As you likely know, today is round two for marriage equality before the Supreme Court, with the constitutionality of DOMA on the dock. Here’s a quick run-down of what the possible outcomes appear to be. The conventional wisdom is that this case is the more likely candidate for the Court to use to make a broad decision — one that could take the federal government out of anti-gay discrimination business, at least to the extent of forcing the federal government to treat all state-sanctioned marriages on equal terms, whether they’re for same or opposite sex couples.
We’ll bring you live reports as soon as today’s oral arguments are done.
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From our reporter in the room at the DOMA hearing …
DOMA just took a beating at SCOTUS. Four liberal justices & Kennedy highly skeptical it’s constitutional.
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) March 27, 2013
The initial reactions out of the Court hearing this morning (very much take it for what it’s worth) suggest that DOMA is in big trouble. The notable fine print, however, is that while the four liberals on the Court appear to see an Equal Protection problem, Anthony Kennedy appears to be focused on federalism — i.e., states rights, that DOMA oversteps into the states’ right to define marriage.
If that’s the case, it would probably be the first time that “states rights” was ever used to vindicate any actual person or group’s rights. It’s almost always been bulwark behind which states hide to deprive citizens of rights. There are likely some marginal examples of the contrary. But the big verdict of history is unmistakable. It would be an ironic first.
This got buried yesterday under an avalanche of Supreme Court news, but it could end up being a significant barrier to comprehensive immigration reform, so it’s worth revisiting.
The short version is that Janet Napolitano sat down with reporters yesterday and effectively rejected one of the GOP’s key CIR demands — that any path to citizenship remain locked until border security is strengthened to meet some measurable, yet to be determined standard. Read More
At border, McCain survives incident where woman climbs a fence. Per McCain: “Incident is another reminder that threats to our border security are real.”