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Louisiana ruling breaks pro-gay marriage streak

Paschendale said:
I have literally no doubt at all in my mind that this ruling won't stand. There was bound to be such a ruling eventually, and it doesn't surprise me at all that it came from a confederate state. Perhaps we'll need a national ruling after all. Either way, this ruling hinges on protected classes, which is a pretty shoddy argument. It relies on the idea that one must be a protected class in order to have equal rights. Again, there is no way that such a poorly supported decision can stand.
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Former Comgederate state.
 
Paschendale said:
Sometimes it's hard to tell.
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Since your bigotry is going to come to the surface, why not your racism too, since Louisiana is one of of the blackest states in the country.
 
Navy Pride said:
I am against changing the name of marriage......What part of that do you not understand?
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They spell marriage differently in states with legal recognition of same sex marriages? :confused:
 
apdst said:
Since your bigotry is going to come to the surface, why not your racism too, since Louisiana is one of of the blackest states in the country.
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Right, I can't criticize someone without being bigoted against them... As usual, I don't think you have any idea what bigotry actually is or what it feels like to experience it.
 
Paschendale said:
Right, I can't criticize someone without being bigoted against them... As usual, I don't think you have any idea what bigotry actually is or what it feels like to experience it.
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I know exactly what it looks and feels like. It looks exactly lije your comments towards Louisianians. You're leveling criticism angainst people because they're from the South and that's bigotry.
 
matchlight said:
I haven't read Judge Feldman's decision and doubt that I will. But going by the brief descriptions of it I read, it makes sense. Apparently the party challenging Louisiana's marriage law made at least two claims.

The first, as best I can tell, was that homosexuals are a suspect class for Fourteenth Amendment equal protection purposes. In equal protection challenges, a law that makes a suspect classification will be reviewed under the Supreme Court's "strict scrutiny" standard. Under that standard, the law will be unconstitutional unless the government can show it was necessary to achieve an essential government purpose.

Laws make suspect classifications when they single out people for disparate treatment based on their race, national origin, or alienage. The challengers evidently argued that the court should declare homosexuals a new suspect class, and the judge declined to do that. That seems proper, because he would have had no legal precedent for doing that.

Absent any suspect classification, rational basis review would have applied, with the Louisiana law being presumed valid and the burden on the challenger to show it was not rationally related to a legitimate government interest. This standard is ordinarily pretty easy to meet, and it was met in this case.

The second claim failed because the judge recognized Louisiana's authority to define marriage by law. In U.S. v. Windsor last year, the Supreme Court held section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional. But the Court was careful to note that DOMA is a federal law, and (however disingenuously) it emphasized it was not questioning the states' traditional authority to define marriage. The judge was just recognizing that authority.

Section two of the DOMA is still in place--at least for now--and it gives states authority not to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. The Full Faith and Credit Clause, Art. IV, sec. 1, requires states to recognize the "public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state." But it also gives Congress power to make laws prescribing how those acts, records, and proceedings shall be proved, and what effect they have. And that's what section two of the DOMA does.
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It is trivial to prove that a same sex marriage ban does not result in more children in the homes of their biological parents. That standard was not met, but you'd know that if you'd read the decision. It was only "met" because the judge said so. He clearly had no legitimate reason.
 
apdst said:
I know exactly what it looks and feels like. It looks exactly lije your comments towards Louisianians. You're leveling criticism angainst people because they're from the South and that's bigotry.
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No, I'm leveling criticism towards the prevailing political attitudes of Louisiana and some of the other states near it. That you can't tell the difference is why you don't understand what bigotry really is.
 
Deuce said:
It is trivial to prove that a same sex marriage ban does not result in more children in the homes of their biological parents. That standard was not met, but you'd know that if you'd read the decision. It was only "met" because the judge said so. He clearly had no legitimate reason.
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Your last sentence only makes it more clear that you don't know enough about standards of review in due process and equal protection challenges to make an informed judgment about whether the applicable standard was met. It wasn't Judge Feldman who needed a legitimate reason, but the state of Louisiana.

The Supreme Court has reiterated that in rational basis review, the court's job is not to decide whether it thinks the law under review was a reasonable means of achieving a legitimate government purpose. The court's job is rather to decide if it's conceivable that the legislators who made the law could have thought it was a reasonable means of achieving a legitimate government purpose.

The law is presumed rational, and courts usually defer strongly to the legislature's decision that it is. The law does not need to be best law that could have been written to achieve the legislative goal. In fact it doesn't need to go very far toward a conceivable legislative goal--courts will uphold a law that takes a "first step" toward a legitimate legislative goal, even if the court thinks the law is ill-advised.

I don't have a Supreme Court decision discussing this in front of me, but if anyone wants to read the Court's explanation of how rational basis review works, I'm sure I can find one.
 
Paschendale said:
Right, I can't criticize someone without being bigoted against them... As usual, I don't think you have any idea what bigotry actually is or what it feels like to experience it.
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You weren't making a valid criticism of anyone. By likening modern Louisiana to the Louisiana that was a Confederate state, you obviously meant to slander Louisianans generally as bigots. And I agree with the poster from Louisiana that by doing that you revealed your own bigotry toward Southerners.

In my personal experience, a disproportionate share of the bigoted and narrow-minded people I've come across have--ironically--liked to call themselves "liberals." In fact, of course, they are anything but.
 
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Paschendale said:
No, I'm leveling criticism towards the prevailing political attitudes of Louisiana and some of the other states near it. That you can't tell the difference is why you don't understand what bigotry really is.
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No, your basing your criticism on the fact that Louisiana is in the South. The former Confederate states don't hold the monoply on anti-gay marriage legislation.

You also said that Louisiana is currently a Confederate state, because you can't tell the difference. News flash: anti-gay attitudes don't exist exclusively in the South.
 
Here's a good discussion of rational basis review by the Supreme Court. It's not hard to see just how deferential to the legislature it is.


We many times have said . . . that rational-basis review in equal protection analysis "is not a license for courts to judge the wisdom, fairness, or logic of legislative choices." Nor does it authorize "the judiciary [to] sit as a superlegislature to judge the wisdom or desirability of legislative policy determinations made in areas that neither affect fundamental rights nor proceed along suspect lines." For these reasons, a classification neither involving fundamental rights nor proceeding along suspect lines is accorded a strong presumption of validity. Such a classification cannot run afoul of the Equal Protection Clause if there is a rational relationship between the disparity of treatment and some legitimate governmental purpose. Further, a legislature that creates these categories need not "actually articulate at any time the purpose or rationale supporting its classification." Instead, a classification "must be upheld against equal protection challenge if there is any reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a rational basis for the classification."

A State, moreover, has no obligation to produce evidence to sustain the rationality of a statutory classification. "[A] legislative choice is not subject to courtroom factfinding and may be based on rational speculation unsupported by evidence or empirical data." A statute is presumed constitutional, see supra, at 319, and "[t]he burden is on the one attacking the legislative arrangement to negative every conceivable basis which might support it," whether or not the basis has a foundation in the record. Finally, courts are compelled under rational-basis review to accept a legislature's generalizations even when there is an imperfect fit between means and ends. A classification does not fail rational-basis review because it "'is not made with mathematical nicety or because in practice it results in some inequality.'" "The problems of government are practical ones and may justify, if they do not require, rough accommodations-illogical, it may be, and unscientific." (internal citations omitted) Heller v. Doe, 509 U.S. 312, 319-320 (1992).
 
matchlight said:
Here's a good discussion of rational basis review by the Supreme Court. It's not hard to see just how deferential to the legislature it is.


We many times have said . . . that rational-basis review in equal protection analysis "is not a license for courts to judge the wisdom, fairness, or logic of legislative choices." Nor does it authorize "the judiciary [to] sit as a superlegislature to judge the wisdom or desirability of legislative policy determinations made in areas that neither affect fundamental rights nor proceed along suspect lines." For these reasons, a classification neither involving fundamental rights nor proceeding along suspect lines is accorded a strong presumption of validity. Such a classification cannot run afoul of the Equal Protection Clause if there is a rational relationship between the disparity of treatment and some legitimate governmental purpose. Further, a legislature that creates these categories need not "actually articulate at any time the purpose or rationale supporting its classification." Instead, a classification "must be upheld against equal protection challenge if there is any reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a rational basis for the classification."

A State, moreover, has no obligation to produce evidence to sustain the rationality of a statutory classification. "[A] legislative choice is not subject to courtroom factfinding and may be based on rational speculation unsupported by evidence or empirical data." A statute is presumed constitutional, see supra, at 319, and "[t]he burden is on the one attacking the legislative arrangement to negative every conceivable basis which might support it," whether or not the basis has a foundation in the record. Finally, courts are compelled under rational-basis review to accept a legislature's generalizations even when there is an imperfect fit between means and ends. A classification does not fail rational-basis review because it "'is not made with mathematical nicety or because in practice it results in some inequality.'" "The problems of government are practical ones and may justify, if they do not require, rough accommodations-illogical, it may be, and unscientific." (internal citations omitted) Heller v. Doe, 509 U.S. 312, 319-320 (1992).
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This is all very true...

However to make a definitive statement that rational basis review is the standard that will apply is unknown at this time, that's what the SCOTUS will have to determine. Those better at the law then I can surely make an argument (and have done so in cases that have already been reviewd and upheld by the 10th and 4th Circuit courts.

First, as your unsourced quote (presumably it is from a SCOTUS case) points out, rational basis is not the level of scruitiny applied when laws work to inhibit a fundamental right. The SCOTUS has repeatedly recognized that Civil Marriage is a fundamental right (Zablocki v. Redhail and Turner v. Safley and Loving v. VIrginia).

Second, the independent area of examination is "suspected lines". Starting with Romer v. Evans the court began to recognize that laws that target homosexuals were unconstitional not even surviving a rational basis examination.

Romer v. Evans
Amendment 2 fails, indeed defies, even this conventional inquiry. First, the amendment has the peculiar property of imposing a broad and undifferentiated disability on a single named group, an exceptional and, as we shall explain, invalid form of legislation. Second, its sheer breadth is so discontinuous with the reasons offered for it that the amendment seems inexplicable by anything but animus toward the class that it affects; it lacks a rational relationship to legitimate state interests.​

Lawrence v. Texas
The second post-Bowers case of principal relevance is Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996). There the Court struck down class-based legislation directed at homosexuals as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. Romer invalidated an amendment to Colorado’s constitution which named as a solitary class persons who were homosexuals, lesbians, or bisexual either by “orientation, conduct, practices or relationships,” id., at 624 (internal quotation marks omitted), and deprived them of protection under state antidiscrimination laws. We concluded that the provision was “born of animosity toward the class of persons affected” and further that it had no rational relation to a legitimate governmental purpose. Id., at 634.​

Windsor v. United States
The responsibility of the States for the regulation of domestic relations is an important indicator of the substantial societal impact the State’s classifications have in the daily lives and customs of its people. DOMA’s unusual deviation from the usual tradition of recognizing and accepting state definitions of marriage here operates to deprive same-sex couples of the benefits and responsibilities that come with the federal recognition of their marriages. This is strong evidence of a law having the purpose and effect of disapproval of that class. The avowed purpose and practical effect of the law here in question are to impose a disadvantage, a separate status, and so a stigma upon all who enter into same-sex marriages made lawful by the unquestioned authority of the States.​

Romer, Governor of Colorado, et al. v. Evans et al., 517 U.S. 620 (1996).
LAWRENCE V. TEXAS
UNITED STATES v. WINDSOR | LII / Legal Information Institute


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The the first question the SCOTUS will have to answer: is marriage a fundamental right that applies to same-sex couples? Secondly, did the passage of laws that denied equal treatment under the law, which anyone will honestly recognize as starting after the Hawaii case in the early 90's, target same-sex couples along suspect lines.

