Why the SCOTUS is likely to rule for gay marriage: Clue: His name begins with "K"

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The Supreme Court is known for its sharp partisan divide. The four-justice liberal bloc is likely to be sympathetic to gay marriage, while the four-justice conservative camp is likely to be hostile – though how Chief Justice John Roberts will come out is far from certain. In the middle is the Court’s usual swing justice, Justice Kennedy, who has – surprisingly – been the court’s most steadfast supporter of gay rights.

A Reagan appointee, Justice Kennedy is no liberal, as he has shown on issues from affirmative action to corporate campaign spending. But he has repeatedly sided with gay litigants before the court. In 1996, early in the gay rights legal revolution, he wrote the majority opinion in Romer v. Evans, striking down a Colorado constitutional amendment that prevented localities from passing laws protecting gay people from discrimination. In 2003, he wrote the landmark ruling Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down Texas’s law against gay sex.

As they say on Wall Street, past performance does not guarantee future results, but it would be surprising based on Justice Kennedy’s rulings so far if he did not side in some way with the supporters of gay marriage. If he is joined, as expected, by the court’s four liberals – Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Justice Stephen Breyer, Justice Elena Kagan, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor – there will be five votes on the court sympathetic to the pro-gay marriage side.

Those five justices could well unite to hand down a sweeping, Brown v. Board of Education-style ruling that the equal protection clause requires all 50 states and the federal government to recognize same-sex marriage. But there are many reasons that, owing to the specifics of the cases, the justices might do less. One option for the court in the Proposition 8 case is to say the parties do not have legal “standing” – and that they should not decide the case at all. (That would leave in place a lower-court ruling allowing gay marriage in California.)

Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2013/03/25/why-the-supreme-court-is-likely-to-rule-for-gay-marriage/#ixzz2OZQm8H8B

[srican69]

1. Ginsberg might rule against it ... see the article in Nytimes

she was uncomfortable with the effect Roe V Wade has had on the SCOTUS and thinks major decisions in a democracy should be political and not judicial

[HERVEPA]

2. Read the long New Yorker Magazine article about her.

No way she rules against it.