A Thinly-Veiled Attempt to Legalize Discrimination
Well here's a terrifying bit of proposed legislation. I wonder why I haven't seen anything about this on the blogs and news sources I monitor. Thanks to beSpacific for pointing it out. There's so much about it to dislike, but calling it the We the People Act (HR 5739) turns my stomach.
It's entirely possible that I'm missing something here, but this confuses me. The proposed legislation states that
The Supreme Court of the United States and each Federal court-- (1) shall not adjudicate-- (A) any claim involving the laws, regulations, or policies of any State or unit of local government relating to the free exercise or establishment of religion; (B) any claim based upon the right of privacy, including any such claim related to any issue of sexual practices, orientation, or reproduction; or (C) any claim based upon equal protection of the laws to the extent such claim is based upon the right to marry without regard to sex or sexual orientation; and (2) shall not rely on any judicial decision involving any issue referred to in paragraph (1).
It goes on to say:
The Supreme Court of the United States and all other Federal courts-- (1) are not prevented from determining the constitutionality of any Federal statute or administrative rule or procedure in considering any case arising under the Constitution of the United States;
The way I read this is that, no state law that deals with the listed issues can be heard by a Federal court even if the law is directly contrary to the U.S. Constitution or other Federal statute, that no state law can be deemed as being Federally unconstitutional. Am I missing something here?
The proposed legislation also seeks to undo any related Federal judicial decision to date.
Any decision of a Federal court, to the extent that the decision relates to an issue removed from Federal jurisdiction under section 3, is not binding precedent on any State court.
I can't even imagine how far reaching this could be or how far back the clock would turn.