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

(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.

Visit this page to download PDFs for the decision and NLCR’s amicus brief.

“We hope the California Supreme Court will uphold the essential principle of equality regardless of political controversy, just as the Iowa Supreme Court has done. The eyes of California and the world are now on the California Supreme Court, which must determine whether equal protection means equal, and whether Californians will continue to share that equality in the freedom to marry.”

“The California Supreme Court is expected to rule on the validity of Proposition 8, which altered the California Constitution to eliminate the right to marry for same-sex couples, by June 3, 2009.”

For more information about NCLR’s Proposition 8 legal challenge, visit www.nclrights.org.

The original plaintiffs, including Phyllis Lyon, the first to be married in San Francisco in 2004 and again on June 16, 2008, will make short statements about the personal significance of the ruling. Civil rights and religious leaders will discuss their role as amici in the Prop 8 legal challenge.

The roundtable takes place on Friday, February 13, from 10:30 a.m. at the National Center for Lesbian Rights, 870 Market Street, Suite 370, San Francisco.

In addition to Eva, the roundtable will include the following speakers:
- Kate Kendell, Executive Director, National Center for Lesbian Rights
- Geoff Kors, Executive Director, Equality California
- Phyllis Lyon, surviving spouse of Del Martin, Petitioner, In re Marriage Cases
- Jewelle Gomez and Diane Sabin, Petitioners, In re Marriage Cases
- Jeanne Rizzo and Pali Cooper, Petitioners, In re Marriage Cases
- Stuart Gaffney and John Lewis, Petitioners, In re Marriage Cases
- Rev. Dr. Rick Schlosser, Executive Director, California Council of Churches, Prop 8 legal challenge amici

EJS has been active in opposing Prop. 8 and in the legal challenges following the Nov. 2008 vote on the proposition, most recently last month when we joined other civil rights groups in filing an amicus brief with the California Supreme Court to invalidate Proposition 8 because it would mandate discrimination against a minority group and did not follow the process required for fundamental revisions to the California Constitution.