Facts
- In 1977, California amended its Family Code to define marriage as a civil contract between a man and a woman.
- In 2000, California voters approved Proposition 22, limiting state recognition of marriage to opposite-sex marriages.
- In 2003, California enacted the Domestic Partner Act, granting registered domestic partners the same state-law rights and responsibilities California granted to spouses.
- In 2004, same-sex couples sued in California state court, claiming the opposite-sex-only marriage restriction violated the California Constitution.
- In In re Marriage Cases (2008), the California Supreme Court agreed, invalidated the statutory limitation, and same-sex couples began marrying in California.
- In November 2008, voters approved Proposition 8, amending the California Constitution to add: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”
- After Proposition 8 passed, county clerks denied marriage licenses to two same-sex couples: Kristin Perry and Sandra Stier, and Paul Katami and Jeffrey Zarrillo.
- In May 2009, the couples filed a federal suit against state officials, alleging Proposition 8 violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses.
- After a bench trial, the district court held Proposition 8 unconstitutional on Due Process and Equal Protection grounds and entered a permanent injunction barring enforcement.
- State officials declined to appeal. The official ballot proponents of Proposition 8 intervened and pursued the appeal.
- The Ninth Circuit certified a question to the California Supreme Court regarding whether official initiative proponents may defend an initiative’s validity when state officials refuse; the California Supreme Court answered that they may assert the state’s interest in doing so.
Issues
- Whether the official proponents of Proposition 8 had Article III standing to appeal the federal judgment invalidating Proposition 8 when the responsible state officials declined to appeal.
- Whether Proposition 8 violated the Equal Protection Clause by withdrawing from same-sex couples the state designation of “marriage,” while leaving intact the substantive state-law rights and duties afforded through domestic partnership law.
Decision
- The Ninth Circuit held the official proponents had Article III standing to appeal because California law authorized them, in these circumstances, to assert the state’s interest in the initiative’s validity.
- The court affirmed the district court’s judgment that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional, but on narrower grounds.
- Applying rational-basis review informed by Romer v. Evans, the court held Proposition 8 violated Equal Protection because its effect was to take from same-sex couples an existing, state-conferred status designation—“marriage”—without a legitimate governmental reason.
- The court rejected asserted justifications such as responsible procreation, childrearing interests, caution in changing marriage policy, religious liberty, and parental control over education, concluding Proposition 8 did not materially further those aims given California’s statutory scheme granting same-sex couples the same legal rights and obligations as spouses.
- The court declined to decide whether the federal Constitution requires states generally to allow same-sex couples to marry and did not decide whether sexual-orientation classifications trigger heightened scrutiny.
Legal Principles
- Initiative proponents may satisfy Article III standing on appeal when state law authorizes them to represent the state’s interest in defending an enacted initiative after public officials decline to do so.
- Under rational-basis review, a measure can violate Equal Protection when it selectively withdraws from a disfavored group a previously recognized legal status or right, and the withdrawal is not rationally related to any legitimate governmental objective.
- Romer v. Evans supports close examination of laws that single out gay people for special legal disadvantage; a law fails even deferential review when its practical function is to impose unequal status without a valid state reason.
- Where a state has already extended all substantive incidents of marriage to same-sex couples, removing only the “marriage” label can be unconstitutional if the label functions as a significant state-conferred status and the removal serves no legitimate governmental interest.
Conclusion
The Ninth Circuit concluded that, in California’s specific legal setting—where same-sex couples already possessed the full set of state-law rights and duties associated with marriage—Proposition 8’s withdrawal of the “marriage” designation from same-sex couples lacked a legitimate justification and therefore violated the Equal Protection Clause, warranting affirmance of the district court’s injunction on those narrower grounds.