According to Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, the court’s recent decision legalizing same-sex marriage laid the legal groundwork for a libertarian justice to eliminate minimum wage laws, or a socialist justice to say that there is a right to an annual income.
In a taped conversation with Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, Alito decried the way he believed the marriage decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, defined the definition of liberty guaranteed by the Constitution’s 14th Amendment to be “the freedom to define your understanding of the meaning of life.”
“There’s no limit,” Alito said, arguing that the Rehnquist court had tried limit such legal definitions of liberty to be “deeply rooted in the traditions of the country.”
“But the Obergefell decision threw that out,” Alito said, as the Daily Beast noted. “It did not claim that there was a strong tradition of protecting the right to same-sex marriage. This would have been impossible to find.”
Without these legal limits on the definition of liberty, Alito speculated that future justices could grant constitutional rights on the basis of their ideological whims, and practically, the nomination of judges will become more like a political election.
“So we are at sea, I think. I don’t know what the limits of substantive liberty protection under the 14th Amendment are at this point,” he said.
"So we are at sea,
Ya think, Sammy?
Delusional.
So ending gender discrimination in marriage law, just like ending racial discrimination in marriage law in 1967, will lead to the end of the min. wage or the installation of a right to an annual income?
The man is untethered to planet earth. That he sits on the SCOTUS bench is astounding.
You mean kind of like it is now??
GAY Marry HAs eLIminateD the MINIMUm waGE. GOod for BUSIness. BAd FOR LIBtards. HAHAHA.
I guess this shows Alito’s possible sympathy for a return to Lochner-era substantive due process jurisprudence. There’s some indication that that’s where mainstream conservative thought is headed.