Free Republic

Texas' attorney general has released an official opinion declaring that state employees can refuse to issue marriage licenses to gay couples if they hold a moral or religious objection. Attorney General Ken Paxton released the statement Sunday following the landmark Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage nationwide. In his statement, Paxton denounced the 5-4 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, but noted that the decision "acknowledged there are religious liberty protections of which individuals may be able to avail themselves." "County clerks and their employees retain religious freedoms that may allow accommodation of their religious objections to issuing same-sex marriage licenses....

Leading Evangelist Franklin Graham is warning Christians nationwide that they should be ready to face persecution if they wish to stand by the biblical definition of marriage following last Friday's U.S. Supreme Court ruling, which legalized same-sex marriage throughout the United States. Despite President Barack Obama claiming that the Supreme Court's ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges is a "victory for a America," Graham, the president of both the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan's Purse, asserted in an interview with Fox News' Todd Starnes last weekend that the United States is really the true "loser" because the ruling could bring...

Republican presidential candidates and those expected to be candidates are divided in their reactions to the last Friday's U.S. Supreme Court same-sex marriage ruling, with some ready to continue fighting for marriage and others suggesting it is time for conservatives to "move on" from the marriage issue and begin focusing on other concerns. While appearing on CBS "Face the Nation" on Sunday, potential 2016 Republican candidate and Ohio Gov. John Kasich argued that there are many other issues facing America right now and it is time to pay attention to those concerns. He asserted that since the Supreme Court has...

Sweeping pollution limits at the center of President Barack Obama’s climate change plan are facing increased scrutiny in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling that showed that the justices aren’t afraid to thwart perceived overreach by Obama or his Environmental Protection Agency. The high court’s ruling undermined Obama administration regulations targeting mercury and other hazardous air pollutants—a different set of regulations from the greenhouse gas limits that Obama is counting on to slow the effects of global warming. Still, the court’s willingness to rein in the EPA emboldened opponents of Obama’s climate change agenda, who said the court had...

When Chief Justice Roberts voted in Obamacare in 2012 I wrote that: [T]he only way to make liberals accept a repeal of ObamaCare is by the brute force of political power, the mandate of the voters expressed at the ballot box. Now Roberts has pushed aside the little matter of the Obamis' deliberate attempt to intimidate states into building their own health care exchanges in King v. Burwell. Justice Kennedy has rubber-stamped gay marriage, and hey, what's the matter with a little disparate impact among friends? What is going on here? It's all explained in Angelo Codevilla's 2010 American...

On June 25th, 2015, the majority of Supreme Court Justices, lead by Chief Justice Roberts, ruled that what the law says does not matter.   What matters is what the Justices want the law to say. This is an important break down in the rule of law.  We have seen it before from the Supreme Court, particularly from the Warren Court, and during the Roosevelt revolution of the 1930's and on.   There seemed to be a brief period in the early 2000s when the Court might actually follow the law of the land.  This was labelled by the left as...

I completely disagree with the Supreme Court decision to block Texas from enforcing restrictions on abortion clinics that would force 10 centers in the state to close. Let me be clear, the regulations that were being placed on these clinics were mainly focused on enforcing safety and guidelines for a very delicate procedure. What the state of Texas is asking for is that these independent clinics performing these procedures be held to the same clinical standards as any other surgical center in the country. In other words, the regulations would have mandated that these clinics have of all the tools...

For most people, words mean what they say. But not necessarily for a majority of Supreme Court justices in two important decisions handed down Thursday. In the most prominent, King v. Burwell, Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for a 6-3 majority, ruled that the words "established by the state" mean "established by the state or the federal government." In a second decision, Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project, Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for a 5-4 majority, ruled that the omission in the 1968 Fair Housing Act of words banning acts that have a disparate...

“I assume that those who cling to old beliefs will be able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes, but if they repeat those views in public, they will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and schools. By imposing its own views on the entire country, the majority facilitates the marginalization of the many Americans who have traditional ideas.” – Justice Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court decision that forced gay marriage on the country The dilemma Christians and conservatives face after the Supreme Court's made-up-from-whole-cloth-instead-of-the-Constitution ruling on gay marriage is...

nvironment: The rogue agency known as EPA has been slapped back by the Supreme Court for failing to consider the cost of a massive new regulation. What else is new?

Ok so here's my take on ways that conservatives can take on gay marriage legally and reverse this aweful decision. #1. We can through the legislative process radically simplify the tax code so that it doesn't deal with marriage and is much simpler, also make it so that anyone can easily gain the power of atty, inheritance from anyone else. Marriage where it intersects with government would be separated, the government wouldn't have the motivation or the power to regulate marriage. Any kind of "marriage certificate issued by the govt. would be moot and void. We'd basically be back to...

