Legal and political experts say that the Supreme Court’s hesitation stems from the idea of creating monumental changes to societal practices in one fell swoop. “There was a genuine concern about going too far, too fast,” says Charles Fried, a Harvard Law School professor and former President Ronald Reagan’s solicitor general. “I sensed a genuine regret that the court had this case before it now.”

The Supreme Court’s oral arguments this week on Prop 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) mark a historic event—it’s the first time in history the justices will hear arguments for cases advocating same-gender marriage. Their decisions could have sweeping impacts on the definition of marriage in the United States: a positive ruling could finally grant same-gender couples the right to wed nationally, affording same-gender couples equitable financial and tax benefits as heterosexual couples.

But is America really not ready for same-gender marriage to be recognized nationally? Reactions to the Supreme Court’s debate indicate that the public may feel the judges are just too old to “get it”: “Supreme Court Justices have entirely too much power. And some of them are too old to make decisions about a changing world,” tweeted Black American Author Terry McMillan, voicing similar sentiments expressed by Major League Baseball Player José Canseco Capas, Jr., and other social-media users.

Supreme Court Justices have entirely too much power.And some of them are too old to make decisions about a changing world.

— Terry McMillan (@MsTerryMcMillan) March 27, 2013

The rising support for same-gender marriage, however, is not simply a generational issue—it’s reflective of shifting American views of LGBT rights. Fifty-three percent of Americans in 2012 (up 32.5 percent from 2009) agree that same-gender couples should receive the same federal benefits as their heterosexual counterparts, according to a USA Today poll.

Opinions on same-gender marriage show increasingly positive long-term trends at an accelerated rate, according to PollingReport.com data cited by The New York Times.

But will increased public support have any affect on the high court’s decision?

Obama, Corporations Lean on Supreme Court

Increasing pressure and advocacy for same-gender marriage from high-profile politicians—including President Obama’s administration and more than 100 GOP leaders—corporations, and new legislation—such as the Pentagon’s decision to issue same-gender couple benefits—had many legal experts anticipating a victory for LGBT-rights supporters.

Amicus “friend of the court” briefs were filed to the Supreme Court, petitioning the justices to strike down Prop 8 and DOMA. Among corporations included on the brief were DiversityInc Top 50 companies Aetna, Ernst & Young, Johnson & Johnson, Marriott International, as well as Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Boehringer Ingelheim, Boston Scientific, Exelon, MassMutual, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Microsoft, New York Life, The Ogilvy Group, Pfizer, State Street Corporation, The Walt Disney Company and Xerox.

Additionally, the Howard University School of Law’s Civil Rights Clinic filed its own amicus brief, which compared Prop 8, DOMA and similar anti-same-gender-marriage bans with Jim-Crow era laws that prohibited interracial marriage and reinforced continuing discrimination against Blacks.

Developing Same-Gender-Marriage Arguments: Prop 8 & DOMA

With hearings underway, the nine Supreme Court justices reportedly have been wrestling with Prop 8, first arguing over the case’s legal standing in court and also tackling LGBT-related issues including  the definition of marriage, political consensus behind the movement, the consequences of raising children in a same-gender-couple home and the historical legalities of LGBT relationships.

“The problem with the case is that you’re really asking, particularly because of the sociological evidence you cite, for us to go into uncharted waters … it is a cliff,” Justice Anthony Kennedy, the anticipated swing vote, said. “You’re doing so in a case where the opinion is very narrow. Basically that once the state goes halfway, it has to go all the way or 70 percent of the way … I just wonder if the case was properly granted.”

“Traditional marriage has been around for thousands of years,” said Justice Samuel Alito, indicating arguments to uphold bans against same-gender marriage. “Same-sex marriage is very new … And it may turn out to be a good thing; it may turn out not to be a good thing, as the supporters of Proposition 8 apparently believe.”

The comments from the judges fall true-to-form with The New York Times’ Adam Liptak’s predictions: “The decisions will almost certainly be closely divided. Even justices who agree about the right outcome may disagree about rationales … The only remotely plausible unanimous decision is dismissal on standing grounds in the Proposition 8 case.”

