The Obama administration this afternoon filed an extensive amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to declare California’s Prop 8 ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. You can read the entire brief below, in full.
Read all our recent articles on Prop 8 and DOMA, including amicus briefs and this week’s stunning news of 131 Republicans asking the Supreme Court to support same-sex marriage.
A few quick key excerpts:
PROPOSITION 8 VIOLATES EQUAL PROTECTION
The Court can resolve this case by focusing on the particular circumstances presented by California law and the recognition it gives to committed same-sex rela- tionships, rather than addressing the equal protection issue under circumstances not present here. Under California law, same-sex partners may “enter into an official, state-recognized relationship,†i.e., a domestic partnership. Pet. App. 48a. State law grants domestic partners all of the substantive rights and obligations of a married couple: domestic partners have “the same rights, protections, and benefits, and shall be subject to the same responsibilities, obligations, and duties under law * * * as are granted to and imposed upon spous- es.†Cal. Fam. Code § 297.5(a). Same-sex partners in California may, inter alia, raise children with the same rights and obligations as spouses; adopt each other’s children; gain a presumption of parentage for a child born to or adopted by one partner; become foster par- ents; file joint state tax returns; participate in a part- ner’s health-insurance policy; visit their partner when hospitalized; make medical decisions for a partner; and, upon the death of a partner, serve as the conservator of the partner’s estate. Pet. App. 49a-50a. California has therefore recognized that same-sex couples form deeply committed relationships that bear the hallmarks of their neighbors’ opposite-sex marriages: they establish homes and lives together, support each other financially, share the joys and burdens of raising children, and pro- vide care through illness and comfort at the moment of death.
Proposition 8 nevertheless forbids committed same- sex couples from solemnizing their union in marriage, and instead relegates them to a legal status—domestic partnership—distinct from marriage but identical to it in terms of the substantive rights and obligations under state law. Indeed, Proposition 8 made clear that it left undisturbed California’s conferral of the same substan- tive rights and obligations of marriage on same-sex domestic partners and that its sole purpose was to deny same-sex partners access to marriage.
And
California’s extension of all of the substantive rights
and responsibilities of marriage to gay and lesbian do- mestic partners particularly undermines the justifica- tions for Proposition 8. It indicates that Proposition 8’s withholding of the designation of marriage is not based on an interest in promoting responsible procreation and child-rearing—petitioners’ central claimed justification for the initiative—but instead on impermissible preju- dice. As the court of appeals observed (Pet. App. 87a), that is not necessarily to say “that Proposition 8 is the result of ill will on the part of the voters of California.†‘‘Prejudice, we are beginning to understand, rises not from malice or hostile animus alone. It may result as well from insensitivity caused by simple want of careful, rational reflection or from some instinctive mechanism to guard against people who appear to be different in some respects from ourselves.†Board of Trs. of Univ. of Ala. v. Garrett, 531 U.S. 356, 374 (2001) (Kennedy, J., concurring). Prejudice may not, however, be the basis for differential treatment under the law.
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OBAMA DOJ SCOTUS Brief Asking for Prop 8 to be declared unconstitutional by davidbadash
http://www.scribd.com/embeds/127864012/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&access_key=key-o7a50jn4b7eq05en38h
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