The Supreme Court on Monday declined an opportunity to overturn its landmark precedent recognizing a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, tossing aside an appeal that had roiled LGBTQ advocates who feared the conservative court might be ready to revisit the decade-old decision.
Instead, the court denied an appeal from Kim Davis, the former Kentucky county clerk who now faces hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages and legal fees for refusing to issue marriage licenses after the court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges allowed same-sex couples to marry.
The court did not explain its reasoning to deny the appeal, which had received outsized attention – in part because the court’s 6-3 conservative majority three years ago overturned Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to abortion that 1973 decision established. Since then, fears about Obergefell being the precedent to fall have grown.
Good. Fuck off, Kim Davis.
Can’t believe this person is still in the news.
So happy for her to be in the news saying she still owe’s $360K! "She was sued by multiple couples in the county, and a jury ordered her to pay $360,000 in damages and legal fees. " smh
I wish it was worse. I feel like she is probably still profiting from her bigotry.
Well, it’s not 360,000. Post judgment interest has accrued during the civil case’s appeals process, so it’s a good bit more than $360,000.
Aww, you say the nicest things!
Nice? Yes. True? More so. In the criminal cases, an appeal is a matter of right. In civil cases, you have to put funds in escrow, which neither side can touch until after the appeal so as to satisfy the judgment if you lose the appeal.
True, it is nice to be reminded of that piece of shit’s financial ruin. We just have to hope that any donations she got went to legal fees.
She is like a cicada you forget about them then after five years or so they show up and make a shit load of noise and annoy the hell out of everybody.
Given all the rest of the terrible shit going on, I can. In fact the big surprise is that they declined. Wonder how that might go with the Texas case
. . . for now
This one I can see lasting for a while. With abortion, there’s at least a valid discussion about when existing rights begin to apply to a fetus. Even without the religious angle, there’s some discussion to be had (ie at conception vs at viability vs at birth).
With same-sex marriage, they would have to justify taking away a right from adult citizens. That’s going to be damn hard to do without resorting to a purely religious angle. I don’t think they are ready to go full on theocracy yet. Maybe during Trump’s third term.
That’s going to be damn hard to do without resorting to a purely religious angle.
Trans people who just lost their (our) passports:
Consider that the only difference between a woman marrying a man and a woman marrying a woman is the sex/gender of one of the people. They have to figure out how to overturn the Civil Rights Act of 1964 first. That’s the one that says you can’t discriminate based on sex/gender (not sure which term is most appropriate here).
That’s exactly the argument that Roe v Wade made.
We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, in this point in the development of man’s knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.
A state criminal abortion statute of the current Texas type, that excepts from criminality only a life-saving procedure on behalf of the mother, without regard to pregnancy stage and without recognition of the other interests involved, is violative of the (due process rights of the mother).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade
When Trump’s activist judges overturned it, they argued that not criminalizing abortion gave women rights that the constitution did not explicitly protect(?)
Because according to incompetent/corrupt Trump judges, that’s how the constitution works now.
If only the framers had realized that they couldn’t possibly list all the rights people have. I mean, one might say the list would be innumerable!
No problem:
- certain
- inalienable
There we go. All around, a good day’s work.
If they can invent presidential immunity despite there being absolutely nothing in the constitution to justify it, I’m sure they have no problem writing an opinion that allows bans on gay marriage.
My best guess would be that they would frame it as being about the right of the states to regulate marriage. If the state can decide how many people can be in a marriage, how old you have to be to marry, how closely related you can be and still marry, the requirements for starting or ending a marriage, and so on, then what’s one more criteria? Add some tangents about the history of marriage in the US, some comments about how government is involved in marriage specifically because of how it connects to issues relating to reproduction, cite some cases from the 19th century, and twist some more recent precedent to reverse its meaning so that you can pretend to be following existing case law and you have a pretty standard ruling for this court.
And yet we have a case right here that suggests they don’t have a way to do that. There are too many gay couples who got married, and nobody wants to sort out the mess of them suddenly losing that.
They may not have felt that this was a good case for their purposes. Or enough of them may have felt that this was a bad time for it. Hell, maybe a couple of the conservative justices just don’t care enough to want to revisit the issue.
But respect for the law, the constitution, and the rights and wellbeing of the people hasn’t been evident in many of their recent opinions. Letting half the states pretend a fraction of marriages never happened wouldn’t even be the most disruptive thing they’ve done. They endorsed racial profiling, made racial gerrymandering presumptively legal, made prosecuting bribery essentially impossible, overturned abortion rights, and crowned Trump as king and gave him a license to kill. And that’s ignoring all the shenanigans happening on the shadow docket where they don’t even bother justifying their decisions. That they’ve at least drawn something of a line against the Trump administration trying to eliminate due process altogether makes sense only because letting go of due process would mean giving up some of their own influence.
If they want to rule arbitrarily on this, then there’s no reason to avoid this particular case. If they don’t want to rule arbitrarily, then they need to think through the implications, and there is no getting around some major practical issues.
Thomas has explicitly signalled that he wants to revisit Obergefell, and Barrett probably would, too. Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch, though, probably want to leave it alone, and combined with the three liberal justices, they ended it all right here.
I’m going to have to disagree that personal, physical autonomy is a valid discussion up for debate in the public sphere.
The only discussion should be between the person carrying the fetus who bears all the risk and responsibility and their medical professional.
The fact that it is even considered valid to be debated shows just how much propaganda works.
You’ve missed my point. I don’t actually care where you stand on when and how it’s decided that a given abortion is allowed; my point was that you can have the discussion without resorting to religioun based arguments.
No, I got your point. But it shouldn’t be considered a discussion worth having either religious or humanist. Overall I agreed with it, just not the example.
Your conviction about one possible position being correct has absolutely no bearing on whether or not the conversation should be had.
If your position is so concrete, a discussion should be no issue for you, as you can never convince anyone else with a simple “my position is right, everything else is wrong.”Edit: that part is phrased awkwardly. What I think I’m trying to get at is that no matter how strong your personal conviction, the conversation still needs to be had, since not everyone agrees with you. Of the people who disagree, yes some are essentially lost causes on that topic, but others can still be convinced. You can’t do that convincing if you always try to just shut down all conversation.
Don’t normalize a third term. If that happens the constitution is officially completely out the window, then watch people truly revolt.
Yep, it’s only because it’s too much too soon. The name of the game is normalization, and they haven’t gone through the process fully with same sex marriage yet. It’s coming.
Fuck that lady.
No thank you.
as a canadian, I’m slighlty disappointed. I unironically think your country would implode if gay marriage were banned. It’d be way too unpopular, more unpopular even than ICE. The opposition would be galvanized.
🏳️🌈✊
