colleague, to be the featured lecturer. as well as the ongoing work our nation must do to secure the work in the united states. is a well distinguished public servant who has spent her entire career working for civil and human rights. she is a graduate of harvard law school, and clerked for justice blackmun on the supreme court. she was confirmed in 2010 to serve as a u.s. commissioner of equal employment opportunity and is currently in her second term. she is the first openly lesbian person to serve. chai is also a professor of law

at the law center. at the law center she founded the federal administration and law clinic the national disability rights network and the lounge center for mental health law. she also founded and codirected -- workplace possibility. a place focused on finding common ground. as legislative council for the american civil liberties union from 1988-1991, chai played a leading role in the groundbreaking disabilities act of 1990 and i had an opportunity

to work with chai in my role as the president of the leadership conference as we worked to get the americans with disability act amendments and 2008 which overturned supreme court decisions that had reduced protections for certain people with disabilities. those who were originally intended to be covered by the ada. in addition chai helped to draft the employment nondiscrimination act, i bill that would prohibit employment destroyed nation based on sexual orientation and gender identity. neither john nor i could think of a better person to be tonight's lecturer, so please join us in welcoming commissioner chai feldblum. [applause] prof. britton: she will give her remarks and then we will have questions and answers. anytime you have a question just write it down and when she finishes or shortly before they

will come around and collect it to would you raise your hand? there is one here and one here. just pass your card to him or her and they will present it to me and i will read your question. please begin. ms. feldblum: thank you so much. as you heard -- and as you now heard from this microphone -- ok. >> this is the live one. ms. feldblum: that is for c-span. ok. so, as you heard, i will talk about the decision that the supreme court handed down this friday. obergefell v. hodges. as you heard in that case, the court ruled that same-sex

couples have the same fundamental right to marry guaranteed by the federal constitution as the opposite sex couples. by that ruling the court invalidated any state law that kept gay couples out of the civil institution of marriage. as many of you know, the opinion was written by justice kennedy joined by justices ginsburg, breyer, sotomayor and dissent was written by justice roberts justices scalia, thomas and justice alito. there was one majority opinion and four dissents. i will talk about the opinion in two ways. i will talk about the legal reasoning that justice kennedy used and the social and moral

message that was conveyed by the court's opinion by not only the result but also the legal reasoning that justice kennedy used. for those who have read the decision already i hope that this talk will provide you with additional insight. for those of you who have not read the opinion, i hope that this lecture will serve the same purpose as a book review often serves. how many times have you heard -- i have not read the book but i have read the review? if you don't read the opinion hopefully this will serve as the book review. one way, perhaps the best way to understand the legal reasoning that the court used in the social message that it sent, is to compare the court's decision last friday in june 2015, that

states may not deny same-sex couples access to the civil institution of marriage. two, the court's opinion and loving versus virginia handed down in june, 1967, that a state could not criminalize the marriage between a black person and a white person. both of those decisions grounded their results in the 14th amendment of the constitution. both of those opinions said these laws violate the 14th amendment of the constitution, violate both the due process clause of the 14th amendment and the equal protection clause. now we will see how they use those in slightly different ways. with the loving case leading with equal protection and adding a dose of due process. and obergefell leading with due

process and adding a dose of equal protection. let's look at the words of the 14th amendment. no state shall "deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law," or "nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." first clause, no state shall deprive any person of life liberty or property without due process of law. it says nothing about what that right to liberty includes. there is no definition of liberty. for example, if someone -- it certainly doesn't say that someone has the fundamental right to raise children and a certain way. a fundamental right to use contraception or get an abortion, or a fundamental right

to marry. it just says no person shall be deprived of liberty without due process. the same thing with the equal protection clause. the equal protection clause does not say that while public schools may not segregate on the basis of race. public universities may not refuse to admit women. it just says no state shall deny a person the equal protection of the law. over time, judges have advanced two ways. giving this language meaning of interpreting these words. one way is to focus on the intent of those who drafted and ratified the 14th amendment. what did those people think right to liberty and meant? what did those people think a right to equal protection meant.

this is called an originalist view of the constitution. the meeting should be primarily if not solely determined on the original intent of those who drafted and ratified that portion of the constitution. an alternative approach is to say that the drafters of the constitution including the 14th amendment intentionally, specifically an alternative approach means they intentionally used general, open-ended terms so that over time the constitutional protections would encompass whatever the country then understood to be included in liberty or equal protection. this is the theory of the constitution as a living document, a living constitution. this is the view that justice

kennedy used in his opinion. here is a quote i have heard already in a speech, tv. i'm going to quote it too. the nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our own time. the generations that wrote and ratified the bill of rights of the 14th amendment did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all its dimensions,". -- that is why the provisions were written in an open ended way that would encompass new understandings of liberty and equality and it is precisely the responsibility of the supreme court of the united states to

discern and apply these understandings. over the past hundred years the supreme court opinions have been decided based on this approach to the constitution, as a living document not interpreted just by the original intent. despite the alarming reactions from the dissent, newsflash, the obergefell is not the first time they have used this approach. even if one egg knowledge is -- and technologies interpretations of the 14th amendment must encompass new meanings and understandings, doesn't mean the 14th amendment prohibits a state from an acting a democratically elected law that prohibits persons of different races from getting married. or, does it prohibit a state

from enforcing a democratically enacted law from entering the civil institution of marriage. the supreme court has answered both of these questions. lets compare how they got there. in the loving case the state of virginia criminalized the act of opposite race couples getting married. challenged under equal protection clause and due process. the state responded in terms of equal protection with two arguments. they said no equal protection problems because we are criminalizing and penalizing black and white people equally. if a black person marries a white person they go to jail. equal treatment. the court did not buy that argument.

the law is using a racial classification, you're taking race into account, that brings the clause into play. the next argument, if you don't buy the first one, there is no violation of the clause because the state has a rational reason for enacting this prohibition. the reason they gave was that the scientific evidence of the impact of interracial marriages was substantially in doubt and therefore was rational to prohibit such marriages. the court didn't buy that argument either. they pointed out when there is a distinction based on race the court is going to adapt a less deferential attitude to democratically enacted laws.

