The voters of the state voted to amend the Constitution to ban same sex marriages and now the California Supreme Court is going to see if that decision by the people was Constitutional: The AP Reports:
California’s highest court agreed Wednesday to hear several legal challenges to the state’s new ban on same-sex marriage but refused to allow gay couples to resume marrying before it rules.
The California Supreme Court accepted three lawsuits seeking to nullify Proposition 8, a voter-approved constitutional amendment that overruled the court’s decision in May that legalized gay marriage.
All three cases claim the measure abridges the civil rights of a vulnerable minority group. They argue that voters alone did not have the authority to enact such a significant constitutional change.
[...]
The court directed Brown and lawyers for the Yes on 8 campaign to submit their arguments for why the ballot initiative should not be nullified by Dec. 19. It said lawyers for the plaintiffs, who include same-sex couples who did not wed before the election, must respond before Jan. 5. Oral arguments could be scheduled as early as March, according to court spokeswoman Lynn Holton.
[...]
But they also agreed that the cases present the court’s seven justices – six of whom voted to review the challenges – with complex questions that have few precedents in state case law.
Depending on how the California Supreme Court treats this, we may be seeing gay marriage get to the Supreme Court. By “depending,” I mean that the California Supreme Court has to consider very carefully which cases it is going to use in its decision. If the Supreme Court interprets federal law such as Romer v. Evans or Lawrence v. Texas, we will see a state interpreting shaky federal precedents which is pretty much a green light straight to the Supreme Court.
If oral arguments occur in March and we assume that PE-BHO won’t have to replace Justice Stevens or Breyer until the end of the year, we might actually ssee him put in a position where he will have to moderate his choice for next justice and maybe skip Judge Sotomayor. Gay marriage as a national issue will not be goo for PE-BHO, especially among African-Americans. In California, African-Americans, who came out in numbers greater than ever before due to the presence of BHO on the ballot, were the deciding votes in getting Prop 8 passed.
UPDATE: The professors have an interesting take regarding whether or not the initiative itself to ban gay marriage was legal in the first place.
