Obergefell v. Hodges, 2015

2021 ◽  
pp. 191-206
Author(s):  
Michael J. Rosenfeld
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Federal District ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
The State ◽  
Court Decision ◽  
District Court ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Circuit Court ◽  
Court Of Appeals ◽  
The U.S

Chapter 14 tells the story of how Jim Obergefell, whose husband John Arthur was dying, sued the state of Ohio to try to force the state to list Obergefell as the husband on Arthur’s death certificate. Ohio was one of many states whose constitution explicitly rejected recognition of same-sex marriages, wherever they were originally celebrated. Obergefell won in federal district court, but the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals consolidated his case with DeBoer v. Snyder from Michigan and cases from two other states, and overturned them all. The plaintiffs appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision of 2015 made marriage equality the law of the U.S. After the Obergefell victory, April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse were legally married in Michigan and then cross-adopted their children.

The Early 2000s

2021 ◽  
pp. 131-144
Author(s):  
Michael J. Rosenfeld
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Gay Rights ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
Court Decision ◽  
Marriage Equality ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Same Sex Marriage ◽  
State Laws ◽  
State Supreme Court ◽  
The U.S

Chapter 9 tells the story of Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 Supreme Court decision that finally struck down the remaining state laws that criminalized sodomy. In 2004 Massachusetts became the first state in the U.S. to have marriage equality, following the state supreme court decision in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health. Opponents of gay rights fought furiously to overturn marriage equality in Massachusetts, but once straight people saw that marriage equality cost them nothing, the opposition faded away. Gay rights groups in Massachusetts prevailed despite having many institutional disadvantages. In California in 2008, Proposition 8 was passed by voters to reintroduce a same-sex marriage ban.

The U.S. Supreme Court Decisions

2020 ◽  
pp. 144-178
Author(s):  
Donald W. Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
District Court ◽  
Circuit Court ◽  
Court Of Appeals ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Federal Jurisdiction ◽  
The U.S

This chapter traces Hague’s appeal through the Third Circuit Court of Appeals into the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, showing how the Hughes court’s inner dynamics explain affirmation of the district court injunction. Observing flux in court personnel and law, the chapter shows that both courts embraced the contemporaneous civil liberties revolution by defending worker speech and assembly rights, but it reveals the Supreme Court as divided over constitutional logic. Justice Owen Roberts’s plurality opinion upheld speech and assembly rights under the Fourteenth Amendment privileges and immunities clause, Justice Harlan Fiske Stone’s concurrence incorporated the First Amendment into the Fourteenth Amendment due-process clause, and dissenters rejected federal jurisdiction. The ruling reflected the contentious evolution of civil liberties jurisprudence, not antiboss or labor law politics.

A Sad Journey down History: A Conversation with Judge Nathaniel Jones about Litigating Milliken v. Bradley I (1974), 40 Years Later

2016 ◽  
Vol 118 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Mark A. Gooden ◽  
Terrance L. Green
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
21St Century ◽  
School Desegregation ◽  
District Court ◽  
General Counsel ◽  
Jimmy Carter ◽  
Circuit Court ◽  
Court Of Appeals ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The U.S

Nathaniel Jones was born May 12, 1926, in Youngstown, Ohio, and served as the general counsel for the NAACP from 1969–1979. During that time, he litigated the Milliken v. Bradley I case before the U.S. District Court in 1971 and the U.S. Supreme Court in 1974. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter nominated Nathaniel Jones to the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, and at 87 years of age, he still serves as a retired senior judge for the court. Our conversation with the Honorable Judge Nathaniel Jones entails his reflections about Milliken 40 years later, origins of his involvement in the case, and suggestions for school desegregation advocates in the 21st century. To begin, we briefly describe Milliken and how the conversation with Judge Jones came about. We organized our conversation around topical areas about the case, which reflect our interview questions. Our discussion with Judge Jones occurred on March 22, 2014, in Cincinnati, Ohio. This conversation concludes with Nathaniel Jones discussing what Detroit and other urban schools districts could potentially be like if Milliken would have been upheld by the Supreme Court.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gillian Frank ◽  
Bethany Moreton ◽  
Heather R. White
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
The Other ◽  
Court Decision ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Sunday Morning ◽  
Same Sex Couples ◽  
Civil Marriage ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The U.S

The lines seem so clearly drawn: A white evangelical minister stands in front of his California congregation on a Sunday morning. In one hand he holds a Bible. In the other is the text of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges extending civil marriage rights to same-sex couples throughout the country. “It’s time to choose,” he thunders to thousands of believers in the stadium-style worship center. “Will we follow the Word of God or the tyrannical dictates of government?” His declaration “This is who I stand with” is met with applause from the faithful as he dramatically flings the Court’s decision to the ground and tramples on it, waving the Bible in his upraised hand....

