Then maybe that should go back to the states to decide as well. I personally feel their smartest move would be to rule that having government involved in marriage at all is too excessive a limitation on freedom of association and therefore government is out of the business entirely
The problem is a lot of states are stupid and self-destructive. A lot of them are essentially on the welfare of the federal government because they're so economically inept and seem addicted to passing policy that makes their state even less desirable.
If we just let them do whatever, WE pay. I pay. That's not free. They're not sovereign states, they're still part of the union. And that means my hard earned money has to go to making sure fucked up states don't completely shit the bed. Ultimately some place like Louisiana shouldn't even exist. But it does, because we fund their existence through welfare.
I don't want to make millions of Americans lives more shit for some ideological cause that I don't even know makes sense.
Okay, we should leave it to the states. Why? Why should we do that? Because someone 200 years ago said so in the federalist papers? Is that good enough to make life shit for millions of people with absolutely no economic gain?
Also, elephant in the room: this court is not made up of textualists. That's just what they tell you so that what they do sounds justified.
segregation was disallowed under the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment, which is much sounder law (and much more likely to be respected by an originalist since it's pretty obvious what they meant and once you make a black person a person under the law (which is also done by the 14th amendment) it's pretty clear you can't treat them differently than anyone else). Conversely, Roe V Wade relies on some pretty tortured reinterpretation of the right to privacy, which in itself is only kind of guaranteed by a less tortured interpretation of other parts of the constitution.
It's also pretty important to point out here that things are only for the states to decide in so far as you guys haven't made an amendment to make that right part of the constitution. The whole point of this is you can't make up rights that aren't there as the supreme court, you aren't the legislative body. If you want more/different rights there is an amending process to change the constitution and then the supreme court will be bound to uphold your changes as well.
Also, why do I know more about your constitution and governing structure than you appear to? I'm not American, I just appreciate how straightforwardly you guys recognize government will always screw you over and needs to be agressively restrained. I just wish you had realized it was all large organizations and more effectively applied your restrictions to corporations as well.
> Also, why do I know more about your constitution and governing structure than you appear to?
Do you? All you have said here is that you think that the equal protection clause forbidding segregation is more sound than the substantive due process clause forbidding criminalization of abortion. That's not a statement about governing structure. That's a statement about your interpretation of the text. I (and many others) don't think that finding a right to abortion in the text is so difficult.
It is ludicrous to point at an originalist interpretation to justify Brown. It is plainly obvious that the authors of the 14th did not intend it to forbid segregation nor would the public have interpreted it to do so at the time. Yes, there is a cottage industry of law professors seeking to square this circle but it is a ridiculous project. If you insist on originalism being the sole interpretive model of the constitution (which I disagree with) then you don't get to so easily say "well obviously Brown was correct."
