Free Republic

SAN FRANCISCO – The federal judge who overturned California's same-sex marriage ban is set to rule Thursday on whether gay marriages should resume immediately in the state or await an appeals court's input. Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker announced late Wednesday that he would issue his decision by noon on requests to impose a stay that would keep Proposition 8 in effect while its sponsors appeal his decision.

The judge who threw out California's ban on gay marriage said Wednesday he is prepared to decide whether to stay his ruling pending appeal. U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, chief of the court in San Francisco, ruled last week that Proposition 8, adopted by California voters in 2008, is unconstitutional. The court said he plans to issue his decision on a stay Thursday morning. Walker issued a temporary stay last week. If he decides to keep his ruling from taking effect pending appeal, same-sex couples might be barred from marriage in California for several years, the Los Angeles Times said....

An Alameda Superior Court judge Monday temporarily barred Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger from imposing new furloughs on state workers beginning Friday. Judge Steven A. Brick ruled that there are "serious questions" about the legality of the furloughs and that permitting them before a scheduled Sept. 13 court hearing could cause irreparable harm. "The court finds, on the limited record before it, that the balance of hardships tips in favor of petitioners," states Brick's ruling, which is intended to preserve the status quo until both sides have had ample opportunity to press their case. Schwarzenegger, through a spokesman, vowed an immediate appeal...

The federal judge who overturned California's same-sex marriage ban this week is a Republican who once came under fire for his membership to a powerful all-male club that had only recently allowed blacks to join. But after Chief U.S. Judge Vaughn Walker struck down the voter-approved ban known as Proposition 8, he became something else in the minds of some: a gay activist. Rumors have circulated for months that Walker is gay, fueled by the blogosphere and a San Francisco Chronicle column that stated his sexual orientation was an "open secret" in legal and gay activism circles. Walker himself hasn't...

It has been clear since before the beginning of the year that Judge Vaughn Walker of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco was on a mission to establish a federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage and thereby to overturn California’s Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment passed by the people of the state in 2008. From his decision to have a “trial” of the “facts” in the case rather than proceed straightaway to legal arguments about the constitutional issues (a choice that surprised even the plaintiffs’ attorneys) to his attempt to stage a nationally televised extravaganza (brought to a halt...

"Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license," federal Judge Vaughn Walker wrote. So one judge overturned a measure approved by 52 percent of California voters in 2008 and upheld by the California Supreme Court in a 6-1 ruling. . . . Walker summed up support for Prop. 8 as emanating from "a fear or unarticulated dislike of same-sex couples." Wrong. Voters have reason to be afraid lest legalizing same-sex marriage result in unintended consequences - such as the legalization of polygamy, as recommended by a Canadian...

A balanced budget for Sacramento County? Not so fast. A Sacramento Superior Court judge on Thursday blocked the county's scheduled cuts to medical programs for the poor, ordering that clinics slated for closure remain open. The cuts were set to take effect this weekend – the start of the new fiscal year. Cuts to primary care, including the clinics, were projected to save $7.8 million. It was part of a spending plan the Board of Supervisors approved last month that included layoffs for nearly 700 workers. The board had to balance a $1.9 billion general fund budget. Included in the...

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is telling senators she'll do her best to consider cases impartially and with judicial humility, as she begins Judiciary Committee hearings facing Republicans charges that she'd let her political views color her decisions as a justice. "I will do my best to consider every case impartially, modestly, with commitment to principle, and in accordance with law," Kagan plans to tell senators as she heads into a marathon week of high-pressure vetting before the Judiciary panel, pressing to portray herself as a mainstream addition to the court.

...District Judge John Dietz, declaring the money used to collect signatures "an unauthorized, illegal contribution," granted the Democratic Party a temporary restraining order to block Green Party candidates from being certified for the November ballot. Democrats contended that a petition drive to put Green candidates on the ballot was actually an effort to help Perry, a Republican, by diverting votes from his Democratic challenger Bill White... It had struggled earlier to get the required 43,991 petition signatures for its candidates to make the ballot. At a hearing Thursday, Green Party member Garrett Mize testified that Perry's former chief of staff,...

