As I am sure my readers already know, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Org., decided June 24, 2022, the US Supreme Court overturned the long-established precedent of a woman’s Constitutional right to an abortion, thereby returning the issue of abortion rights left to be decided by individual states. This gives rise to a vast discrepancy in the breadth of legal rights granted to women dependent on which state a woman resides in, although the facts of two such women may otherwise be identical.
Some legal scholars deduce that we may expect to see an impetus for other rights which are long-settled precedents by the US Supreme Court, to be overturned and similarity returned to individual states, whose state courts would then decide the legal rights of men and women in those states. Among these are fundamental right to privacy in same-sex sexual relations, that the right to marry is fundamental liberty that applies to couples regardless of their sex or race, and contraception.
This concern regarding the danger of many settled legal issues also being overruled by the Court and returned to individual states is not as far-fetched as it many initially seem.
After the Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmation hearings in March of 2022, a US senator told news media that the issue of whether to allow interracial marriage should never have been decided by the Supreme Court for the entire country, but should be left to individual states. The case he was referring to was the US Supreme Court 1967 case, Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967 ). In Loving v. Virginia, the Court in a unanimous decision struck down state antimiscegenation (interracial marriage) statutes. Antimiscegenation laws were a strict prohibition of a "white person" marrying any person other than a "white person". Loving v. Virginia mandated that a state could not prohibit a person from choosing to marry a person of a different race. The US Supreme court ruled that laws banning interracial marriage violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Court noted that, “The two statutes under which appellants were convicted and sentenced are part of a comprehensive statutory scheme aimed at prohibiting and punishing interracial marriage.”
The senator who spoke to the media in March after the Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson hearings said he thought because there was diversity throughout the country, the issue of interracial marriage should not be one rule decided by the US Supreme court for the entire country. He stated that whether or not it should be allowed or banned should be decided by individual states. Speaking twice on the 1967 Loving v. Virginia case, where the US Supreme court prohibited states from banning interracial marriage, he gave a similar answer, “it’s a beauty of the system, and that's where the differences among points of view in our 50 states ought to express themselves." After a fierce uproar over the senator’s remarks, he claimed he did not understand the question, but the toothpaste was already out of the tube.
When it comes to the issues, you can't have it both ways," the senator told the media. "When you want that diversity to shine within the federal system, there are going to be rules and proceedings, they're going to be out of sync with maybe what other states would do. It's a beauty of our system, and that's where the differences among points of view in our fifty states ought to express themselves."
Besides the built-in inherent systemic racism in his reasoning, and turning back the clock 55 years on the fundamental right to privacy; the fatal, and frightening flaw in his legal reasoning is that not every person in any state holds the same opinion as to any issue. “States” do not think and “states” do not hold opinions. It is the individual persons within the states who think and the individual persons who hold opinions - that is where the diversity comes in, and why individual persons in every one of the fifty states should be allowed to choose whom to marry, whether it be same sex or opposite sex, same race or different race, and have fundamental right of privacy in personal relationships no matter what state in which they reside, or what state in which they are geographically positioned when a fundamental right to privacy issue arises in their life.
Without the Supreme Court deciding law maintained as legal precedent which is applied within all fifty states, such as it did in Loving v. Virginia, the clock can be turned back 55 years or more as to the fundamental right of privacy in personal relationships and marriage, and on civil rights as to sex, sexual orientation, race, gender, age, etc., that applies to employment free of discrimination.
What You Can Do
I am an aggressive and compassionate employment law attorney who is experienced in successfully representing women, Blacks, older workers, disabled employees, LGBTQ persons and others in protected classes who were discriminated against at work and was successful in recovering multiple six figure settlement moneys for them. If you are thinking of resigning, or think you will be fired, or have been fired, it is important that you consult with an attorney who is experienced in employment law. I am successful in bringing employee lawsuits against governmental entities and private employers and recovering money for victims of discrimination.
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