In Re Marriage Cases - Procedural History

Procedural History

At the direction of Mayor Gavin Newsom, the Office of the County Clerk of San Francisco "designed revised forms for the marriage license application and for the license and certificate of marriage, and on February 12, 2004, the City and County of San Francisco began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples." On February 13, two organizations, the Proposition 22 Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the Campaign for California Families, filed actions in San Francisco Superior Court (the court of first instance) seeking an immediate stay to prohibit the City from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

The Superior court refused to grant the groups' request for an immediate stay, and the City and County continued to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Following this, the California Attorney General and a number of taxpayers filed two separate petitions seeking to have the California Supreme Court issue an original writ of mandate, asserting that the City's actions were unlawful and warranted immediate intervention." On March 11, 2004, the California Supreme Court ordered officials of San Francisco "to enforce the existing marriage statutes and to refrain from issuing marriage licenses not authorized by such provisions." The Court later held in Lockyer v. City and County of San Francisco that the City and County had acted unlawfully, but was free to bring an action challenging the constitutionality of the marriage laws if it wished. The City and County of San Francisco then filed a Petition for writ of mandate in Superior Court, seeking a declaration that "all California statutory provisions limiting marriage to unions between a man and a woman violate the California Constitution." All six actions were consolidated (coordinated) in a single proceeding called In re Marriage Cases. LGBT rights groups, including Lambda Legal and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, were also among the plaintiffs.

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Richard A. Kramer held for the plaintiffs, finding that the marriage restriction was invalid under the strict scrutiny standard based on a suspect classification of gender. In October 2006, in a two-to-one decision, the First District of the Court of Appeal of California reversed the superior court's ruling on the substantive constitutional issue, disagreeing in a number of significant respects with the lower court's analysis of the equal protection issue."

The opinion, written by Chief Justice Ronald George, cited the court's 1948 decision in Perez v. Sharp that reversed the state's interracial marriages ban. The court found that "equal respect and dignity" of marriage is a "basic civil right" that cannot be withheld from same-sex couples, that sexual orientation is a protected class like race and gender, and that any classification or discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is subject to strict scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause of the California State Constitution. It was the first state high court in the country to do so. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, by contrast, did not find sexual orientation to be a protected class, and instead voided its gay-marriage ban on rational basis review.

After the announcement, the Advocates for Faith and Freedom and the Alliance Defense Fund, among others, stated they would ask for a stay of the ruling. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger immediately issued a statement pledging to uphold the ruling, and repeated his pledge to oppose Proposition 8.

In a one-page Resolution, the California Supreme Court on June 4, 2008, denied all petitions for rehearing and to reconsider the May 15 ruling, as it removed the final obstacle to same-sex marriages starting on June 17. It further rejected moves to delay enforcement of the decision until after the November election, when voters would decide whether to reinstate a ban on same-sex nuptials. Chief Justice Ronald George and Justices Joyce Kennard, Kathryn Mickle Werdegar, and Carlos Moreno voted against reconsideration, while voting to reconsider the judgment were Justices Marvin Baxter, Ming Chin, and Carol Corrigan.