by Jeremy Leaming
In a striking, though perhaps short-lived, victory for marriage equality, a federal appeals court panel invalidated California’s infamous Proposition 8, a ballot initiative that had overturned same-sex marriage in the state.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled 2 -1 today that the anti-equality measure “served no purpose, and no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians,” the Los Angeles Times reports. The Ninth Circuit majority concluded that Prop. 8 subverts the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause.
Prop. 8 was passed, with the backing of religious right organizations, not long after the California Supreme Court ruled that a right to wed could not be denied to same-sex couples, and that doing so would violate the equal protection rights of lesbians and gay men. Prop. 8 amended the state constitution to bar same-sex marriage.
The majority opinion in Perry v. Brown, written by Judge Stephen Reinhardt (pictured) upheld a lower federal court ruling by retired federal judge, Vaughn R. Walker, which invalidated Prop. 8.
“Proposition 8 worked a singular and limited change to the California Constitution: it stripped same-sex couples of the right to have their committed relationships recognized by the State with the designation of ‘marriage,’ which the state constitution had previously guaranteed them, while leaving in place all of their other rights and responsibilities as partners – rights and responsibilities that are identical to those of married spouses and form an integral part of the marriage relationship,” Reinhardt wrote.
Prop. 8 also resulted in an ignoble state constitutional rule that protected marriage only for straight couples, Reinhardt said.
“In adopting the amendment, the People simply took the designation of ‘marriage’ away from lifelong same-sex partnerships, and with it the State’s authorization of that official status and the societal approval that comes with it,” Reinhardt wrote.
erfecting the Declaration: The Text and History of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment required reading. Perfecting the Declaration, the fourth in CAC’s Text and Narrative Series, tells the story of how the American people redeemed the Constitution from the sin of slavery and rewrote the Constitution to guarantee equality to all persons, bringing the Constitution back in line with the principle of equality laid out in the Declaration. In the Equal Protection Clause, “We the People” perfected the Declaration by writing into the Constitution’s text that all “person[s]” are equal, not just that “all men are created equal.” The story of this constitutional transformation is essential to the Supreme Court’s many landmark rulings honoring the Constitution’s promise of equality for all persons, including Brown v. Board of Education, Reed v. Reed, whose 40th anniversary is being 
age licenses, citing evangelical Christianity as a bar against performing her official duties.