Same-Sex Marriage Update

[Greyson]

NO MORE DOMA!!!

With DOMA being struck down this now means that legally married same-sex couples will now be afforded all Federal rights and protection. This would include Immigration law. Now legally married same-sex partners can immigrate to this country if they choose to. Honestly, I did lose hope in my country, USA about 10 years ago. Some of that belief was restored today.

Prop 8 ruling restores marriage equality to same-sex couples in California. This is wonderful news. However, the struggle for full equality nation wide will continue. No one will be left behind. For our fellow queers, lesbians, gays, in states that do not recognized your humanity, yet, we will keep pushing forward.

[Italianboi]

Originally Posted by Greyson

NO MORE DOMA!!!

With DOMA being struck down this now means that legally married same-sex couples will now be afforded all Federal rights and protection. This would include Immigration law. Now legally married same-sex partners can immigrate to this country if they choose to. Honestly, I did lose hope in my country, USA about 10 years ago. Some of that belief was restored today.

Prop 8 ruling restores marriage equality to same-sex couples in California. This is wonderful news. However, the struggle for full equality nation wide will continue. No one will be left behind. For our fellow queers, lesbians, gays, in states that do not recognized your humanity, yet, we will keep pushing forward.

this is the best ever news for me.....I am so happy....yep yep!!!!


now...I just need to find a wife!!! lol

[Greyson]

Originally Posted by Greyson

NO MORE DOMA!!!

With DOMA being struck down this now means that legally married same-sex couples will now be afforded all Federal rights and protection. This would include Immigration law. Now legally married same-sex partners can immigrate to this country if they choose to. Honestly, I did lose hope in my country, USA about 10 years ago. Some of that belief was restored today.

After listening to more legal analysis this morning I am unsure if Immigration status must be recognized in every state. Some say it will depend upon the state. Immigration comes under Federal law. We know states can pass immigration laws and policies but many times they are struck down because Immigration is under Federal purview.

But, this is not the first time our courts make decisions that seem opposed to the constitution. DOMA was a perfect example. Until DOMA the Federal government left it up to the States to decide matters of marriage and divorce. Historically it came under "States Rights." Also, States would honor, recognize all marriages from any state and then afford legal status to their union when in a state that did not perform the marriage. All of that was not the case for interracial couples until Loving vs. Virginia in 1967.

Now we shall see how each state decides to Queer marriages. There are still 37 states the define marriage as "One Man and One Woman."

This past Sunday I did speak to a diverse group of people primarily made up of straight white middle and upper class and there was representation from Latino, African American, LGBTQ and poor people. I addressed Immigration Reform. I reminded them that Senator Marco Rubio was doing every thing he could to keep Immigration Reform out of the reach of Same-Sex couples and families during this latest change in our immigration laws.

I am hoping the overruling of DOMA will now settle that particular immigration injustice. Our time is here. Never give up on humanity for all.


Timeline for Interracial Marriage in USA:

http://civilliberty.about.com/od/rac...y-Timeline.htm

Timeline for LGBTQ Marriage in USA:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...95P07320130626

[MsTinkerbelly]

Kamala Harris On Prop 8 Decision: Same-Sex Marriages In California Should Begin Immediately


Posted: 06/26/2013 5:23 pm EDT


California Attorney General Kamala Harris gave a triumphant press conference Wednesday morning in reaction to the Supreme Court's decision to effectively dismiss California's Proposition 8, which barred same-sex couples from marrying.

In an exuberant speech delivered in downtown Los Angeles, Harris said that all 58 counties in California must abide by Northern California Judge Vaughn Walker's 2010 ruling that declared Prop 8 unconstitutional.

She also strongly urged the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to lift the stay on same-sex marriages as soon as possible -- even before the usual 25-day waiting period until the Supreme Court clerk notifies the lower court of its judgement.

"I am absolutely saying that if the 9th Circuit lifts its stay before the 25 days, that marriages can resume in California -- and shall resume in California," Harris said. "As soon as they lift that stay, marriages are on."

In an emotional tribute to California's same-sex couples, Harris explained that even just one more day of unequal rights was one day too many.

"Each one of those days that has passed has been a day that a family member who may have enjoyed and participated in a wedding ceremony may have passed away," she said. "Each day that has passed is a day that a baby may have been born -- and that California child, then, is in a situation where they don't have the full dignity that other children have when they look up and they ask, 'Why can't my mommies or my daddies be married also?'"

"For that reason," she concluded, "I urge the 9th Circuit to lift the stay as quickly as possible."

In a statement released just after the Supreme Court's ruling on Prop 8 Wednesday, California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) also put the onus on the 9th Circuit to lift the stay on same-sex marriages.