the point of the constitution is to make sure there is the backstop to majority arian views. there has to be overriding purpose for the law that is not simply a desire to treat one race more poorly. the states own justification for the law when you look in the record was to maintain white supremacy. that was the goal. they don't want mixing of the races. the court said that is not ok. that is a violation of equal protection to have that be your reason. law invalidated under equal protection. the court threw in a dose of due process. it ruled virginia's law violated

the due process clause of the 14th amendment. it explained marriage is one of the basic civil rights of man, fundamental to our existence and survival and therefore the court said to deny this fundamental freedom, fundamental right to marry on unsupported of basis is the racial classifications embodied in the statues, classifications directly subversive of the principle of equality, is surely to deprive all the citizens of liberty without due process of law. it is in violation of the constitution and must be struck down as violation of due process. i believe there were important ramifications to the fact that the court in loving used equal protection law and rhetoric in terms of legal ramifications and

the social message. when you use equal protection you're not just a fundamental right. maybe they wanted to buy some items, military commissary store without being told the store doesn't serve blacks. there is no fundamental right to go shopping. some people may feel that. but there is no fundamental right to go shopping and be served in a store. there would be an equal right to be served. there is no legitimate overriding purpose to not serve someone. equal protection has a broader scope. by deciding the constitution on the equal protection ground the court sent a strong moral and

social message because the message was that the ideology of white supremacy could not justify unequal treatment and that was the message that came out very clearly. even though there were just two paragraphs in loving about due process, loving is largely remembered as a strong due process case setting forth the fundamental right to marry. it is the first key case. it will be curious to see whether the equal protection analysis of obergefell, i know that name is hard. whether the protection analysis

of that case over time ends up being some of the most important aspects of that case. so, we get to that case. 48 years after the supreme court decides the loving case. it is faced with the question of whether a state's democratically elected laws prohibiting same-sex couples the access to marriage is unconstitutional. the court decided yes. how did the court get there? the 14 amendment does not say anything about a person having a fundamental right to marry. but for years, the supreme court had ruled certain substantive rights were included in the word liberty. not just the liberty of not being put in prison.

but other certain substantive rights. the court concluded these included the right to bring up one child as one wished, including if you wanted to learn german. you had a fundamental right to procreate, and a case in 1942 in validating a law that required sterilization of criminals. a fundamental right to marry explicated in the loving case. in the late 1960's and 1970's the fundamental right to use contraception or to have an abortion. in these cases the courts interpreted the due process clause as protecting certain fundamental rights under the rubric of liberty from infringement absent a strong justification.

that was interpreted in the due process part. all of these cases, marriage contraception, abortion, they were on the books when the supreme court in 1986 was faced with the question whether a state that criminalized sodomy violated the liberty interests liberty rights of those individuals. many of us thought that it surely did based on the logic of the previous cases. in ballard's versus hardwick, here is how justice wife started his analysis. explaining the relationship between those previous cases in the question before the court. "we think it evident that none of the rights in those cases

bears any resemblance to the claims constitutional right of homosexuals to engage in acts of sodomy. no connection between family marriage, procreation on the one hand and homosexual activity on the other has been demonstrated. no connection between family marriage or procreation, and homosexual activity on the other has been demonstrated. i was clerking on the first circuit in 1986 when this case was scheduled to come down. i was also committed to working as a law clerk to justice harry blackmun the next year. i called the court every day to find out whether the case had come down and how the justices had voted.

there was an number you could call. there was a tape. you could find out what cases were decided and who was in the majority and who was in the dissent. i was clearly very relieved when i got the tape recording saying that justice blackmun was at least in dissent. i was upset we lost the case but i thought thankfully i'm voting -- i'm clerking for justice blackmun and he wrote a strong dissent on behalf of gay people. two weeks after i started at the court i walked into the elevator and justice white was standing there. there i am in the elevator.

my stomach clenched and i thought this man does not think there's any connection between the lesbian relationship i have and other relationships of family. my eyes stung. my eyes stung again 17 years later for a different reason when i was in the courtroom in hearing justice kennedy in lawrence versus texas overruling that case. here is what justice kennedy said. he jury on the language of cases that had found fundamental rights to use contraception or to have an abortion, and in those cases the court had

defined liberty to include the right to make certain personal choices central to individual dignity and autonomy. liberty included the right to make certain personal choices central to individual dignity and autonomy. he applied that to the personal sexual choices that gay people make. he stated those sexual choices were often one part of a personal bond between two persons that can be enduring. that is why he said the liberty protected by the constitution had to allow gay people to engage in such sexual activity without fear of criminal prosecution. part of why -- my eyes cried. partly was the relief of having

the case overruled that had done such harm in the previous 17 years. it was also because it is the first time the countries highest court and described gay relationships in a respectful manner. in a way in which a similarity between the intimacy of gay relationships and straight relationships could be imagined. justice kennedy was also very clear that he was not saying gay relationships necessarily deserved the same legal recognition by the state as opposite sex relationships received. he said state sodomy laws seek to control a personal relationship that whether or not

entitled to formal recognition in the law is within the liberty of persons to choose without being punished as criminals. without saying the word marriage he made it clear this opinion did not say anything about the right of gay couples to acts of civil marriage. the opinion was holding the state could not make a sexual gay relationship a crime. in 2003 justice kennedy was not faced with the decision to the civil institution of marriage. in 2013 in the 5-4 decision in windsor, he wrote for the court the only thing the court has to decide and the only thing the court did decide was whether a section of the federal laws violated the due process clause when required the federal

government not to recognize civil marriages that had been validly entered into by same-sex couples in various states. the court decided it did violate the due process clause and that section of doma was invalidated. in the cases that came to the supreme court this term the court did have to decide the ultimate question of whether the denial of civil marriage to same-sex couples violated the liberty interests of those individuals. as all those watching the supreme court news that meant that justice kennedy would have to answer that question for himself. justice kennedy describes his evolution on this question as follows. he read this on the bench. while lawrence confirmed a dimension of freedom that allows individuals to engage in intimate association without criminal liability it does not follow that freedom stops there.

outlaw to outcast may be a step forward but it does not achieve the full promise of liberty. justice kennedy sees this ruling as a means of moving gay couples from being outcasts to being members of society. a lot of us as gay people have not viewed ourselves as outcasts for some time. we have been out and proud for a while. there is no doubt that this decision stating in no uncertain terms that gay couples deserve the same access to civil marriage and straight couples is a statement unlike any other about the dignity and worth of gay people. the way justice kennedy got to this place was to apply everything he had seen -- said before and carried it to its logic will conclusion. he started with the cases that

have dealt directly with the right to marry. these include primarily the 1967 loving versus virginia case as well as a later case that invalidated a law that prohibited fathers behind on child support from getting married. and another one that invalidated regulations that limited the privilege of inmates to marry. justice kennedy has to acknowledge all of these cases had presumed a relationship involving opposite sex partners. as justice kennedy put it the court, like many institutions, has made assumptions defined by the world and time of which it is a part. to answer the question now

whether the fourth rationale of those past cases should apply to same-sex couples, he said we need to explore and respect the basic reason why the right to marry has been long protected. we have to figure out the reason why this is a fundamental right and based on those reasons see how that applies to gay couples. his first reason was to say there was a fundamental right to marry because the right to personal choice regarding marriage is inherent in the concept of individual autonomy. this has been a major thing for justice kennedy. liberty includes being able to make personal choices that are central to individual dignity and autonomy. he says in the opinion 2 men or 2 women have the same right to make this profound choice as a man and a woman. justice kennedy could have stopped right there in terms of a due process analysis.

