Massachussetts court finds Tenth Amendment in dumpster, brushes it off and uses it destroy Defense of Marriage act.

Dave Kopel at Volokh opines that ...

the federal District of Massachusetts, Gill v. Office of Personnel Management, and Massachusetts v. HHS. The latter case found DOMA unconstitutional, as applied to Massachusetts, because DOMA violates the Tenth Amendment by infringing the state’s traditional core sovereign power of defining lawful marriages.

He believes that

As much as liberals might applaud the result, they should be aware that the logic of his arguments, taken seriously, would undermine the constitutionality of wide swaths of federal regulatory programs and seriously constrict federal regulatory power.”

The key words here are "taken seriously".  Of course the logic will not be applied to other cases unless is serves Liberal causes.

I posted a reply which read ...

The premise of your argument is that court decisions should be consistent. It is my understanding that the purpose of the legal profession, the courts and the law schools is to develop a legal system that can take totally contradictory arguments while claiming adherence to the constitution to reach any preferred position. The concept that the use of the Tenth Amendment in this case will have any effect on the courts in future cases when the Tenth is conveniently put away is seriously naive.


And no, in case you wonder, I’m not being excessively cynical.