Marriage Rights Advocates Fight the Gay Marriage Ban in Court
Three California voters and four organizations dedicated to protecting the civil rights of gay and lesbian people filed a lawsuit in the California Supreme Court about an initiative that seeks to change the California Constitution to bar gay and lesbian couples from marriage.
The initiative is currently slated to appear on the November ballot. The lawsuit argues that the rules for revising the California Constitution were not properly followed.
“We filed this lawsuit because the sponsors of the initiative haven’t followed the very Constitution they’re trying to change,” said Stephen V. Bomse of Heller Ehrman LLP, a lawyer in the suit.
“For good reason, there’s a strict process for making revisions to our Constitution, and it’s more involved than simply collecting petition signatures. That process is in place to safeguard our basic form of government, especially the most basic principle of equal protection of the laws.
“Therefore we are filing this suit today to ask the California Supreme Court to enforce those rules and to require the proponents to follow the correct procedure if they wish to make this far reaching change to our state Constitution.”
The lawsuit claims that the ballet initiative is more than an admendment to the state’s constitution, rather it seeks to change the “underlying principles” of the Consititution and intends to make “far reaching changes in the nature of our basic government plan.”
Therefore, under current law, such a change to the constitution must be approved by a two-thirds majority of the Legislature before being submitted to the voters, according to the lawsuit.
“Here, the proposed initiative constitutes a proposed revision rather than an amendment because: (1) it seeks to alter basic structural principles of our constitutional system, including the principles of equal protection and equal citizenship, the protections afforded to human dignity and personhood by the fundamental rights to privacy and due process encompassed in the right to marry, and the premise that fundamental human rights inherently belong to all person; and
“(2) it seeks to limit the quintessential power and role of the courts in protecting minorities and enforcing the guarantee of equal protection under a revision to the Constitution ensures that substantive changes affecting fundamental constitutional principles are not adopted by a simple majority of the popular vote without adequate scrutiny and deliberation,” according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit was filed in the California Supreme Court on Friday, June 20, 2008. The lawsuit is expected to be reviewed in court this summer.
