romer v. evans

Apparently Judge Roberts is not just an anti civil rights nut job, he also did some good work in his day.

I knew that he worked as a cooperating attorney with the ACLU on a number of cases, but apparently he also advised legal counsel, coached moot court, and strategized legal theory in Romer v. Evans. The NYT says that Roberts did not report his participation in his 83 page response to the Senate questionnaire.

Now for a short history lesson.

Romer v. Evans revolved around Amendment 2 in Colorado. In 1992 the Christian Coalition, led by mousy Ralph Reed, started raising funds and proposing anti-gay ballot initiatives all over the West. That year they fizzled in California, but made the statewide ballot in Oregon (Measure 9) and Colorado (Amendment 2). After a few years of legal tussle, the Supreme Court ruled 6-to-3 in 1996 that Amendement 2 was unconstitutional because is nullified the rights of gays and lesbians and barred the passage of antidiscrimination laws.

"It's one more piece of the puzzle as we keep trying to find out who John Roberts is," said Kevin Cathcart, executive director of Lambda Legal, the advocacy group that helped bring the Romer case.

Not a total mystery (see below). . . but complicated yes.

That victory paved the road for Lawrence v. Texas that overturned Bowers v. Hardwick (and no, not after all these years will I get over the fact that the case that upheld a ban on sodomy had a plaintiff named HARD-WICK. Giggle, it's good for you). Romers was a slow, but critical move, that illustrated to gay-rights activists how to shoot straight up the middle of the court to get a positive decision. After Romer the Christian Coalition and the Oregon Citizens Alliance fizzled, lost funding, and were swallowed back up into the belly of right wing umbrella organizations.

And for that I have to partially thank a guy who worked hard to cripple the Voting Rights Act?

I'm not sure that this is as confusing as the news reports make it seem. First, there is the closeted explanation. But since that's mostly a joke, there's the fact that the attorneys in Romers came looking for him to get the most conservative perspective possible. He assisted, but he may have done so in the way that many attorneys do, as a game, a challenge to his intellect. Besides, the fact that he helped strike something like Amendment 2 is not all that surprising. It was a poorly written, badly crafted piece of legislation, that could have be interpreted to say that gays and lesbians lacked constitutional rights. Even some homophobe conservatives felt uncomfortable with writing that level of discrimination into law -- especially since had it stood, it wouldn't have been for long. This isn't as big a revelation as it seems at first, but does still offer a glimmer of hope about Roberts (who will, if he makes it onto the court, be there for many many years to come). That his reason and intellect can be appealed to, that he can be counted on to be considerate, even innovative. No one can say that about Scalia.