There were no noted dissents.

On Monday, the Supreme Court denied a request from county clerk turned anti-gay gadfly Kim Davis to reconsider and overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 decision recognizing same-sex couples’ constitutional right to marry. There were no noted dissents. It is not remotely surprising that the justices turned away Davis’ petition: There probably aren’t five votes to reconsider Obergefell today—and even if there were, this zombie case would be a terrible vehicle for doing so. No one should assume that gay equality is safe at the Supreme Court. But for now, at least, the Republican-appointed justices seem to prefer indirect assaults on the rights of gay Americans over a head-on attack on their core constitutional freedoms.

For more from Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern:

  • JakenVeina@midwest.social
    5·
    5 hours ago

    I fail to see where in this article they present “The Real Reason Kim Davis Never Stood a Chance”. Unless they mean the whole bit about “Obergefell is entrenched as precedent, and widely supported by Americans”, in which case, that’s horseshit. This SCOTUS has shat on much older and much-more-popular precedents than this, with no hesitation, and no valid reasoning.

  • ignirtoq@feddit.onlineEnglish
    7·
    6 hours ago

    If this Supreme Court were considering the issue for the very first time today, it would almost certainly hold that the Constitution does not protect same-sex marriage by a 6–3 vote. But now that Obergefell is entrenched as precedent, and widely supported by Americans, they’ve shown no appetite for spending down their political capital to issue an unpopular ruling that could only hurt the Republican Party.

    This seems like a really naive thing to say about this court. They have shown no qualms about striking down much older cases with a stronger history of precedent than Obergefell on the most specious of reasoning. They struck down Chevron Deference last year, which was in place since 1984 and had come to form the backbone of judicial handling about highly technical aspects of government regulation of virtually every industry.

    And they have no hesitation about making unpopular rulings. Several justices have a habit of lecturing the public in a way that’s essentially talking down to the people they are supposed to serve and say they simply know what’s better for the people than… the people. Their egos couldn’t care less about their public image; Chief Justice John Roberts has spoken out multiple times that people need to basically shut up and respect the court’s decisions no matter if they like them or not.

    It’s a higher level of infuriating that the court is so obviously corrupt, and then the most corrupt among them present themselves as fundamentally more deserving of respect and deference than the common rabble.

  • Optional@lemmy.world
    261·
    13 hours ago

    But few know what happened next: One couple whom Davis discriminated against sued her for violating their civil rights, and a jury ordered her to pay $360,000 in damages for attorneys’ fees. She and her lawyers at the fringe-right law firm Liberty Counsel have spent years fighting that award. And that is what Davis v. Ermold is really about.

    . . . After losing several rounds of litigation over the First Amendment issue, Davis’ lawyers decided to tack on a bigger request: Suddenly, they did not merely ask for exemptions from Obergefell; they wanted the Supreme Court to overturn it altogether. They raised this claim so late in the game that the appeals court ruled that it had been forfeited. But that did not stop them from including the frontal attack on Obergefell in their appeal to SCOTUS. The request to overturn marriage equality was tacked on to the petition like an afterthought, following the main arguments about religious freedom.

    If Liberty Counsel’s primary goal was to draw attention—and, by extension, fundraising dollars—by taking on marriage equality itself, it worked: Media coverage of this case was wildly disproportionate to its (near-zero) chances of success.