Obergefell Grows Equal Protection Teeth on its Second Birthday

In Obergefell v. Hodges, Justice Anthony Kennedy focused primarily upon marriage as a "fundamental right" protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. As such, the states were required to come up with a strong argument why they could deny it to anyone, let alone gay couples. They couldn't, at least not in the eyes of five of the justices, and the gay marriage bans were struck down.

Justice Kennedy didn't totally limit his reasoning to the due process question of rights, however. He did specifically reference the doctrine of equal protection - also required by the Fourteenth Amendment - and said that it and due process are tied together, based on similar principles of liberty and freedom and both protective of dignity and autonomy.

But many observers have criticized Obergefell for focusing too heavily on fundamental rights and not enough on equal protection. 

That's where Arkansas comes in. There, as in most states that I'm aware of, it is customary for the male spouse of a mother to appear on her child's birth certificate. It happens automatically, regardless of whether the husband is really the biological father of the child. There is no distinction for cases of adultery or artificial insemination. If you're a husband and your wife has a child, your name goes on the birth certificate. End of story.

But that wasn't the case for same-sex spouses in Arkansas. If a woman gives birth there and is married to a woman, her spouse's name didn't go on the birth certificate. Her spouse was not automatically considered the parent of the child - at least when it comes to documenting the birth.

Two couples challenged this rule. They won at the trial court level, but the Arkansas Supreme Court, considering the scope of Obergefell, found that the birth certificate rule "pass[es] constitutional muster" and upheld it.

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court summarily reversed that conclusion in Pavan v. Smith, an anonymous "per curiam" opinion. Why? Because Obergefell held that same-sex couples are entitled to "the constellation of benefits that the State has linked to marriage" on "the same terms and conditions" as different-sex couples. In other words, those couples are entitled to equal protection.

"Disparate treatment" is an equal protection term for discrimination. It doesn't get any clearer than that: Obergefell prohibits treating same-sex couples differently than different-sex couples when the state is doling out various "rights, benefits, and responsibilities" of marriage, including the presumption of parentage to the spouse of the birth mother. If husbands who are not biological fathers are entitled to be listed, then wives who are non-biological mothers must be listed. Simple enough.

But it apparently isn't that simple to Justices Gorsuch, Thomas, and Alito. Gorsuch, writing for them all, argued in dissent that summary reversals such as Pavan are only allowed when "the law is settled and stable...and the decision below is clearly in error," and this is not such a case.

Why? Well, first because there is no "constitutional problem with a biology based birth registration regime" standing alone (an overly simplistic conclusion based primarily on the sharply divided plurality decision of Michael H. v. Gerald D.). Second, the plaintiffs didn't directly challenge the artificial insemination provision of the law, just the general rule about "husbands" that excluded same-sex wives, so there was no reason for the Court to cite it as a reason for reversal. And third, the wife who is left off the birth certificate initially can simply adopt the child later and get added that way. 

Finally, Gorsuch says that Arkansas conceded before them that the artificial insemination rule, 9-10-201, would apply equally to same-sex spouses and thus there was not really a controversy for the court to resolve:

Thus, Gorsuch says, "it is not even clear what the Court expects to happen on remand that hasn't happened already." After all, Arkansas was going to list the mothers on the birth certificates anyway. This is much ado about nothing, or at least much ado about the wrong statute.*

But to me, the majority's view is more compelling. The rule that the plaintiffs challenged - the general requirement that a male spouse's name should appear on the birth certificate regardless of actual paternity, but not a female spouse's name, is discriminatory on its face. It treats same-sex and different-sex married couples differently. Under Obergefell, that's not allowed.

I am glad that six members of the Court took the opportunity to give Obergefell some equal protection teeth, especially as states and cities continue to try creative (and hateful) end runs around it. For example, the Texas Supreme Court is still considering whether Houston can deny marital benefits to municipal employees based on the sex of their spouse. Hopefully they will seriously consider Pavan and rule consistently with it.

*Update: As Mark Stern at Slate documents, Justice Gorsuch's recitation of the facts in the case is totally incorrect. Arkansas never conceded that it would list the birth mother's female spouse on the birth certificates. And it made no sense for the plaintiffs to challenge the artificial insemination rule because they didn't want to overturn it, they referenced it in support of their argument that the rule they did challenge - the rule limiting the naming of spouses to "husband" - was pointlessly discriminatory in violation of Obergefell. All of this suggests Gorsuch's opinion is fraught with errors that should be corrected.

