First Ever Female Ca Attorney General: I'll 'Never' Defend Gay Marriage Ban Prop 8
PUBLISHED: NOVEMBER 24, 2010
San Francisco District Attorney General Kamala Harris has beaten her
Republican rival to become California's next attorney general, the
San Francisco Chroniclereported.
The narrow race dragged on for three weeks after the November 2
election.
Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley declared victory on election
night. But the race turned to Harris' favor as officials added in results from
mail-in and provisional ballots. On Wednesday morning, Cooley
conceded the race to Harris.
The candidates differed on whether to defend the state's gay marriage ban, Proposition 8, which Governor-elect Jerry Brown, as attorney general,
declined to defend.
Cooley said he would defend the ban in court because the “proper
role of an attorney general is to enforce and defend the will of the
people as manifested through the initiative or legislative process.”
unconstitutional, Cooley said the ruling needed to be appealed.
“Today's decision by a federal judge overturning Proposition 8 should
be appealed and tested at a higher level of our legal system,” Cooley
said in a statement. “The California Supreme Court upheld Proposition
8 by a 6 to 1 vote and declared it to be constitutional. Likewise, if the
voters had approved an initiative legalizing same-sex marriage and
a federal judge had ruled against it, I would also support an appeal
of that decision.”
Saying that Cooley either “does not understand the law or he is
deliberately misleading people about its content,” Tobias Wolff, a
University of Pennsylvania Law School Professor, disagreed with the
Los Angeles County district attorney.
“In that first round of legal challenges to Proposition 8, the California
Supreme Court did not rule on the constitutionality of Prop 8 under
any provision of the U.S. Constitution. It was asked to decide only one
question — whether state law permits a ballot initiative to be used
in putting the fundamental rights of a protected minority up for
popular vote,” Wolff told the Courage Campaign, a gay rights group
Harris, who enjoyed the endorsement of Equality California (EQCA),
the state's largest gay rights advocate, promised to “never defend the
anti-LGBT Proposition 8 in federal court.”
Harris will become the state's first female attorney general.
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