Despite the seemingly negative stance of several of the Supreme Court justices, Liptak indicates that there is still hope for the same-gender-marriage movement. “Be that as it may, practitioners and justices say it is the rare oral argument that wins or loses a case,” he wrote.

5 Potential Outcomes: How Will the Supreme Court Rule?

Arguments to uphold the bans still have strong backers, in particular is Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has been labeled as the “swing vote” in both cases. Kennedy previously voiced his hesitations toward backing pro-same-gender-marriage legislations, noting his belief that “a democracy should not be dependent for its major decisions on what nine unelected people from a narrow legal background have to say.”

According to CBS News, there are five possible outcomes of the cases:

1. Same-gender marriage is constitutional: Marriage for all couples would be recognized as a right and same-gender marriage finally would be recognized by the federal government. This would also override locally held bans against same-gender marriage in 39 states.
2. Same-gender marriage is not a constitutional right. This would set a large roadblock for the LGBT-rights movement, however, states would still be able to afford LGBT-couples the right to marry.
3. Marriage and civil unions are equivalent. Obama’s Administration has levied an argument that same-gender marriage should be extended to states currently recognizing civil unions and domestic partnerships, giving these couples essentially equivalent rights as heterosexual, married couples. The difference would remain in the terminology.
4. California’s same-gender marriages protected. Prop 8 would officially be ruled as unconstitutional and bans finally and permanently would be revoked.
5. Cases are dismissed. Amicus briefs have been filed by supporters of Prop 8 claiming the proponents have no standing in court—that the initial trail court case ruling was appropriate and do not have an adverse interest, or had to have been harmed in some way, to continue a lawsuit and to come before the Supreme Court.

“Even if you lose the case, and I think that’s very unlikely, you would say that the case has been a success because it’s changed public opinion so dramatically,” Richard Socarides, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton, told Politico. “It’s really unbelievable what a successful communications and litigation strategy has combined to do in such a short time.”

Legal experts anticipate decisions on Prop 8 and DOMA to come sometime this summer.

What Would You Pay to Witness the Prop 8, DOMA Strike-Down?

LGBT-rights activists and political enthusiasts lined up for front-row seats: Many have been  rallying and camping outside the courthouse since last week, hoping to be one of the 100 people admitted free access to the courtroom hearings. And news sources report that while seats in the courtroom are free-to-attend, having someone save you a place in the days-long line will cost you upwards of $6,000 a pop.

It’s a high price that many are willing to pay: There will be no TV broadcasts, media coverage or digital updates (including Twitter and social media) allowed in the room while the oral arguments are underway. Only a transcript and an audio recording will be released once the arguments have concluded.

Prop 8: Same-Gender Marriage Disputed in California

Although the Supreme Court had struck it down just months earlier, California’s Proposition 8 ban against same-gender marriage was voted into law in 2008. Thousands of same-gender couples in the state already had been legally married but others were prevented from doing so. Proposition 8 has since been struck down by two federal courts as unconstitutional. Should the Supreme Court rule against Prop 8?

What is DOMA? A Case for Discrimination Against LGBTs

The Defense of Marriage Act originally was passed by Congress and signed into law by  President Bill Clinton’s Administration in 1996: DOMA prevents the recognition of same-gender marriage by the Federal Government. The law was struck down last year by two federal appeals courts: Boston in June 2012 and New York in October, and Windsor v. United States now challenges the law’s constitutionality and claims discrimination against LGBTs.

If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the DOMA appeal, same-gender couples in states that recognize same-gender marriage would qualify for the same federal marriage benefits, tax breaks and Social Security survivor benefits that heterosexual married couples are entitled to under the law.

—Stacy Straczynski

The post Why the Supreme Court May Not Recognize Same-Gender Marriage appeared first on DiversityInc.

This article was published by the Center for American Progress.

