Below I touch upon some of the common policy arguments regarding Florida’s adoption statute, but it’s worth noting a very important legal argument that often gets lost in the shuffle with such issues. The Supreme Court’s role is not to take the policy arguments below and determine which is more persuasive. The Court’s function is simply to interpret the law and ensure it’s consistent with Constitutional boundaries. As the Supreme Court itself said in Federal Commun. Comm’n v. Beach Commun., judicial review does “not provide courts a license to judge the wisdom, fairness, or logic of legislative choices.” So long as no Constitutional right is in play – and there are none violated here – the legislation must only be rationally related to a legitimate state interest. On that point the Supreme Court had it right. Some may argue that Florida has outlined a weak state interest and/or doesn’t meet it very well, but it’s a legitimate one nonetheless and is rationally related (even if poorly related) to that interest. The ensuing debates that we’ll hear from pundits over the next few weeks are debates that should take place in the legislature, not the courts.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 11th, 2005 at 11:10 am by Mystery Man and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.