Curious what people would think if Ryan did away with the chaplain position because he’s sick and tired of Catholics.
Most of the right things in history have been done for the wrong reasons. If you’re waiting for nobility, you’re in for a long wait, especially with this crowd.
It’s my view that merely having a bad reason for an otherwise allowed official act isn’t enough to render it void. If we were waiting for nobility, nothing would ever be done in this country.
Sometimes intent figures into legality, in which case it could be enough to at least legally void an action. But bad/stupid reasons don’t 100% overlap with illegal reasons. Hating Catholics would be an illegal reason, so in your example, the action would not be legal. Motivated by hate of the individual would be legal, or even hate of his haircut, but motivated by hate of the protected class is not.
That sort of thing is pretty much impossible to prove in court, though, unless he was dumb enough to talk openly about it, so Ryan would probably have nothing to worry about. It would be an extremely rare thing to have enough evidence of illegal intent to bring a credible case to try to stop him.
But, for example, IMO it’s pretty clear the 19th Amendment passed largely due to white voters being scared of minority voters and trying to double their vote margins. Really shitty reason, leading to a truly excellent result. And Susan B Anthony gets on a damn coin for it, so at some point in history the sins of your motivations are washed clean by the results.
EDIT: Also, sometimes depending on the case, actions can be voided not on illegality, but the lack of any reasonable foundation whatsoever, or failure to follow defined process. i.e. if the Secretary of the Interior decided to rename Yellowstone National Park “Zinkeland” one afternoon, he may technically have naming authority, but the act may be void because the Department’s defined process for making these changes was not followed. These policies usually exist precisely to avoid people getting wild hairs to do things without much cause or forethought.