U.S. Supreme Court Refuses to Stay Marriage Equality in Florida

In a move that ought to be hand writing on the wall as to how the appeal from the ruling from the Sixth Circuit upholding state marriage bans is going to fare, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to extend a stay in Florida delaying the effect of lower court rulings that struck down that that state's gay marriage ban.  The immediate result: same sex marriages will begin in Florida on January 6, 2015.  The larger result?  It seems inconceivable that the Supreme Court would allow marriages to occur in more and more states if it planned to uphold the Sixth Circuit's reactionary ruling that took a position that had been argued by a white supremacist group that had filed an amicus brief.  Indeed, such an action would be akin to an expost facto law - something barred by the U.S. Constitution. Here are highlights from The Advocate:

In a ruling late Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court said it will allow same-sex couples to begin marrying in Florida on January 6. But that doesn't mean that clerks will actually issue licenses.

A federal judge ruled in August that the state's ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, and stayed his decision until early January. The state had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to extend that stay, but the justices have now declined. Ordinarily, emergency requests from Florida are heard by Justice Clarence Thomas, but he referred Florida's petition to the full court. According to Friday's decision, only Thomas and Justice Antonin Scalia were in favor of granting the state's request, and so it was denied.

Unfortunately, couples who attempt to obtain licenses January 6 may still be turned away. The Florida Association of Clerks and Comptrollers has warned its members that because the state's marriage ban remains on the books and because litigation is still ongoing, issuing licenses to gay and lesbian couples remains a criminal act in Florida. Clerks who issue licenses could face up to a year in jail, the group said.

It's hard to imagine that law enforcement officials would actually prosecute a clerk who decided to test that law. But will there be a clerk brave enough to stick his or her neck out? That remains unknown.

If a clerk did decide to issue a license, and if a prosecutor decided to then charge them with breaking the law, that clerk would likely be in a good legal position to defend their actions. But such a defense would probably be costly, so they would also need to be in a good financial position to defend themselves. That would require the support of national civil rights groups, like potentially Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union, or the Human Rights Campaign.

"Every day these couples and their families are denied the protections and benefits that come with legal marriage, they risk real and serious consequences," said HRC legal director Sarah Warbelow in a Friday statement. "We look forward to the day that all couples are able to have their relationships recognized as valid under the law."

The Court's move is a rebuke to Pam Bondi who has enthusiastically prostituted herself to the Christofascists.  It is telling that both Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Alito did not support extending the stay.  Is it possible that even a reactionary like Alito now supports same sex marriage?  Perhaps he and Roberts see the future and they have decided that they do not want to be on the wrong side of history and looked back upon with derision.  Meanwhile, expect NOM and other hate groups to work hard to shake down the ignorant for money. 

Justice Clarence Thomas’s Disgraceful Silence

I have often lamented the misconduct of Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito who utterly ignore the rules of judicial conduct that apply to the rest of the federal judiciary.  If lower court judges engaged in the outrageous political partisanship that we have seen from these three justices or their open bias before hearing cases, they would be likely removed from office.  But in the case of Clarence Thomas, the misconduct goes even further.  The man is a dullard in my view and he doesn't even pay attention during oral arguments.  The man harms the very credibility of the United States Supreme Court.  A piece in The New Yorker looks at Thomas' embarrassing and disgraceful conduct.  Here are excerpts:

As of this Saturday, February 22nd, eight years will have passed since Clarence Thomas last asked a question during a Supreme Court oral argument. His behavior on the bench has gone from curious to bizarre to downright embarrassing, for himself and for the institution he represents.

This point was especially apparent on January 13th, when the Court considered the case of National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, which raises important questions about the President’s ability to fill vacancies when the Senate is in recess. It was a superb argument—highly skilled lawyers engaging with eight inquisitive judges. The case also offered a kind of primer on the state of the Court in action, with Thomas’s colleagues best viewed in pairs.

As for Thomas, he is physically transformed from his infamous confirmation hearings, in 1991—a great deal grayer and heavier today, at the age of sixty-five. He also projects a different kind of silence than he did earlier in his tenure. In his first years on the Court, Thomas would rock forward, whisper comments about the lawyers to his neighbors Breyer and Kennedy, and generally look like he was acknowledging where he was. These days, Thomas only reclines; his leather chair is pitched so that he can stare at the ceiling, which he does at length. He strokes his chin. His eyelids look heavy. Every schoolteacher knows this look. It’s called “not paying attention.”