The Howard University School of Law is one of the oldest law schools in the country and the oldest law school at any historically black college or university (HBCU). Its Civil Rights Clinic has filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to overturn Proposition 8 by highlighting how all of the arguments against same-gender marriage equality are simply recycled variations on arguments that were used to justify prohibitions of interracial marriage until Loving v. Virginia was decided in 1967 (citations omitted):

In the Jim Crow era, the denial of marriage rights to interracial couples served as one of the most potent symbols of the less-than-equal status of  African-Americans. As recently as 1967, sixteen states still had anti-miscegenation statutes on their books; the last such statute was not officially repealed until 2000. Opponents of interracial marriage justified criminal prohibitions against such unions by pointing to the purported detrimental effect of interracial births and parentage, the supposed destruction of society if people marry between the races, and the so-called natural law rationale for keeping the races separate.

While public debate over interracial unions has generally died since Loving v. Virginia, today the opposition to marriage for same-sex couples relies on arguments strikingly similar to those raised in opposition to interracial marriage. Without acknowledging the racial provenance of these discredited arguments, opponents of marriage equality have attacked same-sex couples as a threat to American society, American families and heterosexual marriage, as an affront to the laws of God and nature, and as a menace to their children.

The brief goes on to highlight five distinct arguments that transcend the debates between marriage equality for interracial couples and marriage equality for same-gender couples:

• SOCIAL ORDER: Marriage equality is a threat to the social order and would “introduce a form of pollution to marriage.”
• SEXUALIZATION: The people who want to get married have relationships that are purely sexual, promiscuous, and “deviant.”
• PSEUDOSCIENCE: Researchers have distorted research to raise fears about supposed consequences of marriage equality.
• JUDEO-CHRISTIAN VALUES: The Bible forbids recognizing these relationships.
• CHILDREN: These relationships will cause physical and psychological damage to the children they raise.

The similarities are jarring, and Howard provides plenty of examples for each to demonstrate just how unoriginal the arguments against same-gender marriage truly are. The brief concludes with this stirring rebuke of equality’s opponents, including a quote from gay Black poet James Baldwin:

But the certainty and monotony with which some will always sound the death knell for society, morality, and faith, just because two adults choose to marry, cannot obscure the reality that we heard virtually the same arguments for almost three hundred years to justify preventing two black people from marrying and then a black man from marrying a white woman. Nor, when all is said and done, can these jeremiads about how marriage equality for same-sex couples will lead to our final slouching toward Gomorrah obscure the reality that it is “an inexorable law that one cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one’s own.”

(HT: Kathleen Perrin.)

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After weeks of anxious waiting by LGBT-rights advocates, U.S. Supreme Court justices declared that they will weigh in on the growing same-gender marriage debate. The court announced on Friday afternoon that it will hear two cases that have challenged the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California’s Proposition 8 legislation, both of which defined legal marriage as only between a man and a woman.

The outcome of these two major cases could have a sweeping impact on the definition of marriage in the United States and on same-gender couples’ right to wed.

“The nation’s high court has agreed to consider one of the most defining civil-rights issues of our time. … The DOMA and Prop 8 cases present the Supreme Court with a monumental opportunity to affirm our Constitution’s promises of liberty, equality and human dignity,” says Rea Carey, executive director, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

The announcement follows sweeping changes in public attitudes toward these unions—49 percent of Americans now agree that states should allow same-sex marriage, according to a Pew Research Center poll, compared with 39 percent in 2008.

“The recent election signaled just how far we’ve come on the path toward treating all families fairly, with landmark statewide victories affirming the right of loving, committed same-sex couples to share in the celebration and responsibilities of marriage,” says Carey. “This long road to the high court has been filled with thousands of personal conversations about why marriage matters to us, and of how discrimination hurts our families.”

DOMA: Discrimination Against LGBTs

Legal experts had anticipated that the Defense of Marriage Act would be the most likely to be heard by the Supreme Court. DOMA, which originally was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton in 1996, was struck down this year by two federal appeals courts: Boston in June and New York in October. The law prevents the government from recognizing any same-sex marriage, even if a state’s law provides for it. Windsor v. United States challenges the law, saying it amounts to discrimination against LGBTs in those states that allow same-gender marriages.

If the Supreme Court agrees with the appeals courts, same-gender couples in states that recognize same-gender marriage would be recognized equally under the law and qualify for federal marriage benefits, tax breaks and Social Security survivor benefits.

