Good news and bad news here. The good news is obvious, but the bad news is that this case was really about standing. These justices have just ruled that individual citizens do not have the standing to challenge this law. That was the question before the court here, and that’s the exact question they’re going to be asked in California’s Prop. 8 lawsuit, whether the individual citizens who proposed Prop. 8 have legal standing to defend the law when the governor will not. Kennedy, who wrote this decision, has tipped his hand that he does not favor granting standing to individuals.
From what I read in today’s newspaper about standing, to paraphrase, Kennedy said that people had a right to spend their own money as they wish and it was nobody’s business to try and stop them, so that’s why the court denied standing. The opposition said it wasn’t their money, it belonged to the state. Too bad.
Maybe “standing” isn’t a bad thing in some cases.