Are They Serious?

Check out this Yahoo news story, via DailyKos.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Monday sidestepped a dispute over gay marriages, rejecting a challenge to the nation's only law sanctioning such unions.

Justices had been asked by conservative groups to overturn the year-old decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Court legalizing gay marriage. They declined, without comment.

They declined cert. Those who are crowing that the Court upheld gay marriage should be aware that this doesn't really say anything about the merits. Here's why:

Critics of the November 2003 ruling by the highest court in Massachusetts argue that it violated the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of a republican form of government in each state. They lost at the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.

The Republican Form of Government argument? Oh yeah, that should constitute a concrete and particularized injury sufficient to give them standing. The Court would spend the next 30 years declining cert on every state constitutional interpretation that someone in the state doesn't like!

Yes, it's good that the Court declined to use a pretextual reason to overturn the Massachusetts high court. But that's all that they did. Nothing more.