Nest Stop For Prop *8 { The Supremes }
Both sides confident of victory before highest court in U.S.
The legal battle over California's Proposition 8 will likely not end with the ruling Tuesday (7 February) by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the state's ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional.
The ruling will now most certainly be appealed by Prop. 8 proponents to the U.S. Supreme Court. The court can either decide not to hear the case and allow the ruling to stand, or set the stage for the ultimate legal battle over same-sex marriage.
'Every pro-marriage American should be pleased that this case can finally go to the U.S. Supreme Court,' Brian Raum, an attorney for proponents and senior counsel at the legal group Alliance Defense Fund, said in an e-mail to Bloomberg News.
Raum added that his is confident Proposition 8 would be upheld by the highest court in the U.S.
Theodore B. Olson, lead co-counsel in the case to overturn Proposition 8, believes the Ninth Circuit ruling has given his side very solid legal footing. Olson has argued as dozen cases before the Supreme Court and was on the winning side of Bush v. Gore in 2000.
'We are very confident that this is the kind of challenge that is, right now, at the core, of what the Supreme Court said is impermissible under the 14th amendment to the Constitution of the United States,' he said at a Tuesday morning press conference in downtown Los Angeles.
But Olson declined to speculate about what might happen.
'We don't predict what the Supreme Court is going to do or whether it takes a case or doesn't take a case, we don't predict the outcome of Supreme Court decisions because the court decides these cases,' he said.
But Ted Boutrous, an attorney who worked with Olson and others on the case, believes the opinion written by the appeals court makes their decision very unlikely to be overturned. He remarked that it is 'extraordinarily well-done and supported by multiple cases.'
'We anticipate that the proponents of Proposition 8 will seek Supreme Court review,' he said. 'The way the Ninth Circuit crafted the opinion, it's unassailable.'
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