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| Arizona Republican Governor Jan Brewer |
By Brody Levesque | PHOENIX, AZ -- Arizona Republican Governor Jan Brewer filed a petition for a writ of certiorari last Monday July 2, requesting that the U. S. Supreme Court overturns the Ninth Circuit's ruling last September that allows Arizona's state employees to keep their same-sex partners benefits, including health insurance.
The petition comes three months after the Ninth Circuit denied a request by the state's lawyers to re-hear the case en banc, [with the entire 11-judge panel].
The appellate court had upheld a U. S. District Court ruling to place a preliminary injunction on the law, which prevented Arizona from implementing a law that would have barred state employees' same-sex partners from remaining on their health plans.
"The district court found that the plaintiffs demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits, because they showed that the law adversely affected a classification of employees on the basis of sexual orientation, and did not further any of the state’s claimed justifiable interests," wrote the Ninth Circuit 3 judge panel.
Brewer had signed the law in 2009 and it was scheduled to take effect last year. Her predecessor, Janet Napolitano- now the Secretary of Homeland Security- had authorised health benefits for state employees' domestic partners in April 2008.
In the initial suit, the nine plaintiffs -- all state employees in same-sex domestic partnerships -- stated that if enacted, the loss of health coverage for their partners would cause "serious financial and emotional harm." The Ninth Circuit affirmed this complaint, acknowledging that there was a high likelihood of "irreparable harm" if the law were to go into effect.
The plaintiffs in the case, (Diaz), have until August 6 to respond to the Governor's latest legal maneuver.
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1 comments:
Brewer is living up to her name, brewing up vile concoctions harmful to her own Arizona constituents. I just wish that people who ran for public office were actually interested in doing good, and not just spreading their own illusionary version of reality.
What was it I read recently? It goes something like this, "It's not the asses you have to watch out for, but the asses with ambitions."
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