California Supreme Court Upholds Prop 8; Rules Against Same-Sex Marriage

Well, it could be worse.

The California Supreme Court ruled today that Proposition 8, last November’s ballot initiative amending the California Constitution to forbid same-sex marriage, is legal. It also affirmed that marriages conducted between May 2008 (when the same court ruled that same-sex marriage was constitutional) and November were legal. Supporters of Prop. 8 had hoped for a one-two punch that included invalidation of the 18,000 so-called Rainbow Window marriages.

Prop. 8 opponents rested on the argument that Prop. 8’s stripping of extant rights from a “protected class” of people was such a gross alteration to the state Constitution that it constituted a revision, not an amendment, to the Constitution. Revisions require a completely separate process to be passed.

Does the “fundamental right” of the people to go to the polls and enact law by referendum supersede the “fundamental right” of a protected class to marry? Does the right of the people permit a majority of the electorate to remove rights from a minority? The ruling today suggests that, yes, a majority of the people can remove or limit the rights of a minority group. More on this later.

Let’s be clear: this is not a normal ballot initiative. The ballot measures we voted on last week? Those were standard-issue: permit the legislature to save more money; permit the legislature to redirect money. Prop. 8 was unlike any ballot initiative that California had seen before. It allowed a majority of voters to strip a minority of a right that majority already had. With today’s ruling, a dangerous precedent has been created: the referendum process and the right of the majority to make law through the ballot is officially more important than the rights of the minorities that the majority would seek to take away using the initiative process.

The court’s ruling is 185 pages long. Here’s a summary:

• The scope of the decision is limited to the question of whether or not Proposition 8 was an “amendment” or “revision” of California’s Constitution. The court did not rule on the legal legitimacy of same-sex marriage; that issue was decided last May.
• The marriages that occurred between last May and last November are still valid, since retroactively invalidating a lawfully-performed marriage would require due process and not merely the approval of voters.
• What is at stake here is not the fundamental rights of same-sex couples; the court affirmed that the rights are the same, but under Prop. 8, same-sex couples cannot have the word “marriage.”

That minority had better have a lot of money, because in order to get their rights back, they’ll have to mount a campaign to get another proposition on the ballot amending the Constitution to remove the previous amendment. Fortunately, that’s what they plan to do: Prop. 8 opponents plan to have another initiative on the ballot in 2010, this time repealing the amendment banning same-sex marriage.

Let’s be equally clear what the California Supreme Court is not saying. The court is not suggesting that same-sex marriage itself is inherently unconstitutional; it also is not suggesting that same-sex marriage itself is inherently constitutional. (Interestingly, the May 2008 decision already ruled that the language contained in Prop. 8 is discriminatory under the law; the statute in question contained exactly the same language found in Prop. 8, and back then, when it wasn’t an amendment, it was unconstitutional.) The court has merely adjudicated two issues: does Prop. 8 constitute an amendment, and does Prop. 8 apply retroactively? The majority opinion concluded by noting that, if Prop. 8 opponents are unhappy with today’s ruling, “if there is to be a change to the state constitutional rule embodied in that measure, it must ‘find its expression at the ballot box.’” The court has certainly not suggested that same-sex marriage can never be the law. In finding that Prop. 8 was an amendment, the court has said that the only proper way to invalidate an amendment is with another amendment; i.e., another ballot measure repealing the Prop. 8 amendment.

Only one judge dissented from the opinion. Judge Moreno expressed concern that a simple majority vote could unilaterally strip a minority group of its rights:

The rule the majority crafts today not only allows same-sex couples to be stripped of the right to marry that this court recognized in the Marriage Cases, it places at risk the state constitutional rights of all disfavored minorities. It weakens the status of our state Constitution as a bulwark of fundamental rights for minorities protected from the will of the majority.

Judge Moreno calls the Equal Protection Clause “inherently countermajoritarian,” meaning that its purpose is not to accede to the will of the majority, but rather to ensure that anything the majority does allows for the protection of minority groups. The Clause prevents what John Stuart Mill called “the tyranny of the majority,” one of the dangers inherent in democracy. Under a democratic system, the majority — by its sheer size — is presumed to be correct. As we have seen with Prop. 8, the fact that a majority believes something does not necessarily make that thing true.

There has been some talk of amending the state constitution to alter the amendment process. This would be a good step in the direction of eliminating the back-and-forth that we will see with ballot initiatives for the next few years. Here’s an idea: making a distinction between amendments that due mundane things like alter the budget process and amendments that alter the status of individual liberties.

