The California Supreme Court just issued its opinion in Strauss v. Horton, the case challenging the constitutionality of Proposition 8. The Court found Proposition 8 a valid amendment to the California constitution. It also held that Prop 8 did not retroactively invalidate the roughly 18,000 marriages of same sex couples performed between June and November of last year.
The vote was 6-1.
Justice Werdegar concurred separately to note that while the institution of “marriage” is now limited to different sex couples, the equal protection clause of the California Constitution, as interpreted by the Court in Marriage Cases requires that the state legislature do everything it can to equalize any distinctions between marriages and the legal unions that same sex couples are allowed to enter.
Justices Kennard and Werdegar tried in their concurrences to make sense of a constitution that contains both the language of Proposition 8 and prohibits discrimination against gay men and lesbians by reiterating their commitment to equality. This would have been the moment to disestablish the institution of marriage. Too bad they let it pass.
More analysis to come (the document comes out to 185 pages and is available here).
NYT said the vote was 6-1. Is that incorrect?
Yep – I fixed it after I noticed the mistake myself!