Tag: SCOTUS

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Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy Announces Retirement

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement today. His all-important 'swing vote' helped make major LGBTQ rights a reality
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy

This is very bad news for the LGBTQ community and for the entire country.

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has announced his retirement.

“It has been the greatest honor and privilege to serve our nation in the federal judiciary for 43 years, 30 of those years on the Supreme Court,” Kennedy said in a statement.

In his official letter to President Trump, Kennedy said his resignation would be effective July 31.

Kennedy has been the all-important ‘swing vote’ for years now.

Tom Goldstein, a Washington lawyer who argues frequently before the court and publishes the SCOTUSblog web site, told NBC News, “Justice Kennedy was the most important member of the court in a century, maybe ever.’

Appointed by President Ronald Reagan, Kennedy is responsible for many important rulings in favor of the LGBTQ community:

• He authored the court’s opinion for the 1996 ruling in Romer v. Evans, which reversed a provision in the Colorado Constitution denying homosexuals the right to bring local discrimination claims.

• In 2003, he wrote the Court’s opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, which invalidated anti-sodomy laws on the basis of the Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution

• On June 26, 2013, the Court ruled Section 3 of the hideous Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional in United States v. Windsor. That decision required the federal government to recognize all legal marriages. The majority opinion, penned by Kennedy, read in part, “The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and 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.”

• On June 26, 2015, Kennedy authored the majority ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which made marriage equality legal in every state of the country.

But there were times when Kennedy was not our friend as well:

• In the 2000 case of Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, Kennedy and four other justices voted to uphold the Boy Scouts of America’s right to ban gays from being scoutmasters.

• In 2013, he voted to gut the landmark Voters Rights Act.

• In 2010, he voted with the other conservative justices in Citizens United v. FEC which allowed Super PACS to make enormous donations to political campaigns.

• More recently, he authored the 7-2 Masterpiece Cakeshop ruling which found Colorado baker Jack Phillips didn’t get a fair shake when he was fined for refusing to sell a wedding cake to a same-sex couple.

The vacancy gives Donald Trump another chance to turn the nine-member court even more conservative after the addition of Justice Gorsuch last year.

With five solid conservatives justices on the court, SCOTUS could repeal or limit gay rights, repeal the right to abortion, and more.

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Supreme Court Upholds Trump Travel Ban

The U. S. Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld Donald Trump’s Muslim travel ban in a 5-4 decision.

From The New York Times:

Just a week after he took office, Mr. Trump issued his first travel ban, causing chaos at the nation’s airports and starting a cascade of lawsuits and appeals. The first ban, drafted in haste, was promptly blocked by courts around the nation.

A second version, issued two months later, fared little better, although the Supreme Court allowed part of it go into effect last June when it agreed to hear the Trump administration’s appeals from court decisions blocking it. But the Supreme Court dismissed those appeals in October after the second ban expired.

In January, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to Mr. Trump’s third and most considered entry ban, issued as a presidential proclamation in September. It initially restricted travel from eight nations, six of them predominantly Muslim — Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Chad, Venezuela and North Korea. Chad was later removed from the list.

The restrictions varied in their details, but, for the most part, citizens of the countries were forbidden from emigrating to the United States and many of them are barred from working, studying or vacationing here.

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SCOTUS Dodges Anti-LGBT Florist Case, Orders Lower Court To Revisit Decision

Barronelle Stutzman
 

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to rule on the case of Washington state florist Barronelle Stutzman who refused to create flower arrangements for a same-sex wedding in 2013.

Although SCOTUS didn’t take the case, the justices instead vacated the 2017 ruling against Stutzman by the Washington state Supreme Court and ordered the state’s top court to take another look at the case and consider the SCOTUS ruling earlier this month regarding Colorado baker Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop.

In that case, SCOTUS didn’t decide the central dispute which is: do anti-discrimination laws in 22 states bar “creative artist” business owners from legally discriminating against people based on their sexual orientation or do “deeply held religious beliefs” trump the rights of LGBTs?

Instead, 7 Supreme Court justices found that the Colorado state commission on civil rights appeared to show hostility towards religion in reaching its decision against the baker. In doing so, SCOTUS reversed the fine ordered on Phillips.

Today, SCOTUS told the Washington state Supreme Court to revisit the Stutzman case to see if similar anti-religious bias existed in coming to its decision regarding the florist.

In 2013, Robert Ingersoll and Curt Freed were planning to marry after Washington state legalized same-sex marriage the year before. But when they approached Stutzman for flowers for their event, Stutzman refused citing her Christian beliefs. Washington state’s public accommodation laws ban discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Stutzman was fined $1,000 and ordered to sell floral arrangements for same-sex weddings if she were to continue selling arrangements for heterosexual weddings.