The court has repeated said that Civil Marriage is a fundamental right - that could raise the bar above rational basis. Independently the courts have also found unconstitutional laws that target homosexuals for discrimination - that could also raise the bar above rational basis. Whether that would be heightened scrutiny (along the lines of gender) or strict scrutiny (along the lines of race and religion), we don't know yet.

Then of course they could use rational basis and point out that the law doesn't even meet that standard.



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Paschendale said:
I have literally no doubt at all in my mind that this ruling won't stand. There was bound to be such a ruling eventually, and it doesn't surprise me at all that it came from a confederate state. Perhaps we'll need a national ruling after all. Either way, this ruling hinges on protected classes, which is a pretty shoddy argument. It relies on the idea that one must be a protected class in order to have equal rights. Again, there is no way that such a poorly supported decision can stand.
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Wow if that's the decision then the judge needs to take a constitution 101 class. That is just beyond stupidity
 
matchlight said:
Your last sentence only makes it more clear that you don't know enough about standards of review in due process and equal protection challenges to make an informed judgment about whether the applicable standard was met. It wasn't Judge Feldman who needed a legitimate reason, but the state of Louisiana.
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:roll: Nitpicking phrasing. Pathetic. Their legitimate reason was pure bull****. But the judge accepted it because he's inserting his personal dislike of same-sex marriage into the ruling.

The Supreme Court has reiterated that in rational basis review, the court's job is not to decide whether it thinks the law under review was a reasonable means of achieving a legitimate government purpose. The court's job is rather to decide if it's conceivable that the legislators who made the law could have thought it was a reasonable means of achieving a legitimate government purpose.
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Great! So perhaps you'd like to tell me how it's reasonable for someone to have believed that banning same-sex marriage results in fewer children being taken from heterosexual parents. You see, it's not enough that they "could have believed it." They "could have" believed banning same-sex marriage would prevent the moon from falling out of the sky. There's that "reasonable" standard you mentioned.

I'm waiting.

The law is presumed rational, and courts usually defer strongly to the legislature's decision that it is. The law does not need to be best law that could have been written to achieve the legislative goal. In fact it doesn't need to go very far toward a conceivable legislative goal--courts will uphold a law that takes a "first step" toward a legitimate legislative goal, even if the court thinks the law is ill-advised.

I don't have a Supreme Court decision discussing this in front of me, but if anyone wants to read the Court's explanation of how rational basis review works, I'm sure I can find one.
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And this particular goal isn't even remotely furthered by a same-sex marriage ban. It is outright absurd to suggest that connecting children with their biological parents is somehow furthered by banning two people of the same gender from marrying.

There is nothing remotely reasonable or legitimate furthered by a same-sex marriage ban. Every single argument made in favor of same-sex marriage bans are blown out of the water. There's a reason no anti-equality person has ever identified a specific, measurable degree of harm caused by same-sex marriage. There isn't one. If there was a legitimate purpose, someone would have mentioned it by now. Instead, all we get is "tradition," or "state's rights," or "moral fabric." If you think you have other legitimate reasons, name them. I'll gladly shoot them down. You don't get to hide behind "well the burden isn't on the state." The state might not have to prove the interests, but they still have to name them when challenged. Otherwise the standard is "disprove a literally infinite number of possible reasons."


And this is all just accepting rational basis as the correct standard, which I believe is incorrect. Numerous courts agree with me, including the 2nd circuit's decision in Windsor which the Supreme Court affirmed.
 
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WorldWatcher said:
First, as your unsourced quote (presumably it is from a SCOTUS case) points out
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I cited the source for that quote right at the end of it.

Starting with Romer v. Evans the court began to recognize that laws that target homosexuals were unconstitional not even surviving a rational basis examination.
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I would put it this way: starting with Romer, the justices who have signed on to the homosexual agenda, led by Anthony Kennedy, began to swing into high gear. The majority decision in Romer is a good example of the Supreme Court exceeding its constitutional authority and riding roughshod over the rights of the people of a state. That amendment to the Colorado constitution did not unfairly restrict the rights of homosexuals, nor was there evidence it was inspired by animosity. It was simply an attempt by the people of Colorado to prevent municipal governments from making ordinances that granted homosexuals, but not other people, rights in excess of those available under the state's laws--as several of them had done.

Sure as hell does not comport with the extremely deferential rules the Court itself has established for rational basis review, as set out in the passage I quoted. There is a very good reason for that deference, by the way, which that passage alludes to when it mentions that the Court has no authority to "sit as a superlegislature." And that is respect for the separation of powers, a feature designed into the Constitution as one of a the main checks on abuse of government power. I think Justice Scalia hit it right on the head in his dissenting opinion in Romer:

The constitutional amendment before us here is not the manifestation of a "'bare ... desire to harm' " homosexuals, ante, at 634, but is rather a modest attempt by seemingly tolerant Coloradans to preserve traditional sexual mores against the efforts of a politically powerful minority to revise those mores through use of the laws. That objective, and the means chosen to achieve it, are not only unimpeachable under any constitutional doctrine hitherto pronounced (hence the opinion's heavy reliance upon principles of righteousness rather than judicial holdings); they have been specifically approved by the Congress of the United States and by this Court . . . Today's opinion has no foundation in American constitutional law, and barely pretends to. The people of Colorado have adopted an entirely reasonable provision which does not even disfavor homosexuals in any substantive
sense, but merely denies them preferential treatment.

Then of course they could use rational basis and point out that the law doesn't even meet that standard.
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Going by Kennedy's opinions in Romer and Lawrence, particularly, I'd say that if the Supreme Court ever declares a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, it's most likely that would be its rationale.
 
matchlight said:
I cited the source for that quote right at the end of it.
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Sorry about that, when I read it I thought it was part of the quote.

That's why when quoting a decision I tend cite the case, then indent, then provide and active link - makes it easier for fellow posters to read and then review the source for context.

matchlight said:
Going by Kennedy's opinions in Romer and Lawrence, particularly, I'd say that if the Supreme Court ever declares a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, it's most likely that would be its rationale.
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Kennedy may have been the primary author of Romer and Lawrence, but the majority opinion was approved by 6 of 9 Justices in both cases who also had input as to the wording of the decision. A single Justice does not write an opinion in a vacuum.




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Navy Pride said:
I am against changing the name of marriage......What part of that do you not understand?
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But NP was A-OK with changing it when it was changed to fit his marriage. Wanna talk about hypocrisy?
 
matchlight said:
Your last sentence only makes it more clear that you don't know enough about standards of review in due process and equal protection challenges to make an informed judgment about whether the applicable standard was met. It wasn't Judge Feldman who needed a legitimate reason, but the state of Louisiana.

The Supreme Court has reiterated that in rational basis review, the court's job is not to decide whether it thinks the law under review was a reasonable means of achieving a legitimate government purpose. The court's job is rather to decide if it's conceivable that the legislators who made the law could have thought it was a reasonable means of achieving a legitimate government purpose.

The law is presumed rational, and courts usually defer strongly to the legislature's decision that it is. The law does not need to be best law that could have been written to achieve the legislative goal. In fact it doesn't need to go very far toward a conceivable legislative goal--courts will uphold a law that takes a "first step" toward a legitimate legislative goal, even if the court thinks the law is ill-advised.

I don't have a Supreme Court decision discussing this in front of me, but if anyone wants to read the Court's explanation of how rational basis review works, I'm sure I can find one.
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No, you actually nailed it. I've been saying for years, ever since MA's ban was struck down by a single judge. The standard of rationale basis is on its face rationale because of the due process and rigorous debate within the legislative body. The judge here said that yes, this is a highly contentious issue, there are a myriad of opinions on either side, but the courts do not tread and should always tread lightly on legislative measures that, in there essence, come down to a matter of opinion. SS couples were seeking a new right NOT historically recognized as a right before them. Marriage in and of itself is a right, BUT only legally a right for one man and one woman. No fundamental right exists or existed for homosexuals. He also said that the social science isn't anywhere near settled on the matter, and rightfully (I believe rightfully) or wrongly, he brought up the infinite possible alternative marriage arrangements, to which the plaintiffs admitted would be deleterious to society, BUT not their alternative marriage.

