States Rights, or Not – Recently liberals cheered when a Florida judge held that a school voucher program violated the state constitution. Perhaps freedom-loving state and local officials around the country could still maintain that wall of separation and the evil Supremes would not succeed after all in establishing religion by naked judicial fiat.
But they jeered when a Pennsylvania judge temporarily enjoined an abortion. According to ABC News’s THE NOTE, “[t]hat decision momentarily raised the worst fears of abortion rights advocates” — local judges blocking federal constitutional rights.
Eugene Volokh has a typically thoughtful post on the issue of incongruent state and federal constitutional rights, but for most combatants in the culture wars states rights does not seem to be a matter of principle so much as which states, and which rights, are involved.