Although she’s cried about financial burdens due to the ongoing court case, its important to remember that over $174,000 was raised via crowd funding for Stutzman.

GoFundMe eventually shut down the campaign based on the company’s policy that campaigns can’t be used to raise funds for legal cases where formal charges have been filed.

Stutzman was allowed to keep the $174,000.

The American Civil Liberties Union issued a statement in response to today’s decision saying their work for LGBT equality will continue:

“The Supreme Court today asked the Washington courts to re-examine our clients’ case in light of the recent decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop,” said James Esseks, director of ACLU’s LGBT and HIV Project. “To be clear, the court made no indication the lower courts ruled incorrectly and made no decision on the case’s merits. We are confident that the Washington State Supreme Court will rule once again in favor of the same-sex couple, and reaffirm its decision that no business has a right to discriminate. Our work to ensure LGBT equality is the law and the norm in all 50 states will continue.”

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The Internet Responds To Supreme Court’s Colorado Baker Ruling

While today’s ruling from the U.S.Supreme Court was disheartening to say the least, the good news is that the opinion as written by Justice Anthony Kennedy reaffirms our “dignity and worth” in an open marketplace.

While the court sided in a narrow ruling that Colorado’s Civil Rights Commission handled their decision against baker Jack Phillips in a sloppy manner, it did not set precedent for “legal discrimination” against LGBTs.

Plus, there was a lot of support out there on the interwebs for our community.

Take a look:

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Supreme Court Rules In Favor Of Anti-Gay Colorado Baker

The U.S. Supreme Court has just ruled in favor of an anti-LGBT baker in Colorado who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex wedding.

With Justice Anthony Kennedy writing for the majority, the court rules that when the Colorado Civil Rights Commission considered the Masterpiece Cakeshop matter “it did not do so with the religious neutrality that the Constitution requires.”

The plaintiffs argued that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission showed animus against baker Jack Phillips suggesting that members of the commission believed that Phillips Claimed religious freedom in an effort to justify discrimination.

From the Associated Press:

The Associated Press reports:

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a Lakewood baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple because of religious beliefs did not violate Colorado’s anti-discrimination law. The case pitted Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, and the couple, Charlie Craig and David Mullins.

The court ruled that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission’s actions violated the free exercise clause. In arguments before the court in December, Justine Anthony Kennedy, the author of all the court’s major gay-rights cases, worried that a ruling in favor of Phillips might allow shop owners to put up signs saying “We do not bake cakes for gay weddings.”

Only Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor opposed the narrow ruling in favor of the baker.

In his conclusion, Kennedy makes clear that the ruling here only addresses vacating the decision by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission regarding religious neutrality.

Kennedy states that this is not a license to discriminate against gay persons “seeking goods and services in an open market.”

From the last paragraph of the ruling:

The outcome of cases like this in other circumstances must await further elaboration in the courts, all in the context of recognizing that these disputes must be re- solved with tolerance, without undue disrespect to sincere religious beliefs, and without subjecting gay persons to indignities when they seek goods and services in an open market.

Louise Melling, deputy legal director of the ACLU, issued a statement which read, “The court reversed the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision based on concerns unique to the case but reaffirmed its longstanding rule that states can prevent the harms of discrimination in the marketplace, including against LGBT people.”

Lamda Legal issued a statement which read, in part:

The Court today has offered dangerous encouragement to those who would deny civil rights to #LGBTQ people and people living with #HIV. Religious freedom under our Constitution has always meant the right to believe whatever you wish but not to act on your beliefs in ways that harm others. The Court alarmingly fails to heed that distinction.

More from LGBT activists:

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News Round-Up: February 26, 2018

Tyson Beckford

Some news items you might have missed:

• Supermodel Tyson Beckford does “slow Monday” a whole lot better than I do.

• Australia’s new Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack once warned “sordid homosexuals” could wipe out humanity. He says he’s grown since those statements, but has he?

• Openly bisexual high school senior at Majory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, Emma González, who has become one of the most prominent voices calling for gun control legislation, has amassed over a million Twitter followers since the gun massacre. It’s worth noting the NRA only has 588K Twitter followers.

• The U.S. Supreme Court let stand a decision by the Arizona Supreme Court that recognized a woman as the legal parent of a child she and her same-sex spouse conceived through assisted reproduction.

• Donald Trump wants his longtime personal pilot John Dunkin to run the multi-billion dollar Federal Aviation Administration.

• Check out director Jake Wilson’s “boy version” of Hayley Kiyoko’s latest single, “Curious.” Featuring dancer/model Donald Romain and blond bear actor Tyler Kimball, the video flips the lesbian script of the original video and gives us serious gay party flirtation.

