In the poll — which was conducted Sunday (when the accusation from Christine Blasey Ford was first made public) through Wednesday — 38 percent of voters say they oppose Kavanaugh’s nomination to serve on the nation’s highest court, including 27 percent who “strongly” oppose him.
That’s compared with 34 percent who support his nomination, including 25 percent who “strongly” support him. Twenty-eight percent say they don’t enough to have an opinion.The support for Kavanaugh has gotten worse over time.
The plans, developed in 2011 by Republican leaders who controlled the legislature and signed by Gov. Scott Walker (R), were effective.
In the election held after the new district maps were adopted,Republican candidates won 48.6 percent of the statewide vote but captured a 60-to-39 seat advantage in the State Assembly.
Evidence uncovered during lawsuits over the redistricting found that models showed Democrats would have to win about 53 percent of the statewide vote to capture a bare majority of the seats.The swing vote (as usual) is Justice Anthony Kennedy.
On January 16, the United States Supreme Court announced that this year, they will hear arguments in a case on the question of whether same-sex couples should have the freedom to marry and if anti-marriage laws nationwide should be struck down as unconstitutional. The Court granted review of an out-of-step ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, which ruled in November against the freedom to marry in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee. In each of these cases, federal judges had ruled in favor of the freedom to marry for all, and the 6th Circuit reversed each decision.
The arguments are in the cases Obergefell v. Hodges from Ohio, Tanco v. Haslam from Tennessee, DeBoer v. Snyder from Michigan, and Bourke v. Beshear from Kentucky. The states' response briefs are due March 17, and final reply briefs are due April 17.
The appeal of the intervention denial now continues at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, but same-sex couples will continue to be able to marry during the time that is happening.
The 9th Circuit, which is hearing that appeal, denied NOM’s request to stop the trial court decision striking down the ban from going into effect during the appeal. NOM then went to Justice Anthony Kennedy to ask him to stop the marriages while that appeal is pending before the 9th Circuit.
Kennedy, who hears procedural matters brought to the court from the 9th Circuit, referred the request to the full court, which denied the request without comment on Tuesday.
NOM’s appeal of the denial to intervene is the only matter left pending in the case because Oregon state officials had not fought the lawsuit, having agreed with the plaintiffs that the ban is unconstitutional. They had said that they would not appeal the decision if U.S. District Court Judge Michael McShane struck down the ban.The only state that has had marriage equality is California, and it has since had marriage equality restored since last summer's Supreme Court decision in Hollingsworth v Perry.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s controlling opinion for three justices took pains to say that the decision was a modest one.
“This case is not about how the debate about racial preferences should be resolved,” he wrote, in an opinion joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. “It is about who may resolve it. There is no authority in the Constitution of the United States or in this court’s precedents for the judiciary to set aside Michigan laws that commit this policy determination to the voters.”
His announcement of the decision from the bench was businesslike. Then Justice Sotomayor summarized her dissent, an unusual move signaling deep displeasure. She said the initiative put minorities to a burden not faced by other college applicants and so violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause.
“The Constitution does not protect racial minorities from political defeat,” she wrote. “But neither does it give the majority free rein to erect selective barriers against racial minorities.” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined the dissent. Justice Sotomayor seemed to mock one of Chief Justice Roberts’s most memorable lines. In a 2007 decision that limited the use of race in public school systems, he wrote, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
Justice Sotomayor recast the line. “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race,” she wrote, “is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race, and to apply the Constitution with eyes open to the unfortunate effects of centuries of racial discrimination.”The result is significant for California, because the Golden State is one of 7 where voters have passed ballot measures banning affirmative action based on race (or gender) in public education. California's measure is called Proposition 209 and an attempt to place a repeal on the November 2014 ballot was abandoned earlier this year after Asian constituents expressed their displeasure with the idea of allowing UCLA and UC Berkeley to be allowed to take race into account when deciding who gets admitted to California's top state universities.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who recited orally from the bench a lengthy version of her dissenting opinion, said the ruling would make it much harder for racial minorities to defend affirmative action programs. What had happened in Michigan, she protested, was “the last chapter of discrimination” — changing “the basic rules of the political process in that state in a manner that uniquely disadvantaged racial minorities.”
The Sotomayor opinion, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, ran to fifty-eight pages – surpassing by more than three times the length of the lead opinion by Justice Kennedy and even exceeding the forty-four pages that all of her colleagues had written.
