Supreme Court gets it right in two rulings
The U.S. Supreme Court doesn’t always get it right.
In 1923, it ruled against a minimum wage for female workers in Washington, D.C. More notoriously, it upheld the Fugitive Slave Act in 1857, and set the stage for the atrocities of Jim Crow 39 years later by ruling in Plessy vs. Ferguson that separate facilities for blacks and whites were constitutional. More recently, the 2010 decision in the Citizens United case gave corporations a green light to pour even more money into the political process, further perverting it and drowning out the voices of less well-to-do constituencies.
However, last week, the Supreme Court got it exactly right in two consequential rulings.
On Friday, in a 5-4 decision, it nullified state bans on same-sex marriage and made such unions available in all 50 states. The decision will be looked upon as a capstone in a 50-year fight for gays and lesbians to be accepted as equal citizens, but was not really a great surprise. Before Friday, same-sex marriage was allowed in all but 14 states. The speed at which gay marriage has been accepted since Massachusetts first allowed it in 2003 has been nothing short of astonishing. Just a decade ago, politicians on both sides of the aisle were either running from it like it was Kryptonite or calling for it to be outlawed. It took President Obama until 2012 to admit his long “evolution” on the issue was over and he supported the concept.
Perhaps the only surprise in the decision was how close it was, with Justice Anthony Kennedy voting along with the court’s four liberals. Kennedy movingly wrote in the majority opinion, “As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”
Twenty-four hours before the Supreme Court’s ruling on gay marriage was announced, the court kicked aside a challenge to the Affordable Care Act, asserting in a 6-3 decision that the federal government could indeed provide tax subsidies to poor and middle-class buyers who purchase health insurance in a state that does not set up its own health insurance exchange and instead relies on the federal government to handle its exchange. In what was essentially a frivolous lawsuit, the plaintiffs argued the subsidies were only available to those who purchased health insurance on a state-run exchange, taking four words out of the thousands contained within the law out of context. In his majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts explained “a fair reading of (the) legislation demands a fair understanding of the legislative plan. Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them. If at all possible, we must interpret the act in a way that is consistent with the former and avoids the latter.”
It would appear then “Obamacare” will endure after President Obama leaves office in 18 months. Not surprisingly, opponents of the law are crying that much louder for its repeal, but they have offered no viable plan for a replacement. Eradicating the law would put us right back where we were before it went into effect five years ago – millions left without coverage, rates rising, the federal deficit ballooning as a result of increasing Medicare and Medicaid costs, young people being kicked off their parents’ plans, and on and on.
Nostalgia is nice, but that’s a time no one should want to return to.