A Bessemer attorney, who is against last year’s order by the U.S. Supreme Court legalizing gay marriage nationwide, on Wednesday filed a federal lawsuit against the five justices on the high court who made up the majority in that ruling.
“Defendants (justices) goes beyond a manipulation, twist, strain, or unique perspective on the text and crosses over in to an abandonment of the Constitution,” attorney Austin Burdick states in the lawsuit.
Burdick filed the lawsuit in Birmingham in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama. The case names Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kegan.
Burdick is suing the five justices for violations of the 5th Amendment, breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and seeks, among other things compensatory damages, punitive damages, mental anguish damages, and attorney’s fees and costs. The lawsuit seeks recovery of damages exceeding $6 million.
“For centuries the Constitution has been the instrument of protection for the rights of citizens against government intrusion,” Burdick states in the lawsuit. He says “specifically, since the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868, interpreted the plain language of the Constitution and that amendment to be a guarantee of freedom from government interference in individual liberty.”
The 14th Amendment, which states that “no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws” has been rewritten by the five members of the court, Burdick claims in the lawsuit.
Burdick claims in the lawsuit that the five justices through their opinion have now rewritten that amendment to allow an expansion of government authority, not a guarantee of liberty. “This ‘interpretation’ is no interpretation at all. It is a tyrannical usurpation of authority to rewrite the Constitution,” he states in the lawsuit.
Click here to continue reading this lawsuit.
