Proposition 8

by Jeremy Leaming

As widely expected the U.S. Supreme Court will wade into the battle for marriage equality announcing today it would consider the constitutionality of state and federal bars against same-sex marriage.

The New York Times’ Adam Liptak noted that the Court’s docket now includes a lot of cases centering on “the meaning of equality ….” The high court’s docket already includes cases involving race-conscious university admissions policies and an integral enforcement provision of the Voting Rights Act.

The high court will review a decision striking California’s Proposition 8, which yanked marriage equality rights from lesbians and gay men in the state, and an opinion from a federal appeals court that invalidated a provision of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that California’s Proposition 8 “served no purpose and no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians.” Writing for the majority, Judge Stephen Reinhardt said, “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 their other rights and responsibilities as partners – rights and responsibilities that are identical of those married spouses and form an integral part of the marriage relationship.”

The high court also said it would review U.S. v. Windsor, a case out of the Second Circuit. Earlier in the fall, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit invalidated a provision of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, a law enacted by the Clinton administration. The Obama administration announced earlier in its first term that it would stop defending DOMA in court. The Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group of the U.S. House of Representatives intervened to help defend DOMA.

by Jeremy Leaming

The movement for marriage equality, part of a much more expansive effort to advance equality for the LGBT community, avoided a setback as a federal appeals court in San Francisco refused to reconsider its ruling from earlier in the year that invalidated California’s anti-gay measure Proposition 8.

Proponents of Proposition 8, which barred same-sex marriages in the state, had urged the entire U.S. Court of Appeals for Ninth Circuit to review and reverse a three-judge panel’s February ruling. But a majority of the Circuit’s judges voted against reconsideration, the Los Angeles Times reported.

In February, the Ninth Circuit panel ruled 2-1 that Proposition 8 “served no purpose and no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians.” Writing for the majority in Perry v. Brown, Ninth Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt said, “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 their other rights and responsibilities as partners – rights and responsibilities that are identical of those married spouses and form an integral part of the marriage relationship.”     

Today, three of the Ninth Circuit’s judges lodged a dissent saying the full Circuit should have reviewed the panel’s opinion. The dissenters accused their colleagues of muzzling “respectful conversation” of same-sex marriage. “Even worse,” they continued, “we have overruled the will of seven million California Proposition 8 voters based on a reading of Romer that would be unrecognizable to the Justices who joined it, to those who dissented from it, and to the judges from sister circuits who have since interpreted it.”

In its February opinion, Reinhardt (pictured) cited the Supreme Court’s Romer v. Evans opinion that invalidated Colorado’s effort to use state law to marginalize a group of people, namely gay men and lesbians. Reinhardt noted that in Romer, the high court said Colorado’s constitutional amendment preventing localities from implementing laws protecting lesbians and gay men from discrimination undermined equal protection principles, saying that it was “not within our constitutional tradition to enact laws of this sort,” which targets “a certain class of citizens for disfavored legal status.”

Reinhardt also lamented the impact of Proposition 8, which yanked marriage equality rights from same-sex couples not long after the California Supreme Court ruled that the state’s constitution granted them the right to wed.