US Markets Loading H M S In the news. Erin Fuchs. Sign up for notifications from Insider! Stay up to date with what you want to know. Loading Something is loading. Email address. Deal icon An icon in the shape of a lightning bolt. Page 5. Page 6 Facebook Twitter Permalink. Chief Justice Roberts begins the majority opinion by explaining that the courts can only take on an actual "case or controversy," which does not include every kind of dispute but only those appropriate for the judicial process as opposed to the political process and the legislative branch.
That means, he wrote, that the parties involved must be able to show that they are qualified to sue -- among other issues, they must show that they are being harmed. Those arguing in favor of the California ban did not have standing, the opinion states, and so the justices and the appeals court below them could not consider the case.
For there to be such a case or controversy, it is not enough that the party invoking the power of the court have a keen interest in the issue. Because we find that petitioners do not have standing, we have no authority to decide this case on the merits, and neither did the Ninth Circuit.
View Page 6. Page 13 Facebook Twitter Permalink. Justice Roberts earlier compared the activists supporting Proposition 8 to "concerned bystanders," and here writes that their argument that they stood in for the interests of California's state government was not enough for the court to consider them affected parties or official agents of the state.
Without a judicially cognizable interest of their own, petitioners attempt to invoke that of someone else. Ohio, U. Well, Mr. Olson, is it your position that the only people who could defend a ballot, a law that's adopted in California through the ballot initiative are the Attorney General and the governor, so that if the Attorney General and the governor don't like the ballot initiative, it will go undefended?
Is that your position? In a State that has initiative, the whole process would be defeated if the only people who could defend the statute are the elected public officials. The whole point — you know this better than I do, because you're from California — the whole point of the initiative process was to allow the people to circumvent public officials about whom they were suspicious.
So if you reject that proposition, what is left is the proposition that the State — State law can choose some other person, some other group to defend the constitutionality of a State law. And the California Supreme Court has told us that the Plaintiffs in this case are precisely those people.
Olson, I think that you're not answering the fundamental fear. And so — and — and the amici brief that sets forth this test of fiduciary duty doesn't quite either. The assumption is that there are not executive officials who want to defend the law. They don't like it. No one's going to do that. So how do you get the law defended in that situation? The three justices' questions anticipated their dissent today, which made an impassioned argument for why the court should have granted standing and considered the Hollingsworth case further.
Led by Kennedy, the dissenters argue that their colleagues failed to "take into account the fundamental principles or the principle dynamics of the initiative system. Particularly worrisome to the dissenters is that by denying standing, the court effectively undermined the ballot initiative system — and not just in California, but in "the 26 other States that permit initiatives and popular referendums.
Imagine, for instance, that California experiences a sudden and dramatic spike in air pollution. State legislators and the governor — who, let's say, receive a ton of campaign contributions from the auto industry — won't pass a bill to limit vehicle emissions, so voters decide to put it on the ballot instead.
It passes with clear and overwhelming support. The auto industry challenges the law in federal district court and wins, but state officials decline to appeal the ruling. Under Hollingsworth , that leaves nobody able to pick up the baton and defend the vehicle emissions law.
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