James Madison

by Anthony S. Winer, Professor of Law, William Mitchell College of Law, Saint Paul, Minnesota. This post is part of an ACSblog symposium on Hollingsworth v. Perry and U.S. v. Windsor.

As most readers realize, the Supreme Court asked all parties in both of the upcoming marriage cases to brief and argue issues of standing. The possibility that either or both of the cases could be dismissed on the basis of a lack of Article III standing should therefore be taken seriously. 

In particular, regarding the Prop 8 case, Hollingsworth v. Perry, I have given some thought to a 2011 opinion of the California Supreme Court that specifically addressed the standing of the Prop 8 proponents.   The Prop 8 proponents emphasize this California opinion in defending their standing before the U.S. Supreme Court. However, in this posting I assert that the U.S. Supreme Court should not give any substantial weight to the California Supreme Court’s opinion.

To start with, I’ll say that dismissal for lack of standing in either or both of the cases could have at least a modestly positive result for same-sex marriage rights. A lack of standing in either case would be attributed to the litigants petitioning the Court in opposition to same-sex marriage.  Failure of standing would thus go against the opponents of same-sex marriage. Contrarily, any such dismissal is most likely to favor, at least to some extent, the litigants who are advancing same sex-marriage. For those of us supporting same-sex marriage rights, that would most likely be a positive development. 

By the same token, however, any such dismissal would also probably result in a relatively narrow ruling with relatively limited effects. That is, in the Prop 8 case, dismissal for the proponents’ lack of standing could result in the reinstatement of the District Court’s determination that Prop 8 is unconstitutional. But such a result would not necessarily affect the constitutionality of similar propositions adopted in other states.