What Is Proposition 8?

Proposition 8 is a same-gender marriage ban in California that was voted into law in 2008—just months after the California Supreme Court had struck it down. This left thousands of California same-gender couples legally married while preventing others from doing so. Since then, Proposition 8 has been struck down by two federal courts as unconstitutional.

LGBT: How Many States Recognize Same-Gender Marriage?

According to the Human Rights Campaign, 15.8 percent of Americans now live in states that support marriage equality. If California’s Proposition 8 is struck down, that number will jump to 27.9 percent.

Currently nine states recognize same-gender marriages: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, Iowa and Washington, plus the District of Columbia. Rights for same-gender couples are recognized in Oregon, California, Nevada, Illinois, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Delaware and Hawaii. For more facts on the LGBT population and states’ laws regarding same-gender marriage, please read our LGBT Pride Facts & Figures.

Many of the DiversityInc Top 50 Companies proactively provide additional benefits and services for same-gender couples, both employees and customers. For example, Wells Fargo (No. 33 in The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity) launched an Accredited Domestic Partner Advisor program, which the company presented at our Innovation Fest!, to specifically help LGBT clients with their unique financial situations. Watch the video below.

All of the companies on the DiversityInc Top 10 Companies for LGBT Employees received 100 percent ratings on the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index. These are among the 38 total DiversityInc Top 50 companies that earned a 100 percent rating.

Also read:

The DiversityInc Top 10 Companies for LGBT Employees

Ask the White Guy: LGBT Rights Are Human Rights

CEI Index: Twice As Many Top 50 Companies Have 100% Ratings vs. Fortune 500

DOMA Rejected by Federal Court in N.Y.

Same-Gender Financial Crisis? You Must Watch This

Real Diversity Leadership: CEOs of E&Y, AT&T on Boy Scout Gay Ban

President Obama Supports Marriage Equality

Gay-Marriage Ban Struck Down: Why Your Company Should Care

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Justices recently held an hour-long oral argument to discuss whether a person without the ability to hire or discipline employees can qualify as a supervisor in racial, sexual and religious discrimination cases. An employer automatically assumes liability if a supervisor is accused of harassment; when a coworker is accused, the victim must prove neglect on the part of the employer to extend liability.

Liable for Discrimination?

The debate stems from the Vance v. Ball State University racial discrimination case, in which Mattea Vance claimed her “supervisor,” Sandra Davis, created a racially hostile working environment.

The federal court—which had defined a supervisor as the power to hire, fire, demote or discipline—threw out Vance’s case, as Davis’ job responsibilities did not include these functions. Vance appealed because the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) defines “supervisor” as anyone who has authority to assign or direct daily work activities or recommend employment actions. Listen to the radio broadcast to learn more.

“There are lots of situations where people have power over other employees when they don’t have the power to fire them, to discipline them, to promote them, to set their wages or things like that,” says University of Virginia law professor Daniel Ortiz, who represents Vance. The AARP and National Partnership for Women & Families also are backing Vance.

“This is consistent with workplaces across America today, where jobs are less hierarchical, more collaborative, and so where you have got more senior employees by virtue of their experience or job title, just a paper title, are in a broad sense team leaders of the like in the workplace,” Gregory Garre, representing the university, told CNN. “That doesn’t mean they are supervisors in any traditional sense.”

Will Discrimination Lawsuits Increase?

If the Supreme Court rules in Vance’s favor, it could potentially increase the number of discrimination cases that actually make it to court. The conservative justices argued that a less-restrictive standard could leave companies suffering for the acts of mid-level employees, which would fall under scrutiny.

A decision is not expected until sometime after winter 2013.

The post New ‘Supervisor’ Definitions Could Increase Discrimination Lawsuits appeared first on DiversityInc.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati lifted Michigan’s ban on affirmative action, declaring it unconstitutional. The referendum, known as Proposition 2 and passed by 58 percent of voters in 2006, was declared illegal because it “undermines the Equal Protection Clause’s guarantee that all citizens ought to have equal access to the tools of political change,” Judge R. Guy Cole Jr. wrote in the majority opinion.