Monday’s big election law news came from the Supreme Court’s penultimate decision of the term upholding Arizona’s congressional districts. But before handing down its last three decisions, the court made voting-rights advocates happy by deciding not to review a different election case. “Arizona citizens can continue to participate in voter registration drives without worrying about not having proof of citizenship documents,” Shirley Sandelands, of the League of Women Voters of Arizona, said in a statement Monday. The case, Kobach, et al. v. Election Assistance Commission, et al., was about whether Arizona and Kansas could require voters to prove their citizenship...

States not permitted to alter federal voter registration form to require proof of citizenship. The Supreme Court today refused to accept a case which sought to allow states to supplement a federal voter registration form so as to require proof of citizenship to vote. Such proof is particularly important given how freely many states are handing out drivers licenses to illegal immigrants, and the Obama administration’s unilateral implementation of quasi-amnesty deferrals (some of which were stopped in court). It’s just not enough anymore that someone is here legally (or at least, is not being deported) [Snip] This is not just...

Two days after the Supreme Court affirmed gay marriage as a fundamental right, New York City’s pride parade began, appropriately enough, with a wedding. Presiding over the same-sex ceremony, which took place in front of the historic Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village on Sunday afternoon, was New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, according to Newsday. Cuomo, who noted he was officiating his first wedding ceremony, wed Human Rights Campaign staffer David Contreras Turley, 36, and UBS financial analyst Peter Thiede, 35, while a crowd of onlookers cheered and The Beatles’ “Love Is All You Need” played, Newsday reported. The Stonewall...

RUSH: There wouldn't be social issues if there weren't angst and misery and unhappiness. And make no mistake: That's what's driving all this, folks. You may think this is all political, but it's angst and misery. It's unhappiness. It's people seeking a mysterious... You can read it in Kennedy Supreme Court ruling. You know that Supreme Court decision that Kennedy wrote is basically all about self-esteem and dignity. That's why Scalia openly wrote, he would be embarrassed to sign his name to a majority opinion such as that written by Anthony Kennedy on the gay marriage business. Esteem and dignity...

It is my deepest wish that none of the following should ever happen, but logic says it will. The Supreme Court has taken its place at the head of the charge to destroy the Roman Catholic Church in America. Under all the impassioned arguments about “love winning out” the leering minions of hate and lies have won a major victory. Now they can gather their forces to attack their real enemy, the one that has always been the unspoken target: The Roman Catholic Church in America. For all its faults and self-inflicted damage, the Catholic Church in America is still...

A divided Supreme Court on Monday dealt a significant blow to the Obama administration's environmental agenda, invalidating a rule that would limit the release of mercury and other pollutants from power plants. In a 5-4 ruling, the Court found that the Environmental Protection Agency did not appropriately consider the costs to utility companies when handing down the rule under the Clean Air Act. "We hold that EPA interpreted unreasonably when it deemed cost irrelevant to the decision to regulate power plants," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the court's majority opinion. Scalia was joined by the four conservative justices in his...

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia should resign.That's the thought I had while reading his acid dissents in the two headline-grabbing Supreme Court cases last week, one affirming the IRS's interpretation of the Affordable Care Act, and the other discovering a right to same-sex marriage in the 14th Amendment.Scalia's considered view is that the court has usurped power from Congress in the health care law, and from the American people themselves in the marriage case.Ultimately, on the health care case, John Roberts agreed with most of the claims of the plaintiffs, but decided to rewrite the disputed clause because, as he...

Lots of Republican candidates are really up in arms about the Supreme Court’s gay marriage ruling, and some are trying to fight back strongly against it. Mike Huckabee said states should outright reject it, while Ted Cruz proposed Supreme Court elections to push back against “judicial tyranny.” But on Face the Nation today, likely GOP candidate and Ohio Governor John Kasich told John Dickerson, “I believe in traditional marriage, but the Supreme Court has ruled, it’s the law of the land, and we’ll abide by it.” He implored people to just “take a deep breath,” and said there are plenty...

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday against three death row inmates who had sought to bar the use of an execution drug they said risked causing excruciating pain. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote the majority opinion in the 5-to-4 decision. He was joined by the court’s four more conservative justices. The drug, the sedative midazolam, played a part in three long and apparently painful executions last year. It was used in an effort to render inmates unconscious before they were injected with other, severely painful drugs. Four condemned inmates in Oklahoma challenged the use of the drug, saying it...