Civil rights

by Jeremy Leaming

The Obama administration is weighing in on the constitutional challenge to California’s anti-gay initiative Proposition 8. And like it did in a separate case before the Supreme Court challenging the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, the administration is advancing a call for equality.

The case, Hollingsworth v. Perry is from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which last year invalidated Proposition 8, in part, because it “served no purpose and no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians.”

The Obama administration had no obligation to weigh in, but did so on the last day to lodge briefs with the high court.

“California law provides to same-sex couples registered as domestic partners all the legal incidents of marriage, but it nonetheless denies them the designation of marriage allowed to their opposite-sex counterparts. Particularly in those circumstances, the exclusion of gay and lesbian couples from marriage does not substantially further any important government interest. Proposition 8 thus violates equal protection,” the administration’s brief states.

SCOTUSblog’s Lyle Denniston says the administration’s brief “could be read to support a right to marriage equality in every state, but it did not endorse that idea explicitly.”

Denniston continues, “What the brief endorsed is what has been called the ‘eight-state solution’ – that is, if a state already recognizes for same-sex couples all the privileges and benefits that married couples have (as in the eight states that do so through ‘civil unions’) those states must go the final step and allow those couples to get married. The argument is that it violates the Constitution’s guarantee of legal equality when both same-sex and opposite-sex couples are entitled to the same marital benefits, but only the opposite-sex couples can get married.”

The administration’s brief nonetheless provides what could also be seen as a robust call for equality stretching from coast to coast. For example, the administration argues that laws classifying lesbians and gay men should be subject to “heightened scrutiny.”

“For certain protected classes, however, heightened scrutiny enables courts to ascertain whether the government has employed the classification for a significant and proper purpose, and provides an enhanced measure of protection in circumstances where there is a greater danger that the classification results from impermissible prejudice or stereotypes. Because sexual orientation is a factor that ‘generally provides no sensible ground for different treatment,’ laws that classify based on sexual orientation should be subject to heightened scrutiny,” the brief states.

by Jeremy Leaming

Lawmakers, on national and state fronts, seem a bit more interested in knowing more about the Obama administration’s use of drones in targeted killings abroad and possibly some regulation of the counterterrorism measure. After the weak “white paper,” apparently a brief summary of several documents created by lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel was made public by NBC, lawmakers and a few more journalists have discovered greater interest in the administration’s use of drones to take out suspected terrorists overseas.

But reporting for Salon, Joan Walsh points to some polling that suggests that the administration’s expanding and secretive use of drones is getting a pass from and even winning over some liberals, who were not shy about blasting the Bush administration’s egregious legal reasoning used to justify torture of military detainees.

A poll of 1,000 voters from last summer, conducted by Brown University political scientist Michael Tesler, “found significantly more support for targeted killing of suspected terrorists among white ‘racial liberals’ (i.e., those liberal on issues of race) and African Americans when they were told that Obama supported such a policy than when they were not told it was the president’s policy.”

Walsh’s piece explains Tesler’s work, including some caveats, but concludes the polling suggests that respondents “reaction may be informed by their support for the president, which is at least a little bit troubling. The U.S. is moving into uncharged political, military and moral territory with the use of drones, as well as expanded claims of presidential powers on targeted killings, on what seems to be a global battlefield in time of endless war.”

The support for counterterrorism policy solely or mostly on favorability of the president is highly disconcerting. Especially since the legal reasoning we’ve seen so far looks a lot like a just-trust-me policy. Indeed from a Dish post a couple weeks back, Andrew Sullivan blasted the wobbly white paper for its “corruption of the English language” and for coming “perilously close to the equivalent of ‘Because I said so.’ And the core message is trust me.’”

Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi notes the “histornics and gymnastics some people have resorted to in their efforts to defend this infamous drone program. Extralegal murder is not an easy thing to manufacture consent around, and the signs of strain in the press have been pretty clear all around.”