Eva authored this guest post on Jan. 11 for the SAFE California Campaign site. My fiancé, Steve Henry, was murdered in Kingston, Jamaica, on November 25, 1997. As bizarre as this may sound, one of the thoughts I had as the initial shock wore off, was “Well, am I still against the death penalty?” My answer [...]
The Equal Justice Society and more than a dozen other civil rights organizations this week filed an amicus brief (PDF) in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, urging the court to strike down Michigan’s anti-equality Proposal 2 as unconstitutional. In its brief, EJS argues that Proposal 2 violates the Equal Protection Clause [...]
California State Senator Loni Hancock (D-Oakland) recently introduced Senate Bill (SB) 490, which seeks to abolish the death penalty in California. SB 490 will provide the voters a direct opportunity to end a broken method of punishment by abolishing the death penalty. This is the first time that the California Legislature has considered the issue [...]
The Equal Justice Society and more than forty public interest organizations represented pro bono by the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP today filed an amicus brief in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals arguing on behalf of gay and lesbian plaintiffs in Perry v. Schwarzenegger. In August, Judge Vaughn Walker, of the U.S. [...]
UPDATE: Article by the San Francisco Chronicle’s Bob Egelko. California State Attorney General Jerry Brown today filed a brief (PDF) with the state Supreme Court today opining that article 1, section 31 of the California Constitution (Prop. 209) is unconstitutional as applied in certain circumstances. The letter brief was filed in response to the Supreme [...]
“Today, in a unanimous decision, the Iowa Supreme Court held that the Iowa statute barring same-sex couples from marriage violated the equal protection guarantee of the Iowa Constitution. Lambda Legal represents the plaintiffs in the case,” said NCLR Legal Director Shannon Minter. “The National Center for Lesbian Rights filed an amicus brief in support of [...]
In an excellent op-ed published in today’s San Francisco Chronicle, EJS board member Tobias Wolff summarizes the core issues facing the Calif. Supreme Court as it considers overturning Prop. 8. Tobias, a constitutional law professor at U. Penn., rebuts Ken Starr’s argument that Prop. 8 should be considered an amendment rather than a revision to [...]