AG Pruitt finds marriage decision ‘troubling’

Staff report

Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, referring to yesterday’s decision by a federal district judge that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, said:

“It is a troubling decision. As the Supreme Court recently noted in the Windsor case, it is up to the states to decide how to define marriage, not the federal government. There is a case involving the State of Utah currently pending before the 10th Circuit that is identical to the case in Tulsa. The issue most likely will end up at the U.S. Supreme Court and the outcome will dictate whether Oklahoma’s constitutional provision will be upheld.”

His statement echoes his comments after the Supreme Court decided the Windsor case. In June, Pruitt said: “The Court’s decisions [in Windsor and the challenge to California’s Prop 8] confirmed that it is up to the states to decide how to define marriage, not the federal government. As a result, Oklahoma’s constitutional provision that defines marriage in Oklahoma as between a man and a woman remains valid.” 

However, Pruitt should go back and review the Windsor decision, yesterday’s decision in Bishop v. Oklahoma, and his observation above that “The issue most likely will end up at the U.S. Supreme Court and the outcome will dictate whether Oklahoma’s constitutional provision will be upheld.” That sentence suggests that Pruitt does accept that courts can review laws, and that their decisions settle the matter.

Windsorgive a review of the justification for the federal government to discriminate against same-sex couples, and determines that discrimination to be unconstitutional at the federal level. The same arguments can be applied to state efforts to ban same-sex marriage.

In Bishop, Judge Kern gives a detailed, point by point discussion of the matters at hand, and the discriminatory intent of Oklahoma’s ban on same-sex marriage.

The judge, in holding the ban unconstitutional, comments, “Equal protection is at the very heart of our legal system and central to our consent to be governed. It is not a scare commodity to be meted out begrudgingly or in short portions. Therefore, the majority view in Oklahoma must give way to individual constitutional rights.”

 His decision then states that Part A of the state constitutional amendment violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution.

The Gayly – January 15, 2014 @ 1:30pm