During oral arguments this morning, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts appeared to at least entertain the argument by House Republicans that gays and lesbians are too politically powerful for constitutional protection.

Roberts suggested that gays and lesbians must be “politically powerful” because politicians are “falling all over themselves” to endorse gay marriage, according to a tweet by Mother Jones’ Adam Serwer. The brief by Paul Clement, who represented the House of Representatives in defending DOMA, had reasoned that gays and lesbians are winning political battles and “have the attention of lawmakers,” an absurd claim since the “power” assertion is factually inaccurate, and because such an argument would also cancel out protections for racial minorities and women.

Roberts and his fellow conservatives also expressed concern over the White House’s decision not to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, with Kennedy calling it “very troubling” and Justice Antonin Scalia criticizing the Justice Department’s “new regime.”

By contrast, several of the court’s liberal justices expressed alarm over the impact of DOMA’s actual deprivation of federal marriage benefits on gays and lesbians, with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg calling the rights left for married couples after DOMA “skim milk” and questioning, “What kind of marriage is this?” Justice Elena Kagan, meanwhile, pointed to evidence from a House of Representatives report that lawmakers passed DOMA with improper motives. Justice Anthony Kennedy, the likely swing vote, repeatedly expressed a different concern with DOMA — that it impinged on state definitions of marriage.

The latest conservative outrage is over a story in the Washington Examiner about how new Obamacare forms will ask citizens if they would like to register to vote:

The 61-page online Obamacare draft application for health care includes asking if the applicant wants to register to vote, raising the specter that pro-Obama groups being tapped to help Americans sign up for the program will also steer them to register with the Democratic Party.

On page 59, after numerous questions about the applicant’s identity and qualification for Obamacare, comes the question: “Would you like to register to vote?” The placement of the question could lead some to believe they have to register to vote to get health care.

The story has since been picked up by the Daily Caller, Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA), and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), the number two Senate Republican, who tweeted, “How convenient! Register to vote while applying for Obamacare.”

It’s not only convenient; it’s also required by law.

The National Voter Registration Act of 1993, also known as “Motor Voter,” requires public agencies that provide public assistance to offer voter registration opportunities. Nowhere are citizens told who to vote for, which party to register for, or even that they have to register at all.

Even if it weren’t legally required, do Republicans think it’s problematic to ask people if they’re registered to vote? A “founding father” of the modern conservative movement, Paul Weyrich, who co-founded the Heritage Foundation and Moral Majority, did actually argue in 1980 that “I don’t want everybody to vote.” In fact, he reasoned, “our leverage in the election quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” Are Republicans again trying to prevent more people from being registered to vote?

Over the past two years, GOP lawmakers have indeed worked in earnest to pass new voter suppression laws around the country, making it more difficult for minorities in particular to register to vote. The fact that they would object to federal forms complying with federal law because it might result in more people registered to vote falls squarely in line with the GOP’s recent trend on voting rights.

Before beginning arguments over the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act Wednesday morning, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an opinion unanimously siding with a prisoner who filed a handwritten appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court without a lawyer.

Inmate Kim Millbrook is known for being litigious, and has lost several of his previous cases. But his perseverence and experience with the legal system has paid off. In an opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas, the court interpreted government immunity narrowly, paving the way for many other prisoners and litigants alleging law enforcement misconduct to hold government officials accountable. It is not often that the U.S. Supreme Court takes a case filed without a lawyer. And as the New York Times’ Adam Liptak noted recently, Millbrook’s case comes on the 50th anniversary of the landmark case establishing the right to counsel, Gideon v. Wainright. Petitioner Clarence Gideon, who was also ensnared in the criminal justice system, filed a handwritten appeal on his own, and went on to set groundbreaking precedent with the help of some of the most prominent lawyers of his time.

Millbrook’s case was one of two cases the high court agreed to hear this term filed without a lawyer — a highly unusual scenario. Even more encouraging, both cases sought to challenge government attempts to insulate officials from claims of wrongdoing. In an era when justice is often viewed as synonymous with access to expensive legal representation, today’s decision is a rare win for equal access to justice (even as another U.S. Supreme Court decision decided Wednesday morning contracts access). And in a country whose prison population eclipses that of every other country in the world, it is particularly crucial that inmates are at the very least able to challenge their treatment.

With one week to go before the April 2nd election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Justice Pat Roggensack has raked in around half a million dollars, thanks to donations from big business and Republican groups. As thousands of Wisconsinites face foreclosure in state courts, the real estate industry is spending big to keep the 4-3 pro-corporate majority on the high court. The Wisconsin Realtors Association is spending $200,000 of its own money to support Roggensack, and campaign finance documents filed on Monday list $8,625 in contributions to Roggensack from the association’s PAC. In its endorsement of the justice, the association credited her record of ruling in favor of the real estate industry.