Breaking News: A very odd couple — former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson (who argued for Bush in 2000’s Bush v. Gore) and David Boies (who argued for Gore in Bush v. Gore) have agreed to join forces and take up a federal court case challenging Prop. 8 under the Fourteenth Amendment’s “equal protection” clause. What else is interesting about this? Any case that adjudicates this issue would necessarily adjudicate both any other state law banning same-sex marriage and the federal ban on same-sex marriage. (The U.S. government currently does not recognize same-sex marriage as “marriage” for federal purposes.)

You Can Indefinitely Detain Some of the People Some of the Time

One of the larger problems in my life is that, whenever I want to write about a civil liberties issue, Glenn Greenwald has already beaten me to it. And written it better than I could have. Greenwald is a former civil liberties attorney and number one defender of The Constitution. He is not a Democratic apologist. He heavily criticized President Bush. And he is now heavily criticizing President Obama. In Greenwald’s opinion, suggesting that enforcing our laws is “radical” or “extreme” or “left-wing” is disgusting. When did enforcing the law become a partisan issue? He also writes about the media and how he believes that the media are beholden to the political class in a horrible, symbiotic relationship that ensures that the Fourth Estate will never actually hold our leaders accountable for anything.

And I agree with him on all of it. Absolutely all of it. Darn him! Darn him to heck!

For example, Glenn and I were furious this last week when Sen. Harry Reid kept using a verb that could just as easily have been crafted by Karl Rove. The verb was “release,” as in, “Terrorists from Guantanamo Bay will be released into the U.S.” Many pundits, and even Obama himself, used the verb “release” to describe what the government will do to detainees in Guantanamo Bay now that the administration has re-iterated its desire to close the prison there. “Release” evokes images of terrorists approaching the shore on boats and then merrily skipping off, free of shackles and permitted to wander throughout the country, blowing up whatever they please.

Let it be known: terrorists will not be released into anything. They will be shackled, they will be monitored, they will be in our custody and under guard as they are transported from Cuba to the mainland. And once on the mainland, they will continue to be monitored and under guard as they are moved to whatever prison they will occupy next. Those who believe that terrorists will be “released” in the United States are either negligently ignorant, willfully stupid, or maliciously misrepresentative. One guess as to which one describes Harry Reid.

Prior to September 11, 2001, we believed in something called “due process.” It’s a Fifth Amendment guarantee:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. [Emphasis mine.]

The Supreme Court has ruled before that, since the Constitution uses the word “person” and not “citizen”; and since it would have been very easy to use the word citizen, but person was used instead; and since the author of the Bill of Rights, James Madison, was a lawyer by trade and a very smart man and probably not prone to misusing words; that it therefore follows that the Bill of Rights was intended to apply not only to U.S. citizens, but anyone in the United States. This is affirmed in the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits a state to “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Again, note the use of the word person where citizen could have been used, but wasn’t.

In 1993, the World Trade Center was bombed by a group of terrorists led by Omar Abdel-Rahman, better known as The Blind Sheik. The bomb damaged a parking garage and did kill some people, but it didn’t come close to bringing the building down. Abdel-Rahman and three other accomplices were indicted by civilian prosecutors, accused of breaking publicly-accessible laws, tried in open court inside the United States, under the guidelines of the Constitution and the rules of U.S. civil procedure, and sentenced to U.S. civilian prisons. After 1993, the nation was not less safe because Abdel-Rahman and his accomplices were being imprisoned inside the United States. Abdel-Rahman is housed at the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.

In 1995, Timothy McVeigh and his accomplice Terry Nichols parked a rental truck containing a homemade fertilizer bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The bomb exploded, killing 168 people, injuring 800 others, and destroying the building. Nichols and McVeigh were indicted, again by civilian prosecutors, accused of breaking publicly-accessible (that is, not secret) laws, tried in open court, and sentenced to U.S. civilian prisons. McVeigh was given the death penalty. The nation is not less safe because Terry Nichols is housed inside the United States.

I think you get the point. Eric Rudolph, the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bomber; Wadih el-Hage, accused of involvement in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings; Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber; Richard Reid, the “shoe bomber”; Jose Padilla, the “dirty bomber.” All of these people are being held inside the United States right now, and no one — no one! — is arguing that the United States is less safe because of it. To suggest that allowing Dangerous Criminals inside our borders is silly; there are already more dangerous criminals here!

