The White House responded to today’s Supreme Court arguments with caution, referring to the ObamaCare ruling as a precedent to not to try predict outcomes.
Press secretary Jay Carney said President Obama’s senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, White House Counsel Kathy Ruemmler and an associate counsel, Kathleen Hartnett, were in the courtroom for arguments.
“The president has been updated on the arguments,” Carney said.
“I’m not going to evaluate the arguments today. And I, as everyone, I think, will wait for whatever decisions the Supreme Court makes in the case they heard today and the case they’ll hear tomorrow,” he said. “I would wait — I think we’ve seen in recent history, you know, there’s ample reason to be cautious about predicting outcomes in Supreme Court cases based on any particular piece of the puzzle, in this case oral arguments. So I’ll keep my own caution and not — and not engage in that.”
Carney didn’t indicate that Obama would speak on the same-sex marriage argument anytime soon.
“I mean, the president’s views are clear. He made those views clear last year,” he said. “He spoke about — in a press conference I believe, about the amicus brief that the Department of Justice filed. And he spoke beyond that about his own views, and how the application of heightened scrutiny in his view would mean that there would be no way to write a law that cleared the bar when it came to justifying discrimination against LGBT Americans.”
“…And I think the only comment that we would have about it, we would leave the in-depth studies to sociologists and others, is that it is a recognition by an increasing number of Americans that gay and lesbian Americans ought not to be discriminated against.”
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