A Stitch in Haste

The California Supreme Court has voided the roughly 4,000 gay marriage licenses issued by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and other local officials:

The California Supreme Court on Thursday voided the nearly 4,000 same-sex marriages sanctioned in San Francisco this year and ruled unanimously that the mayor overstepped his authority by issuing licenses to gay and lesbian couples.

The court said the city illegally issued the certificates and performed the ceremonies, since state law defined marriage as a union between a man and woman.

The justices separately decided with a 5-2 vote to nullify the 3,995 marriages peformed between Feb. 12 and March 11, when the court halted the weddings. Their legality, Justice Joyce Kennard wrote, must wait until courts resolve the constitutionality of state laws that restrict marriages to opposite-sex couples.

From the opinion:

[A]lthough the present proceeding may be viewed by some as presenting primarily a question of the substantive legal rights of same-sex couples, in actuality the legal issue before us implicates the interest of all individuals in ensuring that public officials execute their official duties in a manner that respects the limits of the authority granted to them as officeholders. In short, the legal question at issue -- the scope of the authority entrusted to our public officials -- involves the determination of a fundamental question that lies at the heart of our political system: the role of the rule of law in a society that justly prides itself on being "a government of laws, and not of men" (or women).

The decision is absolutely correct, and the court is to be saluted. This case has nothing to do with the constitutionality or legality (or the morality or the wisdom) of California's same-sex marriage ban. It was solely about a renegade mayor playing benevolent dictator. He needed to be slapped down, and slapped down hard. He should probably be removed from office.

How exactly was Mayor Newsom behaving any different from, say, Roy Moore? How dare he unilaterally say, in essence, "The public be damned!"

A mayor is an executive, as in "execute" the laws. Not make them, not ignore them, not declare them unconstitutional. Especially state laws, when he is a local official.

I can put it in slightly different terms: If you're the mayor of San Francisco, or any other local executive, and you don't like a law, or think it's unconstitutional, and for reasons of conscience are unable to faithfully execute that law and are either unable or unwilling to change it through the normal legislative and judicial processes -- then resign!

Or would that be just a little too much publicity for Mayor Newsom?

Other views at Volokh, Outside the Beltway, Hit and Run, Citizen Smash and BoiFromTroi.

(Cross-linked at Outside the Beltway.)