Unconstitutional Quotes

#1. Racial discrimination in public education is unconstitutional ... All provisions of federal, state or local law requiring or permitting such discrimination must yield to this principle.

Earl Warren

#2. Limiting the designation of marriage to a union 'between a man and a woman' is unconstitutional and must be stricken from the statute

Ron George

#3. NATO cannot accept that the unconstitutional coup in Ukraine has not led to the subjugation of the whole Ukrainian nation.

Sergei Lavrov

#4. It is surely only a matter of time before some federal judge finds the Constitution unconstitutional.

Mark Steyn

#5. I found unconventional and it exactly explains your upbringing." Millie's lips curved into a grin. "Unconstitutional doesn't explain you at all, unless you've been participating in something that goes against our country's constitution.

Jen Turano

#6. I have no problem with anybody who wants to bear public witness to their religion, but I don't think they can do it on public property. They have to do it on private property. There's nothing unconstitutional about that.

John Shelby Spong

#7. Certainly, the president is expected to safeguard the Constitution by vetoing unconstitutional acts of Congress. This is especially true because many laws can only be brought before the courts in a collateral way, if at all.

Charles A. Beard

#8. When did it become unconstitutional to exclude homosexual couples from marriage? 1791? 1868, when the 14th Amendment was adopted?

Antonin Scalia

#9. In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that minority set-aside programs in municipal contracts were unconstitutional. The court wondered if there were proof that people of color even want to receive municipal contracts.

Karen DeCrow

#10. how the powers of government were being improperly used through improper warrants of arrest - how it was unconstitutional to stop a person on the freeway and arrest them.

Jon Krakauer

#11. The premise of my whole campaign has been not that people need to believe what I say to them, but they need to look at what I have done. And what I have done in the state of Nevada, I have voted over a 100 times against tax and fee increases, poor public policy, and unconstitutional bills.

Sharron Angle

#12. What we've begun to do is discuss the issue, the constitutional issues around that idea, again the privacy issue, which may not be unconstitutional but may pertain to our unique sense of privacy in the United States.

Chris Asplen

#13. I'm sort of suspicious of most economic development projects, but the ones that encourage taxpayer-funded relocation bidding wars should be declared unconstitutional.

Gail Collins

#14. The words 'In God WE trust' are not only unconstitutional, they aren't even accurate.

Anne Nicol Gaylor

#15. A Supreme Court decision that concessions of this sort were unconstitutional would have taken them off the table and actually increased the effective sovereignty of elected officials.

Michael Kinsley

#16. And what I would say now is, yes, if a state enacted a law permitting flogging, it is immensely stupid, but it is not unconstitutional. A lot of stuff that's stupid is not unconstitutional.

Antonin Scalia

#17. It is always possible for the court to overreach its proper bounds and perhaps declare a lot of laws unconstitutional and frustrate the will of the majority in a way that it ought not be frustrated.

William Rehnquist

#18. By simply refusing to fund a president's unconstitutional conduct, Congress can stop him dead in his tracks - even after the courts have abdicated their responsibilities to do so.

Mike Lee

#19. Banning prayer in school in effect made God unconstitutional.

Rush Limbaugh

#20. The Supreme Court has made God unconstitutional.

Sam Ervin

#21. Anything called a "program" is unconstitutional.

Joseph Sobran

#22. Forty four percent of Republican voters believe President [Barack] Obama was not born in the United States. They believe he is not a legal citizen of the United States.They believe his presidency is unconstitutional.

Lawrence O'Donnell

#23. So far from thinking that a slaveholder is bound by the immoral and unconstitutional laws of the Southern States, we hold thathe is solemnly bound as a man, as an American, to break them, and that immediately and openly ...

Angelina Grimke

#24. The greatest threat to public confidence in elections in this case is the prospect of enforcing a purposefully discriminatory law, one that likely imposes an unconstitutional poll tax and risks denying the right to vote to hundreds of thousands of eligible voters.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

#25. In 'Citizens United v. FEC', the Supreme Court ruled that sections of the federal campaign finance law known as McCain-Feingold imposed unconstitutional restrictions on the First Amendment rights of corporations.

Eric Schneiderman

#26. I will say this: I've had more pro-life bills, I believe, I ruled unconstitutional - but I tried - than the entire total membership of Congress together.

Dan Webster

#27. The layman's constitutional view is that what he likes is constitutional and that which he doesn't like is unconstitutional.

Hugo Black

#28. The federal government should not be an accessory to the unconstitutional actions of the Arizona state government. By continuing to work with Arizona police departments operating under SB 1070, the Department is implicitly condoning the shameful tactics authorized by the new law.

Lucille Roybal-Allard

#29. Now judicial review, beloved by conservatives, can, of course, fulfill the excellent function of declaring government interventions and tyrannies unconstitutional. But it can also validate and legitimize the government in the eyes of the people by declaring these actions valid and constitutional.

Murray Rothbard

#30. Prayer and dependence on God has been our history. How unfortunate it is now that an unaccountable and unelected and misguided judge from Wisconsin, Judge Barbara Crabb, has declared National Days of Prayer - established by the Congress - to be unconstitutional.

James Dobson

#31. I thought what the military was doing was unconstitutional.

Fred Korematsu

#32. If I'm elected president, let me tell you about my first day in office. The first thing I intend to do is to rescind every illegal and unconstitutional executive action taken by Barack Obama.

Ted Cruz

#33. The very idea of marriage is basic to recognition as equals in our society; any status short of that is inferior, unjust, and unconstitutional.

Ted Olson

#34. It is time for Republicans in D.C. to fight. Too often, they give up; they negotiate with themselves. They said they would get rid of the unconstitutional amnesty. They didn't do that. They said they would repeal Obamacare if we gave them the majority. They didn't do that, either.

Bobby Jindal

#35. The inherent right in the people to reform their government, I do not deny; and they have another right, and that is to resist unconstitutional laws without overturning the government.

Daniel Webster

#36. We will submit legislation to the United States Senate which will ... authorize the Congress to undertake judicial review of those signing statements with the view to having the president's acts declared unconstitutional.

Arlen Specter

#37. Almost any government activity can also be seen as taking property 'without just compensation.' The basic model of an unconstitutional 'taking' would be if the government threw you out of your house.

Michael Kinsley

#38. I think it's unconstitutional on the 10th Amendment front.

Mitt Romney

#39. Comments that suggest that Muslims should be banned from the United States are offensive and unconstitutional.

Mike Pence

#40. To be sure, in some instances these proceedings have been unconstitutional, but we must remember that it is not the first time since a war that there have been changes in governments by such methods.

Frank B. Kellogg

#41. I think people have no idea what's coming down the pike. This is the crown jewel of socialism. And we only have next week to stop it ... This is socialized medicine and like I said Sean this is the crown jewel of socialism ... It's unconstitutional.

Michele Bachmann

#42. The right to defy an unconstitutional statute is basic in our scheme. Even when an ordinance requires a permit to make a speech, to deliver a sermon, to picket, to parade, or to assemble, it need not be honored when it's invalid on its face.

Potter Stewart

#43. [T]he courts are so willing to assume that anything that is predominantly black must be inferior ... The mere fact that a school is black does not mean that it is the product of an unconstitutional violation.

Clarence Thomas

#44. I am opposed to any individual taxes until we eliminate all of the unconstitutional agencies, and I suspect we wouldn't need a tax after that.

Michael Badnarik

#45. After the Democrats shoved the 2700 pages of ObamaCare down our throats - and we did find out how expensive, controlling, and coercive the legislation was - a majority of Americans wanted the Supreme Court to toss it aside as unconstitutional.

Bob Beauprez

#46. Be the responsibility on their heads who raise this novel and extraordinary question of reception, going to the unconstitutional abridgment, as I conceive, of the great right of petition inherent in the People of the United States.

Caleb Cushing

#47. Congress seems to want to cure every ill known to man except unconstitutional government and high taxes.

Charley Reese

#48. Legislation that names a specific private organization to defund (rather than all organizations that engage in a particular activity) is improper and arguably unconstitutional.

Justin Amash

#49. The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.

Henry Kissinger

#50. Our national media refuses to report that even the Supreme Court did not say marriage was a human right in all cases nor did it say that the heterosexual definition violated anyone's right or that the heterosexual definition of marriage was unconstitutional.

