Because even if you eliminate discrimination as one degree of freedom in the legal code, that still leaves a lot of room for experimentation. Some states have legalized marijuana, others haven't. Some states have high taxes. Some states have low taxes. Some states allow self-serve gasoline, others don't. I could go on and on. There's an awful lot of room for legal "biodiversity" left.
Based on this flowery language on the 14th Amendment in the majority opinion, I'm having trouble understanding why the 14th Amendment doesn't make marijuana bans illegal too.
That sounds like an attempt at a constructionist argument. That's not what I'm reading at all in this opinion.
I'm reading about the 14th Amendment being something that develops over time, helping people discover new freedoms, and be the very best they can be. It's fluffy stuff.
Did you read the opinion? Decisions typically contain some rhetorical flair ("fluffy stuff"), but there was plenty of substance to this decision. See e.g. pages 3-5 of the Syllabus. None of this analysis would be relevant to a decision about marijuana, and many of the standards the decision sets forth would fail in the case of marijuana.
Yes, I agree, but the 14th amendment requires some kind of asymmetry in order to have effect. To violate equal-protection, something has to be unequal.
Not sure I get your meaning here. People who break the law are incarcerated more than people who don't break the law. That's not an equal protection violation.
Some states have no taxes. Contrast Washington (state) and Oregon. Oregon has no sales tax, but an income tax. Washington has sales tax, but no income tax.
In Portland (which is right on the Washington-Oregon border), I recall a car with the license plate "TAXFREE," which was ambiguous enough that I couldn't figure out if it was referring to the owner being "tax free" (paying no income tax living in Washington) or that the car was "tax free" (the owner paid no sales tax when purchasing it in Oregon).
You pay the sales tax based on where you live, not where the car is. For small purchases, no one tracks this but for large purchases like cars, you are charged the sales tax based on where you live.
You will notice that the 10th Amendment mentions both states and people, which implies that the people can have rights that the states cannot abridge. The 14th Amendment made this explicit.