Executives at ABC Supply, who contributed half a million dollars to Gov. Scott Walker’s effort to fight last year’s recall campaign, gave more than $10,000 to Roggensack’s campaign. ABC Supply has been criticized for paying no state corporate taxes while raking in an estimated $5 billion in annual sales. The corporate-funded Wisconsin Club for Growth, which supports limits on legal liability for corporate defendants, has spent $300,000 on Roggensack’s behalf.

This flood of corporate money comes as the court prepares to rule on several controversial bills from the Republican-controlled Wisconsin legislature, including a Voter ID bill. The recent “open pit mining” bill is also expected to face legal challenges. The bill takes away a citizen’s right to sue mining companies for environmental damage and “allows mining corporations to dump toxic mine waste into sensitive wetlands and floodplains.”

Some of Roggensack’s individual donors are attorneys that practice before the court. The largest contribution from an individual came from attorney Michael Hupy, who recently faced reprimands in Illinois and Wisconsin for violating ethics rules. The Wisconsin Supreme Court found that Hupy mailed out thousands of brochures that falsely accused one of his competitors of unethical conduct—an action that “harmed a portion of the public that may very well have been looking for legal representation.” Roggensack wrote a two-sentence dissent, and less than two years later, Hupy gave her campaign $7,500.

Roggensack’s opponent in next week’s election, Professor Ed Fallone of Marquette Law School, has criticized the incumbent for voting in 2010 to adopt an ethics rule that allows the justices to hear cases involving campaign contributors. The rule states that campaign contributions can never be the sole basis for a justice’s recusal. Fallone argues, “That’s ‘justice for sale,’ and it’s wrong.”

The rule was literally written by two groups—Wisconsin’s Manufacturers and Commerce, the state’s chapter of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the state realtors’ association—that have spent millions on ads for the pro-corporate judges on the court. Justice Ann Walsh Bradley criticized the four-justice majority for adopting “word-for-word the script of special interests that may want to sway the results of future judicial campaigns.” State Rep. Gary Hebl (D) is planning to introduce legislation to overturn the rule. One of the groups that wrote the recusal rule, the Wisconsin Realtors Association, is the same group spending $200,000 to support Roggensack.

Episcopal bishops, priests, and lay people from across the country gathered in Washington, D.C., yesterday to demand federal legislation that would help end gun violence, urging lawmakers to take action on the issue while celebrating a special version of the Christian devotion known as the Stations of the Cross.

Hundreds of participants braved wintry conditions on Monday morning as they gathered in front of St. John’s Church for the event, with many attendees wrapping heavy scarves around their clerical collars and brandishing signs that read “Stop the killing of our children” and “Thou shall not allow murder.”

Participants then sang hymns as they processed down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to the U.S. Capitol, stopping at several locations along the way to recount the Biblical story of Jesus’ crucifixion and pray for those affected by gun violence.

“Today we walk in acknowledgement of the things done and left undone that have contributed to a culture of violence,” said Bishop Laura Ahrens, Suffragan Bishop of Connecticut, as she read from a statement written by another Connecticut priest. “We must acknowledge our sins, individually and collectively.”

Leaders of the event, which included more than 20 Episcopal bishops from all over the United States, met with White House officials before the march to discuss the need for legislation that would prevent gun violence. Speakers at the service praised elected officials working to end gun-related tragedies, noting how incidents such as the recent killing of elementary school students by a gunman in Newtown, Connecticut could be prevented with the help of new laws.

“The victims of each of these shootings are members of our families, religious congregations, and communities, and we continue to grieve for the living as well as the dead,” said Mark Beckwith, Bishop of Newark, as he read a statement written by Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori. “I commend the resolve of lawmakers who believe the time has arrived when our nation must come together to ask the difficult questions, and to discern what may be equally challenging answers, about how we can begin to break the cycles of violence that lead to massacres in suburban schools and routine death on the streets of our cities.”

But while bishops were upbeat about positive developments on Capitol Hill, they also expressed impatience with Washington’s beleaguered attempts to push gun violence prevention legislation through Congress. They urged lawmakers to break partisan gridlock and take meaningful action, particularly in light of the string of high-profile mass shootings that rocked American communities and congregations this past year.

“Leadership is sensitivity that identifies when an event has to have a response,” said Bishop Steve Miller of Milwaukee as he read a statement penned by Barbara A. Campbell.

Dozens of faith groups and religious leaders have spoken out against gun violence in recent weeks. Organizations such as PICO National Network and Faiths United to Prevent Gun Violence helped organize a “National Gun Violence Sabbath” earlier this month, where more than 1,000 congregations – including the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. – held Sunday services and events that called for federal legislation that would end bloodshed caused by gun violence. In addition, Mayors Against Illegal Guns released a video in mid-March that showcased clergy members calling for sensible legislation on the issue, and PICO recently announced that clergy from Newtown, Connecticut have joined more than 4,000 other religious leaders from across the nation in signing a letter to the Senate demanding action on gun violence prevention.

