Justice Thomas objects to court's signal on gay marriage

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is inappropriately signaling it intends to clear the way for gay marriage across the nation, Justice Clarence Thomas complained Monday in a stinging dissent to the court's refusal to block the start of same-sex marriages in Alabama.

"This acquiescence may well be seen as a signal of the court's intended resolution of that question," Thomas wrote in an opinion that was joined by Justice Antonin Scalia. "This is not the proper way" for the court to carry out its role under the Constitution, he wrote, "and, it is indecorous for this court to pretend that it is."

The opinion was remarkable less for the legal result it suggested than for its open criticism of fellow justices.

The Supreme Court often freezes lawsuits in place when they raise the same issue the court already has agreed to decide. And when federal courts declare state laws unconstitutional, "our ordinary practice," Thomas wrote, is to prevent those rulings from taking effect while they are being appealed.

But since October, the justices have repeatedly turned away state requests to keep same-sex marriages from taking place until appeals are resolved.

Thomas has previously made known his support for keeping the same-sex marriage prohibitions in place until the court issues its decision. Although he did not note it in October, he later said he had voted at that time to take up gay marriage when the court rejected appeals from five states seeking to preserve same-sex marriage bans.

https://news.yahoo.com/justice-thomas-court-signals-support-gay-marriage-161755545--politics.html

Did Justice Thomas just call Chief Justice Roberts a coward? Reads that way to me.

[JohnR! 5,495]

I think they are playing good cop/bad cop, so they can appease both sides of the issue. These guys play poker together, there is nothing they need to say to each other they can't say in the privacy of chambers.

It's about time states like Alabama get on with the rest of the country and join the XXI century anyway...

Edited February 10, 2015 by JohnR!