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<B><I>BREAKING NEWS:</b></i> <b>Ninth Circuit Sides With Gay Couples in 2-1 Ruling on Prop 8</b>

BY Ginny LaRoe
February 07, 2012

Taking a narrow approach in deciding the blockbuster challenge to California's ban on gay marriage, a split panel of the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Feb. 7 found Proposition 8 unconstitutional. (See the opinion here.)

Writing for the majority, Judge Stephen Reinhardt said the ban runs afoul of the Equal Protection Clause, serving no purpose other than “to lessen the status and human dignity” of gays in California who could legally marry for a few months before the 2008 vote on Prop 8. The Constitution, Reinhardt wrote, citing the U.S. Supreme Court's Romer v. Evans, does not allow for “laws of this sort.”

“Because under California statutory law, same-sex couples had all the rights of opposite-sex couples, regardless of their marital status, all parties agree that Proposition 8 had one effect only,” Reinhardt wrote. “It stripped same-sex couples of the ability they previously possessed to obtain from the state, or any other authorized party, an important right ' the right to obtain and use the designation of 'marriage' to describe their relationship. Nothing more, nothing less.” Senior Judge Michael Daly Hawkins joined Reinhardt in Perry v. Brown, 10-16696. The panel's sole Republican appointee, Judge N. Randy Smith, wrote a dissent.

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