Jesus Christ: You can’t impeach Him and He ain’t gonna resign.
It is my understanding after reading the ruling earlier that this is now sent BACK to the DISTRICT COURT for them to issue a final ruling.
ALL States can tell the Inferior Court to go POUND SAND:
Federal courts have recognized that state-court review of constitutional questions is independent of the same authority lodged in the lower federal courts. “In passing on federal constitutional questions, the state courts and the lower federal courts have the same responsibility and occupy the same position; there is a parallelism but not paramountcy for both sets of courts are governed by the same reviewing authority of the Supreme Court.” United States ex rel.Lawrence v. Woods, 432 F.2d 1072, 1075 (7th Cir. 1970).
Although consistency between state and federal courts is desirable in that it promotes respect for the law and prevents litigants from forum-shopping, there is nothing inherently offensive about two sovereigns reaching different legal conclusions. Indeed, such results were contemplated by our federal system, and neither sovereign is required to, nor expected to, yield to the other.
Surrick v. Killion, 449 F. 3d 520, 535 (3rd Cir. 2006).
The United States Supreme Court has acknowledged that state courts “possess the authority, absent a provision for exclusive federal jurisdiction, to render binding judicial decisions that rest on their own interpretations of federal law.” Asarco Inc. v. Kadish, 490 U.S. 605, 617 (1989). Two justices of the United States Supreme Court in special writings have elaborated on this principle.
The Supremacy Clause demands that state law yield to federal law, but neither federal supremacy nor any other principle of federal law requires that a state court’s interpretation of federal law give way to a (lower) federal court’s interpretation. In our federal system, a state trial court’s interpretation of federal law is no less authoritative than that of the federal court of appeals in whose circuit the trial court is located.
Lockhart v. Fretwell, 506 U.S. 364, 375-76 (1993) (Thomas, J., concurring). See also Steffel v. Thompson, 415 U.S. 452, 482, n. 3 (1974) (Rehnquist, J., concurring) (noting that a lower- federal-court decision “would not be accorded the stare decisis effect in state court that it would have in a subsequent proceeding within the same federal jurisdiction. Although the state court would not be compelled to follow the federal holding, the opinion might, of course, be viewed as highly persuasive.”).
The word in parentheses is the key one here. State courts are not bound by decisions of lower federal courts (but the parties to those cases, which can include state governments, are). But on a question of federal law, all courts, state and federal, are bound to follow decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Jesus Christ: You can’t impeach Him and He ain’t gonna resign.