Prop 8 Ruling Gives California Same-Sex Marriage, and Other States an Opening

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http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/06/prop-8-ruling-gives-california-same-sex-marriage-and-other-states-an-opening/277241/


Paul Katami and Jeff Zarrillo, plaintiffs in the Proposition 8 case, leave the Supreme Court after Wednesday's ruling. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

By sidestepping a ruling on the merits of California's gay-marriage ban, and at the same time striking down the heart of the Defense of Marriage Act, the United States Supreme Court Thursday morning made at least three things perfectly clear: same-sex marriage is here to stay in those states that now recognize it; Congress may not undermine same-sex marriage rights that today are recognized in those states; and America is in for years more political and legal wrangling over the extent to which such marriages will spread across the country.

My Atlantic colleague Garrett Epps is focusing today on the Court's decision in United States v. Windsor declaring the federal Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional on equal protection grounds. As he notes, the majority opinion from Justice Anthony Kennedy tracks his decades-long sensitivity to the rights of gays and lesbians. I focus here on the Court's cautious ruling in the Proposition 8 case, styled Hollingsworth v. Perry, and what it likely portends for the future both of same-sex marriage and of the legal and political debate over it.

In Perry, the Court did what it did just this past Monday in the affirmative action case -- it avoided a definitive ruling in a case with huge social ramifications. Except that in Perry there was even less consensus on avoiding the merits than there was in Fisher v. University of Texas. In Perry, by a 5-4 vote, in an opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Court ruled that the private parties that had appealed a trial judge's opinion striking down Proposition 8 had no legal right, no "standing," to bring the appeal. The Court in effect restored that trial court ruling -- and thus restored same-sex marriage in California -- but in California alone.

So now is as good a time as any to go back and read the lengthy August 2010 ruling issued by Judge Vaughn Walker, an appointee of George W. Bush, when he struck down Proposition 8 as a violation of the due process and equal protection clauses of the Constitution. It is time to recall how one-sided the Proposition 8 trial was -- how utterly unprepared were the initiative's lawyers and witnesses when confronted with the facts and the law as presented by David Boies and Ted Olson, two of the brightest lawyers of their generation and, today, heroes to the same-sex marriage cause. The trial was a rout, and now its result is the law.