The Top Ten Lines from the Supreme Court's DOMA Decision Aaron Zelinsky Posted: 06/26/2013 10:34 am
Here is a list of the 10 most important lines from today's Supreme Court opinions in Windsor. See any that are missing? Put them in the comments!
"DOMA is unconstitutional as a deprivation of the liberty of the person protected by the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution." -- Justice Kennedy
"DOMA singles out a class of persons deemed by a State entitled to recognition and protection to enhance their own liberty." -- Justice Kennedy
"The Constitution's guarantee of equality 'must at the very least mean that a bare con- gressional desire to harm a politically unpopular group cannot' justify disparate treatment of that group.'" -- Justice Kennedy
"By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others, the federal statute is in violation of the Fifth Amendment." -- Justice Kennedy
"This opinion and its holding are confined to those lawful marriages." -- Justice Kennedy
"The power the Constitution grants it also restrains. And though Congress has great authority to design laws to fit its own conception of sound national policy, it cannot deny the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment." -- Justice Kennedy
"The Court's errors on both points spring forth from the same diseased root: an exalted conception of the role of this institution in America." -- Justice Scalia
"The Court does not have before it, and the logic of its opinion does not decide, the distinct question whether the States, in the exercise of their 'historic and essential authority to define the marital relation,' ante, at 18, may continue to utilize the traditional definition of marriage." -- Chief Justice Roberts
"On the merits of the constitutional dispute the Court decides to decide, I also agree with Justice Scalia that Congress acted constitutionally in passing the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)." -- Chief Justice Roberts
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