Stockwell Day

#51. The 'anchor baby' thing needs to be fixed ... Anchor babies are an unconstitutional declaration of citizenship to those born of non-Americans. It's wrong, and it's immoral.

Russell Pearce

#52. For some of us it seems like yesterday when Ike was in the White House, the U.S. Senate censured Joe McCarthy, and the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that racial segregation in public school was unconstitutional.

Malcolm Forbes

#53. I just want everyone to know that 20,000 gun laws in the United States are unconstitutional. They infringe on your right to protect your life, the lives of your loved ones, and your property.

Michael Badnarik

#54. Invalidating laws has absolutely nothing to do with judicial activism. It depends on whether the law is unconstitutional or not. That's really the key point.

Ann Coulter

#55. The Federal Department of Education should be eliminated. The Department of Education is unconstitutional and should not be involved in education, at any level.

Sharron Angle

#56. Whether you're gay, straight, you can't tell anybody who to love and who to marry. It's unconstitutional and it's morally wrong.

Andrew Dice Clay

#57. The tenet of the separation of church and state is an unconstitutional doctrine.

Sharron Angle

#58. In an unconstitutional partnership with the state, the church can impose the most irresistible, if covert, controls conceivable.

Madalyn Murray O'Hair

#59. Certain characteristics about 'Marbury v. Madison' are, I think, indisputable. Marbury was the first Supreme Court decision ever to strike down an act of Congress as unconstitutional. Marbury stands for the authority of the Supreme Court to have and to exercise that power.

Cliff Sloan

#60. I always worked very hard against the unconstitutional individual mandate in health care. I didn't praise it.

Michele Bachmann

#61. It is unconstitutional to deny people, gay or lesbian couples, the right to marriage. Everyone has equal rights so this is the right way to go. I think it's a great celebration for America.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

#62. Popularity makes no law invulnerable to invalidation. Americans accept judicial supervision of their democracy - judicial review of popular but possibly unconstitutional statutes - because they know that if the Constitution is truly to constitute the nation, it must trump some majority preferences.

George Will

#63. The structure that is currently in place, inside government, forcing government employees to pay union dues, even if they don't want to be in a union
that is fundamentally unconstitutional and it is against the American system of freedom of choice.

Bruce Rauner

#64. The real threat, as seen by the ACLU, is that religious behavior might give secular behavior a bad name, and that is, surely, unconstitutional.

William F. Buckley Jr.

#65. Yesterday, the Supreme Court spent over an hour listening to arguments on whether Obamacare is unconstitutional. Yeah, listening to arguments about Obamacare for an hour, or as most people call that, 'Thanksgiving Dinner.'

Jimmy Fallon

#66. Racial discrimination against a white is as unconstitutional as race discrimination against a black.

William O. Douglas

#67. Here is a good bill that's needed in America. If it's unconstitutional, let the U.S. Supreme Court reverse its opinion and get in line with New Hampshire and that will make it constitutional.

Meldrim Thomson Jr.

#68. You dislike the emancipation proclamation; and, perhaps, would have it retracted. You say it is unconstitutional - I think differently.

Abraham Lincoln

#69. Son, this is the United States of America. Some would say it's unconstitutional to try to prevent psychopaths from fulfilling their potential.

Dean Koontz

#70. Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings "The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer." ... But since the Freedom of Information Act, I'm afraid to say things like that.

Henry A. Kissinger

#71. I believe it could very well be unconstitutional to ban people. We are a country of immigrants, but we have to know who's coming in. They need to come in legally. And we need to be sure that we have been able to have them satisfy the criteria that we set for them to come into our country.

Jan Brewer

#72. The utopian schemes of leveling and a community of goods, are as visionary and impractical as those which vest all property in the crown. These ideas are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government unconstitutional.

Samuel Adams

#73. In the case Stone v. Graham, the Supreme Court ruled that - under 'separation of church and state' - it was unconstitutional for a student in school to even see a copy of the Ten Commandments.

David Barton

#74. We can achieve much more in peace than we can ever achieve in these needless, unconstitutional, undeclared wars.

Ron Paul

#75. Racial discrimination in public education is unconstitutional ... All provisions of federal, state or local law requiring or permitting such discrimination must yield to this principle.

