Courts & Law

Financial Reports: Cathi Herrod & Center for Arizona Policy Give AZ Lege More than Ideas

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capitol940-sig-sm72The nationwide outrage generated byhighly discriminatory SB1062 shined a harsh light on the Arizona Legislature and on the bill’s creator– lobbyist Cathi Herrod and her non-profit political group, the Center for Arizona Policy.

With 123 Center for Arizona Policy bills becoming law, Herrod and her fundamentalist Christian organizationhave been highly influential have beenway too powerful in the the Arizona Legislature for years. (Details here.) Herrod is such a fixture at the Capitol that “admirers and foes alike refer to as Arizona’s 31st senator,” according to AZCentral.com.

A recent fluff piece about Herrod in AZCentral.com said that her group brought in $1.7 million in 2011 (the most recent tax report available) but spent under $20,000 on lobbying the Arizona Legislature that year. Hmmm…

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Senate Tea-Publicans vote for nullification and minting their own money

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6a00d8341bf80c53ef019103d205f6970c-piTea-Publicans in the Arizona Senate demonstrated that they are just as batshit crazy as their counterparts in the Arizona House this week.

Tea-Publican senators voted to pass SR 1003 (.pdf) the Neo-Confederate Senate Resolution for “nullification” of EPA regulations in Arizona, on a vote of 18-11, with one member not voting. Democrat Carlyle Begay, who represents the SRP Navajo Power Generating Station, voted with the Tea-Publicans.

The long-discredited “nullification” theory is unconstitutional, how many times do we have to go over this? The Supremacy Clause, Article VI, paragraph 2 of the U.S. Constitution, and the post-Civil War 14th Amendment, Section 3 is settled law. These Neo-Confederate dead-enders always want to re-litigate the discredited theories that led to the Civil War.

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About Cathi Herrod’s side of the SB1062 story

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So, a few days ago the Center for Arizona Policy got a group of law professors together to get them to sign a letter saying the people opposing SB1062 were “misleading” everyone.

On letterhead for Douglas Laycock, a professor of law and of religious studies at the University of Virginia, 10 professors in addition to Laycock signed on. The thrust of the letter is that SB1062 is not discriminatory because it’s not the bill that was proposed in Kansas.

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Action Alert: CAP abortion bill in the House today

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Your work is not done now that Governor Jan Brewer has vetoed the Religious Bigotry bill from Cathi Herrod and the Center for Arizona Policy (CAP). The Committee of the Whole (COW) in the House is debating the CAP bill for surprise inspections of abortion clinics,HB 2284 (.pdf) TODAY. This bill is really about harassing … Read more

Federal Court rules Texas ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional

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The dominoes of discrimination continue to fall. Think Progress reports, Federal Judge Rules Texas Ban On Same-Sex Marriage Unconstitutional:

6a00d8341bf80c53ef01901df0a0f0970b-piA federal judge has ruled (.pdf) that Texas’s ban on same-sex marriage violates the equal protection guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. According to Judge Orlando Garcia, a Clinton appointee, the state’s marriage laws deny same-sex couples the right to marry, and therefore “demean their dignity for no legitimate reason.” Garcia stayed his decision pending appeal, so same-sex couples cannot begin marrying yet.

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The ruling would prevent the state from enforcing its 2003 law and 2005 constitutional amendment that limited marriage to opposite-sex couples. Voters passed that amendment by a 3-to-1 margin, but a plurality of Texans now support marriage equality.

According to the ruling, not only are these families denied benefits under the law, they are also subjected to “state sanctioned discrimination, stigma, and humiliation,” explaining: “In this case, it is clear that Plaintiffs suffer humiliation and discriminatory treatment under the law on the basis of their sexual orientation, and this stigmatic harm flows directly from Texas’ ban on same-sex marriage.” Garcia cited Windsor, the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning the Defense of Marriage Act, noting that not recognizing same-sex marriages “demeans the couple, whose moral and sexual choices the Constitution protects.”

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