there is a liberty interest in making this profound choice as to whether to get married, and a state may not restrict that, at least not on the basis of child support my prison status, or , sexual orientation. no overriding purpose restricting in that way. for those of you have been to a passover seder, one of the main songs that we sing is if god had just taken us out of egypt that would have been enough. he could have just done that due process violation, but he didn't. he went on. part of why he went on was this was a hard case for justice kennedy. he had evolved in his understanding and he wanted to explain why.

he wanted to explain why the logic of cases applying the fundamental right to marry applied equally to gay couples. another reason he explained was that it helped safeguard children and families. applied equally to gay couples. another reason he explained was that it helped safeguard children and families. marriage safeguards children and families in the state has an interest in that. justice kennedy for some time has been very affected by the research showing that 100,000 children are currently being raised by same-sex couples. research done by the willing's institute. as he explained in this opinion allowing those couples to marry will be incredibly important to those children. not just because of the material benefits they will get up because of the stigma it attaches to their families.

those are the reasons why they are the fundamental right to marry. there are two more reasons. first, the right to marry is fundamental because it is a unique relationship. it supports a two-person union unlike any other in its importance to be committed individual. here is one of the things he says. marriage response to the universal fear that a lonely person might call out only to find no one there. it offers the hope of companionship and understanding in assurance that we will both still live and there will be someone to care for the other. i don't know about you, but i know a lot of unmarried people who are not lonely. they have good friends that will actually be there to offer companionship and care.

i believe that the for justice kennedy there is a fundamental right to marry not only because it is an important personal choice, but because marriage itself is so important and it is so exalted. a lot of that rhetoric captures that. in addition, there is a fundamental right to marry because marriage is a keystone of our social order. that is why justice kennedy explained it was appropriate for a state to place the status of marriage at the center of the legal and social order. precisely because of what he called the precious status of marriage, excluding gay men and lesbians from that has the effect of teaching that gays and lesbians are unequal in

important respects, it demeans gays and lesbians to lock them out of a central institution of the nation's society. justice kennedy then moves to equal protection. the right to marry is derived also from the amendment's guarantee of equal protection. he doesn't do it very rigorous. he talks about the two clauses being interlocking and reinforcing. clearly he knows he has to address the equal protection clause, he has to ground his conclusion in the equal protection clause as well. not only because it had been argued so much, but i think in order that the other four justices to assure they were not going to write concurrences,

they negotiated this section with justice kennedy. what's interesting about that is there is a lot of stuff that is interlocking. he does ultimately say it must be further acknowledge that the challenge laws a bridge central precepts of the quality. the marriage laws enforced by the respondents are in assets unequal. nothing about how fundamental the ride is that they are being denied. what are the legal ramifications of justice kennedy mostly using the due process laws and what is the social implication of

that? the legal arm of vacation justice kennedy thinks he was trying to achieve -- the legal ramification justice kennedy was trying to achieve was in fact a cabinet. you don't have a fundamental right to go shopping. you don't have a fundamental right to get a job. to the extent that gay people are experiencing inequality in areas that are not a fundamental right, the way to get protection in those situations is either under the protection clause if it is a government actor or through statutes that federal congress passes or state legislatures pass requiring equality. obviously a statement that says it is a violation of the protection to treat gay people differently is a boost to the equal protection analysis with regard to other government

actions and a boost in terms of equality under existing laws. for example the argument that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is actually and always discrimination based on sex, that is an argument that is beginning to play out in the courts, that the commission on which i am on has engaged with and said it is sex discrimination. that is not dismissed by the court. it is not even address. it is a form of -- it violates the equal protection clause. justice roberts asked during oral argument, isn't this sex discrimination? differences based on the different sects. i actually think that the

statement that there has been an equal protection violation with this law comic even not explicated, will end up having significant effects. the legal arm of vacations could be narrow but i don't necessarily think they well. -- the legal ramifications could be narrow but i don't necessarily think they will. there was a particular social, moral message that he wanted the court's opinion to convey. the ruling is based not just on the fact that a state must treat a people the same as straight people instead all of the exalted language about marriage allows justice kennedy to make the point that i believe was

clearly driving him throughout this whole analysis, gaming and lesbians do not deserve to be demeaned in society and that giving them access to civil marriage sends the message loud and clear that they will not be. it was not die a enough to provide a few reasons, he wanted to provide all of them. he wanted to explain the exalted status even though the rhetoric understandably makes some people uncomfortable. to him, the overriding importance of marriage in our society is precisely why gay couples cannot be excluded from that civil institution. that is the exact opposite of what the court said in bowers where there was no connection

that could be seen between homosexual activity and family. in this opinion, by using the fundamental right to marriage the fundamental right to a civil institution that is exalted and val arrived in our society, that is how he made the point that there is a similarity, and there is a goodness, and a respect that goes to all of those relationships. thank you for your attention. i'm looking forward to your questions. [applause] >> would you now pass your written questions to the student monitor. do you want to go first? but for one vote. there would be no lgbt right to marry today.

the three dissenters boiled down to two kind of issues. none of the dissenters say they are against same-sex marriage. they simply say the wrong party in our government decided it. it should've been the legislature. the second argument is they try and pick apart the liberty interest. you stated there is no express right to liberty. tommy says liberty gets constrained from doing something. nothing is constraining gays the way that blacks were constrained in america to suppress them under segregation. how do you think kennedy doubt with those arguments? he did try to address them. ms. feldblum: they make a lot out of the 5-4 decision. there have been a lot of 5-4

decisions. citizens united. the bottom line is sometimes the decisions are 6-3 and 5-4 7-2. that does not make a difference. this is the supreme court. these are the nine justices who have been given the responsibility of interpreting the constitution. of the dissent, chief justice roberts dissent is i think quite different than the other three. he does, this was not the right entity to decide this question. he did it for different reasons. the other dissent, they are refighting the question of whether the courts should put any substantive right into the word liberty.

justice tomas' opinion is about liberty means you cannot be shut up in prison, that government can't do something to you, and doesn't even mention the cases of an affirmative right to educate your child as you wish to use contraception. these are rights that necessarily interact with government. the reason people were criminalized in the contraception era, trying to use contraception or sell or prescribe contraception. that is a public right and access. they were just essentially refighting those fights and not really explaining why it should be different now for liberty interests or a same-sex couple versus any of the previous cases. justice roberts was somewhat different.

he did not say it is completely inappropriate for the court. it is a general matter to deduce what is in the liberty interest. he didn't argue that is in the fundamental right to marry and it is wrong to have found -- in 1923 in my and versus nebraska they did a list of fundamental rights even though the case was about the right to bring up your child as you wish. the right to marry had been listed. the first time it was used was in loving. he wasn't saying there is no fundamental right. what he said is it is beyond the authority of the supreme court to decide that same-sex couples have the same fundamental rights. why? why would it be a beyond the authority of the court? he did that by basically saying there is a thing called right to marry. that is one species.

then there is something called right to gay marriage, to same-sex marriage and that is another species. under right to marry you have things like you can't stop people of office it -- opposite races marrying, that is under the fundamental right to marry. you don't have the authority to create this entire new species of marriage called gay marriage. the gay community for years has been saying we don't want gay marriage. we want marriage. we just want access to the exact same civil institution. in a way justice roberts was just saying it is a different animal, it is a different species. he didn't have to engage with the reasons justice kennedy book forward as to why there was a fundamental right to marry.

as far as he concerned the couples were asking for a fundamental right for gay marriage and that was somehow completely different. >> let's do a follow-up. and talk about the geopolitics a little bit of this case. justice kennedy wanted to write the opinion. he was the senior justice on the winning side, have the right to determine who would write the decision, and he sought that himself. secondly, he wrote the opinion in such a way as to align the five justices who were with him to support his conclusions without themselves writing collateral opinions. i think he did that in part because even though it was a highly divided court he wanted as what unanimity as possible.

when one looks at the groundbreaking cases of loving versus virginia, or brown versus the board of education, they were unanimous decisions by the court. while that did not necessarily make a difference in the legal outcome, it did convey that the court was of one mind and looking at these issues. in the loving case the court overturned a racial integrity statute that was first adopted in 1924. anyone who looked around the country knows racial integrity had not been respected given the one drop rule that had affected how race in this country was viewed. it refers to the fact that if an individual has one drop of african blood in some states that person is automatically considered to be black.

this notion of preserving racial integrity through some statute had long been rendered no. it did not exist. the justices in brown, the justices in loving were trying to convey a sense that the court has changed its view on these important issues. that was not available to justice kennedy in terms of getting a unanimous view or anything close to that. he wanted to have unanimity among the five justices. he also incorporated some social science research into his analysis which is comparable to what the court did in brown using social science research as a basis for its decision in this case, he cited the impact of research showing that children

raised in same-sex homes benefit from the parental relationship and that parental relationship would be strengthened if it was also buttressed by the institution of marriage. he went out of his way i think to create as much of a climate showing that same-sex couples and marriage had all of the social benefits that flowed from heterosexual marriage. he went into that. the reason i raise it is because i suspect that given the nature of the divisions that exist within the court, and still exist in the country, there will be a backlash around the court's decision and you are already beginning to see that. the attorney general in texas has issued a statement today which said that all county clerks will not be required to

issue marriage licenses to individuals who seek them if the clerk believes that his or her religious belief would be impaired. the opposition is already beginning to set up what we have seen in the aftermath of the civil rights act and the brown decision, which is an emerging form of resistance. to the decision and putting in place a legal justification for that effort. the fear that i think justice kennedy had was to the extent that you had concurring opinions on justices, you would not have a cohesive color caret rationale -- caret rationale for the change he was proposing and i think you look to the future of how his decision would be handled in the body politic to

emphasize some of the analysis he did. you agree with that? ms. feldblum: i definitely agree. and let me make two observations on what you said. i think if there had been five votes for some other opinion some other legal analysis and a bid on fundamental right to marry without exulting marriage that would have been the case. i think it was very important for the other four justices, ginsburg, breyer, so to meyer kagan to come behind one opinion precisely because of the need to convey that to the country as a whole. some decisions have been unanimous that were important. some decisions have not been. and still have been absorbed and

taken by society. in terms of the issue of a backlash, there is going to be solved. it would be odd if there wasn't. we are still in the midst of this social change. i find it hard to believe that there will be such a backlash that in fact this right will be taken away in some way or that there will be a huge outrage against gay couples. justice roberts tried to say you have cut off the debate, you have hurt yourself in this. i thought about that when i looked on my twitter feed. i'm a big tweeter. if you use facebook, i post all this stuff. it had this link to all the companies that were putting out their brands. oh my goodness.

everyone had their pain. this is in the mainstream already. this is not something where the backlash is going to include 60% of the population. most of the population are so passed it. let me tell you, those corporations would not have been putting out that branding if they thought their going to lose a lot of money. let me say something else about the non-concurrences and the piece about marriage. i have this piece, a blog post that and hunter wrote on the nation's blog. she notes this idea, the final paragraph speaks the plaintiff not be condemned to live in loneliness. imagine what it felt like to join that language, how much sharper the edge for a single

mom or bus driver. i do think that in justice kennedy's effort to say we should no longer demean gay couples who want to get married there is this inadvertent effect on devaluing those who never get married or no longer marry. i don't think that was his intent. which is why i was trying to separate the two reasons that he could have used established due process violation and just stopped. that would have been enough. the two others were the ones that said how important, and the loneliness language the reason why this is the most important relationship one can enter into. i think it was worth it to them so long as there was something

about equal protection and there. >> perhaps the next two questions reflect one of the largest concerns about this decision with respect to religion in the church. one of the audience asked can nature it refused to marry due to religious beliefs, is the church protected, and similarly, why do pastors fear the intrusion into their day-to-day activity, and how do we respond that they are missing the point? ms. feldblum: the easy part of this question is of course churches are protected from retaining their beliefs that only opposite sex couples should get married.

any priest, any rabbi, any religion officiant who is marrying someone in that religious tradition can say i am not going to marry you. even more than that, right now there are many rabbis that refuse to marry an interfaith couple. they will not marry if you are a jew and a christian. they will not marry you. that is obviously discrimination on the basis of race, but they are given the right to do that. that is because the free and exercise clause of the constitution to practice religion is absolutely protective of those activities. anyone who talks about churches and rabbis and priests no there

is not an issue there. but they are actually talking about, and what we have tried to get embodied into laws, though there has been backlash to that, is an individual religious person who is running a restaurant and doesn't want that gay couple who just got married to come in and be celebrating and kiss each other. they do not want it. they do not want to serve that person. they don't want to bake the cake for the wedding, they don't want to do the photographs. their personal religious beliefs says i don't want to serve you. that has never been permitted in our country to overwrite someone else's civil rights. that is what happened in the civil rights act of 1964. barbecues, shops, it's against my religious beliefs to serve

blacks and white together and the court said sorry. of course that is a religious belief. a belief can be burdened by a state if it is necessary to carry out the state's purpose. the states purpose is to ensure someone can walk into a restaurant, and get served. >> we say in most instances where you have identified a business or photographer or a restaurant that refuses to serve, these individuals have licenses granted by the public to allow them to operate as businesses in the communities in which they serve. those licenses require you to serve the public interest as defined. you are not required to provide services to identify criminals if that person is fleeing law

