Obama Admin Urges SCOTUS To Overturn Gay Marriage Ban In California

Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

The Obama administration on Thursday urged the Supreme Court to acknowledge a right to same-sex marriage but stopped short of explicitly arguing it apply to every state, SCOTUSblog reported. The government filed a friend-of-the-court brief in a case on the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure banning same-sex marriage, in which they urged the court to overturn the ban.  

President Obama played a direct role in deciding whether the government should weigh in and what position it should take, according to SCOTUSblog.

Much of the logic of the government’s brief — its first entry into the controversy over California’s Proposition 8 — could be read to support a right to marriage equality in every state, but it did not endorse that idea explicitly…

 

Administration sources said that President Obama was involved directly in the government’s choice of whether to enter the case at all, and then in fashioning the argument that it should make.  Having previously endorsed the general idea that same-sex individuals should be allowed to marry the person they love, the President was said to have felt an obligation to have his government take part in the fundamental test of marital rights that is posed by the Proposition 8 case.

The government’s brief tries to balance states’ rights with support for same-sex marriage with what it terms the “eight-state solution.” It argues that states which already grant the same rights to gay couples as straight ones through civil unions must go the final step and legalize same-sex marriage. There are currently seven such states, in addition to California: Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon and Rhode Island.

Oral arguments in the Prop 8 case, Hollingsworth v. Perry, will be held on March 26.

Latest Livewire
Comments
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: