If the Court strikes down Prop 8, will it apply to the entire 9th Circuit or just CA? If the latter, why? I thought the case went before the 9th originally.
The question presented dealt with Prop 8, meaning CA’s law only.
The 9th made a narrow decision so it only applied to CA.
The SCOTUS decision could theoretically, depending on how they do it, apply to the whole country, the 9th, just CA or just to the two couples who filed suit.
Sorry for the double post.
The case revolves around a right given and then taken away which only happened in CA.
IF they do this, and that is a big if, do all those anti same sex marriage state amendments just go {{poof}} or does/will something more need to be done?
I imagine they’d be unenforceable. People will sue to get married, and those who find themselves at the wrong end of the lawsuits will lose their case in the local jurisdiction because the SCOTUS has already made the ruling. The amendments probably won’t go poof, you can’t get rid of it except if the legislature removes it. Many red states will probably keep it on the books “just in case” or as a form of protest
The DOMA decision is actually going to be the one with the more widespread consequences. If SCOTUS rules down the provision that prevents the Fedgov from recognizing SSM, but only if the state the couple lives in recognizes SSM, the door is wide open for a true strike-down. I can’t imagine that it will be okay for the Army to provide married benefits for a couple where the soldier is stationed at Fort Meade (MD), but stopping providing married benefits if that soldier is transferred to Fort Hood (TX). That seems like an excellent basis for a throw the windows open suit to totally remove DOMA and Lovingize the issue.
Besides the CA-only possibility and the whole-country possibility, there’s also the possibility that the court might follow the so-called “eight-state solution” (also known as the seven- or nine-state solution) and say that states which allow same-sex couples all the rights of marriage except the name have no rational basis for denying the name. (The number of states that would be affected has varied as Delaware passed a marriage equality law and Colorado passed an all-but-marriage civil union law.)
SCOTUSblog has a lot of coverage on the case; here’s one article discussing the options.
The decision’s coming out Monday right?
Hopefully, but it could also be on Thursday or the following Monday. The court recesses at the end of June.
The law would only apply to California, but our legal system is based on precedent. Whether the law is stricken or not it does create precedent. To speculate on what that means (in the case where it is stricken) is difficult, because likely the precedent will be more about the reason it gets voted down more than about the actual intent or viability of specific aspects of the law.
They just go poof in effect, although the text will still be on the books (I think at least one state still has school segregation in its constitution). The Constitution explicitly says that if a state official is forced to pick between the US Constitution and the state’s constitution or laws, the US Constitution wins.
Not quite. It explicitly says that if a state judge has to pick, the federal Constitution wins.
[QUOTE=Act. VI, Cl. 2]
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.
[/QUOTE]
No decision today, next opportunity is Thursday.
It could also be next week on Monday or Thursday. The last Thursday is most likely.
(Actually, it can be anything that they want it to be but the above is by far the most probable.)
Update: no decision today, but evidently the Chief Justice announced that all remaining opinions will be released tomorrow.
Yes, it will be tomorrow.
Roberts is writing the opinion on Prop 8. Kennedy is writing the opinion on DOMA. Another, unrelated to marriage, case will be announced tomorrow as well and written by Alito.
Cases will start to be announced at 10am Washington DC time starting with the Alito case, followed by DOMA and finally Prop 8. We should know everything by around 10:30.
Crazy, I can’t wait. So much history to be made here
That’s SCOTUSblog’s speculation based on the number of opinions written by the various judges in this term. It’s not known for sure.
I thought that they said it definitively during the live blog this morning. It seemed strange to me at the time.