Mike Huckabee: Dred Scott Decision ‘Law Of The Land’ Defense Of Kim Davis’ Gay Marriage Denial Ignores 14th Amendment


Mike Huckabee keeps citing the Dred Scott decision in discussing Kim Davis and related matters. There’s just one problem with that reference. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution provided full citizenship to African Americans and overturned that decision, which makes Huckabee’s historical defense erroneous, the New York Times pointed out.

Mike has been increasingly in the news for championing the Kentucky clerk who recently was freed from jail after declining to provide marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Now Huckabee is also getting attention for his insistence that the 1857 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Dred Scott v. Sanford case is the law of the land. Mike claims that because no one follows it, it shows there is legal precedence for Kim Davis to ignore the U.S. Supreme Court ruling and refuse to provide same-sex couples with marriage licenses.

Huckabee was chatting about the Dred Scott decision during a discussion with Michael Medved when the talk show host asked for clarification.

Medved questioned why Mike said Kim Davis didn’t have to obey the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that made gay marriage legal on the grounds that both individuals and states have ignored such rulings before. Huckabee then made his legal precedent explanation using the overturned Dred Scott decision.

“I’ve been just drilled by TV hosts over the past week, ‘How dare you say that, it’s not the law of the land?’… The Dred Scott decision of 1857 still remains to this day the law of the land which says that black people aren’t fully human. Does anybody still follow the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision?”

But the talk show host persisted, and that’s when Medved revealed Huckabee isn’t alone in issuing erroneous statements about civics and history, pointed out BuzzFeed.

The radio talk show host told the Republican presidential candidate that the Dred Scott decision was overturned by the 13th Amendment. In terms of history lessons, however, the Dred Scott decision was overturned by the 14th Amendment, while the 13th Amendment put a halt to slavery.

Following the history lesson commentary, Medved asked Huckabee whether he would try to amend the constitution in a way that would reverse the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on gay marriages.

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” said Mike.

Huckabee then argued that the ruling on same-sex marriage isn’t actually the law of the land.

“It goes back to what Jefferson said that if a decision is rendered that is not borne out by the will of the people either through their elected people and gone through the process, if you just say it’s the law of the land because the court decided, then Jefferson said, ‘You now have surrendered to judicial tyranny.'”

Moreover, Mike defended Kim Davis’ right to deny same-sex couples their marriage licenses.

“Until Congress decides to codify that and give it a statute it’s really not an operative law and that’s why what Kim Davis did was operate under not only the Kentucky Constitution… but she’s operating under the fact that there’s no statute in her state nor at the federal level that authorizes her,” added Huckabee.

[Photo by Ty Wright/Getty Images]

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