Proposition 8 challenged in federal court

Sacramento Bee ^ | 5/27/9 | Steve Wiegand

[SmithL]

A strange-bedfellows duo of top constitutional lawyers said today they are challenging the legal validity of Proposition 8, the November 2008 ballot measure that prohibited same-sex marriages in California.

Speaking at a Los Angeles press conference, attorneys Theodore B. Olson and David Boies said they had filed a suit in federal court on behalf of two gay California couples, and would seek an injunction to stay the law while arguing it is a violation of the equal-protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Olson, a former U.S. solicitor general, represented former President George W. Bush in Bush v. Gore, which decided the 2000 presidential election. Boies represented Bush's Democratic challenger, Al Gore.

The case "is not about liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican," said Olson. "This case is about the equal rights guaranteed to every American under the United States Constitution."

The challenge in federal court comes a day after the California Supreme Court upheld the validity of Proposition 8 under the state constitution.

[Publius6961]

What do you call a thousand attorneys at the bottom of the ocean?

[Carry_Okie]

Uh, really? Get off it. You know what I meant.

Uh, no, I didn't; I knew what you wrote and responded with a correction to multiple errors in fact.

If DOMA had Constitutional problems it would have been challenged.

Agreed, but that has nothing whatever to do with what I posted which was to correct the record for those who don't know what happened with Proposition 22.

[kaehurowing]

A good start?

[steve-b]

4th step was to get the Supreme Court, at a minimum, to allow the 18,000 marriages to be recognized, despite the Prop 8 definition of marriage.

The SOCAL ruled (correctly) that, in the absence of explicit retroactive language, the existing marriages could not be interefered with. If the proposition was supposed to do that, it needed to be expressly written into the language.