Pollvogt on Justice Kennedy’s Reasoning in Roemer v. Evans & Schuette v. BAMN

Susannah William Pollvogt (University of Denver Sturm College of Law) has posted Thought Experiment: What If Justice Kennedy Had Approached Romer v. Evans the Way He Approached Schuette v. BAMN? on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

In 1996, Justice Kennedy authored a bold — perhaps even revolutionary — opinion protecting the rights of minorities under the Equal Protection Clause. In 2014, Justice Kennedy authored yet another major equal protection decision, but this time refusing to protect minority interests — despite the undeniable factual and legal parallels between the two cases.

To emphasize the factual parallels and yet divergent outcomes in these cases, this essay presents an imagined opinion that runs the facts of Romer through the reasoning of Scheutte. The end product is virtually seamless.