Good Faith and the Rule of Law

Sixty-three years ago today, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down racial segregation in the case of Brown v. Board of Education. In doing so, it completely reversed an interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment that had held constitutional sway for more than a half century. In the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the Court had ruled that "separate but equal" segregation of the races was consistent with equal protection.

In its Brown decision, the Court not only overruled Plessy as a general interpretive guide to the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, but it also ordered every public school district in the country to desegregate "with all deliberate speed:"

[T]he [school desegregation] cases are remanded to the District Courts to take such proceedings and enter such orders and decrees consistent with this opinion as are necessary and proper to admit to public schools on a racially nondiscriminatory basis with all deliberate speed the parties to these cases.

Despite this order, school desegregation in many places around the country did not occur with much speed at all - deliberate or otherwise. With lower courts guided only by this vague command, an organized resistance quickly manifested across the South, with governors and other state officials refusing to desegregate, some even going so far as to physically stand in the way of students themselves.

Many school districts resisted for a decade or more before desegregating. One district in Mississippi finally conceded that Brown v. Board of Education is the settled law of the land just this year.

Chief Justice Earl Warren and his colleagues on the Court in 1954 made a critical mistake in Brown. They assumed, or perhaps just hoped, quite naively, that state and local officials around the country would operate in good faith and dutifully adhere to the rule of law as they swore to do when they took their oaths of office.

The federal Constitution is the highest law in the land, and the federal Supreme Court is the final word on what the Constitution means, thus all other courts and jurisdictions must follow its commands. When state and local officials vow, in various forms, to defend and follow the constitution, that's what they're supposed to do.

But what if they don't? What if they refuse?

That's the tricky thing about the rule of law: it only works if people play along. The aftermath of Brown made this abundantly clear, but recent events are driving the point home once again.

What happens when government officials have a duty to enforce the law but decide not to? What happens, say, when an elected official violates the law, but nobody responsible for holding him or her accountable has any interest in doing so?

The rule of law simply ceases to have meaning.

Article 2, Section 4 of the Constitution says that an elected official, such as the President, can be removed from office through a process called impeachment:

The President, Vice President and all Civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Article 1, Sections 2 and 3, put the process of impeachment in the hands of the House of Representatives and the Senate. The House impeaches, and the Senate tries and convicts (or acquits).

So there is a constitutional method of enforcing the law against elected officials. Those who break the law can be removed from office by both houses of Congress working together, one to impeach and the other to convict.

The problem, of course, is that Congress is a political body, and the presidency is a political office. There are only two viable political parties in American politics, and control of the houses of Congress and the presidency each lies in the hands of only one party at a time. So, like in the past, there are times when Congress is controlled by one party and the presidency controlled by the other. Or, like today, Congress and the presidency are controlled by just one party.

When Congress and the presidency are controlled by one party, the weakness of the impeachment clauses reveals itself. A law-breaking president can only be held accountable by Congress. But if Congress and the president are members of the same party, impeachment only happens if Congress rejects its party loyalty in favor of upholding the law in good faith.

That seems like a pipe dream these days. The controlling party is now unwilling to hold its members accountable for anything. Even such serious crimes as obstruction of justice are committed with no fear of impeachment.

Was this inevitable? And if so, how could the Framers of the Constitution make such an egregious oversight when they drafted Articles 1 and 2?

At the time of the Framing, the tribalism of partisan politics in America had not yet entrenched itself. The Framers did not have the benefit of hindsight that we enjoy. But is it true that the Framers simply could not have foreseen our current political reality where party loyalty so totally trumps the rule of law?

Perhaps that was true for some of them, but not for all. One of the Framers was George Washington, and he, a member of no political party, became the country's first president. In his farewell address of 1796, he saw the writing on the wall, and issued this warning:

All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests.

Nobody listened.

And now, today, the only effective method to remove law-breakers from the office of the presidency relies entirely on a good faith adherence to the rule of law by partisans who, in the periodic event that they control all of Congress and the Oval Office, may have no political will or even incentive to so adhere.

Like the aftermath of Brown v. Board, our current political reality shows us very clearly that the rule of law depends almost entirely on the good faith of our political leaders. God help us.

