In a speech delivered at an American Bar Association function in Chicago on July 31, 2015, retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens had this to say about the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584 (2015) (from the Justice’s prepared text):
“Probably the most significant opinion announced during the Term was Justice Kennedy’s explanation for holding that the Constitution protects an individual’s right to marry a person of … <Read More>
Granting pending summary judgment motions in two pending marriage equality cases, Senior U.S. District Judge John W. Sedwick ruled on October 16 that Arizona’s constitutional and statutory same-sex marriage bans violated the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Connolly v. Jeanes, 2:14-cv-00024 JWS (D. Ariz.); Majors v. Horne, 2:14-cv-00518 JWS (D. Ariz.). Sedwick, who was appointed to the U.S. District Court in Alaska by President George H.W. Bush, hears many Arizona cases … <Read More>
Less than two weeks after roughing up attorneys for the states of Wisconsin and Indiana in a heated oral argument, a three-judge panel of the Chicago-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit issued a unanimous decision in Baskin v. Bogan, 2014 WL 4359059 (September 4, 2014), striking down the bans on same-sex marriage in those states. Writing for the panel, Circuit Judge Richard Posner, one of Ronald Reagan’s earliest judicial appointees in 1981, … <Read More>
I glance at many court opinions almost every day in my ongoing quest of materials for my newsletter, Lesbian/Gay Law Notes, so I have a fairly good idea of what passes for constitutional analysis in federal district court opinions, but every now and then something just jumps out at me as reflecting sheer ignorance. One example of this is Fletcher v. Little, a November 20 decision by U.S. District Judge Sue L. Robinson (D. Delaware), … <Read More>
Missouri law provides that the surviving spouse of a public employee who is killed in the line of duty be entitled to a death benefit equal to half of the deceased employee’s final average compensation. The statute, adopted in 1969, did not define “spouse,” but was supplemented in 2004 with a definition of “spouse” in accord with the newly-enacted state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
When a Missouri state highway patrolman, Corporal Dennis Engelhard, was … <Read More>
Senior U.S. District Judge Bernard A. Friedman, appointed to the court by President Ronald Reagan in 1988, ruled on July 1 that a Michigan lesbian couple is entitled to a trial of their claim that the state adoption law, forbidding same-sex couples to jointly adopt children, and the Michigan Marriage Amendment (MMA), forbidding same-sex marriages, violate their rights under the 14th Amendment. Rejecting the state’s motion to dismiss the case, Judge Friedman cited the Supreme … <Read More>
[Second draft of history. My prior posting on this week’s ruling in the DOMA and Prop 8 cases was written shortly after the opinion was release, and was intended as a basis for my journalistic comment to be published in Gay City News that day. Herewith my more extensive draft, reflecting further thought and containing many more quotes from the Court’s opinion, written two days later. And amended after a few hours to reflect some
[First draft of history. This posting was written within the first few hours after the Supreme Court’s release of its decisions this morning in US v. Windsor and Hollingsworth v. Perry. I’ll certainly have second thoughts and third thoughts, etc…. but this is the first draft of history.]
In a pair of 5-4 rulings released on June 26, the United States Supreme Court held that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) violates … <Read More>
On February 21 and 22 the parties in United States v. Windsor, the pending challenge to Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), filed briefs in the Supreme Court in compliance with the expedited briefing schedule that the Court ordered shortly after granting the Solicitor General’s petition to hear the case. The Justice Department (DOJ) filed two briefs, the first addressed to the merits (whether Section 3 violates the 5th Amendment’s equal protection … <Read More>