The Hollingsworth v. Perry case (which began as Perry v. Schwarznegger) is finally over. Proposition 8 is dead. The bittersweet feeling from election night on 2008 (Obama wins! Marriage Equality loses!) is now dissipated. The kultukampf is finished in California and the forces of "equal justice under law" have won this battle.Last Wednesday, the Supreme Court had ruled that the measure’s backers did not have a legal right to defend the measure in either the Supreme Court or, earlier, in the Ninth Circuit Court. While the Supreme Court considered that case, the 2010 decision by a federal judge in San Francisco striking down “Proposition 8″ had been on hold. It was that hold (or “stay”) that the three-judge Circuit Court panel lifted on Friday. Very soon after that, gay and lesbian couples started getting married in ceremonies across the state. Thousands of such couples have now obtained marriage licenses from officials in the state.Since Justice Kennedy offered no explanation for denying an application claiming that the Ninth Circuit panel had no authority to lift its stay, there is no way to know what legal rationale he had used. It could have been that the sponsors of the measure lacked a legal right to pursue their challenge further, that even if they had such a right it was without legal merit, that the lower court did have the authority to decide for itself when to lift the stay, or perhaps that events had just moved too rapidly in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling that it would be inappropriate to try to roll them back.Although attorneys for the ballot measure’s sponsors have been creative in finding new ways to try to press the challenge, the brief action by Kennedy on Sunday may have removed the final barrier to the full achievement of marriage rights for gays and lesbians in the nation’s most populous state. California is the thirteenth state where same-sex marriages can occur now, or soon, when new laws in a few of the states take effect this summer. The District of Columbia also allows such marriages.
Final update: #scotus 80% likely to strike down #doma. J Kennedy suggests it violates states’ rights; 4 other Justices see as gay rights.
— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) March 27, 2013
It would still be a great win to strike down the odious DOMA and allow legally married couples to have access to federal marriage benefits and responsibilities, but if we don't get clarity from a majority of justices on the "level of scrutiny" question than the underlying issues of equal citizenship for LGBT people in this country will not have been resolved. (Heck, even if the Court were to say that sexual orientation is a suspect class, that would still have to be operationalized on a practical level and would take years topositively impact the everyday lives of LGBT Americans.Justice Kennedy told Clement that there was “a real risk” that DOMA would interfere with the traditional authority of states to regulate marriage. Kennedy also seemed troubled about the sweeping breadth of DOMA’s Section 3, noting that its ban on benefits to already married same-sex couples under 1,100 laws and programs would mean that the federal government was “intertwined with citizens’ daily lives.” He questioned Congress’s very authority to pass such a broad law.Moreover, Kennedy questioned Clement’s most basic argument — that Congress was only reaching for uniformity, so that federal agencies would not have to sort out who was or was not married legally in deciding who could qualify for federal marital benefits, because some states were on the verge of recognizing same-sex marriage.Along with sharply negative comments about DOMA by the Court’s four more liberal members, Kennedy’s stance could put the law on the edge of constitutional extinction. But, if the Court were to do that based on states’ rights premises, the final ruling might not say much at all about whether same-sex couples were any closer to gaining an equal right to marry under the Constitution.There did not appear to be a majority of Justices willing to strike down the 1996 law based on the argument that the Obama administration and gay rights advocates have been pressing: that is, the law violates the Fifth Amendment guarantee of legal equality in general.
There is only one question on which it seemed five Justices might agree: the judgment should be vacated because the petitioners lack standing. The Chief Justice and the four more liberal members of the Court indicated their sympathy for that position. If they vote that way, the Ninth Circuit’s decision striking down Proposition 8 will be vacated – wiped from the books – but U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker’s judgment invalidating Proposition 8 would remain unaffected. That district court ruling would apply to the parties in the case. There would be additional litigation about whether and how Proposition 8 would be applied elsewhere. If Proposition 8 were invalidated in those cases, an appeal likely could be taken in a case in which a state or local official wanted to enforce it. So the issue would go back to the Ninth Circuit, and potentially to the Supreme Court in a few years.The arguments involving DOMA in United States v. Windsor that will be heard today are clearer than those that were heard for Proposition 8 on Tuesday while the stakes are even higher. Over a dozen federal courts that have examined DOMA have ruled that it violates the United States Constitution. The real question is not whether DOMA is unconstitutional, but under what jurisprudential theory.
And one of my favorite parts is the strong conclusion:They resurrect the claim that Prop 8 violates the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. This is the “fundamental right” argument that was advanced in Judge Walker’s opinion but discarded by the Ninth Circuit:Because Proposition 8 prevents gay men and lesbians from expressing this most basic aspect of their autonomy and personhood, and is not “narrowly drawn” to further a “compelling state interest[ ],” Carey v. Population Servs. Int’l, 431 U.S. 678, 686 (1977), it violates due process. Proponents nonetheless claim that marriage—and thus the fundamental right to marry—excludes same-sex couples as a definitional matter. They contend that “marriage” categorically excludes same-sex couples because society’s alleged interest in “responsible procreation and childrearing” is the defining purpose of marriage. Prop. Br. 34. Proponents’ newly constructed understanding of the contours, implications, and meaning of marriage conflicts with longstanding controlling precedent from this Court and the overwhelming record evidence in this case.And they take on the “procreation” argument:This Court has never conditioned the right to marry on the ability to procreate. Rather, the Court has expressly recognized that the right to marry extends to individuals not in a position to procreate with their spouse, see Turner, 482 U.S. at 95, and that married couples have a fundamental right not toprocreate. See Griswold, 381 U.S. at 485-86.
