The Court affirmed the ruling of former Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker that Prop 8 discriminates against same-sex couples in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The court also rejected Prop 8 supporters’ offensive argument that Judge Walker should have refused to preside over the case because he is gay and in a relationship with a man.

“It is a unique and honored position to be an eyewitness to history,” said NCLR Executive Director Kate Kendell, Esq. (Kate is chair of the EJS board of directors.)

“The Ninth Circuit’s ruling finding that Proposition 8 violates the Constitution of this nation marks the first time a federal appellate court has held that a law excluding same-sex couples from the right to marry runs counter to our highest ideals of equality and fairness. With today’s ruling we are a giant step closer to the day when the promise of our Constitution squares with the lived reality of LGBT people.”

The court ruled that Proposition 8 violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution because it “serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples.”

The supporters of Prop 8 have 15 days to ask the Ninth Circuit panel to reconsider its decision or to ask for reconsideration by a larger panel of judges on that court. Alternatively, they have 90 days to request that the Supreme Court of the United States review the case.

NCLR, Lambda Legal, ACLU of Northern California, and Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders filed an amicus brief urging the court to affirm Judge Walker’s decision.

EJS and more than forty public interest organizations represented pro bono by the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP also filed an amicus brief in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals arguing on behalf of gay and lesbian plaintiffs in the case. The brief argued that Proposition 8 excludes an entire class of people – gay men and lesbians – from the long-standing institution of marriage, pushing them instead to the inherently unequal category of domestic partnership.

Source: NCLR

The Equal Justice Society celebrated its 10th anniversary on Dec. 7 with a gala fundraiser at Yoshi’s San Francisco featuring a concert by the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra with Faye Carol, Kenny Washington and Jeannine Anderson where they performed new songs from “Soul of a Movement: Meditations on Martin Luther King, Jr.”

See photos of the event by Bob Hsiang and listen to some of the music performed that evening.

Co-founded and led today by Eva Paterson, the Equal Justice Society has grown into an established player in the national civil rights community, with a specific law and policy agenda that seeks to reinvigorate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

The gala recognized the individuals and organizations that helped start the Equal Justice Society a decade ago:

Founding donors: Elizabeth Cabraser, Jack Londen, Quinn Delaney and Wayne Jordan, Ford Foundation-Alan Jenkins, Sara Ríos, Open Society Institute-Gara LaMarche, Catherine Samuels, John Kowal and Raquiba LaBrie;

Founding board members: Charles Ogletree, John Bonifaz, James J. Brosnahan, Kate Kendell, Tobias B. Wolff, Eric K. Yamamoto, Maria Blanco and Margaret Russell;

Founders: Eva Paterson, Abim Thomas, Susan Serrano, Carrie Avery, Sheila Thomas, Michelle Alexander, Joan Graff, Margaret Russell, Margalynne Armstrong, Shauna Marshall, Angela Harris, Stephanie Wildman, Cheryl Stevens, April Williams and Norm Spaulding; and

First staff members: Eva Paterson, Susan Serrano, Allegra Churchill, Swati Kapadia, Rico Oyola, Joe Lucero, Archana Sahgal, David Salniker, Keith Kamisugi and Elaine Elinson.

During the summer of 2000, a group of lawyers, professors and other advocates interested in equality and justice met in San Francisco to discuss the formation of an organization that would effectively fight to advance the rights of the under-represented. The new group would take on reactionary jurisprudence and ensure that legal scholarship was used in the service of social justice.

Ten years later, EJS has racked up a sizable list of accomplishments.

EJS helped defeat a series of ballot initiatives designed to outlaw affirmative action and data collection on race and leads a coalition of advocates doing cutting edge affirmative and defensive advocacy in California, an important testing ground for racial justice initiatives in the future.

EJS has also exposed hundreds of lawyers and public policy officials to the social science of unconscious bias, and convened litigators and social scientists to brainstorm new approaches to social equity. It has developed a training curriculum for educators, now being used by dozens of school districts across the country, to address implicit bias in the classroom. EJS has substantively engaged in battles against bigotry against immigrants and LGBT people.

The organization is now ready to start litigating cases that will reclaim the 14th Amendment as a tool for making racial justice a reality.

Thank you to Lisa Wong & Associates for your event management services!

