14 Trial Lawyer • Spring 2024 Winding Road Continued from p 13 Court struck down DOMA, the Oregon District Court issued its decision in Geiger v. Kitzhaber.55 The Geiger court declared that “there is no legitimate state interest that would justify the denial of the full and equal recognition, attendant rights, benefits, protections, privileges, obligations, responsibilities, and immunities of marriage to same-gender couples solely on the basis that those couples are of the same gender.”56 The final death knell for the homophobic siege on same sex marriage came the following year when the U.S. Supreme Court concluded (1) the right to marry is a fundamental right under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, (2) same-sex couples had a right to marry and (3) states must recognize lawful same sex marriages performed in other states.57 The tides have turned It’s not news that recent times have demonstrated sharp downturns in the area of social justice and equality. AntiMuslim and Arab hate crimes spiked after 9/11, spiked again in 2016 when Trump became president, and have never fallen below pre-2011 numbers since.58 On May 25, 2020, George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police and protests erupted across the country followed by solidarity protests around the world.59 Trump, the self-proclaimed president of “law and order,”60 used Portland as a testing ground for his authoritarian rule and deployed federal troops to tamp down, nay, smother, the crazy liberal protestors in Portland.61 Since 2020, bias-motivated and hate crimes have been on the rise.62 From 2020 to 2021, African Americans were still being targeted in numbers far greater than other underrepresented populations; however, the steepest percentage increase in hate crimes befell Asian and LGBTQ communities, which
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