(Adds details about Massachusetts case, Supreme Court analysis)
By Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES, July 31 (Reuters) – Gay marriage opponents
asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to uphold a California
ban on same-sex matrimony that was struck down by two lower
courts as a violation of the U.S. Constitution.
The request from backers of Proposition 8, the
voter-approved state constitutional amendment defining marriage
as exclusively between a man and a woman, comes a week after the
high court was asked to review a Massachusetts case challenging
the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage the
same way.
The two petitions move the politically charged issue of
marriage rights for gay men and lesbians one step closer to a
potential first-time review by the Supreme Court in the weeks
before November’s U.S. presidential election.
President Barack Obama turned gay marriage into a 2012
campaign issue in May when he came out in support of the right
of same-sex couples to wed. His Republican opponent, former
Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, disagrees.
The Supreme Court could agree to hear the California and
Massachusetts cases in its next session, which begins in
October, putting the court on track to issue a ruling within a
year.
Alternatively, the high court could decline to hear either
or both cases.
Refusing to weigh in on the fight over California’s Prop 8
would keep intact lower-court rulings nullifying it but leave
unresolved the broader question of whether similar gay marriage
bans in other states would survive a constitutional challenge.
California, the most populous state, joined the vast
majority of U.S. states in outlawing same-sex marriage in 2008
when voters passed Prop 8, overriding a state Supreme Court
decision six months earlier that briefly legalized gay marriage.
The state high court, however, later ruled that 18,000
same-sex weddings officiated between May and November of 2008
would remain legal.
Gay rights advocates subsequently brought suit against Prop
8, and a San Francisco-based federal judge struck down the
measure in a landmark 2010 decision that was upheld in February
by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The appeals court
declined to reconsider the matter in June.
However, the California measure restricting marriage to
heterosexual couples remains in effect until the legal challenge
to Prop 8 runs its course, barring further weddings between gay
men and lesbians in the state in the meantime.
DEFINITION OF MARRIAGE
The majority opinion in February’s 2-1 decision by the 9th
Circuit held that California’s Prop 8 ban did not further the
goal of “responsible procreation,” which was at the heart of the
argument made by supporters of the measure.
“Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other
than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians
in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships
as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples,” the court ruled.
In focusing specifically on Prop 8, the appeals court left
unaddressed whether marriage is a fundamental right available to
homosexual and heterosexual couples alike.
Some legal experts have predicted that the narrow ruling
would lead the U.S. Supreme Court to either limit its own review
to the California law or refuse to consider the case altogether.
In its petition for high-court review, Prop 8 supporters
argued that the U.S. Constitution leaves the definition of
marriage up to individual states to determine.
“Whether the Constitution requires California to eliminate
the most longstanding, universal and fundamental institution —
marriage consisting of one man and one woman — is a question
that should be settled by the Supreme Court,” said Andy Pugno,
general counsel for Prop 8’s defenders.
David Boies, co-counsel for Prop 8 foes, said his side
opposed the petition because “gay and lesbian Californians
should not have to wait any longer to marry the person they
love.”
But he said gay rights advocates welcome Supreme Court
review of the case, adding that the petition “presents the
justices with the chance to affirm our Constitution’s central
promises of liberty, equality and human dignity.”
If the Supreme Court does take the case, the outcome could
well hinge on Justice Anthony Kennedy, a Republican-appointed
conservative seen as a key swing vote. He has written two
important decisions that came down on the side of same-sex
couples, though he has not explicitly endorsed gay marriage.
Six U.S. states and the District of Columbia have legalized
gay marriage but 30 have banned it.
Last week, Massachusetts’ attorney general, Martha Coakley,
petitioned the Supreme Court to uphold a federal appeals court
decision striking down parts of the federal Defense of Marriage
Act.
The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in May affirmed a
lower-court ruling that gay and lesbian couples who were legally
permitted to wed in Massachusetts had been unconstitutionally
denied federal benefits because of the Defense of Marriage Act,
including the right to file joint income tax returns or collect
Social Security retirement benefits.
(Editing by Cynthia Johnston, Cynthia Osterman and Lisa
Shumaker)
