Administration Drops DOMA DefenseFollow

The Dept of Justice announced that they will not defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court any longer, determining that it does not meet heightened scrutiny against the Constitution. DOMA was previously declared unconstitutional and invalid in the lower courts although it's still the law while the case is appealed to higher courts. The DOJ said Congress can try defending it if they want to.

Cue five-fifteen page thread.

Edited, Feb 23rd 2011 12:02pm by Jophiel

First, last, and only post to this thread.

I don't care about this at all.

Is this about gay marriage again?

How does that work? I thought your courts were supposed to act separately and independently from the President?

In before Varus tells us how this is a travesty but premarital sex is a virtue

The courts are separate. The defense lawyer who'd go to court is from the Executive branch. Obviously you wouldn't want the lawyers working for the Judicial branch.

Here's a reasoanable analysis of the question. Given that context, the DOJs decision is questionable, but not completely out of the realm of precedence. It can't (or shouldn't) choose to refuse to defend a case just because they don't agree with it (or their bosses don't). The third case mentioned requires that the president publicly declare/condemn the law as unconstitutional, thus taking an "official" stance on the issue. While it's a weak condemnation hidden inside a release by a subordinate, which most people will never read, it does appear he's met that condition in this case.


It's an interesting turn-around from his public statements during the campaign. But I suppose that his party wants any issue it can to distract the public from the economy, so I guess this was what they settled on. In that context, I suppose it's reasonably smart politics, if not such a great reason for doing something in the broader sense. I'm not sure how this actually affects future court cases though, since I'm sure there are plenty of groups (both in and out of government) who would gladly step in and defend the Act anyway. Now, if the DOJ tries to pull some crap about not allowing anyone to represent the government in their stead, that would be an overstep IMO. Everyone and everything has a right to a day in court and fair representation.



There are other ways though. All of them, unfortunately, require the GOP to stoop to the same low methods that the Dems are using. For example, there's nothing stopping them from simply passing any other non-quorum required legislation while the Democrats are out of the state. My understanding is that anything not budget related can be thus passed. That's an awful lot of potential "bad" things the Dems would want to oppose which they could pass.

A cleaner way, but which would take longer, is to pass legislative rule changes while the Dems aren't there (that's not budget related either). So they could create rules to handle the case currently before them. That's still doing something which the GOP would rather not do: Change long standing rules of conduct to deal with a single short term problem. While the Dems may be willing to chuck the rules out when it suits them, the GOP tends to avoid that when possible.

I suspect they'll just wait them out. The impact of the protests is pretty much done. Those things wane over time and become background noise. But the looming issue is a hard deadline by which if there isn't a budget passed, a whole lot of public workers jobs will disappear, and I assume many public services will be shut down. The GOP doesn't have to engage in any dirty tricks. They can just blame the Democrats for all the lost wages and jobs and services. And I suspect that'll have more weight than anything else.

Edited, Feb 23rd 2011 4:38pm by gbaji

I read that as "Administrator" and I was tryign to figure out what I dropped...

Doubtful that they'd pick issues with any significant Republican opposition to pass though. Trying to punish the other guys by pissing off a significant portion of your own group is pretty stupid poker.


Sure. So if the Republicans want to take the high road, they can't start pulling a bunch of shenanigans now.

I disagree with your assessment of DOMA/DADT but don't care enough to argue in circles about it.

I should have been thinking sharper last night and noted that it requires 50%+1 of the elected body to pass, not 50%+1 of the body in attendance to pass a bill. If, for some reason, thirty US senators got stuck at the airport, the threshold to pass a bill wouldn't drop to 36 senators, it remains at 51 even though only 70 members are in the chamber. Senators regularly miss votes (especially during campaigning season) but you never hear of a bill passing with 48 votes.

In other words, anything the Wisconsin state senators are passing in the absence of the Democrats would have had the votes to pass anyway.

The WI state senate tried to pass a Voter ID law today and then realized that it had a financial component to it and had to shelve it for absence of a quorum. So that was kind of amusing.

Also, the state senate majority leader's wife got a preliminary lay-off notice today. She's a school counselor and will lose her job if a budget agreement isn't reached in time.

Edited, Feb 24th 2011 6:30pm by Jophiel

Yup. Which puts what they're doing firmly of the heading of "childlike" and "temper tantrum", or perhaps "taking my ball with me when I don't get what I want".




Blame Locke. He started it!

Oh you, you were ******* insane long before I came along