They address equal protection:Proposition 8 also violates equal protection, as it is antithetical to the “principles of equality” on which this “Nation . . . prides itself.” Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202, 219 (1982). It creates a permanent “underclass” of hundreds of thousands of gay and lesbian Californians, id., who are denied the fundamental right to marry available to all other Californians simply because a majority of voters deems gay and lesbian relationships inferior, morally reprehensible, religiously unacceptable, or simply not “okay.” With the full authority of the State behind it, Proposition 8 sends a clear and powerful message to gay men and lesbians: You are not good enough to marry. Your loving relationship is not equal to or respected enough to qualify to be called a marriage.
Because of their sexual orientation—a character-istic with which they were born and which they can-not change—Plaintiffs and hundreds of thousands of gay men and lesbians in California and across the country are being excluded from one of life’s mostprecious relationships. They may not marry the per-son they love, the person with whom they wish topartner in building a family and with whom they wish to share their future and their most intimateand private dreams. Although opening to them participation in the unique and immensely valuable in-stitution of marriage will not diminish the value or status of marriage for heterosexuals, withholding itcauses infinite and permanent stigma, pain, and isolation. It denies gay men and lesbians their identityand their dignity; it labels their families as second-rate. That outcome cannot be squared with the prin-ciple of equality and the unalienable right to libertyand the pursuit of happiness that is the bedrockpromise of America from the Declaration of Inde-pendence to the Fourteenth Amendment, and thedream of all Americans. This badge of inferiority, separateness, and inequality must be extinguished.When it is, America will be closer to fulfilling the as-pirations of all its citizens.
The judgment of the court of appeals should be affirmed.Oral arguments before the United States Supreme Court are in almost exactly 4 weeks, on Tuesday March 26.
The court decided 15 cases by 5-to-4 votes, roughly in line with earlier terms. It was also not unusual that two-thirds of those decisions divided along ideological lines, with Justice Kennedy joining either the court’s four more liberal members (Justices Kagan, Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor) or its four more conservative ones (Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Scalia and Clarence Thomas).
What was striking this year was that Justice Kennedy, a moderate conservative, swung right and left an equal number of times. Since 2000, there have been only two terms in which Justice Kennedy did not vote with the conservatives at least 60 percent of the time in such ideologically divided cases.Is Kennedy evolving to the left? I guess I'm pretty happy with a 10-point shift towards liberal results instead of his usual 60-40 split between conservative and liberal positions. Maybe it's because he seems to be getting closer to Elena Kagan, since the two voted similarly 83% of the time this term. There are only two pairs of justices who voted similarly more than 90% of the time (you guessed it!) Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas with the other (somewhat surprising) pair being George W. Bush appointees Roberts and Samuel Alito. I guess "Scalito" is not living up to his reputation to become "a little Scalia" on the Court.
Legal experts on the left and right gleaned three insights from the high court intervention:I think there's almost no chance of the Supreme Court upholding a ruling from the 9th Circuit which goes as far as California's 2008 landmark gay marriage decision In Re Marriage Cases but I do think it is possible there could be 5 votes on the court to rule that it violates the federal constitution when a minority is granted rights through a judicial proceeding and then the majority electorate votes to take those rights away. That should be a legal principle that Justice Anthony Kennedy should be able to agree with, even if it would only apply to striking down Proposition 8 and legalizing marriage in California, and not the 45 states where it is currently not legal already.
First, the justices are following this case closely. They typically rule on appeals after cases are decided. It is rare for them to intervene in a pending trial.
Second, the court's conservatives do not trust Walker to set fair rules for proceedings. Their opinion described how he had given shifting explanations of his plans. This suggests Walker's ruling on Proposition 8 may be viewed with some skepticism.
And third, the majority has a distinct sympathy for the foes of same-sex marriage. The justices cited a series of newspaper stories reporting on the threats and harassment faced by those who have publicly opposed gay unions.
"The ideological split was stunning," said Erwin Chemerinsky, a liberal law professor and dean of the UC Irvine Law School. "It made me think of Bush vs. Gore" -- when, after the 2000 presidential election, the Supreme Court issued a 5-4 emergency order to halt the recount of Florida's paper ballots and three days later ended the recount.
Last week's intervention in the San Francisco case "suggests the majority has a very strong sympathy for Prop. 8's supporters," USC law professor David Cruz added.
M. Edward Whelan, a conservative former clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia, called the high court decision "a stinging rebuke" of Walker that "strongly signals that at least five justices have serious questions about his impartiality and judgment in this matter."
Chemerinsky, Cruz and Whelan all cautioned against predicting the outcome in the high court, but said the justices' ruling was an early sign that the advocates of a constitutional right to same-sex marriage may face an uphill fight.
"Those who want to ban gay marriage spent millions of dollars to reach the public with misleading ads, rallies and news conferences during the campaign to pass Prop. 8. We are curious why they now fear the publicity they once craved. Apparently transparency is their enemy, but the people deserve to know exactly what it is they have to hide."Makes you go, hmmm, right?
