NEW ORLEANS (CN) - Five Louisiana Supreme Court Justices on Tuesday denounced the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that states must recognize same-sex couples' right to marry, calling the decision "a mockery" of the Bill of Rights.
"It is a sad day in America when five lawyers beholden to none and appointed for life can rob the people of their democratic process, forcing so-called civil liberties regarding who can marry on all Americans when the issue was decided by the states as solemn expressions of the will of the people," wrote Louisiana Supreme Court Justice Jeannette Knoll in a winded concurrence to the opinion that officially ended challenges to the state's now defunct same-sex marriage ban.
"I concur because I am constrained to follow the rule of law," Knoll wrote.
Knoll continued by opining that the mandate that states must recognize same-sex marriages, "is a complete and unnecessary insult to the people of Louisiana who voted on this very issue."
Knoll went on to decry "the horrific impact" the U.S. Supreme Court justices "made on the democratic rights of the American people to define marriage and the rights stemming by operation of law therefrom."
Knoll said she sees the Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage as "a complete and unnecessary insult to the people of Louisiana who voted on this very issue."
"The five unelected judges' declaration that the right to marry whomever one chooses is a fundamental right is a mockery of those rights explicitly enumerated in those Bill of Rights," she continued. "Simply stated, it is a legal fiction imposed upon the entirety of this nation because these five people think it should be."
Knoll went on to say it "is a sad day in America when five lawyers beholden to none and appointed for life can rob the people of their democratic process, forcing so-called civil liberties regarding who can marry on all Americans when the issue was decided by the states as solemn expressions of the will of the people. I wholeheartedly disagree and find that, rather than a triumph of constitutionalism, the opinion of these five lawyers is an utter travesty as is my constrained adherence to the 'law of the land' enacted not by the will of American people but by five judicial activists."
In their opinions, the Louisiana justices concurred that a same sex couple's union has to be recognized by the state and that one member of a female couple could potentially legally be recognized as a parent to her partner's biological son, but the justices were firm that they only concurred because they had to.
One justice, Jefferson Hughes III, dissented.
Another, Justice John Weimer, simply concurred.
"I write not to point out what, in my view, the law should be, but to reiterate that judicial decisions should be guided by the rule of law. Judges take a solemn oath to support the rule of law, not to decide cases based on what a judge personally believes the law should be," Weimer wrote.
The remaining concurring justices were Greg Guidry and Scott Crichton.
In light of the Supreme Court's ruling in favor of same-sex marriage, the justices denied the appeal in the case Angela Marie Costanza et al v. James D. Caldwell et al as moot, and sent the case back to the district court for further proceedings.
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