Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: gay marriage, law, Iowa, Dorsey & Whitney, Dennis Johnson
…he represented the plaintiffs in the Iowa gay marriage case; pro bono of course. But his reward was far beyond any monetary compensation he could have received. If there is a better example of the merits of the legal profession, I have rarely seen it.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Diane Schroer, discrimination, justice, law, Title VII, transgender
The background on this correctly decided case from the D.C. Circuit can be found here.
I have a feeling this lawsuit is going to fail. Looking at the equal protection argument, same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples are treated the same in regards to adoption. A disparate impact on same-sex couples is not a valid justification for striking down the law as unconstitutional. This is often a reason for judges to rule something unconstitutional on due process grounds instead of equal protection grounds when the law is designed to burden one group over another even if the law is applied equally to both groups. It’s difficult to imagine an Arkansas court holding that there is a constitutional right for unmarried people to adopt children. Additionally, a lawyer can easily argue that the adoption law does not seek to encourage marriage (something gay couples cannot achieve) but to prevent children from being in homes where unmarried couples reside because of the risk of instability. That appears to satisfy the rather low theshold of rational basis.
Sad, but (potentially) true.
(Via 365gay).