Our guest blogger is Jack Jenkins, a Writer and Researcher with the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative.

New Jersey is one of a dwindling number of states that doesn’t allow its residents to cast in-person votes prior to Election Day. That could change for the Garden State with a stroke of Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) pen.

Late last week, the State Assembly passed S 2364 by a 46-31 vote, following the Senate’s 24-16 approval. The bill would open polling places for 15 days before Election Day, giving residents flexibility to cast a ballot at their convenience. However, Christie has yet to take a position on the matter, and some prognosticators suspect he’ll veto the bill.

New Jersey currently allows citizens to mail in a ballot early, but there’s still a strong need for in-person early voting, as the New Jersey Star-Ledger explains:

The vote was mostly along party lines, which could indicate the governor is unlikely to sign the legislation.

Under the bill, polling places would be open all week, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Mondays through Saturdays, and from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sundays. The cost of the program is estimated at $22 million, although sponsors said it could be done more cheaply without buying costly new equipment.

Democrats say voting complications caused by Hurricane Sandy demonstrate the need for the program.

Early voting is an important and popular voting reform that arose primarily after the 2000 presidential election debacle. Now, all but 16 states offer some form of early voting. Americans take advantage of the option, too; around one-third of all voters now cast their ballots before Election Day, including nearly 80 percent in some states like Colorado.

In the moments before the U.S. Supreme Court began its historic oral arguments in the challenge to California’s same-sex marriage ban, the court issued its decision in a case with very different but important constitutional implications.

In a 5-4 decision in which the justices split along unusual lines, the court led by Justice Antonin Scalia held that police sniffing around for drug activity cannot bring their drug dog to the front door of a private home without probable cause – usually a warrant. The case is the second in two years to affirm traditional property-based limits on government invasions of privacy, although in very different contexts.

In this case, detectives who received a tip that the defendant was growing marijuana in his home walked up to his front door with a drug dog by their side, and used the signals from the dog as the basis to obtain a search warrant and enter the suspect’s home. The crux of the justices’ disagreement comes down to whether Detective Bartlett’s chocolate labrador, Franky, was just another dog entitled to wander up to someone’s home, or whether his special olfactory skills and training made him more analogous to a pair of high-powered binoculars. Justice Elena Kagan explains in her concurrence:

As this Court discussed earlier this Term, drug-detection dogs are highly trained tools of law enforcement, geared to respond in distinctive ways to specific scents so as to convey clear and reliable information to their human partners.  They are to the poodle down the street as high-powered binoculars are to a piece of plain glass. Like the binoculars, a drug-detection dog is a specialized device for discovering objects not in plain view (or plain smell). And as in the hypothetical above, that device was aimed here at a home—the most private and inviolate (or so we expect) of all the places and things the Fourth Amendment protects. Was this activity a trespass? Yes, as the Court holds today. Was it also an invasion of privacy? Yes, that as well.

Not so, said the dissenters, led by Justice Samuel Alito. Alito reasons that a dog’s sniffing skills have been used for centuries, and that if there were really a distinction to be made concerning drug-sniffing dogs, that case would have come up already. The dissenters – three conservatives with Justice Breyer as an unusual ally – also reject the reasoning by the concurring Justices Kagan, Sotomayor and Ginsburg that analogizes the drug dog case to the landmark Kyllo decision, in which the court rejected the use of thermal imaging technology to monitor a home. That case was about new technology, they said, and this case is about old tactics.

But whether using new or old technology, the nature of the surveillance by police is relatively new. Drug dogs are among the many tools of the 40-year-old drug war, and in the latest expansion of their use, we are seeing them creep into public schools. Last year’s case invalidating warrantless GPS monitoring, decided on similar grounds, was also a case about drugs. And many of the millions of newly aggressive stop-and-frisks by the New York Police Department resulted in arrests for nothing more than possession of small amounts of marijuana. In taking a sober look back at the strategies law enforcers justified at the height of the drug war, the invasiveness of police implementation will be just as important as the tactics themselves in determining both whether they pass Fourth Amendment muster, and whether they are tailored to meet public safety goals.

WASHINGTON, DC — There are probably five justices who object to California’s anti-gay Proposition 8 and who would prefer to see it struck down. Justice Kennedy, the conservative viewed as most likely to provide the fifth vote for equality, openly pondered whether Prop 8 violates the Constitution’s ban on gender discrimination. Kennedy at one point admitted uncertainty about whether there is sufficient evidence examining the effect of marriage equality on society, but he then pivoted to note that the nearly 40,000 children raised by gay parents in California suffer “immediate legal injury” because of Prop 8. His vote is not entirely clear, but Kennedy leaned significantly in the direction of justice.

