In Arizona, the Republican attorney general has declined to appeal a district court decision striking down the state's gay marriage ban. His reason immediately jumped out at me -- he claimed there was a risk of Rule 11 sanctions (for unnecessarily delaying the conclusion of litigation), given that the 9th Circuit has already rejected identical appeals and the Supreme Court recently denied cert on the same.
This jumped out at me because I have been playing around with the idea of courts sanctioning states for defending patently unconstitutional legislation. The idea is a sort of a check against grandstanding -- it's an expressive snapback by judges against legislators who pass laws that obviously, on face, violate the Constitution.
Now, no matter what one thinks of gay marriage, that is not this case. I think gay marriage bans are unconstitutional, but not obviously so. There are perfectly reasonable, good faith arguments to the contrary. My thoughts went more along the lines of laws banning the construction of Mosques. In any event, while I agree that an appeal by Arizona would prove to be futile, I am highly doubtful that any court would have imposed sanctions on the Arizona AG for filing it. And even under the Attorney General's view, sanctions wouldn't be imposed because his legal argument was intrinsically frivolous, but because it had functionally already been resolved by the relevant courts. Is that a distinction without a difference, though? Isn't a "frivolous" argument simply one which is absolutely, positively, obviously guaranteed to lose?
The point is, regardless of whether this decision is directly on point; I've been on the eye for any indication that Rule 11 sanctions might be factor in constitutional litigation. Even if the context is different, the fact that a state Attorney General viewed such sanctions as a legitimate possibility is very interesting on its own terms.
UPDATE: "Finally, let's be serious. When was the last time the government was sanctioned for defending the constitutional validity of one of its laws?" If I do write this article, Howard Wasserman just became my epigraph.
Not necessarily the case here, but this could be used as a save-face justification for not pursuing cases initiated by a previous administration, or on disputes between the political and legal leadership in an administration? Or does our political culture allow partisanship in such decisions to be blatant?
ReplyDeleteI doubt it would be used that way, for two reasons -- one, because declining to pursue such cases is relatively common at least when transitioning from one admin to the next, and second, because Rule 11 sanctions come with such a harsh expressive message ("this position isn't just wrong, its frivolous") that I think it would be less "face-saving" and more "face-slapping."
ReplyDelete