Gene Schaerr | |
|---|---|
 Schaerr in 2018 | |
| Born | Gene C. Schaerr April 15, 1957 Kanab, Utah, U.S. |
| Education | Brigham Young University (BA) Yale University (MA, JD) |
| Occupation | Attorney |
Gene C. Schaerr (born April 15, 1957) [1] is an American attorney.
Gene Schaerr | |
|---|---|
| Schaerr in 2018 | |
| Born | Gene C. Schaerr April 15, 1957 Kanab, Utah, U.S. |
| Education | Brigham Young University (BA) Yale University (MA, JD) |
| Occupation | Attorney |
Gene C. Schaerr (born April 15, 1957) [1] is an American attorney.
Schaerr was born in Kanab, Utah, and educated in the public schools. In 1981, he received a B.A. degree from Brigham Young University, and then earned master's degrees in economics and philosophy from Yale University in 1985 and 1986. After graduating from Yale Law School in 1985, where he was a member of the Yale Law Journal , he served as a law clerk for D.C. Circuit Judge Ken Starr, and from 1986 to 1987 for U.S. Supreme Court Justices Warren Burger and Antonin Scalia. [1]
Schaerr is a litigator in state and federal appellate courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. [2] [3] In 2014, he was chosen to represent the state of Utah as outside counsel in Kitchen v. Herbert , the state's legal action defending the state ban on same-sex marriage. [3] [4] [5] In 2015, he also submitted an amici curiae brief on behalf of 100 scholars of marriage to the U.S. Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges , [6] the landmark Supreme Court case on same-sex marriage. The brief argued, among other things, that consistent with patterns in European countries and American states that have adopted same-sex marriage, opposite-sex marriage rates will likely drop as a result of redefining marriage as a genderless institution. This will result, over the next fertility cycle (30 years), in fewer children born to married parents, fewer children born overall since unmarried women have lower birth rates, and more abortions since unmarried women have higher rates of abortion. [7] Although the latter claim was criticized in various press outlets, [8] [9] [10] Schaerr defended the brief and its use of decomposition analysis—a technique frequently used by demographers—on the blog Bench Memos. [11] [12]
Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution requires U.S. states to provide attorneys to criminal defendants who are unable to afford their own. The case extended the right to counsel, which had been found under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to impose requirements on the federal government, by imposing those requirements upon the states as well.
An amicus curiae is an individual or organization that is not a party to a legal case, but that is permitted to assist a court by offering information, expertise, or insight that has a bearing on the issues in the case. Whether an amicus brief will be considered is typically under the court's discretion. The phrase is legal Latin and the origin of the term has been dated to 1605–1615. The scope of amici curiae is generally found in the cases where broad public interests are involved and concerns regarding civil rights are in question.
Utah Constitutional Amendment 3 was an amendment to the Utah state constitution that sought to define marriage as a union exclusively between a man and woman. It passed in the November 2, 2004, election, as did similar amendments in ten other states.
Liberty Counsel is a 501(c)(3) Christian ministry that engages in strategic litigation to promote evangelical Christian values. Liberty Counsel was founded in 1989 by its chairman Mathew Staver and its president Anita L. Staver, who are attorneys and married to each other. The Southern Poverty Law Center has listed Liberty Counsel as an anti-LGBT hate group, a designation the group has disputed. The group is a Christian ministry.
The Thomas More Law Center is a Christian, conservative, nonprofit, public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and active throughout the United States. According to the Thomas More Law Center website, its goals are to "preserve America's Judeo-Christian heritage, defend the religious freedom of Christians, restore time-honored moral and family values, protect the sanctity of human life, and promote a strong national defense and a free and sovereign United States of America".
Barbara Dale Underwood is an American lawyer serving as the solicitor general of New York. She was first appointed to the position in January 2007 by Andrew Cuomo, who was then serving as the state's attorney general. Underwood was reappointed in 2011 by Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
Theodore Harold Frank is an American lawyer, activist, and legal writer based in Washington, D.C. He is the counsel of record and petitioner in Frank v. Gaos, the first Supreme Court case to deal with the issue of cy pres in class action settlements; he is one of the few Supreme Court attorneys ever to argue his own case. He wrote the vetting report of vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin for the John McCain campaign in the 2008 presidential election. He founded the Center for Class Action Fairness (CCAF) in 2009; it temporarily merged with the Competitive Enterprise Institute in 2015, but as of 2019 CCAF is now part of the new Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, a free-market nonprofit public-interest law firm founded by Frank and his CCAF colleague Melissa Holyoak.
Same-sex marriage has been legal in Utah since October 6, 2014. On December 20, 2013, the state began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples as a result of the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah's ruling in the case of Kitchen v. Herbert, which found that barring same-sex couples from marrying violates the U.S. Constitution. The issuance of those licenses was halted during the period of January 6, 2014 until October 6, 2014, following the resolution of a lawsuit challenging the state's ban on same-sex marriage. On that day, following the U.S. Supreme Court's refusal to hear an appeal in a case that found Utah's ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the state to recognize same-sex marriage.
Monte Neil Stewart is the founding president of the Marriage Law Foundation, the former United States Attorney for Nevada, and a former Special Assistant Attorney General and Counsel to the Governor of Utah.
Samuel Robert Bagenstos is an American attorney and academic who is the General Counsel of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. From January 2021 until June 2022, he served as the general counsel for the Office of Management and Budget. He is a former law professor at the University of Michigan, a job he returned to after serving for two years as the principal deputy assistant attorney general in the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division under Attorney General Eric Holder and Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez.
Joseph W. Jacquot is the general counsel to the governor of the State of Florida. Previously Jacquot was the chief deputy attorney general of the State of Florida from 2007 to 2011. He successfully argued before the United States Supreme Court in the landmark Miranda warning case Florida v. Powell and initiated the constitutional lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare").
John J. Bursch was the 10th Michigan Solicitor General. He was appointed by Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette on February 28, 2011. Prior to being Michigan Solicitor General, Bursch served as chair of the Appellate Practice and Public-Affairs Litigation Groups at Warner Norcross & Judd. Bursch argued in more than 6% of all the cases the U.S. Supreme Court heard during his tenure as solicitor general. Bursch returned to private practice at Warner Norcross & Judd in December 2013, and founded his own law firm in 2016, Bursch Law.
Cardona v. Shinseki was an appeal brought in the United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (CAVC) of a decision by the Board of Veterans' Appeals upholding the denial of service-connected disability benefits for the dependent wife of a female veteran. The United States Department of Veterans Affairs denied the disability benefits based on the definition of "spouse" as "a person of the opposite sex" under federal statute. On March 11, 2014, the CAVC dismissed the case as moot after the Secretary of Veterans Affairs advised the Court that he would neither defend nor enforce the federal statute. Cardona subsequently received full payment of her spousal benefits, retroactive to her date of application.
Kitchen v. Herbert, 961 F.Supp.2d 1181, affirmed, 755 F.3d 1193 ; stay granted, 134 S.Ct. 893 (2014); petition for certiorari denied, No. 14-124, 2014 WL 3841263, is the federal case that successfully challenged Utah's constitutional ban on marriage for same-sex couples and similar statutes. Three same-sex couples filed suit in March 2013, naming as defendants Utah Governor Gary R. Herbert, Attorney General John Swallow, and Salt Lake County Clerk Sherrie Swensen in their official capacities.
Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus, 573 U.S. 149 (2014), is a United States Supreme Court case.
Kimberly Jean Davis is an American former county clerk for Rowan County, Kentucky, who gained international attention in August 2015 when she defied a U.S. federal court order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Jonathan Franklin Mitchell is an American lawyer, academic, and legal theorist who served as the Solicitor General of Texas from 2010 to 2015. He has argued seven cases before the Supreme Court of the United States. Mitchell has served on the faculties of Stanford Law School, the University of Texas School of Law, the George Mason University School of Law, and the University of Chicago Law School. In 2018, he opened a private solo legal practice in Austin, Texas.
Frank v. Gaos, 586 U.S. ___ (2019), was a per curiam decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in a case concerning the practice of cy pres settlements in class action lawsuits. Following oral argument, the court asked the parties to submit supplemental briefs addressing whether the parties had Article III standing to pursue the case in federal courts. Supplemental briefing was completed on December 21, 2018. On March 20, 2019, the court remanded the case to the Ninth Circuit to address the plaintiffs’ standing in light of Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins.
Sharp v. Murphy, 591 U.S. ___ (2020), was a Supreme Court of the United States case of whether Congress disestablished the Muscogee (Creek) Nation reservation. After holding the case from the 2018 term, the case was decided on July 9, 2020, in a per curiam decision following McGirt v. Oklahoma that, for the purposes of the Major Crimes Act, the reservations were never disestablished and remain Indian country.
Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt, 587 U.S. 230 (2019), was a United States Supreme Court case that determined that unless they consent, states have sovereign immunity from private suits filed against them in the courts of another state. The 5–4 decision overturned precedent set in a 1979 Supreme Court case, Nevada v. Hall. This was the third time that the litigants had presented their case to the Court, as the Court had already ruled on the issue in 2003 and 2016.
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