In short, by their own admission, allowing gay marriage would also set precedence for all the other alternative marriages, and that insodoing would create a complete mess of the tradition and institution as such to the detriment of society that government and the people would have to get out of the regulating marriage business altogether. Marriage law would be reduced to strict contract law. Ultimately I believe the judge here, Feldman, rightly anticipated the likely outcome to society, and made clear that the people have a right to decide through their legislative process whether they ultimately want to remove traditional recognition of marriage by the people, even if in doing so they exclude other and all brands of alternative marriages.


Tim-
 
Deuce said:
There is nothing remotely reasonable or legitimate furthered by a same-sex marriage ban. Every single argument made in favor of same-sex marriage bans are blown out of the water. There's a reason no anti-equality person has ever identified a specific, measurable degree of harm caused by same-sex marriage. There isn't one.
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Actually you did not read it did you? The plaintiffs here admitted what harm would come from SSM, even though they argued that "their" particular brand of marriage by itself was not harmful, the judge asked well by what measure would the court decide on other brands of marriage, aunts uncles, nieces, nephews, brother, sister, multiple partner marriages etc.. etc.. Would you agree that those brands would be deleterious? If you do, which any rational person would, then how can you make the claim above with a straight face?


Tim-
 
chromium said:
Actually there was another single judge in a confederate state recently, which NP made a thread about (i swear this is deja vu), that ruled the same. He's just spamming f5 on fox news site hoping for any anti gay news and comes running here to post, blissfully ignoring every indication that SSM will be legal even in louisiana swamps within a year, thanks to scotus.

If i can shrug off the pro SSM rulings from dozens of states lately, because they're being appealed and scotus will decide it in the end, NP can do the same with these kind of "activist judge" rulings. He chooses not to because he's that damn spiteful.
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This is a federal district judge. The TN one was a circuit judge.
 
Hicup said:
Actually you did not read it did you? The plaintiffs here admitted what harm would come from SSM, even though they argued that "their" particular brand of marriage by itself was not harmful, the judge asked well by what measure would the court decide on other brands of marriage, aunts uncles, nieces, nephews, brother, sister, multiple partner marriages etc.. etc.. Would you agree that those brands would be deleterious? If you do, which any rational person would, then how can you make the claim above with a straight face?


Tim-
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Post the quote you're talking about.

The burden to justify a ban on polygamy does not ****ing fall onto proponents of same sex marriage. If you want to ban polygamy, you ****ing say why.
 
Hicup said:
No, you actually nailed it. I've been saying for years, ever since MA's ban was struck down by a single judge. The standard of rationale basis is on its face rationale because of the due process and rigorous debate within the legislative body.
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This is just plain stupid. If "it was enacted" inherently satisfies the rational basis test, then rational basis isnt a test at all. and the courts have recognized the stupidity of this notion and explicitly rejected the idea that passing a legislator is enough,

In short, by their own admission, allowing gay marriage would also set precedence for all the other alternative marriages, and that insodoing would create a complete mess of the tradition and institution as such to the detriment of society that government and the people would have to get out of the regulating marriage business altogether. Marriage law would be reduced to strict contract law.
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Slippery slope fallacy is still a fallacy in the legal world. We can't let interracial couples marry, because then we have to let people marry children!




Ultimately I believe the judge here, Feldman, rightly anticipated the likely outcome to society, and made clear that the people have a right to decide through their legislative process whether they ultimately want to remove traditional recognition of marriage by the people, even if in doing so they exclude other and all brands of alternative marriages.
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Redress against tyranny of the majority is part of the court's job. "Will of the people" and "tradition" dont satisfy the rational basis test.
 
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