If elected president, Sen. Ted Cruz has a novel idea for dealing with the Supreme Court’s recent Obergefell ruling on same-sex marriage: ignore the judicial completely and rule by executive fiat.
Ted Cruz has some unsolicited advice for the states not specifically named in last week’s Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage: Ignore it.
“Those who are not parties to the suit are not bound by it,” the Texas Republican told NPR News’ Steve Inskeep in an interview published on Monday. Since only suits against the states of Ohio, Tennessee, Michigan and Kentucky were specifically considered in the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision, which was handed down last Friday, Cruz — a former Supreme Court clerk — believes that other states with gay marriage bans need not comply, absent a judicial order.
“[O]n a great many issues, others have largely acquiesced, even if they were not parties to the case,” the 2016 presidential contender added, “but there’s no legal obligation to acquiesce to anything other than a court judgement.”
While Cruz’s statement may be technically true, federal district and circuit courts are obligated to follow the Supreme Court’s precedent and overrule all other states’ same-sex marriage bans as unconstitutional.
Cruz’s logic is simple, you see. The judicial doesn’t get to interpret the constitutionality of the law because “sworn officers”, i.e. state and federal executives, have sworn the oath to the Constitution and should be allowed to decide what laws they consider to be valid, and that the judicial branch is not the final arbiter of anything.
If this sounds familiar, it’s exactly what Ted Cruz is accusing President Obama of doing on immigration, and now Cruz is more than happy to make this plenary executive argument apply to himself should he be elected to the White House. The hypocrisy could power suns for billions of years.
Cruz is far from the only potential lawless tyrant among the GOP 2016 ranks, Bobby Jindal wants to get rid of the Supreme Court altogether and Rand Paul makes a similar argument that people should be allowed to ignore laws they don’t agree with as part of his Glibertarian Nonsense Freedom and Eagle platform. Of course Republicans were going to run on more power for the executive. They always will. IOKIYAR.