NC Senate considers bill for magistrates to opt-out of SSM marriages

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Maybe they should pass a law allowing officers to opt-out of being in a gay pride parade.

Can straight people refuse to be married by magistrates who refuse to marry same sex couples?

If this passes, then the magistrate who objects to the same-sex marriage will not be officiating marriages at all.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I think everyone is ignoring something very important here which is that this is NOT like the wedding cake scenario in the least because a magistrate is not an employee of a private business but rather a state official. When a public employee discriminates in this fashion, it is state action of the very type that the 14th amendment forbids. Unlike a private business, the state does NOT have the right to refuse service to whoever they choose.

The employee is a representative of the state, but is not the state in total, so you do not have a right for a particular employee of the state to do something if the state can do that same something just as well with another employee. Whether or not that is the case would be the question as to whether this bill is workable.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I think everyone is ignoring something very important here which is that this is NOT like the wedding cake scenario in the least because a magistrate is not an employee of a private business but rather a state official. When a public employee discriminates in this fashion, it is state action of the very type that the 14th amendment forbids. Unlike a private business, the state does NOT have the right to refuse service to whoever they choose.

The employee is a representative of the state, but is not the state in total, so you do not have a right for a particular employee of the state to do something if the state can do that same something just as well with another employee. Whether or not that is the case would be the question as to whether this bill is workable.

That's a clear violation of the management rights of the employer. The employer decides what the employee is doing, not the reverse! You can ask your boss to not do it, but nothing is forcing him to agree with you.

With all this concern about management rights I'm guessing you hate labor unions pretty strongly?
Anyway, in this case, they work for the state, whose policy is set by the legislature. So if the legislature is ok with it, then whatever the employer's rights are ( I guess it'd be state's rights in this case) are satisfied. Bada bing bada boom.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I think everyone is ignoring something very important here which is that this is NOT like the wedding cake scenario in the least because a magistrate is not an employee of a private business but rather a state official. When a public employee discriminates in this fashion, it is state action of the very type that the 14th amendment forbids. Unlike a private business, the state does NOT have the right to refuse service to whoever they choose.

The employee is a representative of the state, but is not the state in total, so you do not have a right for a particular employee of the state to do something if the state can do that same something just as well with another employee. Whether or not that is the case would be the question as to whether this bill is workable.

If all the straight couples who go to the county courthouse have to wait one hour to get a marriage license while all the gay couples have to wait two hours while the court finds a judge willing to do it, then discrimination has occurred, state action is present, the gay couple can bring a section 1983 claim against the judge, and they should win their lawsuit.

That's very clearly not going to happen with this bill since the magistrates who don't do same sex marriages won't be doing any marriages anyway, as was stated in the article and several times in this thread already. So we can all wait a couple hours and suffer because goodness knows marriage is something that should be rushed into.