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Magistrates quit after gay marriage legalized in N. Carolina

gavel

 

by Michael Gryboski and Joseph Earnest November 24, 2014   

 

Newscast Media WASHINGTONSixteen North Carolina judges have either resigned or retired after gay marriage became legal in the state last month when a judge ruled that an amendment to the state's constitution banning same-sex marriage was unconstitutional.

In October, U.S. District Judge Max Cogburn of Asheville struck down the ban and ruled the amendment unconstitutional in response to a Charlotte-based lawsuit.

Reports from the administrative office of the courts note that "between the ruling on Oct. 10 and the end of the month, 16 magistrates left their jobs, but the state wouldn't release why they left," Time Warner Cable News-Charlotte reports.

The cable network added that it's "been able to determine that at least 10 of the 16 magistrates who left last month, did so because they will not perform same-sex marriages."

"The number of North Carolina magistrates who have resigned or retired early because of their opposition to performing same-sex marriages is higher than previously reported," TWC-Charlotte reports, adding that the judges are now required by law to perform same-sex marriages. ... "The court system reports there are 672 magistrates across the state, so only about 1.5 percent have left because of the same-sex marriage ruling."

In May 2012, North Carolina voters overwhelmingly passed a ballot initiative that added an amendment to their state constitution defining marriage as being between one man and one woman.

The New York Times reported in 2012 that the amendment passed by a margin of more than 20 percentage points with 500,000 people voting early, which was a "record for a primary in the state."

North Carolina's Republican Gov. Pat McCrory has said his administration is "moving forward with the execution of the court's ruling [lifting the ban on gay marriage] and will continue to do so unless otherwise notified by the courts," according to the CharlotteObserver.  

A recent decision from the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals declaring state constitutional amendments banning gay marriage are not a violation of the U.S. Constitution, is part of a trend in opposition to redefining marriage, Brian Brown and Tony Perkins argued.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said in a statement that the Sixth Circuit ruling was part of a changing trend in the marriage definition debate.

"As the debate continues, recent polls and the election demonstrate that support for marriage redefinition is stalling as Americans begin to experience and consider the consequences for religious freedom, free speech, and parental rights," stated Perkins.

 

by Joseph Earnest

In Upholding the ban, the Sixth Circuit cited some interesting cases as shown below:

 

    In the early 1970s, a Methodist minister married Richard Baker and James McConnell in Minnesota. Afterwards, they sought a marriage license from the State. When the clerk of the state court denied the request, the couple filed a lawsuit claiming that the denial of their request violated the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. Baker v.Nelson, 191 N.W.2d 185, 186 (Minn. 1971).

     

    The Minnesota Supreme Court rejected both claims. As for the due process claim, the state court reasoned: "The institution of marriage as a union of man and woman, uniquely involving the procreation and rearing of children within a family, is as old as the book of Genesis. . . . This historic institution manifestly is more deeply founded than the asserted contemporary concept of marriage and societal interests for which petitioners contend. The due process clause . . . is not a charter for restructuring it by judicial legislation." Id.

     

    As for the equal protection claim, the court reasoned: "[T]he state’s classification of persons authorized to marry" does not create an "irrational or invidious discrimination. . . . [T]hat the state does not impose upon heterosexual married couples a condition that they have a proved capacity or declared willingness to procreate . . . [creates only a] theoretically imperfect [classification] . . . [and] ‘abstract symmetry’ is not demanded by the Fourteenth Amendment." Id. at 187. The Supreme Court’s decision four years earlier in Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), which invalidated Virginia’s ban on interracial marriages, did not change this conclusion. "[I]n commonsense and in a constitutional sense," the state court explained, "there is a clear distinction between a marital restriction based merely upon race and one based upon the fundamental difference in sex." Baker, 191 N.W.2d at 187.

     

    Baker and McConnell appealed to the United States Supreme Court. The Court rejected their challenge, issuing a one-line order stating that the appeal did not raise "a substantial federal question." Baker v. Nelson, 409 U.S. 810, 810 (1972).

     

    This type of summary decision, it is true, does not bind the Supreme Court in later cases. But it does confine lower federal courts in later cases. It matters not whether we think the decision was right in its time, remains right today, or will be followed by the Court in the future. Only the Supreme Court may overrule its own precedents, and we remain bound even by its summary decisions “until such time as the Court informs [us] that [we] are not.” Hicks v. Miranda, 422 U.S. 332, 345 (1975) (internal quotation marks omitted). The Court has yet to inform us that we are not, and we have no license to engage in a guessing game about whether the Court will change its mind or, more aggressively, to assume authority to overrule Baker ourselves.

Click here to download the Six Circuit's ruling upholding ban on gay marriage. (pop-up)

With the Fourth Circuit ruling against the ban of gay marriage and the Six Circuit ruling in favor of the ban on gay marriage, the United States Supreme Court that was reluctant to decide on the issue, will one way or the other have to deal with it now.

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