NOM BLOG

Peters: PA AG's Refusal to Defend Law is Result of Bad Prop 8 Ruling

 

Juliet Eilperin of The Washington Post:

Pennsylvania attorney general Kathleen Kane announced Thursday afternoon she will not defend the state in a federal lawsuit filed this week challenging the constitutionality of the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, calling the prohibition “wholly unconstitutional.”

...Thomas Peters, spokesman for the National Organization for Marriage, said Kane’s refusal to defend the ban represented a sort of “pocket veto” of the law.

“This is just one more example of how the Supreme Court set a bad precedent [last month] in allowing elected officials to not represent the will of the people when they find it expedient,” he said an in interview.

... Pennsylvania General Counsel James D. Schultz said in a statement he and his colleagues “are surprised that the Attorney General, contrary to her constitutional duty under the Commonwealth Attorneys Act, has decided not to defend a Pennsylvania statute lawfully enacted by the General Assembly, merely because of her personal beliefs.”

... the state GOP chairman Rob Gleason released a statement calling it “unacceptable for Attorney General Kathleen Kane to put her personal politics ahead of her taxpayer-funded job by abdicating her responsibilities.”

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