Federal judge overturns California’s Prop 8

A federal district judge issued a ruling that struck down California’s Prop 8, a ballot referendum that outlawed same-sex marriage in that state. Judge Vaughan Walker, a Reagan appointee, ruled that there was no rational basis for denying gay and lesbian couples the right to marry and that the law violated both the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment.

In the ruling, Judge Walker pointed out that the defendants in the case could not provide any evidence to support what they claimed was the rational basis for the law:

Proponents argued that Proposition 8 should be evaluated solely by considering its language and its consistency with the “central purpose of marriage, in California and everywhere else, to promote naturally procreative sexual relationships and to channel them into stable, enduring unions for the sake of producing and raising the next generation.”

At oral argument on proponents’ motion for summary judgment, the court posed to proponents’ counsel the assumption that “the state’s interest in marriage is procreative” and inquired how permitting same-sex marriage impairs or adversely affects that interest. Counsel replied that the inquiry was “not the legally relevant question,” but when pressed for an answer, counsel replied: “Your honor, my answer is: I don’t know. I don’t know.”

This ruling applies only in California at this time and it will be appealed immediately. If the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upholds the ruling, it would then apply throughout that district in five western states. If the Supreme Court ultimately upholds it — which, to be realistic, is not terribly likely — then Michigan’s ban on same-sex marriage passed in 2004 would also be overturned.