SCOTUS news and opinions

[Evie]

Indeed. It's self-evident that the idea that government employees get to ignore the law if their job description was written under an older law is a stillborn farce, but sadly, integrity and intellectual honesty aren't exactly concerns to some these days.

 

[Lexicus]

Indeed. It's self-evident that the idea that government employees get to ignore the law if their job description was written under an older law is a stillborn farce, but sadly, integrity and intellectual honesty aren't exactly concerns to some these days.

Also all the more bitterly funny in a US context given that the conservatives are currently trying to enact their theory of a "unitary executive" under which all executive branch employees are at-will and can be fired by the President for any reason. True, Kim Davis wasn't a federal employee, but nevertheless it is amusing for someone to couch this argument in terms of the employment rights of government functionaries when the same people who want to do away with gay marriage rights are simultaneously arguing that it's unconstitutional for federal employees to have any adverse rights against the President at all.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Proper consideration of the impact of changes in the law on existing arrangements does not preclude changes in the law and might even make for better law.

 

[Lexicus]

Proper consideration of the impact of changes in the law on existing arrangements does not preclude changes in the law and might even make for better law.

Civil servants are called civil servants for a reason. If you find that your conscience prevents you from carrying out the law, the correct course is to resign.

 

[Arwon]

Yeah this is arrant spurious nonsense for a court to even be indulging, Eddie.

As a public servant, every time there's an election and change of government, I will see changes in the policies and systems I am charged with implementing that are far bigger than the mix of names that go on a certificate some clerk is responsible for processing. That's just the nature of working in public administration.

 

[EnglishEdward]

If legitimacy arises from an election, then was not this lady elected ?

 

[danjuno]

If legitimacy arises from an election, then was not this lady elected ?

Therefore?

 

[Arwon]

If legitimacy arises from an election, then was not this lady elected ?

Local government barely counts lol, especially local government votes for dumb stuff like dog catcher. Why the hell is the person who collects marriage forms an elected position!??

 

[Birdjaguar]

Local government barely counts lol, especially local government votes for dumb stuff like dog catcher. Why the hell is the person who collects marriage forms an elected position!??

Small city/town democracy. IIRC she is a court clerk of some sort and court people are often elected.

 

[Arwon]

Christy almighty lol

 

[Birdjaguar]

SCOTUS supports Trump's snap appeal for a stay and returns the decision back to the appeals court.

 

[Akka]

My understanding is that when she took up her job as registrar, it did not involve marrying same sex couples.

If the state legalises same sex marriage, it might very reasonably make it a condition that all
newly employed registrars shall undertake registration of both different sex and same marriages.

That would be a bit akin a police officer who would only enforce the laws that were voted before he took the oath and would let crimes involving the laws voted after that slide.

If legitimacy arises from an election, then was not this lady elected ?

Legitimacy is not a blank check. Sheriffs or civil servants might be elected to enforce/apply the law, not to write it, so they have legitimacy to enforce/apply the law, not to chose which one they apply and which one they ignore. Samely, representative are elected to write laws, not to enforce it, so they have the legitimacy to decide how to change laws, not to go into the street and arrest people.

Okay, honest question, leaving aside the specifics of what happened here- have you really never worked at a job where your employers gave you work that wasn't part of your original job description, or made you cover for a co-worker with a similar but not the same job on little to no notice, maybe without properly training you for the duties they were assigning you, or just suddenly changed a bunch of work procedures for no reason other than because they felt like it? Cause I'm betting anyone who's ever worked a service job has at least one of those happen with regularity, and your options in that case tend to be "suck it up and do the job your boss is giving you or get fired"

It might happen, and it also might be completely illegal depending on how much the task varies from your regular job description and what is required by such tasks.
i.e., I'm a developper, if I'm asked to do some hardware stuff in the server room, my boss could be sent to trial for endangering me (because my job doesn't cover "tinkering with electrical stuff").

Civil servants are called civil servants for a reason. If you find that your conscience prevents you from carrying out the law, the correct course is to resign.

I hope this also works when they apply laws you don't like.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Supreme Court rejects challenge to legalisation of same-sex marriage​

The US Supreme Court has decided not to revisit its ruling a decade ago legalising same-sex marriage.

The justices turned down an appeal from Kim Davis, who was ordered by a lower court to pay compensation to a same-sex couple after refusing to grant them a marriage licence.

Ms Davis argued that same-sex marriage conflicted with her beliefs as an Apostolic Christian.

