SAN FRANCISCO (ABP) — The same California court that handed gay-rights supporters a major victory last year handed them a significant, but expected, defeat May 26.
Nonetheless, the state Supreme Court’s 6-1 decision to uphold a state constitutional amendment halting same-sex marriages had a silver lining for the state’s gay couples. Despite gay-rights’ opponents request to the contrary, the justices declined to invalidate the approximately 18,000 same-sex marriages that took place between May, when the court legalized gay marriage, and November, when California voters overturned it by approving Proposition 8.
At question in the Strauss v. Horton decision was not the constitutionality of the amendment itself, but whether it was enacted properly. California law distinguishes between two ways to change the state’s Constitution: An amendment simply requires a sufficient amount of valid petition signatures to be placed on the ballot. However, a more sweeping change to the state’s charter is dubbed a “revision,” and requires two-thirds approval by the state’s Legislature before being placed on the ballot.
Gay-marriage supporters said Proposition 8 should have been considered a revision, because it took away a fundamental right from same-sex couples that the court had recognized in the state Constitution.
But the court’s majority sided with supporters of the amendment, noting that the proposition did not entirely take away the rights afforded by marriage, because gays in California still are able to enter into legally recognized domestic partnerships with rights and responsibilities very similar to those afforded by marriage.
Chief Justice Ronald George, who penned the court’s opinion, said Proposition 8 did not “entirely repeal or abrogate” gay couples’ rights to have their relationships recognized by the state. He said the amendment merely “carves out a narrow and limited exception to these state constitutional rights, reserving the official designation of the term ‘marriage’ for the union of opposite-sex couples as a matter of state constitutional law.”
George noted that some of the justices ruled with the majority not because of their opposition to same-sex marriage, but because of their duty to interpret the law.
“[O]ur task in the present proceeding is not to determine whether the provision at issue is wise or sound as a matter of policy or whether we, as individuals, believe it should be a part of the California Constitution,” he wrote. “Regardless of our views as individuals on this question of policy, we recognize as judges and as a court our responsibility to confine our consideration to a determination of the constitutional validity and legal effect of the measure in question.”
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Carlos Moreno — the court’s sole Democratic appointee — said the decision was a dangerous step.
“The rule the majority crafts today not only allows same-sex couples to be stripped of the right to marry that this court recognized [in the previous case], it places at risk the state constitutional rights of all disfavored minorities,” Moreno wrote. “It weakens the status of our state Constitution as a bulwark of fundamental rights for minorities protected from the will of the majority.”
Many legal experts had predicted the court would rule as it did, in part because court decisions to undo constitutional amendments because they were improperly approved are extremely rare in California.
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Robert Marus is managing editor and Washington bureau chief for Associated Baptist Press.
Related ABP stories:
Gay marriage moves ahead in Calif. after state Supreme Court ruling (5/15/2008)