News

In a landmark, 138-page decision, U.S. Federal District Court Judge Vaughn R. Walker held that there was no rational basis for California’s ban on same-sex marriage and that the ban was, therefore, unconstitutional.

In striking down the law, known as Proposition 8, Judge Walker ruled in Perry v. Schwarzenegger that the voters who supported the law did not provide California’s legislature with a proper basis for enacting that state’s ban on same-sex marriage. “A private moral view that same-sex couples are inferior to opposite-sex couples is not a proper basis for legislation,” Judge Walker concluded. Finding no rational basis upon which the discriminatory law advanced any legitimate state interest, Judge Walker held that the ban on same-sex marriage was predicated instead on the irrational and incorrect premise that same-sex relationships are inherently inferior to opposite-sex relationships. Such a premise, he held, is based on nothing more than “fear or unarticulated dislike of same-sex couples” and offends the Constitutional guarantee of equal protection.

We applaud this landmark decision in the struggle for civil rights for gay and lesbian couples and all LGBT Americans and we will be watching closely as it winds its way down the long appellate road that is to come. If, as appears likely, our closely divided Supreme Court has the final word in this case, we hope that the high Court agrees that prohibiting same-sex couples from marrying serves no legitimate state interest and offends the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the United States Constitution.

A copy of the full decision can be found here:
http://data.lambdalegal.org/in-court/downloads/perry_ca_20100804_decision-us-district-court.pdf