I’m bouncing to the track, and the two men are woofilicous 🙂

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SCOTUS Refuses To Hear DACA Appeal By Trump Administration

The U.S. Supreme Court dealt Donald Trump a serious setback today by declining to take up the administration’s appeal of a federal judge’s ruling that requires the government to keep the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program going.

From NBC News:

Under a lower court order that remains in effect, the Department of Homeland Security must continue to accept renewal applications from the roughly 700,000 young people who are currently enrolled in the program, known as DACA. The administration had intended to shut the program down by March 5, but that deadline is now largely meaningless.

In a brief order, the court said simply, “It is assumed the court of appeals will act expeditiously to decide this case.”

Monday’s denial also gives Congress more time to come up with a legislative solution, though repeated bipartisan efforts have failed so far.

At a White House meeting with governors from around the coutry, President Donald Trump said after the court’s decision, “We’d like to help DACA” and criticized the lower court.

The Supreme Court’s denial Monday was expected, because the justices rarely accept appeals asking them to bypass the lower courts.

The DACA program allows children of illegal immigrants, known as “Dreamers,” to remain in the U.S. if they were under 16 when their parents brought them to the U.S. and if they arrived by 2007.

DACA status is given to those who pass a background check, have no prior illegal history and have stayed in school or have current employment. Each “dreamer” must renew their status every two years.

As Pete Williams of NBC News explains below this doesn’t mean the case can’t make it to SCOTUS, only that SCOTUS wants to see the case make it’s way through the regular course of appeals.

At this date, even if the Trump administration took the ruling to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, the case wouldn’t possibly be heard at SCOTUS until this fall at the earliest.

Of course, Congress could choose to act legislatively on the issue, but who knows if that will happen?

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Supreme Court To Hear Arguments Over Trump Travel Ban

The Trump administration is heading to a showdown at the U.S. Supreme Court over Donald Trump’s third attempt to limit travel from certain countries based on national security concerns.

SCOTUS announced today the high court will hear oral arguments in the spring with a decision due by June.

From The New York Times:

The case concerns Mr. Trump’s third and most considered bid to make good on a campaign promise to secure the nation’s borders. But challengers to the latest ban, issued as a presidential proclamation in September, said it was tainted by religious animus and not adequately justified by national security concerns.

The decision to hear the case, Trump v. Hawaii, No. 17-965, came almost a year after the first travel ban, issued a week after Mr. Trump took office, caused chaos at the nation’s airports and was promptly blocked by courts around the nation. A second version of the ban, issued in March, fared little better, though the Supreme Court allowed part of it go into effect in June when it agreed to hear the Trump administration’s appeals in two cases.

The ban restricts travel from eight nations, six of them predominantly Muslim. For now, most citizens of Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Chad and North Korea will be barred from entering the United States, along with some groups of people from Venezuela.

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U.S. Supreme Court Refuses To Review Anti-Gay Mississippi Law

Bloomberg is reporting that the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to review a Mississippi “religious freedom” law, HB1523, that allows broad discrimination against LGBT people.

In denying the request for review, SCOTUS is allowing the law to remain intact.

The justices turned away two appeals by state residents and organizations that contended the measure violates the Constitution. A federal appeals court said the opponents hadn’t suffered any injury that would let them press their claims in court.

The Mississippi fight in some ways represented the flip side of a Colorado case the high court is currently considering; the question in that instance is whether the state can require a baker who sells wedding cakes to make one for a same-sex couple’s wedding.

The cases are testing states’ ability to regulate what happens when LGBT rights come into conflict with religious freedoms. Colorado is aiming to bolster gay rights by enforcing an anti-discrimination law, even though the Denver-area baker says he has a religious objection to same-sex marriage.

The Mississippi law, by contrast, gives priority to religious rights. The state enacted its law less than a year after the 2015 Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.

The measure says religious people can’t be sued or penalized by the government for declining to provide services for same-sex marriage ceremonies. The law also protects people who believe gender is an immutable characteristic or who object to sex out of wedlock.

The 2016 law was passed after the U.S. Supreme Court issued the landmark Obergefell ruling which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.

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Podcast: SCOTUS Refuses Houston Same-Sex Marriage Benefits Review; “Call Me By Your Name” Racks Up More Awards; Tom Goss Has A Musical Message For Christmas

In this week’s podcast:

• The US Supreme Court denied the city of Houston’s request to review a court decision saying marriage equality doesn’t mean equal benefits.

• Bermuda is the first nation to legalize then repeal marriage equality.

• Gay coming of age movie “Call Me By Your Name” continues to rack up awards and nominations

• My suggestions for end of the year charitable donations.

• New music from Tom Goss “Gay Christmas”

All that and more in this episode of The Randy Report