UK Gay reports: a Louisiana District Judge William Morvant ruled Louisiana’s anti-marriage equality amendment invalid because it violated the “single issue” criterion required by Louisiana’s constitution.
Those familiar with the amendments in 11 other states will be aware that many contain language that appears to restrict civil unions or laws permitting the government to recognize civil or domestic unions that permit unmarried couples to obtain legal recognition for “incidents of marriage”. The precise benefits, right and responsibilities associated with the “incidents of marriage” is not clearly defined. I previously mentioned that AARP has expressed opposition to Ohio’s anti-ssm amendment because they believe these secondary restrictions harm unmarried seniors, depriving them of property and other rights vital to seniors.
Despite the clear existence of multiple issues in the amendment, opponents of same sex marriage have accused Judge Morvant of usurping the role of the legislature. Judge Morvant, a Republican, has a reputation for a no-nonsense approach to application of the law. When presented with an emotional appeal by a gay plaintiff, he responded:
See The Enquirer
Presumably, the Judge did not rule in favor of the plaintiffs out of sympathy for their plight; this is a simple application of the law. The term “District” sounds like a lower court ruling to me, so I assume this will be appealed.
No huge surprise here. The amendment writers are looking to get out the vote and identify likely Republican conservative voters for the general election. They don’t care if the amendment stands in court. If they did care, they wouldn’t be making mistakes that a first year law student would be ashamed to make.
No, it’s not a huge surprise. I was “waiting to blog” on this one. There have been a variety of articles about the suites since the elections– most simply listing th many possible reasons to invalidate. (No ballot boxes, vote performed during an election that was not state wide, yada, yada. Some judicial races have been invalidated due to the “failure to deliver ballot boxes” snafu.)
I fail to see how the writers’ motivation for advancing the ammendment, regardless of what it was, takes precedence over the will of the people in deciding whether or not the ammendment is defensible. American courts are charged with enforcing and interpreting laws that already exist, not with legislating new laws into or out of existence. In a country where government is of the people, by the people, and for the people, the fact that 78% of voters in LA approved the measure in a referendum on the ballot this past Spring mandates that such an ammendment be written and adopted. Rarely, in fact, is the voice of the people heard so clearly and so nearly unanimously.
Our system of checks and balances is broken, and we’d better get it fixed. Activist judges are usurping the power of the legislative branch of government – the people we approve and elect to govern us. If we follow the trend to its logical conclusion, we see a time when the judicial branch of our government will be the supreme authority, legislating rather than enforcing those laws put in place by our elected representatives at our behest.
That’s un-American.
I don’t believe the judge declared the amendment invalid due to the writers motivation. He declasred it invalid because it did more than one thing. That is: it 1) banned same sex marriage and 2) it banned civil unions for both gays and straights. (Some states have civil unions that approximate some aspects of marriage but not all. The civil unions are sometimes available to both same sex and opposite sex couples, so they are different things.)
Evidently, the Louisiana constitution doesn’t permit amendments with that do more than one thing. So, the people who wanted to ban same sex marriage should have written one to ban that only. Then if they also wanted to ban civil unions, they should have written a second amendment.
This is, evidently a requirement in the Louisiana constitution. It’s not a bad requirement– after all, it means the voters can separate issues when the vote. On the other hand, not all states have this requirement in their amendment. (In suspect few states have this requirement.)
Louisiana voters can obviously try to amende again. It should be pretty easy to write a single purpose amendment, and submit that to voters.
If they are upset about the multiple purpose clause in the constitution, they could also modify their amendment to modify that. However, I’ll bet you’ll find they won’t do that. The reason is that, even if voters are frustrated by a particular court ruling, they’ll probably realize they really would rather have single purpose amendments when voting! It’s less confusing when you are making up your mind.
Lucia, your argument is well presented and well received. It doesn’t, however, close the door on this one. The judge incorrectly interpreted the amendment’s implementation language as representing multiple purposes. The proposed amendment is similar in scope and identical in purpose to the federally proposed Defense of Marriage Act, intended to preserve the traditionally accepted definition of marriage.
While I agree with you that LA voters would prefer to preserve the amendment limiting to one purpose any future constitutional amendment, I do think we’ll see this amendment broken down into its constituent “purposes” and readopted piecemeal.
Thanks for the well thought out response :)
Lucia, your argument is well presented and well received. It doesn’t, however, close the door on this one. The judge incorrectly interpreted the amendment’s implementation language as representing multiple purposes. The proposed amendment is similar in scope and identical in purpose to the federally proposed Defense of Marriage Act, intended to preserve the traditionally accepted definition of marriage.
While I agree with you that LA voters would prefer to preserve the amendment limiting to one purpose any future constitutional amendment, I do think we’ll see this amendment broken down into its constituent “purposes” and readopted piecemeal.
Thanks for the well thought out response :)
American courts are charged with enforcing and interpreting laws that already exist, not with legislating new laws into or out of existence.
You contradict yourself. Part of interpreting existing law is tossing out or limiting laws that violate Constitutional strictures.
We seem to be in violent agreement at this point, mythago. Well disguised, but agreement none the less. We’re simply interpreting the judge’s interpretation differently. My position that the judge erroneously interpreted implementation language in the amendment as being seperate purposes stands, and does so without putting me in a position of self-contradiction. In fairness, your assertion is equally valid; limiting or striking down laws that violate constitutional strictures is part of a judge’s purview. I just happen to believe that this particular judge is justifying an activist ruling by chosing to interpret implementation language as seperate purposes.
As soon as you start throwing around “will of the people” and “judicial activism,” you’re using neocon lines that do not really address whether the judge in question overstepped the judicial mandate, but instead complain about the result.
I agree with you that the two restrictions will be passed, separately, as they should have been in the first place. It’s not “judicial activism” just because it’s liberal.
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I believe the judge made a correct decision considering the fact that the amendment had two purposes. They should have been seperate. The judge clearly followed the law when making this ruling which is what judges are suppose to do. They are not suppose to just follow the people, rather than follow the law. If the people cared so much about it, they should have gone and re voted when it was on two seperate ballots.
Hm. When they say “District Court”, are they talking about a Federal district court or a Louisiana state district court?
The amendment writers are looking to get out the vote and identify likely Republican conservative voters for the general election. They don’t care if the amendment stands in court.
That’s a pretty amazing and highly generalized assertion, NancyP. All the commentary I’ve seen about these things are that the people putting them forward are very serious about banning same-sex “marriage” or anything like it. You’re also assuming that only conservative Republicans would support this. Is the Louisiana electorate 78% Republican? I doubt it. I suggest that if you oppose this kind of thing, you should be very careful not to underestimate or misinterpret it’s supporters. It will do your cause no good.
The judge was apparently applying the Louisiana constitution. Therefore this would almost certainly have been in a Louisiana state court.
Don’t forget that various STATE constitutions can differ from the U.S. Constitution in very important ways. Massachusetts’ constitution contained language which was used to support gay marriage, for example–the U.S. constitution does not contain that language.
Judges certainly DO occasionally usurp the role of the legislature. But this is a far cry from doing so. In fact, declaring the law invalid and essentially saying “try again” is exactly what they are supposed to do.
OTOH, the act of the Massachusetts State Supreme Court seemed to me to very specifically usurp the role of the legislature, to the point that they actually ordered the legislature to pass an enabling law for gay “marriage”. I wonder what would have happened if the Great and General Court had simply refused to do so.