A federal appeals panel in San Francisco ruled Tuesday that California’s Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, a decision that could lead to the Supreme Court’s consideration of the controversial social issue.Read the rest here.
By a 2 to 1 vote, the panel overturned the proposition, which was approved by 52 percent of the state’s voters in 2008 and amended the state’s Constitution to limit marriage to a man and a woman.
This is not very surprising. The 9th Circuit is so far out in left field that if the world were flat they would be in imminent danger of falling off the leftward edge. This is going to the Supreme Court which has overturned more rulings from the 9th circuit than most of the other Appellate Courts combined.
3 comments:
I am mystified by the logic of this opinion. The Supreme Court will have to run on it if for no other reason than it creates a right to be constitutional as long as the legislative act serves no productive purpose. That's not the courts domain to say what legislative purpose is or is not productive.
This basically means there's no point in voting.
The reasoning of the Court is beyond ridiculous. They claim the key factor is that a right is being "taken away" without good cause. Ignoring that the right was "granted" by the California Supreme Court out of wholecloth, the Constitution was amended to remedy that, and that's the basis for the appeal. They even acknowledge that for the vast majority of California's history it was understood that marriage was between a man and a woman.
Interestingly, the Court refused to reach the issue of whether there was a Constitutional right to gay marriage. They found only that it was a breach of the equal protection clause to "take away" a pre-existing right without (they say) a rational basis. Unfortunately, the dissent wasn't much clearer. It was a bit rambling and disjointed. Lots of people are predicting the USSC will either affirm or deny cert. I have my doubts. The Lawrence v. Texas case is cited in the dissent, specifically Justice O'Connor's concurrence where she notably said that preserving traditional marriage was a rational basis for a state making a discriminatory law.
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