Proposition 8 back to the ballot in 2012?
Equality California launched a campaign yesterday to gauge community support for heading back to the ballot in 2012 to try to undo Proposition 8.
Rex Wockner
Equality California launched a campaign yesterday to gauge community support for heading back to the ballot in 2012 to try to undo Proposition 8.
Approved by voters in November 2008, Prop 8 amended the state constitution to re-ban same-sex marriage, which had been legal for 4 and a half months.
EQCA said the ongoing federal lawsuit against Prop 8 “could take years to resolve” and so it wants to know what the “community” wants to do.
In a case brought by the American Foundation for Equal Rights, represented by famous attorneys Ted Olson and David Boies, a federal district court struck down Prop 8 last summer and issued an injunction barring its further enforcement.
However, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals suspended the injunction, and the people who had put Prop 8 on the ballot appealed District Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision.
Then a new question emerged: whether ballot-measure sponsors have legal “standing” to appeal a federal court’s strikedown of a state ballot measure. None of the people who were sued in the case — including California’s previous and current governors and attorneys general — had or has any interest in defending Prop 8. They consider it to be unconstitutional.