"Same-sex Californians will not be able to marry until the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals confirms the stay of the injunction, which has been in place throughout the appeals process, is lifted," Brown said in a statement.

Even though Judge Walker found Prop 8 unconstitutional, he also issued a stay on same-sex marriage along with his ruling, acknowledging that the case could still live on in appeals.

Unfortunately for Harris and same-sex couples who want to get married as soon as possible, the 9th Circuit has already confirmed that it will indeed wait for 25 days -- and even longer, if need be -- before lifting the stay on same-sex marriages.

The court prefers to wait for the Supreme Court's ruling to become official and also wants to give Prop 8 proponents time to ask for a rehearing, the Associated Press reports.

[Nadeest]

Only Section 3 of DOMA has been deemed unconstitutional. That clears the way for federal benefits to be given to all married people, yes. However, Section 2 is still in effect, thus States can still refuse to recognize same sex marriages that happened in another state.

The fight is far from over, people. We have just won one battle. The war is still going on, and we have not nearly won, yet.

[Soon]

[MsTinkerbelly]

Marty Lederman Guest

Posted Wed, June 26th, 2013 11:32 pm

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The fate of same-sex marriage in California after Perry

Back before the oral arguments in Perry, I wrote a post explaining what might happen to same-sex marriage in California if the Supreme Court were to hold that the Proposition 8 sponsors did not have standing to appeal from Judge Vaughn Walker’s judgment of August 4, 2010.

Now that that is indeed what has happened, what does it mean for the marriage rights of same-sex couples in California?

The Supreme Court concluded that the judgment of the Ninth Circuit must be vacated, and remanded the case to the court of appeals “with instructions to dismiss the appeal for lack of jurisdiction.” What about the district court judgment, however? In my previous post, I surmised that perhaps the Supreme Court would say something about the proper scope or application of the trial court’s judgment in the event the Court vacated the court of appeals’ decision. Not so: the Court majority is silent on the question of how Judge Walker’s injunction should be applied. Notably, however, in his dissenting opinion Justice Kennedy wrote that “the Court’s opinion today means that a single district court can make a decision with far-reaching effects that cannot be reviewed.”

Judge Walker’s injunction — see page 136 of his opinion — therefore remains unchanged by the Supreme Court’s decision; it is in effect the law of the case. What does this mean, as a practical matter, for same-sex marriages in California? Let’s take the relevant questions in turn:

1. When will the injunction take effect?

A: When the court of appeals lifts the stay that it imposed on the district court’s judgment. The Supreme Court’s mandate to the court of appeals will not be issued for at least 25 days. As far as I know, however, the court of appeals does not have to wait for the Supreme Court’s mandate in order to lift its stay of the trial court’s injunction. And Attorney General Harris apparently has asked the court of appeals to lift the stay as soon as possible. Therefore the trial court’s injunction will presumably go into effect on Monday, July 22d at the latest . . . and perhaps earlier.

2. Which state officials are bound by the injunction?

A: Judge Walker’s injunction reads: “Defendants in their official capacities, and all persons under the control or supervision of defendants, are permanently enjoined from applying or enforcing Article I, § 7.5 of the California Constitution.” (Section 7.5 is Proposition 8, which provides: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”)

The defendants who are bound by the injunction are six California officials—the County Clerks of Alameda County and Los Angeles County, the Governor, the Attorney General, the Director of the Department of Public Health & State Registrar of Vital Statistics, and the Deputy Director of Health Information & Strategic Planning for the Department of Public Health. The injunction clearly binds these six officials.

Moreover, in a memorandum dated June 3, 2013, Attorney General Harris concluded that, under California law, all California County Clerks—officers who have responsibilities to issue marriage licenses and otherwise implement state marriage laws—are “under the control or supervision” of the Director of the Department of Public Health & State Registrar of Vital Statistics. In support of this conclusion, the Attorney General relied primarily upon language in the California Supreme Court opinion in Lockyer v. City and County of San Francisco, 95 P.3d 459, 498 (Cal. 2004). I do not know enough about California law to assess whether the Attorney General’s opinion is correct that County Clerks are subject to the supervision of the Director of DPH . . . but assuming it is correct, then the injunction would also run against all California County Clerks, at least with respect to their function of issuing marriage licenses.

3. Which same-sex couples does the injunction protect?

A: Well, it obviously benefits the two couples who sued in Perry — Kris Perry and Sandy Stier, and Paul Katami and Jeff Zarrillo. They will be able to obtain marriage licenses from the defendant Clerks of Alameda and Los Angeles Counties, respectively.