A weak performance by Charles Cooper, the lawyer defending discrimination, probably went a long way to push Kennedy into the pro-equality camp. When Justice Sotomayor asked Cooper to identify a single example outside of marriage where discrimination against gay couples could be “rational,” Cooper responded “I cannot,” prompting Sotomayor to note that Cooper had more or less conceded that gay people meet the definition of a class entitled to heightened protection under the Constitution. Under longstanding precedent, a group which has experienced a “‘history of purposeful unequal treatment‘ or been subjected to unique disabilities on the basis of stereotyped characteristics not truly indicative of their abilities” enjoys enhanced protection under the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.

Similarly, when Cooper argued that same-sex marriages could somehow undermine opposite-sex marriages, Kagan asked him to explain the “cause and effect” behind this point. When Cooper fumbled the question, Kennedy pounced, asking if Cooper was “conceding the point” that same-sex couples are not a threat to other people’s marriages. Cooper was left to meekly assert that it is “impossible for anyone to foresee the future accurately enough to know exactly what those real-world consequences would be.”

Yet the question of whether California’s same-sex couples enjoy the blessings of liberty was rapidly eclipsed by a different, unspoken question — whether gay couples in Alabama also enjoy those rights. Three justices, Roberts, Scalia and Alito asked hostile questions to the attorneys supporting equality and appear very unlikely to vote against Prop 8. Similarly, while Thomas was characteristically silent, no one expects him to break from his past, anti-equality opinions in gay rights cases. Of the remaining five, at least three spent much of the argument grasping for ways to limit the scope of a decision striking down Prop 8.

Sotomayor, at one point, asked pro-equality attorney Ted Olson whether the Court’s decision could be limited to just California. Kennedy worried about the “uncharted waters” facing the Court if it struck down marriage discrimination nationwide. Justice Ginsburg, who famously accused Roe v. Wade of moving “too far, too fast,” alluded to the fact that racial marriage discrimination ended in two stages — first the Court struck down bans on interracial cohabitation, then it struck down bans on interracial marriage. The clear implication was that the Court could be similarly incremental here.
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Early in this morning’s Supreme Court oral argument over the constitutionality of the California ban on same-sex marriage, Justice Anthony Kennedy suggested the children of same-sex couples suffer “immediate legal injury” from Proposition 8, according to Bloomberg. “They want their parents to have full recognition and status,” Kennedy said, adding that the “voice of those children” is important.

Kennedy, who is likely the swing vote, also suggested he was very uncomfortable striking down Proposition 8, according to a tweet from SCOTUSblog. Kennedy raised dismissing the case, which would leave in place the lower court ruling invalidating the same-sex marriage ban, but would not set any precedent about equal rights or marriage equality.

In response to Kennedy’s assertion, Justice Antonin Scalia questioned whether children would actually be harmed by Proposition 8, saying there is “considerable disagreement” about the “consequences” of same-sex marriage. “I take no position on whether it’s harmful or not, but it’s certainly true there is no answer to that scientific question,” he said, according to tweets from the Huffington Post’s Ryan Reilly.

Beginning this morning, the Supreme Court will hear two cases that could recognize the right of everyone, straight or gay, to marry the person they love. The first concerns California’s anti-gay Proposition 8, and could potentially extend the right to marry to same-sex couples in all fifty states. The second challenges the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), and could end the federal government’s practice of denying equal benefits to couples who are legally married under state law. Here is everything you need to know to understand these cases:

How The Court Could Rule

– A Broad Decision: The best, and most obvious, decision would be for the justices to follow the Constitution and the clear command of precedent and extend marriage equality to all fifty states. It is fairly likely, however, that at least one member of the majority will be too cautious to require Alabama to follow the Constitution, even if they are prepared to order California to do so. If the justices punt on the Alabama question, the important question is whether they hold that anti-gay laws are subject to “heightened scrutiny,” a skeptical kind of constitutional analysis that will make it very difficult for anti-gay discrimination to withstand court review in the future.

— A One-Off: The Ninth Circuit proposed a way to strike down Prop 8 while leaving most other states free to engage in marriage discrimination (the court said that voters were not permitted to withdraw the right to marry once it had been established by the state Supreme Court). The logic of the ruling was thus confined to California. Similarly, two of the Court’s most important gay rights opinions relied on very narrow reasoning that advanced equality only incrementally. It is possible the justices will repeat this performance.

– Jurisdictional Dodges: In both cases, the Court could potentially rule that it lacks jurisdiction to hear the case, a decision that would cast a cloud of uncertainty over the rights of gay couples.

– A Stealth Attack: Several prominent conservatives are pushing a dangerous legal theory that would strike down DOMA on states’ rights grounds, and potentially endanger Social Security, veterans benefits and progressive taxation in the process.

– A Loss: Ultimately, however, it is important to remember that this is a severely conservative Court, and even so-called swing vote Justice Kennedy is a severely conservative justice. Equality could lose.

What To Expect From The Justices

– The Democratic Appointees: It would be very surprising if any of the Court’s four Democrats vote to uphold discrimination. While some commentators have noted Justice Ginsburg’s critical statements about Roe v. Wade — “It’s not that the judgment was wrong, but it moved too far, too fast” — this statement suggests Ginsburg might take an incremental approach, not that she will vote to uphold discrimination. Chance of pro-equality vote: more than 90 percent.

– Justice Kennedy: Kennedy is the author of two narrowly reasoned, but very important cases upholding gay rights. His record on gay rights is not perfect, however. Kennedy cast the key vote holding that the Boy Scouts have a constitutional right to engage in anti-gay discrimination, and he’s behaved less and less like a moderate swing vote and more and more like a hardline conservative in recent years. His vote for equality is likely, but not certain, and is more likely than not to rest on very narrow reasoning. Chance of pro-equality vote: 60-70 percent.

– Justice Thomas: Thomas is the Court’s most conservative member, but he once called Texas’ “sodomy” ban an “uncommonly silly” law, and he cares a great deal shrinking federal power until it is small enough to be drowned in a bathtub. Indeed, Thomas believes federal child labor laws and the nationwide ban on whites-only lunch counters are unconstitutional on states’ rights grounds. For this reason, it is possible he will be attracted to the claim that DOMA violates states’ rights. There’s no chance he’ll vote to strike Prop 8, however. Chance of pro-equality vote: 20 percent on DOMA, 0 percent on Prop 8.

– Chief Justice Roberts: Roberts has a lesbian cousin who will attend the marriage arguments as his personal guest, and he once did pro bono work on behalf of gay rights activists when he was an attorney in private practice. Nevertheless, Roberts remains very conservative and has a long record of criticizing decisions that read the Constitution’s promise of equality broadly. If Roberts does vote with a pro-equality majority, it is just as likely that he will do so in order to wrest control of the opinion and narrow it as he would to extend the blessings of liberty to gay Americans. Chance of pro-equality vote: 10 percent.

– Justice Alito: Alito is probably the toughest conservative questioner on the Court, and he has emerged as a strong advocate for whatever outcome conservatives prefer. Chance of pro-equality vote: less than one percent.

– Justice Scalia: In past opinions, Scalia compared homosexuality to murder, drug addiction, bestiality, incest and child pornography. Chance of pro-equality vote: 0 percent. Chance his opinion will accuse pro-equality justices of kowtowing to the “homosexual agenda”: 99.99 percent.

Surging Support For Marriage Equality

– Marriage Equality Has Strong Bipartisan Support: Retired Judge Vaughn Walker, the first judge to strike down Prop 8, is a Republican appointed to the bench by President George H.W. Bush. Three of the court of appeals judges that voted to declare DOMA unconstitutional are Republicans. 131 top Republicans, including six former Republican governors, filed a brief supporting marriage equality.

– The American People Support Marriage Equality: Fifty-eight percent of Americans believe same-sex couples should be allowed to marry. Among adults under 30, support is at 81 percent.

The Constitution guarantees “the equal protection of the laws” — and that includes same-sex couples. As the Supreme Court has explained, this guarantee is most robust when applied to groups that experienced a “‘history of purposeful unequal treatment‘ or been subjected to unique disabilities on the basis of stereotyped characteristics not truly indicative of their abilities.” LGBT Americans undoubtedly fit this description, and thus neither DOMA nor Prop 8 can stand.

According to a report in the New York Times on newly released federal data, roughly 300 immigrants are currently being held in solitary confinement at the 50 largest facilities throughout the United States immigration detention system — the largest such system of any in the world. Many of these detainees are being held on civil as opposed to criminal charges, and thus are “not supposed to be punished; they are simply confined to ensure that they appear for administrative hearings.”

On any given day, about 300 immigrants are held in solitary confinement at the 50 largest detention facilities that make up the sprawling patchwork of holding centers nationwide overseen by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, according to new federal data.

Nearly half are isolated for 15 days or more, the point at which psychiatric experts say they are at risk for severe mental harm, with about 35 detainees kept for more than 75 days.

While the records do not indicate why immigrants were put in solitary, an adviser who helped the immigration agency review the numbers estimated that two-thirds of the cases involved disciplinary infractions like breaking rules, talking back to guards or getting into fights. Immigrants were also regularly isolated because they were viewed as a threat to other detainees or personnel or for protective purposes when the immigrant was gay or mentally ill.

Of those immigrants being held in solitary confinement, 11 percent where mentally ill, 46 percent were held for 15 days or more, 21 percent were held 45 days or more, and 11 percent were held 75 days or more.

Solitary confinement generally involves holding prisoners for 23 hours a day in a small, windowless cell with a steel door. The one allowed hour of recreation usually takes place in similarly small enclosures that are indoors or lined with fencing — “similar to an indoor dog kennel,” as the Times put it. Access to phones, lawyers, outside communication, or even showers is often strictly limited. Solitary confinement is widely considered a psychologically damaging and dangerous form of confinement, and earlier this year the Federal Bureau of Prisons announced it will be carrying out a study of the practice. One federal court has already determined that solitary confinement of the mentally ill, at least, amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

The overall population of immigrants in detention has exploded by 85 percent since 2005, and now stands at roughly 400,000. At the same time, there are more than 80,000 people in solitary confinement throughout then United States at a given moment — again, the largest number of any country in the world.

A racist hate group at Towson University has announced plans to conduct its own nighttime police patrols on campus.

Founded last year, the White Student Union has stirred significant controversy already. The organization has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. In addition, its founder, Matthew Heimbach (who goes by the title “Commander Heimbach”), and fellow organizer Scott Terry interrupted a minority outreach panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference this month in order to defend slavery, noting that slaveholders provided blacks with food and shelter. Terry later told ThinkProgress that African-Americans “should be allowed to vote in Africa” and he’d be “fine” living in a society where blacks are permanently subservient to whites.

The Towerlight has more on the vigilante plan:

The controversial White Student Union has resurfaced on Towson’s campus with plans to conduct random nighttime patrols, which members say are for students’ protection.

Some members of the group, equipped with flashlights, will conduct on-campus safety walks, and female members will carry pepper spray in an attempt to protect students from various crimes like sexual assaults and robberies, WSU President Matthew Heimbach said. [...]

Heimbach said female members have also been enrolling in self-defense classes, and members have been going to local gun ranges as a group, but not in a “military way,” Heimbach said.

He said group members would carry no weapons on the nighttime walks.

One need look no further than the White Student Union’s blog to see why their vigilante operations could turn problematic. In a blog post last month entitled “Black Crime Wave Continues!“, the group writes:

The frequent robberies, sexual assaults, and acts of vandalism at Towson University are not often reported in the local media. For those who are not Towson students it seems hard to fathom that every single day black predators prey upon the majority white Towson University student body. White Southern men have long been called to defend their communities when law enforcement and the State seem unwilling to protect our people.

As a result, the post reads, “The WSU executive board has unanimously approved to make it mandatory for all female WSU members to begin taking some form of unarmed self defense training over the next month.”

Though no Towson faculty would sign on as a sponsor for the WSU, the administration allows the group to use university resources. As the group bragged in September 2012, it is “excited to report that it has taken one step closer toward becoming recognized by Towson University,” pointing to its profile on a university website.

The Associated Press reports a federal judge blocked a Missouri technical college from drug-testing its students on Friday for a second time, following a higher court’s decision reversing a previous decision as too broad.

U.S. District Judge Nanette Laughrey in Jefferson City granted a preliminary injunction that temporarily prevents Linn State Technical College from screening all first-year students and some returning students for cocaine, methamphetamines, oxycodone and eight other drugs.

The two-year school also cannot report the test results from September 2011, when it began the program and collected urine samples from 500 students before the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri filed suit on behalf of six students. The lawsuit claims the program violates students’ Fourth Amendment rights against unlawful searches and seizures.

Under the Linn State policy students new to the institution must pay $50 and submit to drug test for a broad range of substances — refusing results in the student being dropped from the college. A student who tests positive for drug use could remain enrolled if they test clean 45 days later, complete an online drug-prevention course at student cost of $35 or other “appropriate activities,” and may be referred for professional assistance. A federal appeals court overturned and an earlier restraining order from Laurghrey in January that sought to protect current and future students, calling it too broad, leading the ACLU to file a narrower complaint on behalf of current students.

The Supreme Court has upheld mandatory drug testing for high school athletes and for those in jobs that pose a significant threat to public safety if done under the influence. While Linn State claims that as a technical college their students operate heavy machinery and drug testing is needed to keep them safe, none of the six plaintiffs in the ACLU case operate heavy machinery as part of their academic program — instead, they work on programs like Electronics Engineering Technology and Design Drafting Technology that involve sitting at a drafting table or in front of a computer.

While the mandatory drug testing program at Linn State is the only such program that the ACLU is aware of at a public college or university in the country, blanket drug testing proposals for welfare recipients have become increasingly common despite their dubious legal standing. In February, a federal appeals court unanimously upheld a decision to fault a Florida law that would require all state welfare applicant to be drug tested.

In Meridian, Mississippi, known for its particularly egregious practices that criminalize student discipline, kids have been put behind bars for wearing the wrong color socks or being late to school. The city has become the center of a recent national trend in which minority students are disproportionately subject to arrests, interrogations and time in juvenile detention for school behavior violations. But Meridian also has a history of discrimination, and has been subject to DOJ monitoring since 1967, when a court ordered the school to desegregate, and implemented a plan that remains in place. In conjunction with that monitoring, the Department uncovered that African Americans in the majority-black district received significantly harsher punishments for the same offenses and were more than five times more likely than whites to be suspended from class. On Thursday, the city school district and DOJ reached an agreement to curb some of the most egregious practices in what has become known as the school-to-prison pipeline.

The 44-page consent decree prescribes a broad range of reforms, including banning suspension or any other “exclusionary disciplinary consequence” for a dress code violation or single incidence of tardiness, and prohibiting school officials from involving law enforcement officers except when required by law or necessary to ensure student safety.

If approved by a federal judge, this agreement would settle claims by the DOJ’s Educational Opportunities Section with the school district, but it does not affect a separate ongoing DOJ lawsuit against the city and several other state counties and departments that alleges children are punished “so arbitrarily and severely as to shock the conscience.”

Officials on a press call Friday hailed the agreement as “landmark” but conceded that Meridian is just one of many jurisdictions both within Mississippi and around the country that are criminalizing school discipline.

“Unfortunately, today across the country, students are being pulled off the path to success by harsh disciplinary policies that are excluding students from school for minor disciplinary infractions,” said the DOJ’s Jocelyn Samuels. “Students are being suspended, expelled or even arrested for school uniform violations, talking back to teachers or laughing in class.” Studies have found that these policies don’t make schools safer, and instead funnel kids out of school and into the criminal justice system.

When a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit struck down a Michigan ballot initiative banning affirmative action in university admissions last July, we predicted it would soon be struck down by the full Sixth Circuit. It’s not that the decision was wrong — there are actually two Supreme Court opinions that prohibit states from forcing racial minorities to jump through unique hoops to enact a law which benefits them as a group — it’s just that these aren’t the sort of precedents that the conservative majority on the Sixth Circuit are likely to follow, or that this Supreme Court is likely to uphold.

This prediction turned out to be wrong. When the full Sixth Circuit convened to hear the case, two conservatives were recused and one of the court’s partially retired liberals was allowed to rehear the case due to a quick in the court’s rules. As a result, the panel’s decision was barely upheld on an 8-7 vote.

Today, racial diversity’s luck probably ran out — the conservative Roberts Court announced that it will hear this case. Given this Court’s general hostility to efforts to promote diversity and cure the legacy of longstanding discrimination, it likely that the Roberts Court will do what the dissenting judges in the Sixth Circuit called for, and uphold the ban. After all, this is the same Roberts Court that once claimed that an effort to desegregate public schools violates the Constitution.

If there is any silver lining for supporters of racial diversity in the Court’s decision to hear this case, it is that it suggests that a pending decision challenging the University of Texas’ admissions program may not be as sweeping as the most conservative justices would hope. The Court is widely expected to strike down much of Texas’ diversity policy in that decision, but there would be no need for the Court to hear a second affirmative action lawsuit if they were not planning some resolution of the Texas case that leaves open some possibility of racial diversity programs surviving in some form.

One way or another, marriage equality is coming to the United States. A recent poll shows support for equality at 58 percent, up 21 points from just a decade ago, and a massive 81 percent of adults under 30 support treating same-sex couples just like any other. The Supreme Court should strike down the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California’s equally anti-gay Proposition 8 because they are unconstitutional, but one way or another, marriage equality is happening. And it is happening soon.

Perhaps for this reason, two leading conservatives published columns last week advocating a way the Supreme Court could strike down DOMA while doing maximal damage to the social safety net. Five days after anti-science columnist George Will published a piece seeking to discredit the social science supporting marriage equality, Will endorsed a radical misreading of the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment that would lead to DOMA being struck down. One day later, Michael McConnell, a former federal judge and leading socially conservative law professor, made the same argument in the Wall Street Journal. Here’s McConnell’s version:

[T]he court need not base its decision in Windsor on the merits of the same-sex marriage question. The leading argument against DOMA all along has been that the federal government lacks authority under the Constitution to create and enforce a definition of marriage different from that of the state in which a couple resides. It is hard to think of an issue more clearly reserved to state law under constitutional tradition than the definition of marriage.

The court has held that “regulation of domestic relations” has “long been regarded as a virtually exclusive province of the States” (Sosna v. Iowa, 1975). In the past, the court has recognized a “domestic relations exception” to federal judicial power. Although the legal question is close, the court could take the same path in Windsor—holding that DOMA improperly intrudes on the reserved powers of the states.