Thomas has a part to play, if he wants to take it. The Noel Canning case, for example, raises a profound issue in constitutional law. Noel Canning, a bottling company, is challenging a ruling of the National Labor Relations Board on the ground that some of its members were appointed illegitimately. All Presidents have used recess appointments, often without much controversy; Obama did so in this case because Congress had refused to act on his nominations, to the point that the N.L.R.B. didn’t have a quorum. 

No one, however, has been more outspoken about this conflict, at least on paper, than Thomas, the most extreme originalist on the Court. Scalia believes that the Court owes some deference to its own precedents, even if they differ from the original meaning of the text. Thomas is happy to lay waste to decades, even centuries, of constitutional law. Clearly, then, Thomas could have contributed to this spirited, important debate. Instead, on this day he was, as usual, checked out.

Still, there is more to the job of Supreme Court Justice than writing opinions.  . . . .
But the process works only if the Justices engage. The current Supreme Court is almost too ready to do so, and sometimes lawyers have a hard time getting a word in edgewise. In question-and-answer sessions at law schools, Thomas has said that his colleagues talk too much, that he wants to let the lawyers say their piece, and that the briefs tell him all he needs to know. But this—as his colleagues’ ability to provoke revealing exchanges demonstrates—is nonsense. Thomas is simply not doing his job.

By refusing to acknowledge the advocates or his fellow-Justices, Thomas treats them all with disrespect. It would be one thing if Thomas’s petulance reflected badly only on himself, which it did for the first few years of his ludicrous behavior. But at this point, eight years on, Thomas is demeaning the Court.

For many reasons, Thomas needs to be removed from the Court.

Justice Alito: 'The Idea That Romantic Love Is a Prerequisite to Marriage' is the Problem

If there's any doubt about the backward thinking of supposed "thinkers" and "intellectuals on the far right, one need look no further than Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's (Alito is pictured at left) recent dissent in United States v. Windsor in which this Neanderthal bemoans that the idea of romantic love should be a part of marriage began all the problems surrounding marriage and gay marriage in particular.  Alito seemingly longs for the days when women were bartered by their male relatives for livestock and other financial or political benefits with out a care as to whether the woman involved could even tolerate her often much older husband.  Alito's creepy views are certainly in keeping with the Christofascist agenda of subservient wives and sex being only for procreation (and male pleasure).  Huffington Post looks at Alito's batshitery.  Here are excerpts:

There's been lots of discussion about Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's off-the-rails DOMA dissent, but if you really want a peek into the mind of someone living a couple of centuries in the past -- and using pseudo-academic rationales rather than pure emotion, like Scalia -- you've got to read Justice Samuel Alito's concurring dissent on DOMA.  In it we learn that the problem with the decline of marriage really began with "the ascendence of the idea that romantic love is a prerequisite to marriage."

This makes me think that a) Justice Alito purchased his wife at an auction, or from her parents in exchange for a plot of land and a couple of mules, or b) she kicked him out of the house the moment he walked in the door after she read his dissent.

Is this what conservatives really think, that the real problem is that we're marrying for love?

The family is an ancient and universal human institution. Family structure reflects the characteristics of a civilization, and changes in family structure and in the popular understanding of marriage and the family can have profound effects. Past changes in the understanding of marriage -- for example, the gradual ascendance of the idea that romantic love is a prerequisite to marriage -- have had far-reaching consequences.... We can expect something similar to take place if same-sex marriage becomes widely accepted. The long-term consequences of this change are not now known and are unlikely to be ascertainable for some time to come.

I can't imagine that Alito really believes we should go back to arranged marriages. But the man who stated during oral arguments on DOMA that gay unions are "newer than cellphones and the Internet" does appear to believe that the shift to "romantic love" was a dramatic change that caused such a jolt to the institution of marriage

"At present, no one -- including social scientists, philosophers, and historians -- can predict with any certainty what the long-term ramifications of widespread acceptance of same-sex marriage will be," Alito warns. And for that reason Alito believes the court should have upheld DOMA. The logical conclusion of this reasoning is that if the government could have enforced arranged marriage with a federal law, it should have, since no one could predict the outcome of these newfangled romantic-love marriages, which altered the institution of marriage forever.

The descent of the far right into utter insanity continues and it is frightening that someone as out of touch with normal reality is on the Supreme Court.