SAN FRANCISCO - Charles Cooper, the attorney defending a federal challenge to Proposition 8, came to San Francisco to deliver his closing argument on same-sex marriage Wednesday. But Chief Judge Vaughn Walker made it feel much more like a cross-examination. Walker closely questioned Cooper about his trial presentation, including why his side called only one witness to testify about the institution of marriage. Where Cooper's counterpart Theodore Olson of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher was able to deploy lofty rhetoric with less interruption, Cooper was stuck parrying Walker for about two hours. At one point, Walker asked Cooper to recount the...

Victoria Kolakowski, who's running for Alameda Count Superior Court judge in a November runoff election, declares on her campaign Web site that she hopes to make history."If I am elected, I would be the first openly LGBT superior court judge elected in Alameda County, the first openly LGBT person elected countywide, and the first transgender trial court judge in the United States," it states. The question is how much it should matter. Kolakowski, 48, transitioned from male to female in 1989 during her last year in law school and had sex reassignment surgery in 1991. She has 21 years of...

Ohio's highest court has ruled that a person may be convicted of speeding purely if it looked to a police officer that the motorist was going too fast. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that an officer's visual estimation of speed is enough to support a conviction if the officer is trained, certified by a training academy, and experienced in watching for speeders. The court's 5-1 decision says independent verification of a driver's speed is not necessary. The court upheld a lower court's ruling against a driver who challenged a speeding conviction that had been based on testimony from police...

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s undergraduate thesis at Princeton University in 1981 was mostly a clinical analysis of the socialist movement in the United States, but in her conclusion she expressed disappointment that “labor radicalism” had failed to gain political prominence. Kagan, in her 130-page thesis, titled “To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933,” sought to explain “why the growing and confident American socialist movement of the Progressive Era suddenly fell apart.” Kagan’s thesis, in the end, was that infighting ultimately did in the movement. “Through its own internal feuding, then, the [Socialist Party] exhausted itself forever...

A federal judge has blocked Gov. Paterson’s push for 100,000 state worker furloughs. Senior U.S. District Judge Lawrence E. Kahn issued the temporary restraining order late this afternoon. (Read it here.) The furloughs, which would be the first in state history, were to go into effect on Monday, but now will have to wait. Kahn scheduled a hearing on the matter for May 26. The temporary restraining order also prohibits Paterson from submitting any more emergency extenders that withhold the 4% to &% pay raises for union employees. Paterson included the furloughs in an emergency spending bill to keep government...

It is no more of an empirical question than whether she is Jewish. We know she is Jewish, and it is a fact simply and rightly put in the public square. If she were to hide her Jewishness, it would seem rightly odd, bizarre, anachronistic, even arguably self-critical or self-loathing. And yet we have been told by many that she is gay ... and no one will ask directly if this is true and no one in the administration will tell us definitively. In a word, this is preposterous - a function of liberal cowardice and conservative discomfort. It should...

The White House anticipates that the position Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan took regarding military recruiters at Harvard Law School, during her time as dean there, will be one of the big points of attack from Republicans. The policy banning military recruiters from using Harvard Law School’s Office of Career Services had been in place since 1979 because of the military’s ban on gay and lesbian troops serving openly. University policy requires that any employer who recruits at Harvard Law School and uses the services of office of career services must sign a statement indicating that it does not discriminate...

CHICAGO (AP) - A federal judge in Chicago has refused to issue a subpoena for President Barack Obama to testify at former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's political corruption trial.

President Barack Obama's nominee to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals evidently doesn't know the difference between a motive and an excuse. Judge Robert Chatigny, a federal court judge based in Connecticut, was picked by the president despite a judicial record which includes trying to bully a convicted serial killer's attorney into delaying his client's execution despite lower court rulings and the client's own instructions, Or perhaps he was picked because of such an attempt at judicial activism.

A controversial nominee for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals apologized Friday for sending Senate Judiciary Committee members an incomplete portfolio about himself and said he'd do whatever he could to win the committee's trust. Republican senators called into question Goodwin Liu's temperament as a possible judge, blasting the controversial 9th Circuit Court of Appeals nominee during his confirmation hearing Friday over statements he made about Supreme Court Judge Samuel Alito's "vision of America." At the time of Judge Alito's confirmation process Liu was quoted as saying that "in Judge Alito's America, the police may shoot unarmed Americans ... the...

Madison, Wis. (AP) -- A federal judge in Wisconsin says the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb issued the ruling Thursday in a lawsuit filed by the Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation.