Valley Oak
01-14-2010, 02:50 PM
On gay rights and homosexuality, Supreme Court Justice Kennedy has often taken a strong stance in favor of expanding Constitutional rights to cover sexual orientation.
Right now, the legal lawsuit challenging the federal constitutionality (under the Equal Protection Clause) of Proposition 8 in California is being heard by District Court Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker, in a U.S. District Court in San Francisco. The name of this nonjury case is Perry v. Schwarzenegger.
Perry v. Schwarzenegger is a cliffhanger case; it can go either way and it will all depend on Justice Kennedy when it inevitably reaches the US Supreme Court. Kennedy is an on the fence justice appointed by Reagan with a slight tendency to vote conservative. Just yesterday, on January 13, 2010, Justice Kennedy voted to disallow any taping or broadcasting of the same-sex marriage trial, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, taking place right now in a federal court in San Francisco. This was a close 5-4 decision on Hollingsworth v. Perry (the case on allowing the trial's broadcast), with Kennedy siding with the conservative judges, Scalia, Alito, Stevens, and Thomas. If this serves as a litmus test, then millions of Americans will have their Constitutional right to marry denied when this case is appealed all the way up to the highest court in the country. The only good news is that the case will reach the US Supreme Court again within the next ten years afterwards and the LGBT community will inevitably win its right to marry.
Kennedy wrote the Court's opinion in the controversial 1996 case, Romer v. Evans, invalidating a provision in the Colorado Constitution denying homosexuals the right to bring local discrimination claims. In 2003, he authored the Court's opinion Lawrence v. Texas, which invalidated criminal prohibitions against homosexual sodomy under the Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution, overturning the Court's previous contrary ruling in 1986's Bowers v. Hardwick.
However, Kennedy was very careful to limit the extent of the opinion, declaring that the case did not involve whether the government must give formal recognition to any relationship that homosexual persons seek to enter. In both cases, he sided with the more liberal members of the Court. Lawrence also controversially referred to foreign laws, specifically ones enacted by the Parliament of the United Kingdom and the European Court of Human Rights, in justifying its result. Kennedy voted, with 4 other Justices, to uphold the Boy Scouts of America's organizational right to ban homosexuals from being scoutmasters in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale in 2000. On 19 October 2009 Justice Kennedy temporarily blocked Washington state officials from releasing the names of people who signed petitions for a referendum ballot measure that would repeal a gay rights domestic partnership law.
Edward
Right now, the legal lawsuit challenging the federal constitutionality (under the Equal Protection Clause) of Proposition 8 in California is being heard by District Court Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker, in a U.S. District Court in San Francisco. The name of this nonjury case is Perry v. Schwarzenegger.
Perry v. Schwarzenegger is a cliffhanger case; it can go either way and it will all depend on Justice Kennedy when it inevitably reaches the US Supreme Court. Kennedy is an on the fence justice appointed by Reagan with a slight tendency to vote conservative. Just yesterday, on January 13, 2010, Justice Kennedy voted to disallow any taping or broadcasting of the same-sex marriage trial, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, taking place right now in a federal court in San Francisco. This was a close 5-4 decision on Hollingsworth v. Perry (the case on allowing the trial's broadcast), with Kennedy siding with the conservative judges, Scalia, Alito, Stevens, and Thomas. If this serves as a litmus test, then millions of Americans will have their Constitutional right to marry denied when this case is appealed all the way up to the highest court in the country. The only good news is that the case will reach the US Supreme Court again within the next ten years afterwards and the LGBT community will inevitably win its right to marry.
Kennedy wrote the Court's opinion in the controversial 1996 case, Romer v. Evans, invalidating a provision in the Colorado Constitution denying homosexuals the right to bring local discrimination claims. In 2003, he authored the Court's opinion Lawrence v. Texas, which invalidated criminal prohibitions against homosexual sodomy under the Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution, overturning the Court's previous contrary ruling in 1986's Bowers v. Hardwick.
However, Kennedy was very careful to limit the extent of the opinion, declaring that the case did not involve whether the government must give formal recognition to any relationship that homosexual persons seek to enter. In both cases, he sided with the more liberal members of the Court. Lawrence also controversially referred to foreign laws, specifically ones enacted by the Parliament of the United Kingdom and the European Court of Human Rights, in justifying its result. Kennedy voted, with 4 other Justices, to uphold the Boy Scouts of America's organizational right to ban homosexuals from being scoutmasters in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale in 2000. On 19 October 2009 Justice Kennedy temporarily blocked Washington state officials from releasing the names of people who signed petitions for a referendum ballot measure that would repeal a gay rights domestic partnership law.
Edward