This is constitutional gobbledygook. McConnell and Will are both arguing that, because the Constitution does not give the federal government power over “domestic relations” it follows that DOMA exceeds Congress’ lawful powers. This is similar to the argument conservatives raised against the Affordable Care Act, and it is also compete nonsense.

Federal law grants married couples numerous financial benefits that unmarried individuals do not enjoy. Married couples pay taxes at different rates than single people. They are exempt from estate and gift taxes that apply to their spouse’s property. They receive certain benefits under Social Security, Medicare and other federal programs, and so forth. These financial benefits are constitutional because the Constitution gives Congress the power “to lay and collect taxes . . . and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States” — what lawyers call the “tax and spending power” — and the power to tax and spend necessarily includes the power to decide who pays what taxes and who receives what benefits. DOMA does not, as Will and McConnell suggest, define the meaning of “marriage” for the entire nation. Rather, it mostly just defines the meaning of the word “marriage” for the purpose of determining who is eligible for federal benefits that are given only to married couples.

If Congress does not have the power to decide who pays what tax rates and who receives what federal benefits, than the entirety of America’s safety net could be in danger. Retirement programs like Social Security cannot exist unless the government can limit it to persons of retirement age. Veterans benefits cannot exist unless the government can limit them to veterans. Even progressive taxation is in jeopardy under Will and McConnell’s theory, because the government must have the power to decide who pays more and who pays less taxes.

In other words, if the Supreme Court embraces Will and McConnell’s misreading of the Constitution, it could radically rework America’s social contract and leave most Americans much worse off as a result.
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Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will hear the first of two cases which could end discrimination against same-sex couples and ensure that all Americans can marry the person they love. Whatever happens in those two cases, one thing is all but certain: Justice Antonin Scalia will vote to maintain marriage discrimination, and he will spend much of this week’s oral arguments making insulting comments about LGBT Americans. Here are some of the most offensive things Scalia compared to homosexuality in his past opinions:

• Murder, Polygamy and Cruelty to Animals: In Romer v. Evans, the Court held that Colorado could not enact a state constitutional amendment motivated solely by animus towards gay people. Scalia saw no problem with laws enacted with such a motivation — “The Court’s opinion contains grim, disapproving hints that Coloradans have been guilty of ‘animus’ or ‘animosity’ toward homosexuality, as though that has been established as Unamerican. . . . I had thought that one could consider certain conduct reprehensible–murder, for example, or polygamy, or cruelty to animals–and could exhibit even ‘animus’ toward such conduct.”
• Drug Addicts and Smokers: In the same opinion, Scalia suggested that a law which relegates LGBT people to second-class status is no different than any other law “disfavoring certain conduct.” Anti-gay laws, in Scalia’s view, are no different than laws disfavoring “drug addicts, or smokers, or gun owners, or motorcyclists.” His decision to include “gun owners” on this list is somewhat ironic, considering that he would later write the Supreme Court’s opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller which held for the first time that there is an individual right to own a firearm.
• Prostitution and Heroin Use: Dissenting in Lawrence v. Texas, Scalia rejected the idea that an outright ban on “sodomy” violates the liberties protected by the Constitution. Such a ban, “undoubtedly imposes constraints on liberty,” Scalia wrote, but “so do laws prohibiting prostitution” or “recreational use of heroin.”
• Incest, Adultery, Obscenity and Child Pornography: Rejecting the Lawrence majority’s conclusion that private sexuality between consenting adults receives “substantial protection” under the Constitution, Scalia responded “[s]tates continue to prosecute all sorts of crimes by adults ‘in matters pertaining to sex’: prostitution, adult incest, adultery, obscenity, and child pornography.”
• Bestiality: Later in the same opinion, Scalia argues that gay sex can be criminalized because some people find it immoral — “The Texas statute undeniably seeks to further the belief of its citizens that certain forms of sexual behavior are ‘immoral and unacceptable,’ the same interest furthered by criminal laws against fornication, bigamy, adultery, adult incest, bestiality, and obscenity.”
• Having a Roommate: For all his over the top rhetoric, Scalia’s cruelest dig on same-sex couples may be his most subtle. In a discussion about what the anti-gay Colorado amendment in Romer does and does not prohibit, Scalia suggests that the bond between two men or two women in a committed relationship is no greater than the bond between two “roommates”: “The amendment prohibits special treatment of homosexuals, and nothing more. It would not affect, for example, a requirement of state law that pensions be paid to all retiring state employees with a certain length of service; homosexual employees, as well as others, would be entitled to that benefit. But it would prevent the State or any municipality from making death benefit payments to the ‘life partner’ of a homosexual when it does not make such payments to the long time roommate of a nonhomosexual employee.”

After writing all of these lines, Scalia concludes his Lawrence dissent with a plea that he is not in the least bit anti-gay. “Let me be clear,” Scalia writes, “that I have nothing against homosexuals.”