Drop the magistrates opt-out law before legal bills mount

Even as Phil Berger, president pro tem of the North Carolina Senate, was pushing on with his right-wing crusade to allow magistrates and registers of deeds employees to opt out of assisting with or performing same-sex marriages, the U.S. Supreme Court was mulling its ruling on the constitutionality of gay marriage.

As we now know, the high court upheld that right, which would seem to render Berger’s folly irrelevant and moot.

Unfortunately, however, the “religious liberties” law passed, despite serious constitutional questions about whether sworn public officials can simply not do their duty because of their personal religious views. That would seem a blatant violation of the principle of church-state separation. Not to mention it selectively offers those officials a right to pick and choose, in effect, whether they’re going to do their jobs.

If it faces a legal challenge from the American Civil Liberties Union or individuals, it almost certainly will fall, and thus Berger and his mates in the General Assembly will have wasted taxpayers dollars defending the indefensible, a law created purely on political ideology to cater to the extreme wing of the Republican Party.

Fourteen of the state’s 672 magistrates have declined to perform same-sex marriages. If they recuse themselves, they’re not allowed to marry anyone for at least six months. Sarah Preston of the state ACLU noted the small number shows “the legislature made this a bigger deal than it needs to be.”

True enough, but allowing public officials to selectively do or not do their duty opens the way for all sorts of problems. Will they decline to do their duty if they have religious objections to marrying people of different religious denominations? That may sound like a fanciful question, but it’s legitimate.

The law, a waste of time and energy, needs to be struck down before the state engages in another useless legal fight just because Republican legislative leaders are spending the public’s money instead of their own.

This story was originally published July 8, 2015 at 7:21 PM with the headline "Drop the magistrates opt-out law before legal bills mount."