Wednesday, June 26, 2013

It's the last day of the Supreme Court term.

Get ready to talk about same-sex marriage. Here's the live-blogging at SCOTUSblog. The action starts at the top of the hour.

UPDATE 1: DOMA. 5-4. Roberts and Scalia and Thomas and Alito dissenting. "DOMA is unconstitutional as a deprivation of the equal liberty of persons that is protected by the Fifth Amendment." "DOMA singles out a class of persons deemed by a State entitled ot [sic] recognition and protection to enhance their own liberty."

UPDATE 2: Here's the PDF of the opinion in Windsor. From the Scalia dissent, something I found looking for whether the majority applied heightened scrutiny:
The majority opinion need not get into the strict-vs.-rational-basis scrutiny question, and need not justify its holding under either, because it says that DOMA is unconstitutional as “a deprivation of the liberty of the person protected by the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution,” ante, at 25; that it violates “basic due process” principles, ante, at 20; and that it inflicts an “injury and indignity” of a kind that denies “an essential part of the liberty protected by the Fifth Amendment,” ante, at 19. The majority never utters the dread words “substantive due process,” perhaps sensing the disrepute into which that doctrine has fallen, but that is what those statements mean.
UPDATE 3: From Kennedy's majority opinion, there's a discussion of federalism, but it's not the basis of the opinion:
[I]t is unnecessary to decide whether this federal intrusion on state power is a violation of the Constitution because it disrupts the federal balance. The State’s power in defining the marital relation is of central relevance in this case quite apart from principles of federalism. Here the State’s decision to give this class of persons the right to marry conferred upon them a dignity and status of immense import. When the State used its historic and essential authority to define the marital relation in this way, its role and its power in making the decision enhanced the recognition, dignity, and protection of the class in their own community.
UPDATE 4: From the Roberts dissent:
At least without some more convincing evidence that the Act’s principal purpose was to codify malice, and that it furthered no legitimate government interests, I would not tar the political branches with the brush of bigotry.
Kennedy's opinion doesn't use the word "bigotry." It says:
The class to which DOMA directs its restrictions and restraints are those persons who are joined in same-sex marriages made lawful by the State. DOMA singles out a class of persons deemed by a State entitled to recognition and protection to enhance their own liberty. It imposes a disability on the class by refusing to acknowledge a status the State finds to be dignified and proper. DOMA instructs all federal officials, and indeed all persons with whom same-sex couples interact, including their own children, that their marriage is less worthy than the marriages of others. The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity. By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others, the federal statute is in violation of the Fifth Amendment. This opinion and its holding are confined to those lawful marriages.
UPDATE 5: The next case isn't about ssm. A unanimous opinion in Sekar, written by Scalia, about the Hobbs Act: "Attempting to compel a person to recommend that his employer approve an investment does not constitute the obtaining of property from another under the Hobbs Act."

UPDATE 6:  The Prop 8 case is resolved on the standing ground,  "line up is 5-4: Kennedy dissents, joined by Thomas, Alito, and Sotomayor.... " The decision of the Ninth Circuit is vacated and remanded." Scalia provides the 5th vote with the liberal Justices. [ADDED: No, Sotomayor is also dissenting, and Roberts is in the majority. So it's a mix.] From the opinion: "We have never before upheld the standing of a private party to defend the constitutionality of a state statute when state officials have chosen not to. We decline to do so for the first time here."

UPDATE 7: Here's Hollingsworth v. Perry, PDF, the Prop 8 case, written by the Chief Justice.
For there to be... a case or controversy, it is not enough that the party invoking the power of the court have a keen interest in the issue. That party must also have “standing,” which requires, among other things, that it have suffered a concrete and particularized injury.
That's a totally well-established statement about standing, as most lawyers know (I hope!)

UPDATE 8: The lack of standing happened AFTER the District Court ruled Prop 8 unconstitutional. The losing party, California Governor Schwarzenegger, decided not to appeal, to accept the result, so only what the Circuit Court did must go.

UPDATE 9: Roberts, in Hollingsworth, says that without the governor as a party, the case continued with individuals who had intervened but were not ordered by the district court to "to do or refrain from doing anything." So there was nothing "personal and individual" about the case for them. They argued that they had a "''"unique," "special," and "distinct" role in the initiative process — one "involving both authority and responsibilities that differ from other suporters of the measure."'” But Roberts said that interest only had to do with "the process of enacting the law," nothing that came after that. "Article III standing 'is not to be placed in the hands of "concerned bystanders," who will use it simply as a "vehicle for the vindication of value interests."'"

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