No Faith in the Moral Standards of the Players as a Group

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

May God forgive me, but I've been reading Obergefell on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. Am I reading this right, and is Scalia essentially arguing that not even a rational basis standard should apply, and judges should just defer the shit to the legislature?

Jack Balkin said it well:

The arguments of the dissenters in Obergefell for judicial restraint and respect for democratic deliberation would sound a lot more convincing if they hadn't all joined the opinion in Shelby County v. Holder. Shelby County is truly made up out of whole cloth, and it strikes down key parts of an important civil rights statute passed by overwhelming majorities in Congress. Indeed, at oral argument in Shelby County Justice Scalia suggested that the very fact that the Voting Rights Act was passed by such overwhelming margins is a reason that the courts needed to strike it down. Talk about five lawyers undermining democracy and imposing their ideological convictions on the rest of the country. . .

You could also point to campaign finance reform and the way they have used the First Amendment to limit legislative action.