SAN FRANCISCO (ABP) — A California trial judge has said a state law banning same-sex marriage violates the California Constitution.
San Francisco Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer ruled March 14 that a state law — first passed by California legislators in 1977 and affirmed by more than 60 percent of the state's voters in 2000 — banning gay marriage offends the California Constitution's equal-protection provisions.
“No rational basis exists for limiting marriage in this state to opposite-sex partners,” Kramer, a Republican and a Catholic, wrote. “Same-sex marriage cannot be prohibited solely because California has always done so before.”
Kramer dismissed state attorneys' two main arguments defending the law — that the law was rational because opposite-sex marriage was deeply rooted in California tradition, and because the state had a rational purpose in encouraging procreation by encouraging heterosexual marriage.
The tradition argument was not valid, Kramer said, because other state laws — such as a law banning interracial marriage that was overturned in 1948 — that were based on tradition were similarly unconstitutional.
And the procreation argument was also invalid, the judge said, because the state does not ban marriage for heterosexual couples who have no intention or ability to procreate. “One does not have to be married to procreate, nor does one have to procreate in order to be married,” he wrote.
Kramer also rejected the state's contention that same-sex marriage was unnecessary in California because the state also extends many of the same rights to same-sex couples through domestic partnerships. “The idea that marriage-like rights without marriage is adequate smacks of a concept long rejected by the courts: separate but equal,” he wrote.
Kramer's ruling is California's first in favor of same-sex marriage. Last year, the California Supreme Court invalidated several thousand marriages performed in San Francisco earlier in the year, after Mayor Gavin Newsom (D) ordered city clerks to offer marriage licenses to gay couples on an equal basis with heterosexual couples. Newsom said the state law banning the marriages violated the California Constitution.
But the state's high court did not reach that conclusion in deciding that Newsom had exceeded his authority by ordering the marriages.
In 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court issued a similar ruling, saying the state's constitution required equal marriage rights for same-sex couples. The ruling was implemented last year, and Massachusetts remains the only jurisdiction in the United States with legalized gay marriage.
But similar lawsuits are pending in several other states. The Washington Supreme Court heard arguments in a case earlier this year, and a ruling is expected soon. Last month, a state judge said New York's practice of denying marriage licenses to homosexual couples violates that state's charter.
California officials have promised an appeal of Kramer's decision, which will then be heard by a regional appeals court and, likely, ultimately by the California Supreme Court. It could be a year or more before a final decision.
A coalition of national civil-rights groups filed the suit, Woo vs. California, on behalf of a San Francisco woman and her lesbian life-partner.
As has become customary after such rulings, conservative groups dismissed Kramer's action as another example of “judicial activism” or “judicial tyranny.”
“For the second time in the last month, an aberrant judge has launched a judicial assault on the bedrock of our society,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Washington-based Family Research Council, in a statement released shortly after the decision was announced. “We now look to the California Supreme Court to restore some sanity to the judicial process and overturn today's court decision — which, if upheld, will wreak havoc on our society, redefining the institution of marriage and denying children a mother or a father.”
Perkins also predicted the ruling would provide further momentum toward passage of a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution banning gay marriage nationwide. Members of Congress have re-introduced the Marriage Protection Amendment. A similar amendment failed to pass both houses of Congress last year.