Additionally, the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), the group that challenged the ban, says it expects the number of Black and Latino students at universities to at least double once affirmative action is reinstituted.

Reactions to Affirmative Action in Michigan

“We are pleased that the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals has made the common-sense ruling that diversity can be a part of the consideration in university admissions, state hiring and state contracting. The private sector takes affirmative steps regularly to ensure that they have hiring, promotion and contracting practices that are inclusive,” says Thomas Costello, president and CEO of the Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion.

He continues, “It is foolish to prevent the public sector from using the best practices of our most successful businesses and corporations. We hope that Michigan will again begin the judicious use of affirmative-action policies to ensure true equal access to opportunity in our state.”

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, however, has sworn to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, citing the need for merit-based admissions and a desire to uphold the fair rule of law. And Jennifer Gratz, the white plaintiff in the 2003 Supreme Court case that challenged University of Michigan undergraduate admissions policies, wrote on her Facebook wall: “The court has given me a clear mission: I must re-engage in the fight to guarantee fair and equal treatment for all. The court has no right to overturn the will of the people and decide that equality is unconstitutional.”

Read more reactions to the ruling.

What’s Affirmative Action’s Future?

The decision comes at a critical watershed for affirmative action—the U.S. Supreme Court currently is examining whether race-based college admissions are constitutional as a whole. The Fisher v. University of Texas case, which was heard in October and should be decided next year, could result in the repeal of the historic Grutter v. Bollinger decision from 2003, which upheld race was a viable factor in determining college acceptance.

Corporations who filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of affirmative action in the Fisher case—and attested to the bottom-line benefits of maintaining a diverse pipeline—include several DiversityInc Top 50 companies: Aetna (No. 24), Merck & Co. (No. 16), Northrop Grumman (No. 42) and Procter & Gamble (No. 5).

For more on affirmative action, read the following:

Ask the White Guy: Racism and Affirmative Action—Why White Victims Are the Key to the Solution

Affirmative Action Benefits Whites Too … More Than You Think

Affirmative Action: Why Is Ward Connerly Wrong?

The post Affirmative Action Not Dead Yet: Appeals Court Strikes Down Michigan Ban appeared first on DiversityInc.

Question:

I would love to see your response to this article, A New Kind of Affirmative Action Can Ensure Diversity. You always have powerful, well researched insights. My thoughts are these:

• I appreciate the author’s efforts to address the reality of economic disadvantage.

• Just because racial discrimination, racial disadvantage and affirmative efforts to address those issues make the author uncomfortable, that doesn’t mean ignoring racial disadvantage and eliminating all race-aware selection processes make for good public policy.

• Today’s greatest racial disadvantages come not from the type of overt racism that is subject to legal actions and protections, but from micro-inequities, the insult of low expectations and other subtle forms of discrimination. These subtle but very damaging forces cannot be curtailed by enforcement of anti-discrimination laws, as the author suggests.

Answer:
This is an outstanding question, one I’ve been giving a lot of thought to.

I think we need to face the reality that affirmative action as we know it is going away, almost certainly with the pending Supreme Court decision. I’m writing this as a proponent of affirmative action, so bear with me.

There are legal arguments for and against affirmative action, but the emotional argument always has an influence. Since 2004, I’ve perceived a decrease in public support of affirmative action, and polls back up my perception. The Supreme Court in 2004 was arguably more liberal—but most people don’t know that the justice widely perceived as having saved affirmative action, Sandra Day O’Connor, had a horrible (from my perspective) record on decisions based on race. So as good as we thought we had it then (and it wasn’t so good), I think it’s worse now. Further, the Millennial generation is firmly against affirmative action, including well over 40 percent of Black and Latino students.

