BY CARLOS SANTOSCOY
PUBLISHED: SEPTEMBER 18, 2010
In urging an appeals court to overturn Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn
Walker's ruling that stuck down California's gay marriage ban, backers
have called the ruling “egregiously selective and one-sided.”
After conducting a 13-day trial in January, Walker last month ruled
Proposition 8 to be unconstitutional because it violates the right of gay
men and lesbians to equal protection and due process. It is the first time
a federal judge has ruled on the constitutionality of state-enacted gay
marriage ban.
In written arguments submitted Friday to the the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals, lawyers for ProtectMarriage.com, the sponsors of the ban,
chided Walker for ignoring relevant information, including “judicial
authority, the works of eminent scholars past and present in all
relevant
academic fields, extensive historical and documentary evidence,
” in finding
the law unconstitutional and basing his opinion “almost exclusively
on an uncritical acceptance the evidence submitted by Plaintiffs'
experts.”
He “simply ignored virtually everything … that ran counter to its
conclusions,” lawyers wrote in their 134-page brief.
The challenge was organized and funded by the American Foundation
for Equal Rights (AFER), which is scheduled to submit its arguments
next month. AFER is representing a gay couple and a lesbian couple
who have been denied the right to marry because of Proposition 8.
Attorneys for ProtectMarriage.com urged the three-judge appeals court
to ignore the testimony presented at trial, calling it “unreliable and
ultimately irrelevant.”
Lawyers also rejected Walker's conclusion that Prop 8 supporters
backed the measure out of animus towards gay men and lesbians,
calling it an attack on the “many judges and lawmakers and millions
of Americans who rightly and reasonably understand that marriage is
the unique union of a man and a woman.”
In a statement released Friday, Chad Griffin, president of AFER,
defended Walker's ruling, which he said was “based on our nation's
most fundamental principles, and that the Constitution does not permit
unequal treatment under the law.”
“Regardless of the defendant-intervenors' protests, the fact remains that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional, as was proven conclusively and
unequivocally through a full federal trial,” Griffin said.
Oral arguments in the case are scheduled for the first week in December.
