Tag Archives: Unconstitutional

News

Obama supports legislation to repeal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)

Leave a comment

From ABC News.

Excerpt:

Tomorrow the Senate will hold the first hearing on The Respect for Marriage Act, which repeals the Defense of Marriage Act, thus granting to all lawfully married couples—including same-sex couples—to receive federal marriage benefits and protections if they are joined by a valid marriage in a state where such marriages are legal.

“The president has long called for a legislative repeal of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, which continues to have a real impact on the lives of real people –our families, friends and neighbors,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said at today’s press briefing.

“He is proud to support the Respect for Marriage Act, introduced by Senator Feinstein and Congressman Nadler, which would take DOMA off the books once and for all,” said Carney. “This legislation would uphold the principle that the federal government should not deny gay and lesbian couples the same rights and legal protections as straight couples.”

The president has long opposed DOMA, signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996, but it wasn’t until earlier this year that he instructed the Justice Department to stop defending it as a law on the books, as is customary.  In February, President Obama “made the determination,” according to Attorney General Eric Holder, that DOMA “as applied to same-sex couples who are legally married under state law, violates the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment.”

As for his personal position on same sex marriage, the president continues to only say it is “evolving.”

At last, his true colors are on display on the marriage issue. Everyone who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 opposed traditional marriage, and opposed the right of children to have a normal relationship with both of his or her biological parents. When you add this insult to the pro-abortion injuries he’s dealt previously, the end result is clear. This man is no Bible-believing Christian, and no Bible-believing Christian could EVER vote for him.

Related posts

News

Republicans hire top lawyer to defend traditional marriage against Democrats

1 Comment

This is from liberal CNN. (H/T Reuben)

Excerpt:

House Republicans have hired a prominent conservative attorney to defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act in a pending lawsuit, legal sources say, and will make an effort to divert money from the Justice Department to fund its high-profile fight.

House Speaker John Boehner disclosed the legal and political strategy in a letter Monday to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. The Obama administration, which normally would defend federal laws in judicial disputes, announced last month it believed the Defense of Marriage Act, often referred to as DOMA, to be unconstitutional. The law defines marriage for federal purposes as unions only between a man and woman.

Boehner said that with the Justice Department not participating, he had “no choice” but to act unilaterally.

“The burden of defending DOMA, and the resulting costs associated with any litigation that would have otherwise been born (sic) by DOJ (The Department of Justice), has fallen to the House,” Boehner said. “Obviously, DOJ’s decision results in DOJ no longer needing the funds it would have otherwise expended defending the constitutionality of DOMA. It is my intent that those funds be diverted to the House for reimbursement of any costs incurred by and associated with the House, and not DOJ, defending DOMA.”

Such a move would require Senate approval, an unlikely prospect since Democrats control that chamber.

Boehner will probably end up finding money for the legal fight from other discretionary and non-discretionary spending sources, according to legal experts. There was no indication just how much the legal fight could eventually cost.

[…]Legal sources say the House Republican leadership hired [Paul D.] Clement, a Washington appellate attorney, to defend the law. He filed a brief Monday in a pending case from New York, where a lesbian received an estate tax bill of more than $360,000 after her longtime partner and legal wife had died.Clement is a former solicitor general under President George W. Bush, serving from 2005 to 2008. It was his job to defend federal laws and executive actions in court, similar to what he will be doing now as a private lawyer on retainer. He was mentioned at one time as a possible Supreme Court nominee.

Separately, he also is representing more than two dozens states in their lawsuit against the administration over the sweeping health care reform law passed by Congress last year. That case is pending in a federal appeals court in Atlanta.

Once again we see the importance of conservative parents raising influential children. Everybody talks about traditional marriage, but only Paul D. Clement is going to be in a position to really do something about it. And why? Because he has effectively pursued skills and jobs that put him in a position to have an influence.

News

Obamacare struck down as unconstitutional by Florida judge

1 Comment

Hans Bader again, writing at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Excerpt:

A judge in Florida just declared the health care law known as “Obamacare” unconstitutional, ruling it void in its entirety. Judge Vinson rightly declared the health care law’s individual mandate unconstitutional, since the inactivity of not buying health insurance is not an “economic activity” that Congress has the power to regulate under the Interstate Commerce Clause. (Under the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Morrison (2000), which I helped litigate, only “economic activity” can be regulated under the Commerce Clause, with the possible exception of those non-economic activities that harm instrumentalities of interstate commerce or cross state lines.)

Judge Vinson also rightly declared the law as a whole unconstitutional. The health care law lacks a severability clause. So if a major provision like the individual mandate is unconstitutional — as it indeed was — then the whole law must be struck down.

[…]As I noted earlier in The Washington Examiner, “To justify preserving the rest of the law, the judge” in the earlier Virginia case “cited a 2010 Supreme Court ruling [Free Enterprise Fund v. PCAOB] that invalidated part of a law — but kept the rest of it in force. But that case involved a law passed almost unanimously by Congress, which would have passed it even without the challenged provision. Obamacare is totally different. It was barely passed by a divided Congress, but only as a package. Supporters admitted that the unconstitutional part of it — the insurance mandate — was the law’s heart. Obamacare’s legion of special-interest giveaways that are ‘extraneous to health care’ does not alter that.” In short, Obamacare’s individual mandate is not “volitionally severable,” as case law requires.

The individual mandate provision also was not “functionally” severable from the rest of the law, since the very Congress that passed Obamacare deemed the individual absolutely “essential” to the Act’s overarching goals (as Judge Vinson in Florida correctly noted).

[…]Cato legal scholar Ilya Shapiro, who filed briefs against the law in Virginia, comments on today’s decision here, calling it a “victory for federalism and individual liberty

I also got two more opinions about what this means:

Not sure who to believe. An injunction would have been better.