Earl Warren

#76. Limiting the designation of marriage to a union 'between a man and a woman' is unconstitutional and must be stricken from the statute

Ron George

#77. NATO cannot accept that the unconstitutional coup in Ukraine has not led to the subjugation of the whole Ukrainian nation.

Sergei Lavrov

#78. It is surely only a matter of time before some federal judge finds the Constitution unconstitutional.

Mark Steyn

#79. I found unconventional and it exactly explains your upbringing." Millie's lips curved into a grin. "Unconstitutional doesn't explain you at all, unless you've been participating in something that goes against our country's constitution.

Jen Turano

#80. I have no problem with anybody who wants to bear public witness to their religion, but I don't think they can do it on public property. They have to do it on private property. There's nothing unconstitutional about that.

John Shelby Spong

#81. Certainly, the president is expected to safeguard the Constitution by vetoing unconstitutional acts of Congress. This is especially true because many laws can only be brought before the courts in a collateral way, if at all.

Charles A. Beard

#82. When did it become unconstitutional to exclude homosexual couples from marriage? 1791? 1868, when the 14th Amendment was adopted?

Antonin Scalia

#83. In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that minority set-aside programs in municipal contracts were unconstitutional. The court wondered if there were proof that people of color even want to receive municipal contracts.

Karen DeCrow

#84. how the powers of government were being improperly used through improper warrants of arrest - how it was unconstitutional to stop a person on the freeway and arrest them.

Jon Krakauer

#85. The premise of my whole campaign has been not that people need to believe what I say to them, but they need to look at what I have done. And what I have done in the state of Nevada, I have voted over a 100 times against tax and fee increases, poor public policy, and unconstitutional bills.

Sharron Angle

#86. What we've begun to do is discuss the issue, the constitutional issues around that idea, again the privacy issue, which may not be unconstitutional but may pertain to our unique sense of privacy in the United States.

Chris Asplen

#87. This separation was absolute in our original Republic. But the sky-godders do not give up easily. In the 1950s they actually got the phrase In God We Trust onto the currency, in direct violation of the First Amendment.

Gore Vidal

#88. I'm sort of suspicious of most economic development projects, but the ones that encourage taxpayer-funded relocation bidding wars should be declared unconstitutional.

Gail Collins

#89. The words 'In God WE trust' are not only unconstitutional, they aren't even accurate.

Anne Nicol Gaylor

#90. A Supreme Court decision that concessions of this sort were unconstitutional would have taken them off the table and actually increased the effective sovereignty of elected officials.

Michael Kinsley

#91. And what I would say now is, yes, if a state enacted a law permitting flogging, it is immensely stupid, but it is not unconstitutional. A lot of stuff that's stupid is not unconstitutional.

Antonin Scalia

#92. It is always possible for the court to overreach its proper bounds and perhaps declare a lot of laws unconstitutional and frustrate the will of the majority in a way that it ought not be frustrated.

William Rehnquist

#93. By simply refusing to fund a president's unconstitutional conduct, Congress can stop him dead in his tracks - even after the courts have abdicated their responsibilities to do so.

Mike Lee

#94. Banning prayer in school in effect made God unconstitutional.

Rush Limbaugh

#95. The Supreme Court has made God unconstitutional.

Sam Ervin

#96. Anything called a "program" is unconstitutional.

Joseph Sobran

#97. Forty four percent of Republican voters believe President [Barack] Obama was not born in the United States. They believe he is not a legal citizen of the United States.They believe his presidency is unconstitutional.

Lawrence O'Donnell

#98. So far from thinking that a slaveholder is bound by the immoral and unconstitutional laws of the Southern States, we hold thathe is solemnly bound as a man, as an American, to break them, and that immediately and openly ...

Angelina Grimke

#99. The greatest threat to public confidence in elections in this case is the prospect of enforcing a purposefully discriminatory law, one that likely imposes an unconstitutional poll tax and risks denying the right to vote to hundreds of thousands of eligible voters.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

#100. In 'Citizens United v. FEC', the Supreme Court ruled that sections of the federal campaign finance law known as McCain-Feingold imposed unconstitutional restrictions on the First Amendment rights of corporations.

Eric Schneiderman