Introducing "Heightened Scrutiny"

This past weekend I officially launched Heightened Scrutiny, a podcast about the Supreme Court's landmark civil rights cases. The very first episode explores the people and arguments that led to the important (and infamous) decision in Roe v. Wade.

I will be covering a wide array of important cases with this podcast, which I'm writing, recording, and editing all by myself. I hope to reach a very broad audience, helping everyone (not just lawyers or law students) understand more about how the Supreme Court approached its most famous cases and why it ruled the way that it did in each one.

Each episode will feature archival news reports on the major cases, as well as clips from the oral arguments themselves, in which the Supreme Court justices question the attorneys about the biggest social and legal issues of the day.

Hopefully, Heightened Scrutiny will be an entertaining way for listeners to become constitutional law experts (or maybe just fans) without having to go to law school. A cheaper way, if nothing else. I hope you check it out and enjoy it.

The Judicial Branch Impugned

We live in strange times, my friends. Before the Trump era began, which seems like very long ago already, I would not have believed you if you had told me that the President of the United States would someday use his Twitter account to lambast and impugn sitting federal judges and the entire judicial branch along with them.

I would have laughed.

But just such a thing is the regular practice of our current president. On February 4th, just after his executive order banning immigrants and refugees from certain countries from entering the United States was put on hold by a federal judge (for the fourth or fifth time), Trump tweeted:

The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!

That so-called judge is United States District Judge James Robart, is a nearly fifteen-year veteran of the federal bench. He was appointed by George W. Bush and approved by the Senate 99-0. According to the NY Times, he is a "mainstream Republican" in his personal politics (whatever that means anymore as Trump now leads the GOP), and is generally well-respected.

Robart is hardly the only federal judge whose motives and qualifications have been attacked by Trump. In late May of last year, when he was still just Candidate Trump, the president launched a Twitter war against United States District Judge Gonzalo Curiel. Judge Curiel's offense? He dared be the judge presiding over a lawsuit against Trump University (which ultimately settled before trial). According to Trump:

I have a judge in the Trump University civil case, Gonzalo Curiel (San Diego), who is very unfair. An Obama pick. Totally biased-hates Trump

Trump subsequently attacked Curiel for being a "Mexican" and thus being inherently biased against the candidate who ran on openly anti-Mexican and anti-immigration platforms. And then Trump doubled down on his comments, refusing to apologize.

All this would be a sideshow but for Trump's role as the chief executive of the United States government. As president, he seems strangely unaware of (or unconcerned about) the well-established (and widely known) system of checks and balances upon which our country's government depends. The legislative branch passes laws and approves funding for the executive branch. The executive branch enforces the laws but can also veto them. The judicial branch reviews laws and executive actions for their compliance with the constitution. The executive branch appoints judges to the judicial branch and the legislative branch approves or rejects those appointments.

Trump, however, appears to understand none of this, or at least oppose this system whenever he doesn't get what he wants out of it.

Lest anyone be prone to false equivalence, while it is true that presidents have long discussed or even criticized specific judicial decisions, none have previously suggested that the judges themselves are corrupt or illegitimate for ruling the way they did.

Certainly there have been corrupt and biased judges in the past, and there will be corrupt and biased judges in the future. And many times judges make bad decisions. But the stability of our governing system requires that the executive branch not accuse the judicial branch of illegitimacy any time the president doesn't get his way.

The executive branch will win some court cases and it will lose some. It will sometimes get told it has gone too far. The very basic job of the president in those situations is to firmly disagree with the result, if need be, but never to suggest that the only legitimate branch is his own. Is that too much to ask?

Copy Paste

Plagiarism has been a big news item lately. At the Republican National Convention this past week, Donald Trump's wife Melania gave a speech that included word-for-word passages taken from Michelle Obama's 2008 speech to the Democratic National Convention. That caused a bit of an uproar, mostly among academics, journalists, and Democrats.

Stealing other people's words and passing them off as your own is bad. But stealing from others is not the only form of plagiarism. There is also something called self-plagiarism, where you steal from yourself without attribution. Compared to stealing from others, it's a lesser sin, but still generally frowned upon. Sometimes sternly.

Now, a disclosure. Lawyers are habitual plagiarizers. We recycle documents constantly, using language from past motions written by ourselves and partners to fill out new motions, copy/pasting big chunks of old briefs and filings into new briefs and filings, etc. Firms often keep repositories of past filings that are shared by multiple lawyers. Some lawyers, especially those with lots of clients and heavy workloads dealing with the same legal issues over and over, routinely reuse old documents, sometimes simply replacing one client's name with another. It's not the best way to do things but it saves a ton of time. There are some filings in litigation that are truly routine and rewriting them from scratch is wasteful and simply not necessary.

Is this OK? I've seen it excused on the basis that the lawyer is not claiming whatever it is he or she plagiarized as his or her original work in a public sphere - in other words, there is a difference between court filings and an academic article or a news piece - but that's not really true because court filings are public and lawyers sign their names to everything they file.

But, on the other hand, legal advocacy is not an academic pursuit. You have to write a lot and provide sources, sure, but lawyers use written briefs and motions to point out to the court the legal reasons why their client should win a particular dispute. Legal writing is a tool more than a piece of scholarship. Even a 14,000-word appellate brief is not considered an academic work for which the author is seeking personal recognition. It's a letter to the court asking for them to do something in your favor and giving them reasons why they should.

Judicial opinions, like those written by Supreme Court justices, are a little different in my mind. They're still not academic or journalistic works, but they carry the weight of law and are cited for their authority as legal precedent. They gain power over time, and reflect the author's personal views on how the law should operate and how it should be applied to facts which may reoccur in the future. Judicial opinions contribute to a judge's public reputation. So, in that case, I think plagiarism is a much bigger deal.

What about self-plagiarism in judicial opinions? Well, that's kind of curious. Is a judge ripping himself or herself off in an opinion without attribution as big a deal as stealing from another judge without attribution? Probably not. But is it still kind of dubious? Probably.

Until recently, I had never noticed an incident of judicial self-plagiarism. But in my preparation to teach an upcoming class on constitutional rights, I noticed an interesting little historical reference used twice by the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

In 1985, the Supreme Court decided the case of Wallace v. Jaffree. Jaffree was a lawyer and the father of three children attending public schools in Mobile, Alabama. At school, his children were required by state law to observe "a period of silence, not to exceed one minute in duration...for meditation or voluntary prayer." Jaffree sued the school district, arguing that the purposeful inclusion of "voluntary prayer" by the Alabama legislature violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

The Supreme Court agreed with Jaffree, and struck down the law. In dissent, then-just-Justice Rehnquist (he would become Chief the next year) wrote a solo dissent criticizing the Court's interpretation of the Establishment Clause. The Court interpreted it to require strict religious neutrality on the part of the government. Rehnquist argued that the prominent role of religion in the history of American government belied this claim. To bolster his argument, Rehnquist referred to a person you may have heard of:

George Washington himself, at the request of the very Congress which passed the Bill of Rights, proclaimed a day of "public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God."

472 US 38, 113. I didn't omit any citation. Rehnquist didn't cite any source for this quote. But that's not the rub.

The rub comes fifteen years later, in a case called Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe. In the late 1990s, Santa Fe High School in Texas started every football game with a student-led prayer or invocation. A group of students and their parents sued the school district, arguing that the pre-game religious ritual violated the Establishment Clause.

Like in Jaffree, the Supreme Court agreed, striking down the school's prayer scheme. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the majority opinion (just like he had in Jaffree). And once again, now-Chief-Justice Rehnquist dissented. The fact that he dissented wasn't the only thing familiar about the case. This passage from his opinion in Santa Fe may also seem familiar:

...when it is recalled that George Washington himself, at the request of the very Congress which passed the Bill of Rights, proclaimed a day of "public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God."

530 U.S. 290, 318.

Rehnquist used the exact same sentence about George Washington in his Santa Fe dissent that he had previously used in his dissent to Jaffree. The only difference in Santa Fe was that he included a historical source for the Washington quote ("Presidential Proclamation, 1 Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1897, p. 64 (J. Richardson ed. 1897).").

Rehnquist did not, however, note the fact that he had already written this same passage in Jaffree. Normally when Justices quote themselves, they cite to the original opinion (even if it was a dissent and not the majority holding). It is somewhat odd that Rehnquist didn't do that in Santa Fe considering he was trying to make the exact same point he made in dissent to Jaffree.

Is this a big deal? Probably not. Chief Justice Rehnquist was no Melania Trump. But it is interesting to see that the phenomenon of plagiarism pops up even in the hallowed halls of the United States Supreme Court from time to time.