Email from my Mom on my Prop 8 Petition Email
Amein! S.F. City attorney and Gloria Allred are both filing suits in Supreme court this week, contesting that Prop. 8 is unconstitutional, as it prohibits a protected group from certain rights. Hopefully, one of these will prevail. Meanwhile, State Attorney General Jerry Brown (former CA. governor) has declared that the people who got married within the window of time when the State Supreme Court declared gay marriages legal, and before this ballot measure passed, will remain married. Good for him, and especially to Mayor Gavin Newsom of S.F. – he’s my hero for sticking his neck out without regard for his political future. I hope he runs for governor, but is probably too liberal for CA. All coastal areas voted against Prop. 8 and the entire rest of the state voted in favor. The map is scary.
I’m curious to see what happens, because however you frame it, the will of the voters has spoken, has it not? There aren’t any accusations of voter fraud or anything like that. This is an attempt to get the courts to overturn a democratically passed law, passed via direct vote no less. And it’s not just an ordinary state law, it’s a state constitutional amendment. Seems to me that as a matter of strategy, this is a bad idea. They should lick their wounds and then get the vote out next time to get the amendment off the books. It doesn’t sound like the petitioners have much of a case, anyway.
My cursory glance at some articles about the legal issues being debated show that this challenge will bring up some interesting things about state constitutional law, the main question being whether we have a constitutional amendment or a constitutional revision (which has stricter standards). (Equal protection is a more peripheral issue because an amendment could legitimately limit the scope of an equal protection guarantee. But if what they have amounts to a revision—more of a fundamental change to the constitution—then petitioners win because such a measure has to be approved by 2/3 of the legislature which it wasn’t.) Volokh thinks that this is an amendment, but Bainbridge isn’t so sure.
