Discussion for article #231940
If a blue state were to have a law stripping employees of salaries if they DIDN’T license a gay marriage, then the right wing fauxrage would be dialed to 11.
“The State is not subject to suit in law or equity pursuant to the eleventh amendment of the United States Constitution for complying with the provisions of this section, regardless of a contrary federal court ruling,”
In other words, just another redneck confederate secessionist attempt at nullification…all because he hates himself some fags.
I couldn’t even read the language of the bill without hearing a fucking twang.
My law says you have to do what I want you to, and if you challenge it, I automatically win! HAH, SO THERE!!
What an asshole…
Newsflash: 11 is the only number on the dial and the knob doesn’t turn.
All this hatred for the people not just like them will die kicking and screaming as it’s kicked into the dustbin of history.
Eventually.
Now that’s Small Gumment Freedum!
Meanwhile, that phony ass cowboy looks like he munches more sausage than Chris Christie campaigning for the Polish-American vote.
The Klan/GOP pitchfork offers several points of view…
Edumacate me but were it to become law, it doesn’t seem like it would stand challenge at the Federal level. 11th doesn’t cover discrimination. Would those that want to gay marry have standing?
Wow, you can write laws that exempt themselves from judicial oversight? Why didn’t anyone think of that before? I’m sure Jim Crow is kicking himself in the afterlife right now for not having done that with his laws.
Next step is to get rid of that pesky executive branch, by stating that only vigilante groups can enforce laws. And then finally, we’ll suspend voting up until the time that everyone gets on the same page with what the Founding Fathers truly wanted, which can only be deciphered by Justice Scalia and Glenn Beck. Just because democracy is the best form of government doesn’t mean we are subject to its horrid limitations. So from now on, democracy means whatever Texas says it means. Because freedom, yeehaw!!
Nullification, Equal Protection violation with regard to the employees and another one for Those People. It’s the Neoconfederate Trifecta.
I wish I were more confident that the Fifth Circuit won’t find a way to read gays out of the Constitution because God Hates Fags, however.
Not everyday you see a man shaking hands with a Jackass in a cowboy hat. Outside of Texas anyway.
Part of the law says that it will be enforced “regardless of a contradictory federal ruling”. They’re claiming immunity from federal court jurisdiction.
(Which is BS, of course.)
Take your hat off indoors, jackass.
Yes, because after the Fifth Circuit (likely) rules in favor of marriage equality, same-sex couples can show demonstrable harm as a result of this state legislation.
Same for county clerks and other local officials.
Sure. And when the Feds say that they have no choice they will have to ask for volunteers for the, now unpaid, job of county clerk.
You can’t stop a cultural change like this. Once people realize that gay folks are people to, they don’t unrealize it. Shouting words of nullification and hatred won’t succeed in stoping a force driven by love.
Well that is what I thought since the federal government is senior sovereign.
The 11th Amendment may not apply as Texas believes it would.
"If a state violates federal law, the state itself can’t be sued in federal court — but a federal court can order state officials in their own name to comply with federal law.
This was decided by the Supreme Court in the controversial 1908 case Ex parte Young. This ruling was based on the fiction that a state official enforcing an unconstitutional state law is a private person — while still remaining a state agent when it comes to remedying the unconstitutional law! For example, in the 1993 ruling in Martin v. Voinovich, the high court ordered the governor of Ohio to construct housing for handicapped people to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The question that lies at the heart of the Eleventh Amendment is whether the individual states can still be regarded as possessing sovereignty: complete legal independence. This certainly was the position for the first decade of independence under the Articles of Confederation. But did this position continue under the U.S. Constitution, which was ratified in 1788?
In short, are, say, Maine, Ohio, Kentucky, and Texas as independent of one another and of the U.S. federal government as, say, France, India, Brazil, and Australia are of one another? Clearly not, but they obviously have a high degree of autonomy nevertheless. If the states were indeed sovereign states in the fullest sense, immunity from suit would follow. Because they don’t have full sovereignty, their immunity from suit is also only partial."
The bill, of course, is attempting to nullify a court decision before the decision is handed down, which is a pretty extraordinary bit of legislative calisthenics.
But then, we’re talking about Texas, which the late, great Mollie Ivins called America’s Laboratory for Bad Government.
That’s awesome.
Why doesn’t he just write up a law that says “The State of Texas will pay out a big-ass settlement to whatever county clerks (“clerks”) sue them for following a federal law; and will also pay out at least 6 figures in legal fees trying to fight these clerks while wasting the Attorney General’s time and resources; and will bitch and moan about it for months while accomplishing exactly jack-sht except for paying out all that money,” and be done with it?