A SPECIAL THANK YOU TO OUR GALA SPONSORS AND ADVERTISERS

• Arnold & Porter LLP
• Minami Tamaki LLP
• Morrison & Foerster LLP
• Neyhart, Anderson, Flynn & Grosboll
• Richard Grosboll
• James Finberg & Melanie Piech
• Colette Holt & Steven Pitts
• Van Der Hout, Brigagliano & Nightingale, LLP
• Thomas A. Saenz
• NARAL Pro-Choice California
• Gwen McKinney
• Doron Weinberg
• David Salniker & Teri Waller
• Rev. Diana McDaniel & the Friends of Port Chicago
• Price And Associates
• Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area
• Cedric Brown & Ray Pifferrer
• Nan Hunter
• Boxer & Gerson, LLP

According to Judge Walker: “Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.” Download a PDF of the ruling.

Under the decision, same-sex couples are not immediately allowed to marry. Judge Walker will decide after August 6 whether to stay his order while the case is being appealed, or allow marriages to resume in the interim.

As a racial justice organization committed to working with others to ensure that the rights of all are expanded — especially those who have been historically denied equal protection under the law — the Equal Justice Society opposed Prop. 8.

Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and a member of the EJS board of directors, observed:

“[W]hile we should savor today’s victory, this is just another step in our journey to full justice and dignity for our lives and our choices-including the freedom to choose whether and whom to marry.

“We must continue to reach out and have conversations about our families and our lives with our friends, our loved ones, our allies. By sharing our stories, we win the hearts and minds of others who may not share our views, and create a world where all families are valued and respected as fully equal.”

Read Kate’s full statement here.

(San Francisco, CA, June 12, 2009)—We are very surprised and deeply disappointed in the manner in which the Obama administration has defended the so-called Defense of Marriage Act against Smelt v. United States, a lawsuit brought in federal court in California by a married same-sex couple asking the federal government to treat them equally with respect to federal protections and benefits. The administration is using many of the same flawed legal arguments that the Bush administration used. These arguments rightly have been rejected by several state supreme courts as legally unsound and obviously discriminatory.

We disagree with many of the administration’s arguments, for example that DOMA is a valid exercise of Congress’s power, is consistent with Equal Protection or Due Process principles, and does not impinge upon rights that are recognized as fundamental.

We are also extremely disturbed by a new and nonsensical argument the administration has advanced suggesting that the federal government needs to be “neutral” with regard to its treatment of married same-sex couples in order to ensure that federal tax money collected from across the country not be used to assist same-sex couples duly married by their home states.

There is nothing “neutral” about the federal government’s discriminatory denial of fair treatment to married same-sex couples: DOMA wrongly bars the federal government from providing any of the over one thousand federal protections to the many thousands of couples who marry in six states. This notion of “neutrality” ignores the fact that while married same-sex couples pay their full share of income and social security taxes, they are prevented by DOMA from receiving the corresponding same benefits that married heterosexual taxpayers receive.

It is the married same-sex couples, not heterosexuals in other parts of the country, who are financially and personally damaged in significant ways by DOMA. For the Obama administration to suggest otherwise simply departs from both mathematical and legal reality.

When President Obama was courting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender voters, he said that he believed that DOMA should be repealed. We ask him to live up to his emphatic campaign promises, to stop making false and damaging legal arguments, and immediately to introduce a bill to repeal DOMA and ensure that every married couple in America has the same access to federal protections.

Other press conference participants include:

• S.F. City Attorney Dennis Herrera, Santa Clara County Counsel Ann Ravel, and other public attorneys
• Kate Kendell, Executive Director, National Center for Lesbian Rights
• The Rev. Art Cribbs, United Church of Christ, amici
• Lisa Cisneros, California Rural Legal Assistance, amici
• Gloria Allred, attorney and partner, Allred, Maroko and Goldberg, representing plaintiffs Robin Tyler & Diane Olson
• Jennifer Pizer, Marriage Project Director, Lambda Legal
• Elizabeth Gill, Staff Attorney, ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender & AIDS Project
• Geoff Kors, Executive Director, Equality California

The press conference begins at 7:30 a.m. in the South Light Court of San Francisco City Hall. The press conference will conclude by 7:50 a.m. Oral arguments begin at 9:00 a.m. in the California Supreme Court, on the Fourth Floor of 350 McAllister Street in San Francisco. The court, in the Earl Warren State Office Building, is located directly across the
street from the Civic Center Plaza, diagonally across from City Hall. The California Channel will broadcast the hearing live.  For details, visit http://www.calchannel.com/carriage.htm.

The cases are Strauss et al. v. Horton et al. (S168047); Tyler v. California et al (S168066; and CCSF v. Horton (S168078).