Speaking last month at the University of Minnesota Law School,
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told the audience that there was
“no urgency” compelling the Supreme Court to rule on gay
marriage because the lower courts had not yet split over the issue.
Indeed, since the Supreme Court ruled against the Defense of
Marriage Act in 2013, no federal appeals court has voted to sustain
a state ban on same-sex unions.
But as University of Minnesota
law professor Dale Carpenter
explains at SCOTUSblog, that unbroken streak may soon be coming
to an end thanks to a looming decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the 6th Circuit, which is set to rule on gay marriage bans in
Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan, and Tennessee. “The judge sitting in the
middle of the Sixth Circuit panel on August 6 was Jeffrey Sutton, a
careful and smart conservative jurist appointed by President George
W. Bush and confirmed by the Senate in 2003. He is widely seen as
the swing vote on the panel, with one judge a likely vote to strike
down the state bans on same-sex marriage (Martha Craig Daughtrey)
and one judge likely to uphold them (Debra L. Cook).” Thus,
Carpenter notes, “the next step in the controversy over same-sex
marriage likely depends on Sutton.”
How might Judge Sutton vote? Carpenter argues that there is a
real chance he will lead the 6th Circuit in upholding the gay
marriage bans, thereby creating “a circuit split, practically
guaranteeing review in the Supreme Court.” Carpenter explains:
The Sixth Circuit could write a decision rebutting the numerous
constitutional grounds for same-sex marriage, including equal
protection and due process. It could try to explain why encouraging
opposite-sex couples to procreate responsibly depends on excluding
same-sex couples from marriage. It could try to clarify why
children are best raised in homes where their parents are married
while the parents of their best friends are not. It could hold that
despite a history of horrendous and invidious discrimination the
courts should not view anti-gay discrimination with any special
suspicion.
Sutton might also uphold the gay marriage bans as an act of
judicial deference, the legal philosophy which says that the courts
should give lawmakers the benefit of the doubt and therefore rarely
strike down democratically enacted statutes. After all, the last
time Sutton found himself at the center of a roiling national
debate over the wisdom of a controversial piece of legislation, he
voted to sustain the law in part on those very grounds.
What case was that? It was Sutton’s 2011 opinion in Thomas
More Law Center v. Obama, in which the 6th Circuit upheld
the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care
Act, aka Obamacare. According to Sutton, the great legal battle
over President Obama‘s health care law is “just as
stirring, no less essential to the appropriate role of the National
Government and no less capable of political resolution” than the
debate over the constitutionality of the Second Bank of the United
States at issue in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819). And in
that foundational case, Sutton observed, “the Supreme Court erred
on the side of allowing the political branches to resolve the
conflict.” Similarly, he declared, the fate of Obamacare should be
decided by “the peoples’ political representatives, rather than
their judges.”
Many gay marriage advocates were surprised and disappointed this
week when the Supreme Court
refused to take up any new gay marriage cases. Judge Sutton may
soon provide the circuit split that SCOTUS (and everyone else) is
waiting for.
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