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Homosexuals Flock to California City Halls for Marriages; Last Minute Appeal Filed to Stop Ceremonies (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Same-sex couples dressed in jeans, shorts, white dresses, and the occasional military uniform filled San Francisco City Hall on Saturday as clerks resumed issuing marriage licenses one day after a federal appeals court removed the last obstacle to making gay marriage legal again in California.

But lawyers for the sponsors of California’s same-sex marriage ban have filed an emergency motion asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overrule the federal appeals court.

Attorneys with the Arizona-based Alliance Defending Freedom said they submitted the petition on Saturday to Justice Anthony Kennedy, who handles motions dealing with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Senior Counsel Austin Nimocks says a three-judge 9th Circuit panel acted prematurely and unfairly when it lifted the hold on same-sex marriages it had put in place while a challenge to the ban made its way through the courts.

Nimocks says the Supreme Court’s consideration of the case is not done yet because his clients still have 22 days to ask the justices to reconsider their decision holding that Proposition 8′s backers did not have legal authority to defend the ban.

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Polygamists Hope Supreme Court Rulings Will Pave Way to Decriminalization

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Polygamists nationwide are cheering the Supreme Court’s rulings on Wednesday, which paved the way for gay marriage in California and federal recognition for married same-sex couples.

“I was very glad,” polygamist Anne Wilde told Buzzfeed on Wednesday. “The nuclear family, with a dad and a mom and two or three kids, is not the majority anymore. Now it’s grandparents taking care of kids, single parents, gay parents. I think people are more and more understanding that as consenting adults, we should be able to raise a family however we choose.”

Joe Darger, a Utah-based polygamist who has three wives, told Buzzfeed that the court “has taken a step in correcting some inequality, and that’s certainly something that’s going to trickle down and impact us.”

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Alaska, Other States No Longer Subject to Key Provisions of 1965 Voting Rights Act

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Photo Credit: Evan Vucci

Photo Credit: Evan Vucci

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that states no longer can be judged by voting discrimination that went on decades ago, a decision that argues the country has fundamentally changed since the racially motivated laws of the civil rights era.

In a 5-4 ruling, the justices said the Voting Rights Act’s requirement that mainly Southern states must undergo special scrutiny before changing their voting laws is based on a 40-year-old formula that is no longer relevant to changing racial circumstances.

“Congress — if it is to divide the states — must identify those jurisdictions to be singled out on a basis that makes sense in light of current conditions. It cannot rely simply on the past,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority, which was comprised of the court’s conservative-leaning justices.

The four liberal-leaning justices dissented, arguing that racial discrimination in voting remains a real threat. The majority didn’t disagree with that, but the core of Chief Justice Roberts‘ opinion was that discrimination today looks markedly different from what it did decades ago, so the law must be changed to reflect that.

The Shelby County v. Holder ruling sparked an immediate debate about the status of race and discrimination in modern America.

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Judicial Tyranny? FISA Courts Fashioning Their Own Rules, In Secret, to Spy on Every American

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Photo Credit: Washington Post

Photo Credit: Washington Post

Wedged into a secure, windowless basement room deep below the Capitol Visitors Center, U.S. District Court Judge John Bates appeared before dozens of senators earlier this month for a highly unusual, top-secret briefing.

The lawmakers pressed Bates, according to people familiar with the session, to discuss the inner workings of the United States’ clandestine terrorism surveillance tribunal, which Bates oversaw from 2006 until earlier this year.

Bates had rarely spoken of his sensitive work. He reluctantly agreed to appear at the behest of Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who arranged the session after new disclosures that the court had granted the government broad access to millions of Americans’ telephone and Internet communications.

The two-hour meeting on June 13 featuring Bates and two top spy agency officials — prompted by reports days earlier by The Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper about the vast reach of the programs — reflects a new and uncomfortable reality for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and its previously obscure members. Within the past month, lawmakers have begun to ask who the court’s judges are, what they do, why they have almost never declined a government surveillance request and why their work is so secretive.

The public is getting a peek into the little-known workings of a powerful and mostly invisible government entity. And it is seeing a court whose secret rulings have in effect created a body of law separate from the one on the books — one that gives U.S. spy agencies the authority to collect bulk information about Americans’ medical care, firearms purchases, credit card usage and other interactions with business and commerce, according to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

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Arizona’s Voter ID Law Voided by 7-2 Supreme Court Decision

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Photo Credit: Yana Paskova

Photo Credit: Yana Paskova

The U.S. Supreme Court threw out an Arizona law requiring evidence of citizenship when people register to vote, in a victory for minority-rights advocates and the Obama administration.

The justices said Arizona’s proof-of-citizenship law runs afoul of a federal statute that sets registration requirements. The 7-2 ruling limits the role played by the states in national elections and raises questions about similar laws in three other states — Alabama, Georgia and Kansas.

A U.S. appeals court had invalidated the Arizona law, pointing to a 1993 federal statute that says states must “accept and use” a standard registration document known as the federal form. That form instructs prospective voters to swear that they are citizens, under penalty of perjury…

The high court case didn’t directly involve allegations of racial or ethnic discrimination, though civil-rights groups pressed those contentions earlier in the litigation. The dispute presented legal issues different from those in the voter-identification battles that garnered headlines before last year’s election.

Under Arizona’s law, those seeking to register could prove citizenship by presenting copies of a driver’s license or state-issued identification. The state also would accept a birth certificate, a passport or naturalization papers. Arizona voters approved the measure in 2004.

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Supreme Court Rules Human Genes Cannot be Patented

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Photo Credit: AP

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that companies cannot patent parts of naturally-occurring human genes, a decision with the potential to profoundly affect the emerging and lucrative medical and biotechnology industries.

The high court’s unanimous judgment reverses three decades of patent awards by government officials. It throws out patents held by Salt Lake City-based Myriad Genetics Inc. on an increasingly popular breast cancer test brought into the public eye recently by actress Angelina Jolie’s revelation that she had a double mastectomy because of one of the genes involved in this case.

Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the court’s decision, said that Myriad’s assertion — that the DNA it isolated from the body for its proprietary breast and ovarian cancer tests were patentable — had to be dismissed because it violates patent rules. The court has said that laws of nature, natural phenomena and abstract ideas are not patentable.

“We hold that a naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature and not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated,” Thomas said.

Patents are the legal protection that gives inventors the right to prevent others from making, using or selling a novel device, process or application. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has been awarding patents on human genes for almost 30 years, but opponents of Myriad Genetics Inc.’s patents on the two genes linked to increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer say such protection should not be given to something that can be found inside the human body.

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“Conservative” Supreme Court Allows DNA Collection From Anyone Targeted by Police; Scalia Writes Scathing Dissenting Opinion, Joined by Left

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Photo Credit: soychemist

The police may take DNA samples from people arrested in connection with serious crimes, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday in a 5-to-4 decision.

The federal government and 28 states authorize the practice, and law enforcement officials say it is a valuable tool for investigating unsolved crimes. But the court said the testing was justified by a different reason: to identify the suspect in custody.

“When officers make an arrest supported by probable cause to hold for a serious offense and they bring the suspect to the station to be detained in custody,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority, “taking and analyzing a cheek swab of the arrestee’s DNA is, like fingerprinting and photographing, a legitimate police booking procedure that is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.”

Justice Antonin Scalia summarized his dissent from the bench, a rare move signaling deep disagreement. He accused the majority of an unsuccessful sleight of hand, one that “taxes the credulity of the credulous.” The point of DNA testing as it is actually practiced, he said, is to solve cold cases, not to identify the suspect in custody.

But the Fourth Amendment forbids searches without reasonable suspicion to gather evidence about an unrelated crime, he said, a point the majority did not dispute. “Make no mistake about it: because of today’s decision, your DNA can be taken and entered into a national database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason,” Justice Scalia said from the bench.

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House Passes Bill on Lying About Military Medals

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People who falsely claim they have received a military medal in order to obtain money or government benefits could face up to a year in jail under legislation that easily passed the House Monday.

The Stolen Valor Act, sponsored by Nevada Republican Joe Heck, is a second attempt by the House to revive a law on fraudulent claims to medals that was struck down by the Supreme Court in June last year. The legislation is identical to a measure that passed the House overwhelmingly last September but saw no Senate action before the last session of Congress ended. The vote Monday was 390-3.

The Supreme Court, in invalidating the Stolen Valor Act of 2006, ruled that while making false statements about receiving a military medal might be contemptible, such lies were protected by First Amendment free speech rights.

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Supreme Court Hints That It Won’t Issue Sweeping Ruling On Same-Sex Marriage; Scalia Hammers Anti-Prop 8 Advocate

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NBC Politics

In a historic oral argument on a challenge to state laws that limit marriage to heterosexual couples, the Supreme Court indicated Tuesday that it might not strike down such laws.

The justice whom many observers view as the swing vote in the case, Justice Anthony Kennedy, voiced worry at one point during the argument that proponents of same-sex marriages were asking the court to issue a decision that would “go into uncharted waters.”

After the oral argument, Pete Williams of NBC News reported that it seemed “quite obvious that the U.S. Supreme Court is not prepared to issue any kind of sweeping ruling” declaring that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry.

Williams said there seemed to be “very little eagerness” from any of the justices to “embrace that broad a ruling.”

At issue Tuesday was California’s Proposition 8, the state constitutional amendment enacted by voters in 2008 that limits marriage to one man-one woman couples. Those seeking to have the court strike down Proposition 8 argue that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment includes a right for same-sex couples to marry. Read more from this story HERE.

SCALIA: ‘When Did It Become Unconstitutional To Exclude Homosexual Couples From Marriage?’

By Brett LoGiurato. During oral arguments today at the Supreme Court, Justice Antonin Scalia and attorney Ted Olson had a pointed exchange over whether same-sex marriage is a fundamental right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

Scalia’s argument, which was advanced by Chief Justice John Roberts before him, was that when the institution of marriage developed historically, it was not done with the explicit intent of excluding gay and lesbian couples.

“We don’t prescribe law for the future,” Scalia said. “We decide what the law is. I’m curious, when did it become unconstitutional to exclude homosexual couples from marriage? 1791? 1868? When the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted?”

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States’ AGs Split on Constitutional Right to Gay Marriage

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Photo Credit: PewStates

When the Supreme Court hears arguments this week on same-sex marriage, it will confront an issue that has divided the public across the country and exposed fissures among the states.

One divided group could weigh heavily on the justices as they consider what could be a historic, once-in-a-generation constitutional decision: the briefs of states’ attorneys general.

More than half the states’ top lawyers have weighed in on the same-sex marriage issue before the court, underscoring the degree to which state officials and those they represent see their interests at work in the case. Depending how the justices rule, their decision could upend established laws in nearly every state.

As lawsuits over same-sex marriage have wound through the courts, the tangled web of state laws dealing with domestic partnerships, civil unions and same-sex marriage has become mired in the broader debate.

States’ rights and federalism could factor strongly in any decision the justices hand down as they consider two key questions: First, whether California’s Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage is constitutional. And second, whether the federal Defense of Marriage Act barring the federal government from recognizing legal same-sex unions is either unconstitutionally discriminatory or an infringement on states’ right to define marriage as they see fit.

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