Foregoing litigation and waiting around for a legislature without any protections would have been much more dangerous. People were right to bring Onergefell, Roe, Brown, and a lot of other civil rights cases to the court and the court was right to rule on them the way they did. We just should have found a way to make the court less stupid about campaign finance so we could get a legislature that would finish what those cases started.
That’s the danger of protecting rights only by judicial doctrine. It forestalls actual legislative attempts to create protections.
Foregoing litigation and waiting around for a legislature without any protections would have been much more dangerous. People were right to bring Onergefell, Roe, Brown, and a lot of other civil rights cases to the court and the court was right to rule on them the way they did. We just should have found a way to make the court less stupid about campaign finance so we could get a legislature that would finish what those cases started.
But for cases like Reed v. Reed and Craig v. Boren chilled the ratification we would have gotten Obergefell three decades earlier.
And “waiting around for a legislature” isn’t the alternative. Civic engagement is.