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Donald W. Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
Federal Court ◽  
Court Decision ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
Court Records ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Time ◽  
The U.S

This introduction reframes the history of the U.S. Supreme Court decision Hague v. CIO (1939) that guaranteed speech and assembly rights in public municipal forums under federal law for the first time. It lifts the story out of standard treatment as a product of police repression of labor organizers by city boss Frank Hague, exploring instead the case’s broader roots in multiple changes in city governance, policing, the labor movement, civil liberties law, and anticommunism and antifascism politics of the late New Deal era. It urges examination of all sides of the controversy, winners and losers, scrutinizing evidence beyond antiboss sources, including varied newspapers, municipal reports, trial transcripts, labor archives, and federal court records. It views the case as part of a constitutional watershed.

Signing, Sectarian Schools, and the Law

2020 ◽  
pp. 121-151
Author(s):  
Bruce J. Dierenfield ◽  
David A. Gerber
Keyword(s):  
Federal District ◽  
Catholic School ◽  
Establishment Clause ◽  
District Court ◽  
Parochial School ◽  
Court Of Appeals ◽  
Government Aid ◽  
Sectarian Schools ◽  
Civil Libertarian ◽  
The U.S

This chapter examines and analyzes the five-year journey of Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills School District (1993) from the federal district court in Tucson to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to the U.S. Supreme Court. William Bentley Ball, the Zobrests’ attorney, and John Richardson, the school district’s attorney, clashed over whether the Establishment Clause permitted any government aid to a Catholic school. Many religious and civil libertarian groups—but just one national deaf association—filed arguments to sway the court. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who wrote the majority decision favoring the Zobrests, misunderstood the complicated function of a sign language interpreter to permit what he regarded as incidental parochial school aid. Rehnquist maintained the aid was permissible because the plaintiffs and their deaf son were its main beneficiaries.

The Moral Core of U.S. Constitutional Bans on Hate Speech Codes

1998 ◽  
pp. 33-37
Author(s):  
Norman Fischer
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
First Amendment ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
Court Decision ◽  
Speech Code ◽  
Stanford University ◽  
Speech Codes ◽  
Moral Basis ◽  
The U.S

The striking down of the Stanford University Hate Speech Code on February 27, 1995 demonstrated the strong animus in U.S. First Amendment decisions against such codes. Judge Peter Stone, applying the U.S. Supreme Court decision in R.A.V. ruled, first, that the Stanford Code was too broad, and second, that the state cannot censor content by picking out some "fighting words" to prohibit. I argue that the moral basis for banning overbroad codes combines a nonconsequential emphasis on the value of liberty with a consequentialist analysis of what happens when liberty that should be protected is entangled in codes reflecting liberty that should not be protected. In contrast, the moral basis for content neutrality does not depend on consequentialist thinking, but shows that the very search for a moral basis for banning the purest acts of hateful speech logically makes the speech protected by elevating it to a viewpoint.

Disputing the Supreme Court Decision, 1857

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
William F. Moore ◽  
Jane Ann Moore
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
Abraham Lincoln ◽  
Court Decision ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Dred Scott ◽  
Federal Authority ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The U.S

This chapter examines Abraham Lincoln and Owen Lovejoy's criticism of the U.S. Supreme Court's 1857 ruling in the case of Dred Scott. The Dred Scott decision, written by Chief Justice Roger Taney, affirmed that slaves were not citizens and indeed “had no rights which a white man was bound to accept.” Lincoln and Lovejoy denounced the Supreme Court's interpretation that the Constitution provided federal authority to reduce human beings to property without rights, accusing it of political abuse of judicial power. This chapter begins with a discussion of the Illinois Supreme Court's previous rulings in connection with the slave transit law, along with Lincoln and Lovejoy's argument that humans could not legally be reduced to property under the Constitution. It then considers the two men's views on religion and politics as well as their response to the Dred Scott decision. It also looks at Lincoln and Lovejoy's preparations for the 1858 elections.

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