Senator Braun Says States Should Be Free to Ban Abortions and Interracial Marriages

[Galraedia]

It’s not easy for a non–Judiciary Committee senator to make news on constitutional law even as his colleagues are engaged in hearings on a U.S. Supreme Court nomination. But Indiana senator Mike Braun managed to do that in an interview with reporters from his state. After Braun took the common Republican position that states, rather than the federal courts, should control most aspects of abortion policy, he was asked if his commitment to states’ rights would extend to letting legislators and governors ban interracial marriage. To put it another way, if, as a matter of principle, the Supreme Court should reverse the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade and turn the abortion issue back to the states, shouldn’t it also reverse the 1967 decision in Virginia v. Loving and turn the interracial-marriage issue back to the states, too? That made sense to Braun, who said the Court shouldn’t “homogenize” national issues: “If you’re not wanting the Supreme Court to weigh in on issues like that, you’re not going to be able to have your cake and eat it, too. I think that’s hypocritical.”

Yikes.

Now even though Braun’s background is that of a businessperson selling truck parts and accessories, not a lawyer, he presumably has a couple of lawyers on his staff. You can imagine their chagrin when the boss made that comment and thus embraced the rather radical idea (highly controversial since the end of the Civil War) that states’ rights trump every other constitutional consideration. In the case of interracial marriage, a unanimous Supreme Court held that race-based marriage prohibitions blatantly violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment (a separate ground from the due-process-clause basis of Roe). It’s kind of hard to argue otherwise in the post-civil-rights era, which is why Braun is very alone in his contention.


Read more: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/03/braun-says-states-should-be-free-to-ban-interracial-marriage.html

[Thomas Hurt]

1. Used to be people thought the states should be free to decide whether to have slaves.

..we worked that sh*t out already

[Mad_Machine76]

3. Looks like

we're going to eventually have to re-fight every battle all the way back to the Civil War. Their hoods are REALLY slipping, lately.

[Mad_Machine76]

2. FML

He's one of my senators

[Metaphorical]

4. This is the face of the second civil war

It is no accident that we suddenly seem to be swimming in anti-abortion legislation, civil rights rollbacks, voting restrictions, gender-discrimination crusades, and so forth. I think it goes beyond the 6-3 majority on the supreme court, though that's a part of it. Thus, this is a soft secession - reduce the oversight of the Federal government in every way possible, gerrymander the hell out of the electoral maps, and lock in permanent minority state governments. This then lets these states continue to suck the Federal government (and by extension the affluent blue states) dry until finally the blue states pull the plug on the whole project and break away.

I'm curious to see what happens as Russia implodes. This was what Putin was attempting to do in 2020 through Trump. As the Russian spigots collapse, I have to wonder if support for this agenda is also going to collapse in the supposed red states.

[struggle4progress]

5. Would the Supreme Court uphold private bounties on racist pigs?

[struggle4progress]

6. Freedom is a constant struggle

[lastlib]

7. These troglodytes make me puke.

[sakabatou]

8. Holy fucking shit...

[Bettie]

9. Well, bless his shriveled little

black heart.

[jalan48]

10. They've prepared their ignorant followers for an authoritarian, christo-fascist takeover of our

government, and now they are informing us how it's going to happen.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

11. Texas Abortion Ban Architect Now Looking To Recriminalize Gay Sex And Overturn Gay Marriage

This is the asshole who drafted the Texas abortion law. This asshole wants to strike down the implied right of privacy by getting Roe overruled which would/could lead to striking down the right to same sex marriage. interracial marriage, gay sex and other rights

Link to tweet

https://www.comicsands.com/jonathan-mitchell-overturn-gay-marriage-2655065691.html

Though Mitchell's brief, also signed by his co-counsel Adam Mortara, dedicates much of its time to the Texas abortion law's defense, it also questions "lawless" pieces of legislation, namely the Lawrence v. Texas ruling, which decriminalized gay sex nationwide, and the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, which legalized same-sex marriage.

Though the brief does not say reversing Roe v. Wade would threaten the same-sex marriage ruling, it does say that

""the news is not as good for those who hope to preserve the court-invented rights to homosexual behavior and same-sex marriage …
"These 'rights,' like the right to abortion from Roe, are judicial concoctions, and there is no other source of law that can be invoked to salvage their existence."

It goes on to add that while the Supreme Court should not necessarily overturn Lawrence and Obergefell, it should consider these two rulings as "lawless" as Roe v. Wade and, by extension, Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

"This is not to say that the Court should announce the overruling of Lawrence and Obergefell if it decides to overrule Roe and Casey in this case."
"But neither should the Court hesitate to write an opinion that leaves those decisions hanging by a thread. Lawrence and Obergefell, while far less hazardous to human life, are as lawless as Roe."

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet