The U.S. District Court judge hearing the challenge to California’s Proposition 8 referendum banning gay marriage has just ruled it unconstitutional and granted a permanent injunction against its enforcement. Read the entire Order (138 pages of it) here. I haven’t read it yet, but I hear it found the law unconstitutional on both due process and equal protection grounds, and specifically also noted in the findings of fact the “no harm no foul” effect of the 18,000 gay marriages legally performed in CA before the passage of Prop 8.
How will this impact us here in Georgia? First, we can bank on Karen Handel and Nathan Deal once again scrambling to out-homophobe one another in the 6 days before the Republican gubernatorial primary runoff. But taking a longer view, the case is undoubtedly headed up the appellate court chain, likely to the Supreme Court given that the next stop will be the notoriously liberal 9th Circuit who will probably uphold the ruling. If California’s anti-gay marriage amendment is unconstitutional, who’s to say all those other ones enacted around the country in 2002-2006 aren’t as well…including Georgia’s, which passed with 76% of the vote in 2004?
More importantly, will anyone have the cojones to file suits in other states with similar state constitutional amendments to challenge them too? Will anyone try this in Georgia? David Boies and Ted Olson appear to have lit the path for others to boldly follow…
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