/originalists teaming up against the 'mainstream' conservatives is indeed a rarity, hence the interest therein, but it's not necessarily an odd one or anything like that given the particularities of the case before them.
Yes, this is just the modern version of the Scalia+Thomas+Liberals (sometimes minus Breyer) criminal justice cases of the 2000's. I'm a bit surprised by Barrett though. It is (or at least will be) interesting to see where her idiosyncrasies are. I've thought they could be somewhat similar to Justice Scalia, for whom she once clerked. A decision like this reinforces that viewpoint.