What about the many other California same-sex couples who were not plaintiffs in the case? In my earlier post, I wrote that it is “not clear from the face of the injunction whether Judge Walker intended it to apply only to the defendants’ treatment of the two plaintiff couples, or whether Judge Walker instead intended to prohibit the defendants from denying marriage licenses to any same-sex couples in California.”

But in the briefing subsequent to my post, all the parties appeared to agree that Judge Walker’s injunction was intended, and is best construed, to also guarantee non-party same-sex couples the right to receive California marriage licenses. Therefore I think it’s fair to assume the injunction will be interpreted, by public officials and courts alike, to protect all same-sex couples, not limited to the four named plaintiffs. As Lyle explains, that is certainly the view of the relevant California officials, including the Governor and the State Registrar, who have advised state officials accordingly.

Did Judge Walker have the authority to issue such an injunction protecting non-parties? I don’t think he did, for the reasons I described in my previous post—primarily, that district court judges generally do not have the power to issue injunctions that protect persons other than the parties before them, absent a class action or a case in which a broader injunction is necessary to ensure that the plaintiffs receive complete relief. (On the other hand, not a single Justice on the Supreme Court uttered a word today to call into question the legality of the breadth of Judge Walker’s injunction, a fact that will certainly lend support to the counterargument that Judge Walker did not overreach in crafting the scope of the order, in the event that were to become an issue in further litigation.)

But even if I were right about that legal proposition—that is to say, even if Judge Walker’s injunction should have been limited to the protection of the plaintiffs before him—so what? That injunction nevertheless governs the case, and it will be operative, regardless of whether it should have been more tailored. And in their briefs to the Supreme Court, both the private-party challengers of Prop 8 and the City and County of San Francisco stressed that no party (no party with standing, anyway) had challenged the scope of that injunction.

Now that the injunction will finally go into effect, could there be a new challenge to the application of Judge Walker’s decision to non-party couples? If so, such a challenge presumably would come from either the named defendants (virtually inconceivable), or from a County Clerk who does not wish to issue a marriage license to a couple who were not plaintiffs in the Perry case.

My tentative view is that such a County Clerk challenge is a very unlikely prospect, for several reasons:

First, such a Clerk might be subject to the direction of the State Director of DPH as a matter of California law, and the Director might have the authority to forbid such a challenge and to direct the Clerk to issue the license. (Again, I am not sufficiently well-versed in California law to know for sure on this point.)

Second, a motion by such a County Clerk for relief from the judgment as applied to non-party couples, presumably pursuant to Rule 60 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, “must be made within a reasonable time,” according to Rule 60(c)(1). And it’s now been almost three years since the court issued the injunction. On the other hand, the injunction has been stayed most of that time, which might affect whether a motion now would be “reasonable.” (Any Rule 60 mavens out there who might know more about this?) [UPDATE: Thoughts from Howard Wasserman on this and related issues.]

Third, and most importantly, why bother? A County Clerk knows that if he refuses to issue a marriage license, the couple in question could simply drive to another county to apply to a different Clerk. Moreover, such a Clerk thinking of challenging the scope of the injunction also knows that if that collateral attack were successful, the requesting couple could then bring their own constitutional lawsuit against the Clerk, and would almost certainly prevail on the merits in the district court and in the Ninth Circuit—especially in light of the Supreme Court’s decision today in Windsor. Even a successful challenge to the scope of Judge Walker’s injunction, therefore, would only (at best) delay an almost inevitable injunction against the Clerk in question. Hardly worth the candle, then.

If I’m right that no Clerk is likely to challenge the application of the injunction to non-plaintiffs, or in any event that any such challenge is unlikely to be successful in permitting the Clerk to deny license applications in the long run, the result will be that County Clerks throughout California will be legally required to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples . . . and most or all will be willing or required to do so by July 22d at the latest. Judge Kennedy, then, will have been proven correct that “the Court’s opinion today means that a single district court can make a decision with far-reaching effects that cannot be reviewed.”

That is to say: Same-sex marriage in California is here to stay. And therefore, as of August 1, marriage equality will be a reality in the District of Columbia and thirteen states: California, Connecticut, Delaware (where a new law takes effect July 1), Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota (where a new law takes effect August 1), New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island (also Aug. 1), Vermont, and Washington.

[tara_kerrie]

A group called Arkansans for Equality submitted paperwork to the Attorney General to see if the paperwork is legal so they can start gathering signatures to have an ammendment to overturn the ban on gay marriage on the ballot next year.

I think i explained that right. If i misunderstood i hope that Medusa or someone will correct me.