Supreme Court issues rulings in gay marriage cases

[Valin]

Chicago Tribune:

 

 

Tribune staff and wire reports

June 26, 2013

 

In a victory for same-sex marriage supporters, the Supreme Court this morning voted to overturn a key part of the the Defense of Marriage Act and let stand a lower court ruling overturning California's Proposition 8.

 

"The principal purpose and the necessary effect of this law are to demean those persons who are in a lawful same-sex marriage," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in a 5-4 decision on DOMA. "This requires the Court to hold, as it now does, that DOMA is unconstitutional as a deprivation of the liberty of the person protected by the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution."

 

(Snip)

 

The court also voted 5-4 that it did not have jurisdiction to hear the Prop 8 case. That left in place a San Francisco federal district court ruling that overturned the law.

 

 

(Snip)

 

 

 

[Valin]

Hot Air

 

Update: From the conclusion of Kennedy’s opinion:

 

The liberty protected by the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause contains within it the prohibition against denying to any person the equal protection of the laws. See Bolling, 347 U. S., at 499–500; Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña, 515 U. S. 200, 217–218 (1995). While the Fifth Amendment itself withdraws from Government the power to degrade or demean in the way this law does, the equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment makes that Fifth Amendment right all the more specific and all the better understood and preserved.

 

The class to which DOMA directs its restrictions and restraints are those persons who are joined in same-sex marriages made lawful by the State. DOMA singles out a class of persons deemed by a State entitled to recognition and protection to enhance their own liberty. It imposes a disability on the class by refusing to acknowledge a status the State finds to be dignified and proper. DOMA instructs all federal officials, and indeed all persons with whom same-sex couples interact, including their own children, that their marriage is less worthy than the marriages of others. The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its mar-riage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity. By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others, the federal statute is in violation of the Fifth Amendment. This opinion and its holding are confined to those lawful marriages.

[Valin]

Hot Air Again

Update: A further clarification from Kevin Russell at SCOTUSBlog:

 

To be clear: Windsor does not establish a constitutional right to same sex marriage. It was important to the outcome that the couple in the case was legally married under state law. The equal protection violation arose from Congress’s disrespecting that decision by New York to allow the marriage.

[Valin]

Gay Patriot

Bill Clintons Defense of Marriage Act Finally Overturned By Roberts Court

Bruce Carroll

 

I was asked to do a play-by-play on the mornings SCOTUS rulings at Ricochet.com. So I present you a somewhat truncated version of that post. Mostly because Im lazy and do this for free.

 

As I expected, the Supreme Court has just issued its opinion that the Defense of Marriage Act, signed into law by Bill Clinton, is unconstitutional.

 

The vote was 5-4 with Justice Kennedy joining the liberal justices and Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas dissenting.

 

(Snip)

 

From Chris Geidner at BuzzFeed (who is also a lawyer) has this to say about Prop 8 decision:

 

Todays decision means the trial-court decision striking down #Prop8 stands. Questions remain whether that can & will be enforced statewide.

Heres an attempt at interpretation on Prop 8 ruling from SCOTUSblog:

 

Heres a Plain English take on Hollingsworth v. Perry, the challenge to the constitutionality of Californias Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage: After the two same-sex couples filed their challenge to Proposition 8 in federal court in California, the California government officials who would normally have defended the law in court, declined to do so. So the proponents of Proposition 8 stepped in to defend the law, and the California Supreme Court (in response to a request by the lower court) ruled that they could do so under state law. But today the Supreme Court held that the proponents do not have the legal right to defend the law in court. As a result, it held, the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the intermediate appellate court, has no legal force, and it sent the case back to that court with instructions for it to dismiss the case.

So there you go. As weve said all along here at GayPatriot, this should be a state issue. Now jubilant low-information gays prancing around Chelsea and The Castro agree with us, even though they dont know why!

[Valin]