With that reality, I think those of us who see affirmative action as our chief viable solution to social injustice must adjust. We’re a business publication, so I’m going to make the case why this is a pressing business concern later in this column. But first, let’s address the problem. I have a combined total of 21 years of board experience among Bennett College (historically Black), New Jersey City University (Hispanic serving) and Rutgers University, where I chair the fundraising committee for Rutgers Future Scholars. I focus all of my board work on enabling poor students to attain the education their potential shows they can attain. I’ve endowed scholarships at all three schools and have donated roughly $750,000 since 2006. Here’s what I see:

In my opinion, today’s greatest racial discrimination is economically based. Pew Research Center analysis shows that Black and Latino households were dramatically and disproportionately clobbered in this subprime crisis and subsequent recession. Unemployment rates show the same bias. The prison-industrial complex feeds on poor people and is part of the depressive economic cycle for Blacks and Latinos. Our country imprisons people at by far the highest per-capita rate in the world; 58 percent of prisoners are Black and Latino. Our four-decade-old “war on drugs” is supported by the people who make money off it—nobody wages a war for 40 years unless they’re winning it. In my opinion, our president made a huge mistake in ending No Child Left Behind.

I’ve heard Secretary of Education Arne Duncan speak several times and he frankly makes no sense to me; it’s as if he digs up every non-fact and cliché and strings them together. (Here’s a transcript of his latest speech.) His position is passive—what we should do—as if he just arrived on the scene. The fact is that our public schools do a criminally poor job. I find it amazing to be asked to speak at dozens of economic-development events where people from cities with shrinking or stagnant economies wring their hands—yet are able to segregate their school systems into successful/white and criminally negligent/Black and Latino districts. Then they ask me for advice on how to lure companies to their employee-desert brown fields. Please.

In short, there are economic forces that benefit by crushing Black and Latino households. This is no micro-inequity, unless you would describe being sucker-punched by Sonny Liston in his prime as “subtle.”

But this is impacting more than just Black and Latino households. In today’s New York Times, there is an article about the national declining standard of living. According to the Times, “By last year, family income was 8 percent lower than it had been 11 years earlier, at its peak in 2000, according to inflation-adjusted numbers from the Census Bureau. On average in 11-year periods in the decades just after World War II, inflation-adjusted median income rose by almost 30 percent.” That’s a lot of white people being ground up by the same forces. To quote Frederick Douglass: “No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.”

On to the compelling interest for corporate decision makers: The combination of forces behind economic discrimination is destroying this “recovery.” There are millions of jobs open—and many more millions of unemployed people who are incapable of filling these jobs because they are not prepared. The negative cycle of decreasing household wealth, incompetent schools and predation by the prison-industrial complex is attacking our country’s consumer base AND talent pool.

We must wage a war on poverty and we can’t wait for the government to lead the way. Corporations can be convinced to do what’s good for them and take the problem firmly in hand by forcing school systems to stop gerrymandering proper education standards. My experience is that progressive companies are increasingly interested in building their own pipelines, so they can convince the schools they recruit from to start using the Rutgers Future Scholars model (or something like it). The reason is simple: People are created equally, therefore talent is distributed equally, and if you subvert the potential of groups of people, companies cannot possibly recruit the best and brightest—much less expect to sell to them. The fact that racially based economic discrimination has now ensnared a growing group of white people enables us to build some force behind this effort. It’s distasteful but true—by including white people, you can disarm the bigots who have been whipping up a portion of our electorate for the past six years by appealing to overt bigotry. You also appeal to people of every group, especially the Millennial generation that is far more progressive than older generations but ironically is at the tipping point of ending affirmative action; these people grew up watching injustice on YouTube and are far better connected than my generation could ever hope to be.

Here’s your hope for the future: Undergraduates at Rutgers can apply for a for-credit course to be a mentor in the Rutgers Future Scholars program. There are 10 times the number of students (representationally white, by the way) wanting to be mentors than there are spots available—and we have 1,000 middle- and high-school students in the program to mentor.

Luke Visconti’s Ask the White Guy column is a top draw on DiversityInc.com. Visconti, the founder and CEO of DiversityInc, is a nationally recognized leader in diversity management. In his popular column, readers who ask Visconti tough questions about race/culture, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability and age can expect smart, direct and disarmingly frank answers.

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The ruling is “a watershed moment in the legal movement for lesbian and gay rights,” said American Civil Liberties Union attorney James Esseks.

Sources anticipate that the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group of the House of Representatives will appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.

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