The 2015 ruling in the case of Obergefell v Hodges was a historic victory for LGBT rights in the US, but some conservatives argue it dealt a blow to religious liberty.

Davis appealed in a civil rights lawsuit by David Ermold and David Moore, a couple who accused her of violating their constitutional right to marry.

"For me, this would be an act of disobedience to God," she said at the time.

In 2022, federal Judge David Bunning rejected Davis's argument that her constitutionally guaranteed religious beliefs protected her from liability in the case.

"Davis cannot use her own constitutional rights as a shield to violate the constitutional rights of others while performing her duties as an elected official," Bunning wrote.

The Rowan County clerk was ultimately ordered to pay $360,000 (£274,000) in damages and served six days in jail for contempt of court.

The 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals based in Cincinnati, Ohio, also ruled against her.

In her appeal to the Supreme Court, Davis's legal team argued the same-sex marriage right was grounded in a "legal fiction".

On Monday, Davis's lawyer, Mat Staver, of the conservative legal group Liberty Counsel, said his client "now faces crippling monetary damages based on nothing more than purported hurt feelings", reports the Lexington Herald Leader newspaper.

The Trump administration had not commented on her case while it waited to see whether the nation's top legal arbiter would take up the appeal.

Some conservatives had hoped the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, would revisit the issue of same-sex marriage after the justices in 2023 overturned a longstanding right to abortion.

In Obergefell v Hodges, Anthony Kennedy, a since-retired conservative justice, sided with four liberal justices.

Kennedy wrote in the decision 10 years ago that gay people hoping to marry were "not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization's oldest institutions".

"They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right."

Three of the four conservative justices who dissented in that case still serve on the court.

One of them, Chief Justice John Roberts, wrote in his dissent at the time: "Today, five lawyers have ordered every state to change their definition of marriage. Just who do we think we are?"
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2y1z70lwlo

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

Anyone who didn't think the Trump court appointees were put there to just do whatever he says, should not be surprised...

 

[danjuno]

Anyone who didn't think the Trump court appointees were put there to just do whatever he says, should not be surprised...

A very small minority, given the amount of boot licking they've done for the guy. It's interesting this is the one line they seem afraid of crossing.

 

[Lexicus]

Anyone who didn't think the Trump court appointees were put there to just do whatever he says, should not be surprised...

The Trump administration had not commented on her case while it waited to see whether the nation's top legal arbiter would take up the appeal.

 

[choxorn]

This is one of those times the Court gives us a token reasonable ruling just to keep us from getting too pissed at them. They'll make sure to give Trump what he wants any time it really matters.

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

This is one of those times the Court gives us a token reasonable ruling just to keep us from getting too pissed at them. They'll make sure to give Trump what he wants any time it really matters.

I don't think it's that complicated:
- Many states have adopted same-sex marriage laws since the 2015 Obergefell ruling which entail a whole bunch of tax and beneficiary issues, that overturning the ruling would have made for a lot of different subsequent legal challenges for keeping the status quo intact. Contrast this with Roe which was, more bluntly, a medical procedure issue that was overturned.
- Had there been any partisan desire to see this overturned, by any means necessary, this would have been reflected in more elected Republicans supporting Davis's case. Interestingly, in all the coverage of this, there have been none as far as I can see. For the amount of opposition to same-sex marriage that there was before, I think most everyone has sort-of largely made their peace with the general idea of it, if not with how it was implemented from the top.
- It's strange how Kim Davis's appeal represented some looming threat to the status quo within these very pages, but once that evaporated away today, we're now "the Court was just being generous this time" (?). I don't buy it. I'll take the simpler view that Davis's case was simply too much of a long shot to really get behind. She was one person with a weak grudge; this was not an entire state government challenging the validity of the law on states' rights grounds.

 

[Lexicus]

I'll take the simpler view that Davis's case was simply too much of a long shot to really get behind. She was one person with a weak grudge; this was not an entire state government challenging the validity of the law on states' rights grounds.

Correct. The Court may certainly still overturn Obergefell but the conservative legal movement needs to provide a better case (pretext) for them to do it.

 

[Birdjaguar]

It takes 4 justices to add it to the docket, but 5 to overturn. There may not be 5 justices dedicated to overturning the marriage ruling. There is no point to adding it unless Thomas and Alito have 3 more on their side. The complications of undoing it are significant. Undoing millions of marriages and their wills, trusts, tax forms, and ownership would be bad juju. Roberts and Barrett cannot be counted on.