An analysis of the retirement of California Chief Justice Ron George
by SaveCalifornia.com President Randy Thomasson
Morally-liberal and a judicial activist at heart and in practice, Ron George, the chief justice of the California Supreme Court, has announced he won’t run for reelection in November.
George’s bowing out means the only Supreme Court justice on the November ballot is Carlos Moreno, a Gray Davis appointee who is even more to the left. Moreno officiated at homosexual weddings and was the only judge who voted to overturn Prop. 8 after it became part of the California Constitution. (SaveCalifornia.com provides this solely for educational purposes and does not support or oppose candidates.)
How will Ron George be remembered? Pro-family conservatives cannot forget that Ron George is a judicial activist who doesn’t care much about the written California Constitution.
In May 2008, George authored the infamous 4 to 3 decision inventing homosexual “marriages.” George based his ruling on the “equal protection” clause of Article 1, Section 7 of the California Constitution, which mirrors the post-Civil War 14th Amendment guaranteeing to black former slaves all the legal rights afforded white freemen.
But “equal protection” mean the laws must give equal opportunity to individuals no matter their race, not their behavior. Yet Ron George broke his pledge to defend the written California Constitution when he opined that couples (different from individuals) who are “gay or lesbian” (not in the Constitution) have the right to marriage licenses (which were not in the Constitution until Prop. 8 passed in Nov. 2008).
You see, Ron George lets his own beliefs trump his boss, which is the California Constitution. He invented homosexual “marriages” because he personally believes some people are born homosexuals (there is zero scientific evidence for this) just like some people are born black:
But as he read the legal arguments, the 68-year-old moderate Republican was drawn by memory to a long ago trip he made with his European immigrant parents through the American South. There, the signs warning “No Negro” or “No colored” left “quite an indelible impression on me,” he recalled in a wide-ranging interview Friday. “I think,” he concluded, “there are times when doing the right thing means not playing it safe.”
(Source: Los Angeles Times, May 18, 2008)
But that’s not all. Don’t forget 1997, when Ron George authored the 4 to 3 ruling striking down California state law requiring parental consent for a minor’s abortion. This was scandalous. After a pro-life justice retired, George led the charge to vacate the court’s earlier 4 to 3 ruling that had actually upheld the parental consent law. Gov. Pete Wilson had appointed the pro-abortion Ming Chin, and George took full opportunity to kill more babies.
In his horrible ruling, George hearkened back to his predecessor, Rose Bird, who had redefined the paperwork privacy clause in the California Constitution to somehow mean a teenager’s right to a tax-funded abortion. George expanded this unconstitutional “case law” to say that parents have absolutely no right to know about or to stop an abortion on their pre-teen and teen daughters.
Wait, there’s more. Ron George participated in several other bad rulings that violated the strict reading of the California Constitution or rulings that had nothing to do with the Constitution: requiring rental property owners to kill off their religious values and rent their own property to unmarried, fornicating couples (1996); inventing homosexual “second parent” adoptions (2003); forcing businesses that offer marriage benefits to the public to offer the same to homosexual couples (2005); and squashing the religious freedom of doctors who don’t want to artificially inseminate homosexuals (2008).
Who will replace Ron George on the Supreme Court? Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will nominate a replacement for George, whose final day on the bench will be Jan. 2, 2011. That nomination will go on this year’s November ballot.
Article 6, Section 16 of the California Constitution says if a justice does not seek reelection, “the governor, before September 16, shall nominate a candidate.” That candidate will then stand for election “at the next general election,” i.e., Nov. 2, 2010. So if you like Schwarzenegger’s pick, you can vote yes; if you don’t like the nominee, you can vote no, and the next governor will do the nominating.
My take? Since Republican governors Ronald Reagan, George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson all nominated or elevated Ron George at one time or another, you can’t trust anyone to put judges on courts unless both the appointer and the appointee both swear to abide solely by the WRITTEN Constitution and its original intent, not what governors or judges think it should say.
“…the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them. The Executive not only dispenses the honors, but holds the sword of the community. The legislature not only commands the purse, but prescribes the rules by which the duties and rights of every citizen are to be regulated. The judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither force nor will, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.”
Alexander Hamilton, leading author of The Federalist Papers, first
Secretary of the Treasury
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