Law Office Management
Mar. 2, 2012
Competing Opinions
Majority and dissenting opinions in the Ninth Circuit's Proposition 8 ruling.
Majority Opinion |
Dissent by Judge N. Randy Smith |
"[A]ll parties agree that Proposition 8 had one effect only. It stripped same-sex couples of the ability they previously possessed to obtain from the State, or any other authorized party, an important right - the right to obtain and use the designation of 'marriage' to describe their relationships. ... Proposition 8 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. ... By using their initiative power to target a minority group and withdraw a right that it possessed, without a legitimate reason for doing so, the People of California violated the Equal Protection Clause." |
"The United States Supreme Court has not recognized that the fundamental right to marry includes a fundamental right to gay marriage. .... Gays and lesbians are not a suspect or quasi-suspect class. ... 'In nearly one hundred and fifty years since the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, to our knowledge no Justice of the Supreme Court has suggested that a state statute or constitutional provision codifying the traditional definition of marriage violates the Equal Protection Clause or any other provision of the United States Constitution.' " |
| Quoting from Citizens for Equal Protection v. Bruning, 455 F.3d 859, 870 (8th Cir. 2006). | |
Kari Santos
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