Bill O’Reilly Has A Plan To Rig The Supreme Court’s Marriage Equality Decision [View all]

[William769]

“These ladies have to recuse themselves,” an indignant Bill O’Reilly proclaimed on his Fox News show Tuesday night. “I’m shocked they haven’t done it already.”

The “ladies” O’Reilly was referring to are Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan, both of whom have officiated same-sex weddings in the past. O’Reilly wants these two justices to remove themselves from a group of pending cases challenging anti-gay marriage discrimination. In the unlikely event that Ginsburg and Kagan heed O’Reilly’s call; that would give the justices who dissented in the Court’s 2013 decision striking down such discrimination at the federal level a 4-3 majority — most likely changing the outcome of the case.

O’Reilly’s attempt to pressure justices who are likely to support equality off a major gay rights case is not a new strategy. The American Family Association (AFA), a leading anti-gay group, called for both justices to recuse the very same day that the Court announced that it was taking up marriage equality last January. “Both of these justices’ personal and private actions that actively endorse gay marriage clearly indicate how they would vote on same-sex marriage cases before the Supreme Court,” the AFA claimed in a statement. This, they claim, is sufficient reason for the justices to remove themselves from
the case.

If the mere fact that a justice’s political views can be determined by their actions were a reason to remove that justice from a case, then Ginsburg and Kagan wouldn’t be the only justices who need to recuse from the marriage equality cases. Justice Antonin Scalia, with his rants about the “homosexual agenda,” hasn’t exactly been shy about his own views on gay rights. Scalia, however, like Ginsburg and Kagan, can rest assured that he is not required to recuse himself from these cases either.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/04/22/3649757/bill-oreilly-plan-rig-supreme-courts-marriage-equality-decision/