I don't believe you're right about en banc cases Rick. In several of the marriage equality cases the losers (the anti-equality folks in all instances) either discussed or requested an en banc hearing. None were granted. But they would surely have not even attempted this step if losing would have foreclosed the possibility of going to SCOTUS. It would have been such a foolish move that not even Liberty Counsel would have gone that route.
To the extent I can find anything pertinent it appears that federal court rules treat the results of an en banc appeal just as they would treat any other appeal.
What part of a civil ceremony did George not get? The "civil" part. Many on the religious right would prefer not to recognize civil marriages as actual marriages.
Despite some of the testimony, and while it is, on its face, a reasonable thing to think about, I very much doubt whether the list of horribles Gallagher and her friends project would actually happen under current law because they would represent point-of-view discrimination which is already illegal. Like most of what the Right proposes, FADA is a solution in search of a problem and would at best create issues where none currently exist.
That seems to be an intermittent error on this site. In the past I've sometimes been able to fix it by logging out and then logging back in. Other times that hasn't worked and I've needed to report it to the admins.
Read the decision. It's a masterpiece.
Just in case any elaboration is needed, the relevant part of the "Obergefell language" is the phrase "on the same terms and conditions." HB1523 creates a class of married couples and couples seeking marriage licenses for the purpose of treating them differently from other similarly situated couples. That's the specific violation of the "Obergefell language."
"Such as it is indeed." It's basically a bunch of whining combined with the now-typical excuse that the law addresses a problem (which of course has never existed).
There's something both pathetic and absurd about crafting a law which says in effect "here is a list of the kinds of people one may discriminate against without fear of punishment and here are the reasons you can give for doing so." I cannot wait for this and similar laws to be challenged in court.
On the other hand by going out of their way to discriminate the rule-breakers end up in a worse position. Court rulings on violations of basic civil rights tend to be more all-encompassing than legislation would be.
BTW it's the Establishment Clause. :)
Allow religion to be an excuse for one form of discrimination and we can look forward to religion's being invoked to permit other forms of discrimination as well.
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Ruckus