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So lemme get this straight.
- Lorie Smith, owner of 303 Creative, doesn’t actually design websites. Her company doesn’t actually provide that service.
- Stewart (last name withheld) didn’t ask for a wedding site for him and his husband from her.
- Stewart isn’t gay. He’s married to a woman and they have a kid together.
- AND what could possibly be the most ironic occupation for Stewart to have? He’s a web designer.
You can’t make this shit up. Or I guess you can. Because Lorie and the Supreme Court did.
That’s just the result of the inability to challenge laws unless you’re personally affected.
In Germany we have something called abstrakte Normen-Kontrolle, which does exactly what it sounds it does: Federal or state governments or a quarter of members of parliament can ask the Consitutional Court to review a law in the abstract and decide wether it’s compatible with the constitution.
This saves a lot of headaches when it comes to laws that are on the books but unenforced, or are new and so far unchallenged.
The whole idea of “standing” is to prevent contrived arguments about chipmunks and candycanes from driving jurisprudence. I think it’s a reasonable bar to have, as long as it is enforced evenly, which in this case it obviously was not.
Standing is important to maintain to keep courts from being completely overrun, but it’s also important to have a way to get cases heard without standing in extraordinary circumstances. A handful of times laws get passed that negatively affect many people, but not enough to qualify for standing, effectively making the law above reproach, which is bad for everyone.
I feel like y’all are saying the same things.
Which is probably why it’s restricted to the parties I mentioned above.