MSNBC’s Weissmann: SCOTUS Ruling ‘Tyranny’ Because Gay Marriage Case Was a ‘Hypothetical’

MSNBC legal analyst and former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Weissmann said Friday on “Deadline” that the Supreme Court’s decision involving a webpage designer who said her religious freedom was being violated is “tyranny.”

Weissmann said, “In this country, you cannot bring a case that is a hypothetical. You can’t say to the court, ‘You know, here’s a situation I’m thinking of in my mind. Can you give me a ruling on what you would do?’ You need to have something called a case or controversy. There has to be a real dispute. When you think about the fact that Supreme Court hears, what, a few dozen cases a year? Of course it needs to decide real cases, it doesn’t have enough time to do hypotheticals.”

He continued, “The thing that is so amazing about this case is that this is somebody who had no real issue. There was no complaint. There wasn’t even somebody who had opened up a business. This was somebody who said, ‘Hey, I’m thinking I might open a business and I’m thinking that I might want to discriminate against same-sex marriage couples.’ And it turns out even all of that didn’t raise a case or controversy because there was nobody who was actually asking, there was no same-sex couple who was asking for the person to do anything. So the whole thing was a hypothetical.”

He added, “Just remarkable that that becomes the vehicle. As Justice Kagan said, any court that was functioning as a court, not as a legislature, as a court, would have said there is no standing. There is no case here. We’re done. Meaning you have to wait for another vehicle, maybe you come up with the same horrendous decision later, but that is why, as a lawyer, it is so dispiriting. Because if you do not have honesty and integrity in the courts and you are not operating within the rule of law, then you’re in tyranny.”

Weissmann concluded, “This is John Locke, wherever law ends tyranny begins. If you don’t have the Supreme Court at least, you know, in good faith applying the law, it is impossible to have respect for that institution.”

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