What's happening around the United States in the courts…

[osodecanela]

I just came across www.marriageequality.org/lawsuits this morning. It's a well updated synopsis of what's either gone on, or is going on all over the country.

What happen yesterday in Oklahoma took me much by surprise, In large part as I didn't know the lawsuit had ever been filed. That happened back in 2004. This page's explanation clarified for me why it took 10 years for a ruling to happen in this case. I definitely think checking this page out is worth doing.

Comments

[tilia-tomentosa.livejournal.com]

Thank you for that site. :)

But when I tried to read the explanation about Oklahoma, it felt as if I'd suddenly stopped understanding English, although that was far from my first encounter with legalese. I still find your judicial system extremely difficult to understand.

[osodecanela.livejournal.com]

Don't feel bad Dari; there are plenty of non-legal types that are native English speakers who don't understand legalese.

So, what confused you? Standing? If that's the case, it refers to who has the right to sue whom and for what. The prop 8 question that went to SCOTUS was decided on standing, namely that the people who sought to sue to defend prop 8 after the initial trial in Federal district court in San Francisco, in the eyes of SCOTUS did not have the right to sue or in this case appeal the district court's decision. Because the Prop 8 decision at the Supreme Court was based on the issue of standing, the actual merits of the case were NOT decided by the Supreme Court. No standing to appeal, meant that the appeals at the Circuit Court level were vacated (ie did not happen, even though they supported the District Court) and the original district court's ruling stood. Note that in the eyes of the 9 Supreme Court Justice the decision that there was not standing was 5-4. Four thought there was standing and were ready to go ahead and rule on the merits, but 5 were not ready to go there.

These days often many people are named in suits so that anyone who should be named is (since even lawyers don't always agree on the question of standing) and in the original Oklahoma filing, the Gov and the Attorney General were named as defendants. The 8th circuit appellate court ruled the two couples who sued did not have the right to include the Gov, and the AG, a little detail that took 5 years from the initial filing, and then the couples had to go back and amend their complaint and start again. Gov and AG removed from the complaint and County Clerk who issues the marriage licenses added to it. Is that any clearer?

[tilia-tomentosa.livejournal.com]

I learned to understand "standing" exactly in the context of Prop 8, I think, but couldn't understand the part that you explained, about the Gov and the AG.

To start from the very beginning, it's easy to understand "motion to dismiss", but what exactly was the role of the district court in the whole thing? Just denying said motion to dismiss, or were there more to it?

Then I had to look up "summary judgment," and I think more or less understood it. But is still wonder why and how did the court "suspend all deadlines".

And how did the U.S. House of Representatives and BLAG get involved at all, and who is supposed to represent the United States in court?

[osodecanela.livejournal.com]

As for how did the court suspend all deadlines, that one is beyond me, but who is supposed to represent the US in Court? That would be either the Attorney General of the US or perhaps the President, I suppose, although the AG of the country is nominated by the President and approved by the Senate and it's not an elected position, unlike most of the individual states. In this case however, it was the legal opinion of AG and the Dept of Justice (as well as the opinion of the Obama Administration that DOMA was unconstitutional and they refused to defend it, so the House of Representatives and BLAG (which though named so, was hardly bipartisan) stepped forward to defend DOMA and other related cases like this one.

This is analogous to what happened in the Prop 8 appeals here in Ca. Normally either the Governor or the AG would have been the individuals to have made the appeal of the district court's ruling, but both the former Gov. and AG and the current Gov (who WAS the former AG) and the current AG thought that 8 was unconstitutional and refused to defend it. They would have had standing to make the appeal. What was so screwy to me in the prop 8 case, was when the Gov and AG refused to appeal, the folks who put 8 on the ballot stepped forward to appeal, along with a couple of conservative county clerks (the county clerk is the individual who issues marriage licenses in each county) and the 9th Circuit FEDERAL court of Appeals turned to the Calif. STATE Supreme Court and asked them to decide if any of those parties had standing to mount the appeal in FEDERAL Court. The Calif. Supreme Court ruled the clerks did not, but the people who put 8 on the ballot did. SCOTUS ultimately disagreed with them and that was how 8 was finally resolved. (Convoluted enough for you?) I actually suspect that what got SCOTUS to take 8 was to deal with the issue of standing and not the merits of 8.