enforcement but as a general matter you are required to provide assistance to those who come to your shop if you have a license granted from the state to provide that support. to make the argument that somehow your personal religious beliefs which may be violated trunk your responsibility to the public goes a step too far. the precedent in the wake of the 1964 civil rights act comes in to foresee her. julian made an excellent analysis. he was there for the passage of the 1964 civil rights act. he remembers the response to serving african-americans under the title two of the civil rights act of 1964 which deals with the issue of public accommodations and saying we

expect you to carry out those responsibilities. strong enforcement from the outset from the federal government and in some instances the state cut off that line of debate. you are seeing now an effort by some to use religious freedom which we acknowledge is a legitimate issue of concern. everyone is entitled to have their own personal religious beliefs. those religious believes cannot be used to trump newly established rights that the court has granted to same-sex couples anymore so then they could do on issues of race. it seems to me that while we are obviously talking about a variety of different things, the shared interest that we have in providing consistent responses on the part of quasipublic officials trumps those religious views if the individual seeks to

operate in the public sphere. ms. feldblum: i want to add one other thing in terms of religious -- respecting religious believe some practices. it is something that i personally feel strongly. i grew up as an orthodox jew prayed my father was an orthodox jewish rabbi, holocaust survivor. we lived in very much of a bubble of orthodox judaism. i went to orthodox jewish school , elementary school, high school. the government allows religious parents to pull their kids out of public school and teach them in their bubble. that was important. i personally left that bubble and became not religious and entered for the first year, i called this world that you operate in, the secular world. i would say in the secular world

they do this. all these new and different things to me. i think it is the essence of who we are as a country, the essence of protecting pluralism that we ensure religious communities get to exist in this country in whatever bubble that they want to exist. but, and justice kennedy said this, those religious beliefs cannot dictate the laws and policies for the rest of the country. they just can't. >> religious beliefs and the freedom to exercise one's civil rights are not in conflict, and nor should we perceive them to be in conflict. my concern is that some who believe themselves to be deeply and personally religious should not expect the state to support

activity that would permit them to violate the rights of others when they are dealing in the realm of commerce. if in fact you are a religious -- you are in officiant at a church or synagogue you can deny the right to marry to same-sex couples. if you are operating in the civil world in which you are attempting to regulate behavior in the marketplace, that is a step too far. i think the recognition of the business community that there are interests here that are fundamentally american, it seems to me is a good thing and we want to encourage that. one of the purposes is to show that there does not have to be a war of ideas between the religious and those who have

more secular views. they are not in conflict. i do think there is some education that is needed and that is why this is a valuable exercise. >> this is probably a longer question for you. how do you feel about mounting sexual orientation claims under title vii on a theory of gender stereotyping. what affect will obergefell have on title vii employment termination laws? ms. feldblum: i'm not actually sure the case itself will have significant impact. it will have -- that sentence i read, this is a violation of the protection will have some resonance. in terms of what the eeoc has done to date, our responsibility

is to interpret the words of a statute that congress passed. that is our job. after congress passed the 1964 act that said you can't discriminate based on sex, we got charges from a transgender person who was discriminated against ricci says it is about sex. we said no it is not. we got charges from gay people who said this is just great nation because of the person i'm involved with. we again said no it is not sex. after we said it the court started saying it also. they have these rationales. it is not sex discrimination because the employer discriminates against a man who is gay and against a woman who is lesbian. they are treating them equally. that is a poor argument then, it

is clearly a poor argument now. the other reason they said was that was in the intent of congress. the intent of congress was to protect men and women. that shifted when in 1989 the supreme court held that it doesn't matter if you treat some women find if you don't treat other women ok, because they are not matching up to your stereotype of what a woman should be like. evidence that they didn't want to be a partner because she was too masculine, told to wear more makeup, go to charm school whatever. that is sex discrimination. 10 years later, justice scalia dealing with sexual harassment saying yeah there is no

protection in a same-sex situation, he said very clearly we are governed by the words of this statute. congress feels differently and congress can change it. those two cases started to change what courts were doing. a few court started to save termination against transgender person was a form of sex discrimination because it was waste on gender -- based on gender stereotypes. we get cases in the federal sector applicants for federal jobs or federal employees can come to us if there are claims of discrimination. there was someone who was discriminated against, she wanted to bring a claim that she was discriminated against. in 2012 we at the commission

ruled that discrimination against a transgender person is inherently based on gender stereotypes. there is no other basis other than the stereotype someone designated at mail -- as mail at birth should stay that way. you are taking sex into account regardless of what other reason you are doing it. hired the person when they were a man and you will not hire her now because she is a woman. that is taking the sex into account. and then also, with 2011 through recently, we said we would take claims by lesbian gay, and transgendered

people. it is a stereotype that men should be dating women and that women should be dating men. that is a gender stereotype. most of the courts have said that gender stereotyping of what gay men is -- if a game and is too feminine and he is harassed, you can point to "you are girly " or "you walk like olda woman." it will not protect a lesbian like me. how many of you would think will my goodness, that must either the first lesbian commissioner of the eeoc. i violated gender stereotype.

-- eeoc? i violate the gender stereotype. we are taking charges from gay people and we have gotten hundreds -- i mean hundreds -- of charges. people have taken the charges. we have investigated and helped 223 people get relief. not one of those in a court. throughout this process you can get relief through mediation settlements. is that enough? no. of course it would be good to have the explicit federal law that says that you may not discriminate against sexual identity. in public accommodations, you

may not discriminate. it is better because it is clear. you do not have to argue in court that you should agree with the eeoc. it is clear and it is guaranteed. it is much more visible. a law like that passes and employers know that. the employers of the fortune 500 companies know that the eeoc will take the charges and that we consider lgbt people to be covered under federal law. they are taking that into account. most of the people are employed by the small businesses. the businesses with more than 15 employees. not businesses that no they should not be discriminating. the law would get visibility out there. >> here is one of the two last

questions that comes back into the case. can you discuss now how the impact of the statutes defining spouse in the context of divorce and adoption? >> one of the things that happened two years ago when the supreme court struck down the section of the defense of marriage act that says, if you are valid the married in your state, we at the federal level will not recognize you. the benefits that come through federal law -- everything from federal security and tax, we are not going to consider you. thgaat was struck down.

anyone who got married in any state, one of the things the office of personnel management sent out as a ruling early on was if you lived in mississippi and cannot get married in mississippi and you want to massachusetts and do gotten married -- you had gotten married, the federal government would view that marriage as valid. you could get the federal rights. lots of people in lots of states said -- but, you do not get a writes that mississippi gives. all you can do is get federal rights. it will not change the definition at all. there is not a gay spouse. there is a spouse. you get married and you will be a spouse and you will get the benefits and responsibilities or

you can choose not to get married and then you are not a spouse. >> yeah. the answer raises another issue that i think we should put on the table. as much as we may celebrate part of the decision by the court. it is landmark, by any standard. this is a decision that will forever change how we in the country view marriage and the issue of of same-sex marriage. it is groundbreaking. having said that it, the individuals who got married after the decision was rendered could go home and find out that they had been dismissed from their job with no potential consequence they could pursue. no protection under federal law.

the job discrimination, in many states, even though they are wired to recognize the sanctity and the legality of your marriage. >> you witnessed a very important moment in washington politics. >> drumroll, please. >> one of the things that a lot of the groups say is what you just said. right? you get married and you put the picture of your spouse on the desk and you get fired and have no recourse under federal law. i need the people to stop saying that. you do not have the recourse under the federal law. do not believe you have no recourse. we have the one 800 number. we have had people come through

the doors. you know why they came through the doors? they are not even part of the community and have not heard. they have not been giving money to organizations. you know how 80% of the country thinks it is illegal to discriminate? that 80% was walking in. it is not prayer -- fair to a person in mississippi or any state -- the states without explicit laws -- to say you have no recourse. eeoc takes complaints under existing law and i think we are right. i think we are right. i voted for the cases and the courts are beginning to agree with us.

will there be a difference in opinion along the way? certainly. will the supreme court have to decide the case? of course. i would have loved if the court had said it was a violation of the equal protection clause following up on justice roberts it is a form of discrimination and sex discrimination gets heightened scrutiny and it is a violation of sextus rumination. we would have jumped over everything and, clearly, it would have been including sexual orientation. that did not happen. instead, we are in a two track effort between congress and the supreme court to get the rights. >> here is the problem. here is the problem. assuming you are correct, the decisions handed down are based

on part -- in part on statements controlling businesses in some instances to take a progressive view and you may have some basis and custom on which to race the decisions. the argument cuts against congress being faced with a choice to which they need to respond. to the extent that you provide a safety valve for discrimination that we believe is a poor and -- is abhorrent, for individuals where they would not have no protection, you cut against the argument that congress must step in. the failure to do so heightens the disparity between individual citizens, who have rights to achieve certain benefits that

were established. it goes naturally from that. if we look at the areas of protection, we argue the individual should the protected in their job. we take the view that the characteristics that do not go to the performance of the job should not be considered. if you argue that race should not be a factor to determine whether an individual can perform a certain function or a job, that same argument should apply to sexual orientation and you wouldn't evaluate the standards. the concern i have. i mean -- i hear you. the eeoc is an important safety valve and i'm concerned of the discrimination, housing

discrimination that would normally be prohibited under title eight. i'm concerned about violations of public accommodation. i am seeking to make clear that the statute provides additional clarity and it is important to argue that, even if you can receive an offense without the statute, the benefits received are modest and limited in certain circumstances. >> so, i think this is important as a political moments and i absolutely -- it introduces new wants and complexity -- it introduces nuance and complexity. it is not what people necessarily like in this town.

however, from my perspective it is the reality and let's be strategic and smart about the reality. i do not think the way to think about the eeoc is as a safety valve. in the federal sector, we issue the opinion and that is it. we issue the opinion and they have to comply. we can try to cajole and get people to settle. notice how none of the companies want to be the one that was sued. they all settle all stuff they clearly make a decision. they know we have the authority to go to court and do not necessarily want to be the posterchild. we did settle with companies. one is still fighting.

do not think of the eeoc as help you can get. think of it in terms of the role it played after the 1964 act passed. so, it says you cannot discriminate based on sex. that means you cannot reduce the rights -- they say, if you hire a man who has school-aged children and you will not hire women with below school-aged children, that is discrimination. these are radical decisions. it was the eeoc that included pregnancy discrimination. it is the first line to interpret the law. it is ultimately up to the courts to decide whether or not they agree with us.

part -- article one congress passes the law. article two, the executive implements the law. article three, the courts decide what the law means. in the case of women with school-aged children and not -- we ultimately one of the supreme court. on primed and see -- we ultimately won at the supreme court. on pregnancy, we lost. the legislatures said they would pass a pregnancy act and, to me, it is now simply doing the job. the job is to enforce the laws congress passed. congress says you cannot discriminate based on sex.

we say, if you discriminate against a transgendered person, that is because of sex. if you discriminate, we take that case. in a minor way, it cuts against a new law and it introduces nuac nce and complexity. i helped to draft the original employment nondiscrimination act in 1993. the very first ill was comprehensive and it included housing, public accommodation and recipients of federal funds. we went act after the debacle of the "don't ask, and tell" situation -- "don't ask, don't tell" situation.

to be honest, i think it provides for a member of congress is not sure. you tell them, you are not breaking new ground. you are nailing it down. >> last question. i would make one observation, guys. the congress now is distinctly different from the congresses that responded to challenges at the time of the civil rights act of 1964 or in response to the loving decision -- lovett decision or imperial gold data -- empirical data. this is a congress divided along partisan lines and has an ideological divide. it takes positions that are diametrically against the

national interest and are in favor of ideological interests. this new wants and subtlety -- nuance and subtlety creates change that has to be overcame. i'm telling you as a point of fact that it took 15 years to pass a hate crimes law to protect gay and lesbian transgendered individuals. that should have been the easiest to pass and it took 15 years. the timeline with respect to marriage equality has been short in comparison to the changes that word she is in the courts and not the legislature. i would say that the legislature

is not going to be the most hospitable environment to change. we will have to see how it plays out. >> i ask you to put the supreme clerk had on. look at this from justice scalia. the court has nine men and women who studied at harvard and yield. eight of them grew up in the east. only one hails from in between. not a single southwestern orer. not a single evangelic it christian or a protestant of any denomination.

despite the character of the body, they answer legal questions about the american people ratifying the traditional definition of marriage. they are not voting on that basis. they say they are. to allow the policy question to be considered and resolved by a patrician and unrepresentative panel, there is no social transformation without representation. what do you think he was doing i deprecating the court? >> if you leave justice scalia, he goes on at length on this idea of not being representative

of the people. the interesting thing, as he said, is that the majority technologies -- the majority is applying their values. they are not doing that. they say their job is to interpret the constitution and the constitution has been interpreted to include fundamental right to marry. they, as justices, are obliged to hold -- uphold the constitution and this right to marry. if they decide that they are going to, essentially, adopt the beliefs of some portion of the country. you know what? it does not matter if it is 20% of the country or 80% of the

country. if they are going to adopt those, as of close to -- as opposed to -- does that apply to gay couples who are seeking to marry? that is what they did. they put the law consistent with the supreme court three years. to me, those who are out of the mainstream, whether coming from the arenas or not, the other supreme court justices who dissented our parting -- are part of the group. they are ignoring the president -- precedent and superimposing values that say same-sex entering marriage is a different species of marriage as opposed

to being entitled to a fundamental right. we have a supreme court to interpret the constitution and to have the constitution govern our lives as a people. that is what the supreme court did for us to underscore the way obama did speaking at the church and trust in. is the united states of america that because a douche and provides for all of us. >> a perfect way to end what we hope was an interesting discussion for you and me. please join me in thanking her. >> coming up today, jim webb

on law enforcement issues. then, president obama's conference with brazilian president dilma rousseff. after that, new jersey governor chris christie announces his candidacy for president. today, the carnegie foundation hosted a discussion with the editor and chief of an independent russian radio station about changes facing the russian political system and the state of media freedom during the ukraine crisis. that is live at 1:30 p.m. eastern on c-span 2. the supreme court ruling in king versus burwell upholds subsidies for the purchase of health care. today, "politico" posts a discussion on the future of health care in the united states.

you can see it live at 1:05 p.m. eastern on these been 3. -- on c-span 3. >> c-span gives you the best access to congress. live coverage of the u.s. house congressional hearings, and news conferences, events that shape public policy. and every morning, "washington journal" is live with your comments by phone facebook and twitter. c-span, created by america's cable companies and brought to you as a public service by your local cable or satellite provider. >> next, virginia senator and potential presidential candidate jim webb talks about law enforcement, immigration, mental health care, and criminal justice system reform. he was a featured speaker at the national sheriffs association annual conference in baltimore. this is 45 minutes.

[applause] senator webb: thank you for coming to visit with me during these different discussions that are being held about where potential presidential candidates may view issues such as criminal justice reform in law enforcement. i would like to begin first day thanking all of you for the service that you are giving to your community and to your family and ultimately to our country by having chosen this profession of law enforcement. there happen questions over the past year or so about the relationship between our law enforcement communities and the communities which many of them

serve. i know from observation and personal experience how dedicated the great majority of our law enforcement community is and what a hard job it often can be on a daily basis. we used to have a saying a long time ago when i was in the marine corps. there were similar confrontations about those who were serving in the military in law enforcement. they were calling law enforcement people cakes -- pigs. the saying in the marine corps was, if you don't like a police officer, the next time you are robbed, call a hippie. the marine corps experience and work as an attorney led me to have a strong feeling about how we structure law enforcement in

our society. if you look at how the marine corps is structured you see that it combines discipline, meaning a sense of order, fairness meaning that everyone under that system must be treated fairly with a mission. how are we going to work together and overcome all these different boundaries that are so obvious when people come into the military to get our job done and have harmony. at the same time we have discipline and fairness. we will work together in terms of solving the problems that face us. it is essential that we maintain order. it is for the harmony of our society that we have trust and

mutual support between the communities and our law enforcement entities. the best case scenario, the goal that we should look for is that our law enforcement officials should be part of the community. solving crime becomes a function of the cooperation rather than having an adversary relationship. enforcement of the laws gives a community the assurance that there will be stability so they can live their regular lives. i have worked on this in many different ways. anyone can read a speech and take a position during a presidential campaign. going into the prisons in

talking to the wardens and people who worked as turnkey is -- they only had 40,000 people in prison. here in the u.s. we had only 600,000 people in prison. these are different societies. one is ethnically and culturally homogeneous and has been working with each other and ours is a

multicultural society where we have a lot of abrasion and differences that we have to resolve and resolve them as leaders. how do we get this sort of disparity, what is it in their system they are doing right and what is it we are doing wrong. the typical response i got from the people in the japanese system was, what happened to you? they said, we copied the american system in the 1890's. i started looking hard at system

and we can take these numbers over the years in the 1980's and we had 600,000 people as a set incarcerated. by the time i was running for the senate we had 2.38 million people incarcerated in the united states. and things were not getting any better. i started raising this issue on the campaign trail when i was running for the senate. i was running against an incumbent who had gotten the highest number of votes for president in the conservative political action conference in march of 2006. we were 33 points behind in the polls. i did not have any money. i did not have a campaign staff but i am going to go out and talk about the issues that we need to fix in this country and let the dice roll where they may. we won, by the way. nine months later. talking about this issue, the

typical advice it was getting from political consultants was you can not talk about over-incarceration in virginia during a senate campaign. it will be political suicide for you to discuss this issue. everybody is afraid. this is not just about over incarceration. it is about the entire criminal justice system. one is the last time we took a hard look at it from point of apprehension to whether you decide to arrest and if so, what type of a court should you go into and what sort of a sentence should come out of a finding of guilty and what happens to someone when they are inside a prison, what does the prison administration look like? in the japanese criminal justice system, you could not become warden at a japanese criminal justice system as you started -- you would go through a national examination, year of training,

and work your way up. similarly to what they do in the u.s. military. our system was random. there are some states where it was very advanced and there are other states where -- you are coming and watching for a week. american correctional association said that's all you need to do to start working in a prison. it definitely affects how the system was being run. beyond the prison administration, how do we prepare people who have been incarcerated and are going into supervision, how do we prepare them for reentry into society? a large percentage of these people, all of you will agree want to reenter society. they want to put this experience behind them and move to become a productive member of our society

and it is in the self-interest of every american that as many people who have been incarcerated as can be properly reentered into our society should be. it will save us money, communities will be safer, you won't have them back on the street doing other things. that happens when they can't get jobs or they don't have the training, or a profession to work, and people won't be afraid of them. when i got to the senate we decided we would look at all these components. if you look at the u.s. congress in general, what happens is people will get tied up in one specific issue or another, sentencing differentials, crack versus powder cocaine. maybe that one issue can be resolved through the legislative

process. we held two years of hearings. we did joint panels with groups like george mason university over here in fairfax, virginia. we got people talking across the lines on issues such as mass incarceration. after two years of thinking we decided the best approach would be to put together a national commission bringing the best minds of america into the table and for the first time since 1965 to get the advice of people who have been out like all of you have been out into this world of law enforcement, of all different aspects of it and to come in and tell us what is the best way that we can remake our criminal justice system in a way that is fair, that can reduce the numbers in incarceration and improve the safety of our communities.

we sat down from our office, not from a committee staff, from our office. we sat down with stakeholders from across the political spectrum and philosophical spectrum. we brought in people from the aclu, from the marijuana project, from the national bar association, from your organization, from the international association of chiefs of voice, we've brought in 100 different stakeholders, listen to them, got them to talk to each other, and put together a bill which i think was as good as any piece of legislation like this could be. it was for 18 months, $14 million, that's like one helicopter. we could get these minds together and show us for the first time since 1965 how we can

streamline and improve this law enforcement process. we finally got on to the senate for in october of 2011 having worked on this from us five years and we hit the great stone wall of filibusters that preceded the 2012 elections create we got bipartisan support but we had 57 votes, we needed 60 votes to break the filibuster. we had four republicans including orrin hatch, a very strong supporter. we lost the legislation on the floor. the national review online which is a conservative publication, it had been insanity to filibuster this commonsense approach. we brought this issue out of the

shadows, into the place of public debate, where republicans and democrats, liberals and conservatives, could come together and talk about it. again, one of the reasons i wanted to come over here today was to express my appreciation to the national sheriffs association for having listened and contributed, and finally in february of 2011, deciding to support this approach, which i believe we still need. there are other areas, where i as someone who prides myself and working in a bipartisan way, we developed a leadership model and in 16 months were able to pass the best g.i. bill in history, and on this issue, there are other areas where we need to be

working together and listening and i would be grateful and honored to be working with your organization in the future to make sure that we can look at these issues in a continuously creative way, in order to enable our law enforcement officials to do their jobs, and at the bottom of this, to work toward the harmony and the respect that we need in our communities. with that, i'm happy, john, if you want to sit down and spend the rest of this time and discussion. thank you very much. [applause] >> i'm sitting here, but you can sit there if you want. senator webb: you're on the

right, i'm on the left. [laughter] >> it really is a pleasure to have you here. as you know, c-span has reached out, using a multitude of its viewers. this is a great opportunity as well, and cisco and verizon are pushing this out over the web. as we talked about earlier, we have a number of questions for you. some of them are going to push the envelope, because that's what i think we have to do in this country. we asked the membership, what do you want to ask these folks that may run for president? these are not my questions. i think they are excellent. let me start off with the first one, then we will go out to the audience. in the evolving war against terror, what role do you see for local law enforcement in protecting the homeland? i'm going to add a twist to this. anything they need to do that they are not doing, that you

would suggest to them? senator webb: i believe that in terms of the structure of the mission, it's important that we look at local law enforcement as a supplement to what already federal law enforcement, and in some cases military people, are required to do. i think the classic recent example is what happened when the aircraft hit the pentagon on 9/11. i actually was in the pentagon that morning, having breakfast with the commandant of the marine corps. the first word we got when they came into his breakfast room was that a missile had hit the world trade center. that was when cnn first broke the story. commandant jim jones said, do you want to come in my office and catch up on cnn? i got in my car and headed down

the road when the plane hit the pentagon. if it were not for the first responders and the local law enforcement, we would have been in a real pickle. i watched that for three days from the balcony of my writing office so i could look directly at the pentagon. those functions have been increased. the training levels have increased, the types of equipment going to local law enforcement has definitely increased. the role is there, it has been defined. the one hesitation that i have the one concern that i would want to pass on is, we do not want to give the impression to local communities that we are militarizing our local law enforcement. there's a difference between being an infantry officer and a police officer. i have been in infantry officer, and i couldn't do the job of a

police officer. most police officers are not going to want to do the job of an infantry officer. when you see in some of these communities over local law enforcement heavy up with basic military gear, with the vehicles that are military vehicles on the street, you would only want to be doing that in an extraordinary situation. the best role for our local law enforcement people when it comes to regular community relationships is that role of harmony and protector and guarantor, when you know when something goes wrong, the community is going to be on your side. basically, my view is we want local law enforcement to be the supplementary force, but at the same time we want to make sure

these two roles are clearly defined when our communities look at them. thank you. >> i'm going to turn to the audience here. we have a question from chester county, south carolina. i'm going to ask sheriff alex underwood to present you with the next question. >> senator, you voted in the past to continue funds for declared sanctuary cities since march 2008. as president of the united states, would you expand on the scope of these cities, or would you leave the influence of to the states? senator webb: well, we are getting into a think a fairly complicated area of how you define the mandatory role of local law enforcement people when it comes to federal missions. the bill that we voted on, i looked it up when somebody asked me about it, it was one of these rush limbaugh amendments.

basically it didn't say you are voting to continue the motion, the motion that was voted on said were going to cut off all federal help to local law enforcement inside any of these sanctuary cities. that's kind of absurd. it wasn't even an illegal immigration type of deal. at the same time, the concern is when you have high density immigrant populations, many of them illegal, which is actually what we have about two blocks from where i live in falls church. when you have that sort of high density population, if you are saying to local law-enforcement, the first thing you want to do is come in and check somebody's papers, you are going to have a tendency among the people who are living there not to call for help. you might have a domestic abuse

situation, or a robbery or gangs. there was very heavy gang activity in this como area, for instance. the notion of the sanctuary cities was for local governments to decide they would not require local law enforcement to conduct activities that were basically federal activities, and i respect that. i don't think you should be cutting off funding in other areas if local communities decide to do that. i think in most cases it works toward more effective work i our local law enforcement people. >> thank you. senator, the next question came via the web. as long as our country's immigration problems go unsolved, the sheriffs will continue to bear the heavy cost of handling many of the illegal aliens crossing our borders and

overcrowding our jails. until comprehensive immigration and border security reform is accomplished, how would you enforce the current law of the land? senator webb: i think the difficulty that we all have is the knowledge that in many ways, there are a lot of reasons why people come to this country illegally. a lot of them come because they want to work. they want to become part of the system. some might come to conduct criminal activities. this is particularly true in terms of how south of the border has turned -- is in danger of turning into a narco state. there is a lot of drug trade coming across the border.

some might be coming for purposes of international terrorism and these sorts of things. it is proper to do our best to enforce the laws as they exist. we want to try to work toward a system that recognizes the realities of where we are under this simpson was only act was passed nearly 30 years ago now and has proven to be blacks and ineffective. -- and has proven to be lax and ineffective. but the reality of the system were working under right now is the president has declined to prosecute certain areas, particularly in those areas i mentioned about people who have come here to make a better life. >> do you agree with that decision? senator webb: i'm happy to comment on that, but congress is basically declining to legislate. it's like they are paralyzed.

we saw that in the 2007 attempt for some sort of immigration reform. the reality is that there are millions of people here because of the weakness of the law that are going to stay here. you are not going to send a number probably much higher than 11 million -- you're not going to round up people on buses and send them back. under the current law, i would support the process of identifying people who are illegal, discouraging border crossings for a lot of reasons security being one of them crime being another. i would want to see our foreign policy focus more heavily on solving the problems in mexico and central america. we are spending all this energy and diplomatically and financially and militarily over in places like iraq and

afghanistan in that part of the world. the greatest problem -- the greatest challenge we can solve is to work to stabilize the government in mexico and central america so that there is a different environment down there and we won't see the same sorts of immigration patterns. with respect to the president declining to prosecute, and i think what you've seen from some other people if they are saying they will even go further than that. we have to be very careful about timelines. when i was in the senate, when we had the immigration bill in 2007, i introduced an amendment which said that from the date of passage of this legislatio