Dear America,
Last week was a very important one in American history. The U.S. Supreme Court rendered two rulings that are seminal in resolving future tensions between and among states' rights, federal power and the rights of the individual. In Obergefell v. Hodges, The Court held that homosexuals have the same right to marry that heterosexuals have, and in King V. Burwell, The Court held that federal subsidies under the Affordable Care Act can be extended to the insured in states that have decided not to provide an insurance market place on the internet just as they are to the insured in states with state run health insurance market web sites. But the significance of those cases, over and above their implications for the people individually effected by them, is far broader than just those specific results. Of course, the extension of the right to marry is profound for millions of people as is the universality of eligibility for health insurance subsidies among those who cannot afford insurance on their own. But more important in both cases is the line that has been drawn around "states' rights," which has been the rallying cry of all those who would rather employ a euphemism for odious opinions than come right out and admit their opinions on the validity of other peoples points of view. States' rights were the pretext for defying the Civil Rights Act of 1964. States' rights have been the cause for which conservatives were purportedly fighting in both King and Obergefell, and in Obergefell in particular, they are the ox that conservatives are claiming has been gored, but the reality is that conservatives don't like the idea of homosexuals being enfranchised in our society. Their motivation has nothing to do with vindicating the rights of anyone; they are motivated by the desire to prevent some from having the rights that they do. But there is an overarching principle that the Supreme Court has vindicated in general terms, and it has neither a liberal nor a conservative bias: the federal government can act for the protection of the American people, even when states have refused to do so.
The actual legal axioms that operate in Obergefell are those in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that bar states from enacting laws or taking any action that deprives any citizen of a right, protection or privilege that it avails to other citizens. And apropos of the issue in Obergefell, the amendment was written as it was to prevent the southern states from ever passing laws that would have even the effect of disenfranchising anyone, not just black men and women. The blather about leaving the definition of marriage to the states is nothing but a red herring intended to obscure the fact that conservatives don't accept efforts by government to intervene in their affairs, but they don't mind if the states intervene in the affairs of people whom they don't like. Still, the conservative voice on the issue of states' rights holds sway in a large swath of states, and among conservatives in other states looking for a rallying cry, other than overt gay bashing, to scrawl on placards and bumper stickers. But the Supreme Court has now said that they have to call their prejudices by their right names, because states' rights have nothing to do with them. In its essence, The Constitution says that states have powers...only people have rights, and now, the Supreme Court has said that in no uncertain terms. States may not exercise their powers in violation of the rights of people. They don't have the right to do so.
As to King, the decision of the Supreme Court, which I must admit I haven't read yet, seems to stand for the proposition that has always arched over statutory construction by the courts: a statute cannot be interpreted so as to yield an absurd result, and an absurd result is what the plaintiffs in King were looking for. The fact is that there was an omission from the Affordable Care Act that was a function of carelessness, not intent. When the authority to subsidize insurance premiums for those less fortunate than most of us so that even they could afford health care, it was couched in language that related to premiums paid by those who got their insurance through state run insurance market web sites. It never said that those who got their insurance through the federal web site couldn't have the subsidies, so the claim that such people were barred from getting them was an insertion into the law, not a provision that was necessary by implication, and that is essentially what the Supreme Court said. Essentially, King stands for the proposition that one cannot vitiate the effects of a federal law by attributing to its language something that isn't there, and further, if the only way to make a law sensible is to construe the statute in a global sense and draw implications from its broader purpose for want of specific language that is dispositive, then that is what the court may do. And believe it or not, conservatives in the Republican Party are breathing a sigh of relief.
Both of these cases had the potential to be hurdles in the campaign of any Republican running for president in 2016 because the Republican Party is now on the wrong side of public opinion nationally. Even the Affordable Care Act has turned the corner now with the most recent polls indicating that more people favor the act than oppose it. As to the rights of homosexuals in the form of gay marriage, the tide has long since turned with more than 60% of Americans favoring extending to homosexuals the same right to marry that heterosexuals have--two more rounds fired out of the Republican foot-shooting pistol that they managed to dodge despite very careful aim. Mind you, both decisions were close, and the conservatives still think they have some business telling other people whether they can be married or not, and they still think "Obamacare" is some kind of government plot even though the extent to which people who don't need the law have been injured by it is so minimal that no one I know knows anyone who has been negatively impacted by Obamacare, and chances are that no one you know knows anyone either. So, once again, the newly conservative Supreme Court that gave us decisions like Citizens United, which authorized those with money to take more control of our electoral process than they already had, have rescued their fellow conservatives from...themselves really. In other words, they have done right in spite of themselves.
Your friend,
Mike
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