Two Momentous Supreme Court Announcements Today! Sotomayor And Same-Sex Marriage

Big Supreme Court day today, for all of us-- but especially for the LGBT community in California and wingnut central Inside-the-Beltway. Any minute now the California Supreme Court will announce their ruling on the constitutionality of Prop 8 and on the legality of the 18,000 marriages that took place between the time same-sex marriage was legal and the Mormons and other primitive, bigoted and dangerous religionists managed to get marriage equality overturned. And later this afternoon President Obama is rumored to be announcing his first nomination for the Supreme Court, something that the hard right has probably put more man-hours into planning their fake outrage than Obama has into vetting his list.

I think the California ruling is scheduled at 10AM and it is widely expected that the Court will uphold Prop 8-- and the marriages that took place between June and November. The right-wing hate groups want the marriages declared invalid but are far more concerned about making sure Prop 8 is upheld. The head of one of the primary hate groups, Andrew Pugno of ProtectMarriage.com, said his Mormon-financed organization probably won't challenge the legal marriages. “It’s such a tiny number,” he said. “And it’s not the core issue.”

The tone of the court’s questions during oral arguments in March suggested that it would be unlikely to overturn Proposition 8. But several justices suggested that the proposition’s spare language-- 14 words, stating that only male-female marriages were “valid or recognized”-- was not explicitly retroactive.

Nationally the big news is the nomination of course. GOP fundraising and base mending depends on how big a stink they can make over whomever Obama nominates. And they and their allies at Hate Talk Radio and Fox are ready to make the most of it. The Supreme Court has been at one of its historically low points under Bush and his selection of John Roberts was one of the worst-- and most long-lasting-- of many terrible ordeals he inflicted on the country. As we've discussed before, just 3 days after the country was celebrating Obama's victory, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, far right extremist Jon Kyl (R-AZ), who is also, ominously, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, threatened that he would filibuster any nominees not to his liking. By March, the whole crazed Republican Senate caucus signed a letter essentially thretaening the same thing. They insist that Obama's nominee share their very right wing "view on cases related to social, law and order and business issues." A friend of mine in Washington sent me a document that asks the simple question, "just what is that 'view' that these Republicans are defending? What sort of judges do they favor? Let's look at the record of the judges that were put on the federal bench when they were in power. The patterns couldn't be clearer:

·        Despite talk from some senators about “strict constructionism” and not “legislating from the bench,” judges installed when Republicans had the chance frequently pursued a political agenda rather than upholding the Constitution and the law.
 
·        Their political agenda consistently favored those at the top in our society instead of ensuring equal justice and personal freedoms for everyone.
 
As the report available from the Alliance for Justice web site describes in more detail, the current Supreme Court…
 
·        Ruled that a major corporation could cheat a woman who worked there for 19 years out of tens of thousands of dollars in pay.
 
·        Took away the long established right of a man who was injured because of a defective heart device to hold the manufacturer accountable for the damage.
 
·        Said that government officials can fire or demote whistleblowers for exposing corruption, waste, or fraud to their supervisors.
 
·        Cut by 90 percent what a jury had awarded the victims of a massive Exxon oil spill.
 
·        Ruled that customers can’t sue bankers or others who helped corporations such as Enron to defraud them.
 
Appeals court judges appointed by President Bush have shown the same political bias.
 
·        One ruled that Chevron could legally mislead employees about their retirement benefits.
 
·        Another ruled that consumers can be required to pay for merchandise received in the mail even if they never ordered it.
 
·        Yet another allowed hospital executives to fire a nurse after she said publicly that she believed new staffing policies jeopardized the health of mothers and their babies.
 
President Obama has made it clear that he intends to appoint judges who will uphold the Constitution and the law to provide equal justice and personal freedoms for all, not just a few. That would be a dramatic departure from the appointments of the past eight years, and that is why he is being threatened with opposition in the Senate.

This morning's NY Times ran a piece, probably planted by Rahm Emanuel, doing a little Sistah Soulja dance at the expense of Obama's most stalwart defenders, trying to make the point that he isn't seriously considering anyone even nearly as far to the left as Roberts, Alito, Thomas and Scalia are to the right.

Pamela S. Karlan is a champion of gay rights, criminal defendants’ rights and voting rights. She is considered brilliant, outspoken and, in her own words, “sort of snarky.” To liberal supporters, she is an Antonin Scalia for the left.

But Ms. Karlan does not expect President Obama to appoint her to succeed Justice David H. Souter, who is retiring. “Would I like to be on the Supreme Court?” she asked in graduation remarks a couple of weeks ago at Stanford Law School, where she teaches. “You bet I would. But not enough to have trimmed my sails for half a lifetime.”

While there are clear political advantages to Mr. Obama if the perception is that he has avoided an ideological choice, Ms. Karlan’s absence from his list of finalists has frustrated part of the president’s base, which hungers for a full-throated, unapologetic liberal torchbearer to counter conservatives like Justice Scalia.

It has been more than 40 years since a Democratic president appointed someone who truly excited the left, but Mr. Obama appears to be following President Bill Clinton’s lead in choosing someone with more moderate sensibilities.

Neither Emanuel nor the president is so thick as to think any of this will placate the drooling reactionary savages out to make a stink and a buck. Nor will it calm treacherous self-servers like Ben Nelson (D-NE), Evan Bayh (D-IN) and Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), out to show their red state constituents that they know how to stand up to a Democratic president. But, for now, what the White House seems to be doing is setting the table to make it clear that although "some liberals said they wished Mr. Obama would be as bold in reshaping the court from the left as Mr. Bush was from the right," he's going to be nominating moderates. To the GOP it wouldn't make a difference if he nominated a moderately progressive judge like Diane Wood or like Sonia Sotomayor or if he just went and proposed Fidel Castro or Kim Jong-il. They'll be screaming their heads off like its the end of the world no matter what he does.

We're hearing that President Obama will nominate Judge Sotomayor at 10:15AM eastern time. And the NY Times just confirmed it.


UPDATE: As Expected...

The California Supreme Court ruled (6-1) that Prop 8 was constitutional and, unanimously, that the 18,000 marriages are legal. So what now? Watch: