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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsGay Rights Attorneys Are Poised To Bring Alabama’s Resistance To Marriage Equality To An Abrupt Halt
A motion filed in an Alabama federal court on Friday will likely bring Alabamas efforts to thwart marriage equality in that state to an unceremonious halt. This motion, in the likely event that it is granted, will give a federal judge who sided with marriage equality authority over each of the states probate judges that refuse to comply with her decision.
The probate judges currently are caught between two dueling court orders. In the same week that lawmakers gathered in Selma, Alabama to commemorate the bloody march that inspired the Voting Rights Act and helped break the back of Jim Crow, the Alabama Supreme Court handed down a 134-page opinion placing the state in opposition to a different kind of civil right. On Tuesday evening, the state supreme court ordered all the states probate judges but one Mobile Probate Judge Don Davis is subject to a federal court order requiring him to comply with the Constitutions promise of equal rights under the law to stop issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in Alabama. The states justices also hinted that they may soon extend this order to Judge Davis.
This order is the culmination of a weeks-long campaign of resistance to marriage equality from within the states judicial system. Not long after Judge Callie Granade, a George W. Bush appointee to a federal district court in Alabama, held that denying equal marriage rights to same-sex couples violates the Constitution, the Alabama Probate Judges Association claimed that, despite Granades ruling, they must follow Alabama law and cannot issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
In reality, the Constitution provides that it is the supreme law of the law and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding. So state judges are not free to defy a federal courts order interpreting the Constitution.
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http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/03/09/3631226/gay-rights-attorneys-poised-bring-alabamas-resistence-marriage-equality-abrupt-halt/
RKP5637
(67,032 posts)Takket
(21,425 posts)dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)Alabama continues to support State supremacy.
Gotta give them kudos for tenacity, at least.
Sheesh.