scotus hasn't looked at the defense of marriage act right? i find it really hard to imagine a stupid congressional act can void full faith and credit.
The people of Iowa violated the law (state constitution) by prohibitting gay marriage. The court merely ruled that they must follow their constitution.
The US Supreme Court has to answer whether a man seeking union with another man, or a woman seeking union with woman enjoys the same Constitutional guarantee of one's right to marry recognized by the Court. If same sex marriage is a part of the Constitutional right to marry, there is no doubt in my mind, State's law forbidding it is unconstitutional under the strict scrutiny test grounded in due process and equal protection. If it is not, as J.Saclia once put it, then legislature has a legitimate interest based on moral soundness to promote hetero-sex marriage and therefore bar same-sex marriage.
If marriage including same-sex marriage is a fundamental right recognized by the Iowa Constitution, the Iowa Court can adjudicate on this issue. Of course,this poses a question to the US Supreme Court.
If the Iowa people wanted to be able to discriminate they should not have put an equal protection clause in their state constitution. It's not the judges' fault that the clause didn't say "except for homosexuals".
Deference to political process is when State or Congress does not infringe on one's Constitutional right. Whether a right is a Constitutional right is within the realm the Court's power, unless it is Constitutional or politically unreviewable, and neither is involved here. This has been long settled ( I concede not without debate). And again if the Iowa court decide same-sex marriage is protected Iowa's Constitution, the Court can adjucate and invalidate State law if necessary. If you are accusing the Iowa Court is finding a fundamental right for gay people without Constitutional basis and that job should be left to the legislature, I think it is a profound and basic question about how much power Judiciary should have over other branches of our government.
No, I don't agree. The judges had no choice. The Iowans passed their constitution and set up their laws in such a way that it is the job of their Supreme Court to decide whether a state law follows the rules set up in the state's constitution (assuming the case is brought before them). They obviously felt that this law didn't follow the rules of their constitution. You can argue that judges should not have the right to determine whether a law is constitutional, but in that case you should take that up with the people of Iowa. The only way to argue that the judges told Iowans to go stick it is if you think the judges' decision was legally flawed. I don't agree with that (based on the little I know of the case), but if you want to make that argument feel free.
In theory, Iowa legislature also has the power to interpret the meaning of Constitution. Clearly the Iowa Court has to follow explicit provisions of Iowa's Constitution. But I guess the contention is rather whether the Court has sole interpretive power of the meaning of Constitution that is not explicit.
I'm not versed on the details of the Iowa setup. I'm really assuming the standard separation of powers between Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches. If there are some intricacies in Iowa that make it different I'd be curious to read more about it. (And at worst if your statement is true then the justices stuck it to the legislators, not the people.) On a separate note... Iowa could of course pass a Constitutional amendment like California did, although Nate Silver says that it's about a 50-50 shot if they try.
Yeah. Constitutional Amendment is a way to go, but passage of it is a high bar, which I believe is more than 2/3 of the votes. I guess what I to say is that bingsha10's argument does have some weight if we are willing to entertain debates about existent power distribution among three branches of our government.
That was a great ruling. It was solidly written by a conservative group of judges, and I hope it's used as a template by other states. The courts have already given Washington state a short amount of time to remedy the situation, and I expect gay marriage will be legal here in Washington in the next year. I'd love to see Vermont legalize gay marriage via legislation. The governor vetoed it, but it might get overridden in a very close vote. Arnold vetoed it in California. Until the legislative and executive branches are willing to stand up for this issue, the courts are rightly ruling against fear and discrimination. It's a great day for equality.
Not sure if this has been answered yet fmullegun; but Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act in '96, which specifically prevented that: "No State ... shall be required to give effect to any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other State ... respecting a relationship between persons of the same sex that is treated as a marriage under the laws of such other State ... or a right or claim arising from such relationship."
