9th Circuit Declares Prop 8 Unconstitutional
 

9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the district court ruling that Prop 8 was in violation of the 14th Amendment. Here is the text of the decision:

Ninth Circuit Prop. 8 decision

"Proposition 8 served no purpose, and had no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in CA."


Definitely a great day for equality.

And a sad day for both decency & the rights of the voters.

edit: And now it's on to the Supremes, where this was going either way.

I'm surprised it only took Jon 3 minutes to respond.

Random act of timing, if I hadn't seen it when I probably wouldn't have seen it for several hours (about to be AFK).

More of a {shrug} than you'd probably suspect though, I don't get particularly high or low on lower court rulings when an appeal seems likely.

My sister-in-law is gonna be pissed!

Decency? Must be tough not liking "them gays".

I'll reiterate my stance that we need to separate religious marriage from legal marriage. Religions have the right to determine what marriages they see as legitimate. But everyone should have the right to enter into a legal partnership to spend their lives with a loved one, a natural progression in the human condition.

That is why I support the concept of civil unions.

Agreed that this is definitely headed to the Supreme Court.

Long overdue.

I have a feeling that the SCOTUS will rule that appellants don't have standing so they can avoid ruling on the heated central issue, just like they did with the pledge ruling a few years back.

Hooray!! As I agreed with Judge Walker's decision entirely, I am glad the 9th Circuit affirmed it.

Religions won't be forced to marry anyone. The state will have to treat gay marriage equally.

Exactly. You're free towards your marriage, and your church can recognize what it chooses to; but your church should not determine that of others.

Fundementally, I'm convinced gay marriage is a conservative belief - the idea and faith in the institution of marriage being extended out to gay people. Why is that a bad thing?

Its the easy way out, no? I don;'t think they want to rule on gay marriage before the 2012 elections.

I'm fine with civil unions if there's no marriage for anybody, but I don't think that's a realistic path. Legalizing gay marriage doesn't force churches to do anything. however, banning gay marriage discriminates against churches that do perform gay marriage ceremonies. As long as marriage is recognized by the government, it is unconstitutional to arbitrarily deny it to a group of people without a compelling interest.

It's still easiest just to have the government recognize "civil unions" as a status with a basic set of laws, tax code, guidelines, etc and if something fits that definition, they are a civil union. Government should be out of marriage

SI

I agree that SCOTUS would rather not reach the merits. I wonder if it might just deny cert.

If the Court does reach the merits, I think that it upholds the decision 5-4 with Kennedy writing the majority opinion joined by the four liberals.

That's complicated because the Loving v. Virginia decision that overruled bans on interracial marriage declared marriage as a fundamental human right.

It is nice to see that common sense rules when it should. Yes, the majority of the voters voted for this. However, the majority was wrong. That is why we have our constitution and our system of checks and balances. This is basic US Government 101 people. If you don't get it, go back to school.

In theory maybe, but the same people against gay marriage would never tolerate the name change. Discrimination is the point for most of these people.

+1

It must really suck to be so very attached to the white, heterosexual, christian, patriarchal society that is disappearing before our very eyes.

Actually California needs to get out of the "citizen" initiated propositions entirely. They have almost single-handedly destroyed the state's economy.
Proposition 13: War by initiative | The Economist

Possible en banc in Ninth Circuit first?

With the reputation the 9th Circuit has, I think in the interests of expediency they would go straight to the Supremes, rather than wait to see if the entire panel would hear the case and decide any differently.

Good article.

Wow, now that's a blast from the past. :)

I don't think it should be eliminated, but, I think it needs a serious overhaul. One, it needs to be much much more difficult to get a measurement on a ballot and the second one needs to be, full disclosure of where the money is coming from.

Yep. Anytime you can pass a spending measure without funding it by a simple majority, but require a super-majority to raise taxes, that doesn't bode well.

That would be nice but with Citizens United I think you can just setup a corporation (or non-profit organization) to funnel the money and disguise your individual identity.

This is fantastic news. A victory for common sense and decency.

That entire issue of The Economist was all about California. There were maybe 10-20 articles in total - some with good things to say about the state, some bad - but all of them insightful.

Despite the Ninth Circuit's reputation, it has some pretty heavy-hitting conservatives on the bench--see, e.g., Kozinski, O'Scannlain, Bybee. En banc in the Ninth Circuit draws 11 judges at random--not the full panel--so might get lucky (which the supporters of Prop 8 certainly didn't get on their first go-around, drawing Stephen Reinhardt).

The problem with the Christian Right and other groups is that they want to make legislation based on something only they believe in. That's great that it works for them, but how about the rest? It's like trying to get a Bears fan to wear a cheesehead. I even say this as a Christian. It's interesting reading a book about Chrisitanity and the government and the author even admits if someone is a Christian politician they are either really good at one or the other.

That is a very good point. If I had to pick one of the two, I'd pick making it harder to get something on a ballot. Maybe also having something along the lines of having to have a super majority as well, if it does make it onto a ballot.

True, but if they conclude that the case will go to SCOTUS no matter what, then there's no point in delaying as all a reversed ruling would do is switch the plaintiff and defendant.

From what I am reading, this was a pretty narrow opinion--based more on discrimination against homosexuals by changing a law already on the books than on the fundamental right to marriage.

If that is the case, the odds of a cert grant go down a bit, IMHO.

Seth MacFarlane makes a hell of a point - every civil rights battle is always won by the people oppressed.

Oh god yes. This isn't a liberal or conservative thing - the proposition system is idiotic.

Dola, this is a no-brainer. The same people were on the wrong side of civil rights, on the wrong side of female suffrage, on the wrong side of slavery... and they will continue to be on the wrong side.

Apparently the 9th Cir ruling is VERY narrow - seemingly only applying to California and, apparently, tailored by Judge Reinhardt to Justice Kennedy.

I've read the ruling and it is very narrow. They said all Prop 8 did was deny gay couples the word "marriage", but left in place the other benefits that married couples enjoy. Thus the Prop 8 supporters could not argue it harmed the family, since Prop 8 didn't stop gay couples from starting a family. They did add that the ruling didn't mean Prop 8 would be Constitutional if other factors were in play, just that they didn't need to consider those other factors to reach their decision.

In theory, that should be the case. In practice? I really wonder. I do think that in a "free" country, the government should not be defining what in essence is a religious sacrament. Civil marriage is more a contract between two people, whereas religious marriage is a sacred act defined by the religious beliefs of the individual. Having the government define it instead of the church/synagogue/temple/whatever, is in essence an infringement on the freedom of religion. It is sad to me that many right-wing Christian groups don't recognize that, and instead want to use the government as their own personal strong arm, forcing all to act in the way of their beliefs at the point of the gun. What they don't seem to recognize is that gun can be turned back at them when prevailing winds shift against their beliefs.

Absolutely. The rights of a bigoted mob to suppress the rights of a minority group shall not be infringed!

Keep fighting the good fight Jon, even as your kind rightfully goes the way of the dodo.

Right, if laws against gay marriage are allowed, I'd love to see some more laws, prohibiting inter-religious marriages, only allows virgins to be married, etc. Maybe then they'd get the idea. Many religions have differing rules about marriage, we're not going to start picking one's rules and all going by them.

Its surprising to me that these churches don't discriminate against atheists or other religions marrying, but they have such a problem with gays marrying. If its such a religious institution, why allow it to be tainted by non believers and people worshipping other gods?

I mean marriage happens everywhere, no matter what the chosen religion of anyone involved is, so I have a hard time seeing it as anything but a union between two adults which is basically a pledge of monogamy on legal paper. The fact that getting married changes so many things legally is weird to me, but I don't see any reason why it should matter.

In theory I'm fine giving government recognition to civil unions and letting churches determine who is and isn't married. In practice, though, the same people fighting against gay marriage would be firmly opposed to the government changing marriage to civil unions. Discrimination is the point, and that's why over the long haul they're going to lose.

The prevailing opinion that I'm getting from some legally minded friends is that this isn't as good as first read for proponents of gay marriage in the short term as one might think.

Because they only ruled on a very limited part of the appeal (and decided since the issue was decided on the limited part, the rest didn't need to be added), the likely path for this is for the full 9th Circuit to affirm the decision, but then the conservative leaning Supreme Court to decline to hear it, and as such not cause binding precedent.

This does mean that gay marriage will be legal in California, which is a laudable goal.. but it will not be the short term fix to overturn all the OTHER states laws.

If you'll forgive the tortured analogy.. in the dam against preventing gay marriage, this is a sizeable leak. 29 million people is a sizable chunk of people. However, this is not the catastrophic "break the dam" moment that proponents of gay marriage were hoping for, nor the dramatic "bulwark the dam" moment that the defenders of prop8 were hoping for. Instead, the dam will continue to crumble, and deteriorate slowly in the natural course of history, before it fails. That is slow, but inexorable (Think of it this way, in the context of a civil rights issue this is moving rather quickly)..

The victory in the long term is all but certain for proponents of allowing gays to marry.. The key words being the long term.

While this is somewhat true, denial by the Supreme Court to may not be binding, but will still be cited by courts in other states and circuits and I think it will lead to justices being more likely to take that next step. It may be long term before gay marriage is legal everywhere, but I do think this ruling will speed up the process.

Also I think the Judge writing the opinion wrote it narrowly so IF the Supreme Court picked it up, Justice Kennedy would be likely to rule against Prop 8 instead of being more queasy in affirming an equal protection arguement. This will allow for more normalization for the practice, as the most populace state in the union allows for homosexuals to marry.

Out of curiosity...what if the Supreme Court refuses to hear it? Is it kicked back to the state or is Prop 8 officially dead at that point?

If SCOTUS refuses to hear, then Prop 8 is dead.