{"id":184713,"date":"2012-02-07T23:23:00","date_gmt":"2012-02-08T04:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/02\/07\/appeals-court-rules-that-prop-8-is-unconstitutional\/"},"modified":"2012-02-07T23:23:00","modified_gmt":"2012-02-08T04:23:00","slug":"appeals-court-rules-that-prop-8-is-unconstitutional","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/02\/07\/appeals-court-rules-that-prop-8-is-unconstitutional\/","title":{"rendered":"Appeals Court Rules that Prop 8 Is Unconstitutional"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/02\/08\/us\/marriage-ban-violates-constitution-court-rules.html\">was a 2-1 decision<\/a>, and the opinion is a pretty strong:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: blue;\"><p>\u201cAlthough the Constitution permits communities to enact most laws they believe to be desirable, it requires that there be at least a legitimate reason for the passage of a law that treats different classes of people differently,\u201d Judge Stephen R. Reinhardt wrote in the decision. \u201cThere was no such reason that Proposition 8 could have been enacted.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll that Proposition 8 accomplished was to take away from same-sex couples the right to be granted marriage licenses and thus legally to use the designation \u2018marriage,\u2019 \u201d the judge wrote, adding, \u201cProposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gay men and lesbians in California.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>BTW, all three judges agreed that the defendants request that the judge Vaughn Walker recuse himself was pretty much a crock of sh%$.<\/p>\n<p>The precedent on this case is fairly straightforward, the Supreme Court ruling on Colorado&#8217;s Amendment 2 about 15 years ago, where they said that voters can&#8217;t strip rights from a group just because they make them feel squicky, the so-called &#8220;rational basis&#8221; test.<\/p>\n<p>The question now is whether or not this case goes to the full appeals court (en banc), or to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n<p>And while we are on recusals.&nbsp; Seeing as how Scalia has publicly, and repeatedly, made comments explicitly stating that he has pre-judged the matter, how about he recuse his flabby ass from the case?<\/p>\n<p>If SCOTUS takes it, it will be closer though, as O&#8217;Connor has been replaced by Alito, who is an almost certain vote against gay civil rights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was a 2-1 decision, and the opinion is a pretty strong: \u201cAlthough the Constitution permits communities to enact most laws they believe to be desirable, it requires that there be at least a legitimate reason for the passage of a law that treats different classes of people differently,\u201d Judge Stephen R. Reinhardt wrote in &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[971,972,1030,978],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-rights","category-justice","category-lgbtq","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184713"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184713\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}