It’s also worth noting that, with the exception of Reid and Padilla, all of the above criminals were convicted using the 200-year-old, civilian due process proscribed by the Constitution. Reid and Padilla were held incommunicado in U.S. navy brigs. The government eventually dropped its terrorism charge against Padilla, who was alleged to be making a “dirty bomb” (a traditional bomb filled with radioactive material; it would not cause a nuclear explosion, but it would spread radiation). Since the government didn’t have enough evidence to prosecute the terrorism charge, the charge was dropped. Padilla, nevertheless, was sentenced because even though terrorism is a crime, all the things that terrorists do are already illegal, anyway! Blowing up a building is no more illegal because it was done with a political agenda in mind.

The assertion that Terrorists need to be tried in a special, extra-Constitutional way, held without charge, subjected to torture, and perhaps never afforded a trial is ludicrous. In the paragraphs above, we have ample evidence proving that trying terrorists in civilian courts, using civilian rules, does work. The United States is not less safe. And furthermore, housing convicted terrorists in civilian prisons does work. And furthermore, charging them and trying them does work. For people like Vice President Cheney to suggest that using due process makes us less safe just goes to show us how out of his mind the man is. He would probably be happier living in Iran, where the executive has unlimited power to imprison people for made-up reasons, or no reason at all. Here in the United States, we do not convict people merely on the confidential say-so of the executive branch; that’s the way dictatorships (you know, those countries that we purport to be fighting against — unless your name is “Saudi Arabia”) behave. Here in the United States, it is up to the executive to prove that the accused is guilty. Guilt is never assumed — unless, apparently, you committed a terrorism-related crime after September 11, 2001. Or you were linked to terrorism, no matter how specious the link or how questionable the evidence. Or you associated with terrorists, even if you didn’t know they were terrorists. Or you were planning on committing a terrorism-related crime, even if “terror” wasn’t your goal. Or, as Obama articulated yesterday, the government is afraid you might commit terrorist crimes in the future. Yes, the possibility of future law-breaking is now grounds not only for detaining someone, but for never giving them a trial or even a preliminary hearing to prove that they did what they were accused of doing. As long as the government says “Terrorist,” an individual’s guilt is implicit and that person will never, ever be released. (More likely, as Greenwald observed, you will be imprisoned indefinitely if the government can’t guarantee that it will win a trial. Do show trials sound like the hallmark of a vibrant democracy or a repressive despotism?)

Obama’s plan is definitely a step in the right direction, but it’s not nearly enough. In order to restore the rule of law to this out-of-control country, he must admit that there is no situation in which a person should be held indefinitely; habeas corpus is a right guaranteed to anyone in U.S. custody, and the U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed as much. Obama apologists have used exactly the same rhetoric President Bush used to support Obama’s case; namely, “we are at war.” And these prisoners are prisoners of war; therefore, they do not have the right to contest their detention, and they may be detained until the end of the conflict. Seeing as how we’re waging a war on an abstract idea, it’s hard to see exactly when (or if) this war will be over.

Are we now in the business of imprisoning people indefinitely? What does that say about us as a nation? What will historians say fifty years from now? Today, we regard the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II as deplorable and appalling, but at the time, it made sense to our political leaders. We have the ability to stop lawlessness right now instead of musing, decades later, about the mistakes we made, and saying, “We’re so sorry. We’ll do better next time.” Unfortunately, every time “next time” comes up, we fail again (we began failing as early as the John Adams administration, with the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts). Obama offers the promise of actually living up to our ideals as a country. Rather than fumble to attempt to explain and excuse his actions, we must ask, “Is what he is doing right? Is it legal?” And, as Glenn Greenwald wonders, “What would I have said if George Bush and Dick Cheney advocated a law vesting them with the power to preventively imprison people indefinitely and with no charges?”

Please do read Glenn’s article. It is a thorough, lucid, and amazing analysis of Obama’s position on these detainees, with some very tough questions and conclusions that must necessarily follow from that position. I do not believe they are questions that Obama and his supporters want to ask, because they lead to the very same places formerly occupied by previous administrations. At the end of the day, Obama & Co. are saying, “Yes, it is okay to detain some people indefinitely, without the government ever having to prove that they committed a crime.” Not only is that assertion illegal, it’s un-American, and if we continue down that road, it makes this country not only less safe, but less worth defending.

Same-Sex Marriage: Obama’s Lincoln Moment

On Wednesday night, Governor John Baldacci of Maine signed legislation that he struggled to support. While governors are often pressed by their legislatures and constituents to support laws that they do not necessarily agree with, this bill—one that legalizes same-sex marriages—was a personal dilemma for the first-term governor. After weeks of agonizing over the decision, the Governor released a statement to the press that outlined the reasoning behind his eventual approval:

In the past, I opposed gay marriage while supporting the idea of civil unions. I have come to believe that this is a question of fairness and of equal protection under the law, and that a civil union is not equal to civil marriage.

The first governor to sign a same-sex marriage bill, Baldacci touches on the heart of the same-sex marriage debate: The arguments for or against same-sex unions based on morality, religion, tradition, or any other logic is irrelevant. What matters is the law. And the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution that he refers to clearly states “[no] State [shall] deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Which means that, like it or not, from Baldacci’s perspective, gays and lesbians should be entitled to the right to marry if straight people are allowed to marry.

Over the course of the past several months, four states have legalized same-sex marriage in their states: Connecticut, Vermont, Iowa, and New Hampshire (Massachusetts legalized gay marriage back in 2004). Recently, both New York and Washington D.C. have decided to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. And now there is talk that New Jersey may become the sixth state to legalize same-sex marriage in the coming months.

Throughout this civil rights upheaval,  President Obama and his administration have remained conspicuously mum. According to the New York Times, Obama has said that as a Christian he opposes gay marriage but remains a “fierce advocate of equality” for gay men and lesbians. And so far, he has remained true to that statement by pledging to sign a U.N. declaration, which Bush refused to sign before he left office, that calls for a worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality (the United States was the only western nation not to support the measure). Moreover, Obama has continually recognized qualified persons with same-sex sexual orientations for top level jobs: In his short time in office, he has appointed numerous openly gay officials for executive administrative positions and may be considering two prominent lesbian lawyers to replace Justice Souter on the Supreme Court.

Although the saying goes that “actions speak louder than words,” his silence is an action that may indicate his political discomfort with gay rights advocacy. During the election, he reiterated that same-sex marriage is an issue that should be decided by the states. And, to a certain extent, he’s constitutionally correct: There is currently no federal marriage license that any straight couple can apply for but, then again, opposite-sex couples who marry in their home state trust that their marriage will be honored no matter which state they travel to or live in. And while there is no federal law regulating straight marriages, the 1996 Federal Defense of Marriage Act passed by Congress regulates same-sex unions. The Act explicitly outlines that states do not have to recognize same-sex marriages or civil unions performed in other states. That is a gross discrepancy.

While Obama has said that he supports a repeal of that legislation and of the military’s “Don’t ask, Don’t tell” policy, he has remained virtually silent on the gay marriage issue since he took office and has chosen to not comment on the landslide of same-sex marriage laws in recent months. Although this issue may not seem like a priority for the administration when they have an economic crisis and two wars to contend with, it should be a priority for the president since Obama has repeatedly stated that he wants America to rebuild and renew its reputation in the world. In a 2007 article he wrote for Foreign Affairs, he stated:

At moments of great peril in the last century, American leaders such as Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy managed both to protect the American people and to expand opportunity for the next generation. What is more, they ensured that America, by deed and example, led and lifted the world — that we stood for and fought for the freedoms sought by billions of people beyond our borders. […] They used our strengths to show people everywhere America at its best.

Yet, how can those freedoms be realized if America does not follow its own laws and ensure that all of its own citizens receive the same “protection” under the law? If President Obama is going to continue to reiterate that marriage laws should be left to the states, then he should actively pursue a repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act since it is a federal measure. So too, if he wants America to “lead by deed and example” then he must show support for states that have passed inclusive marriage legislation and encourage others to do the same. It sets a very bad “example” to have some areas of the country have more “freedoms” for its citizens than others.

Or, Obama could take a cue from his favorite president, Abraham Lincoln. When Lincoln took office in 1861, he viewed slavery as a states’ issue and expressly stated that he had “no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with slavery in the States where it exists.” However, two years later, he delivered his Emancipation Proclamation that freed the slaves because it was “an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution.” Certainly, it is thorny comparison between slavery and gay rights and America is not in a civil war where gay marriage is, like slavery was, the catalyst for domestic combat; nevertheless the United States is at a civil rights crossroads that needs to be addressed by the President. Had Lincoln chosen to never take that stand on slavery, decided to put it off until later, or thought he could leave the responsibility on to the next administration, Obama may have never even had a chance to be our president. Obama should take a page from the book of his presidential idol and realize that, regardless of the political risk, he is obligated as America’s national leader to stand up for the rights of all Americans.

Obama has continually said that he wants his presidency to speak to and for all Americans. In his famous Democratic nomination acceptance speech, Obama evoked Martin Luther King and reiterated that “now is the time” for the United States to rebuild and renew:

[I]n America, our destiny is inextricably linked, that together our dreams can be one. “We cannot walk alone,” the preacher cried. “And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.”

Indeed, we cannot turn back and now is certainly the time.