Tuesday morning, the Supreme Court heard oral
arguments on Hollingsworth v. Perry, otherwise known as the Proposition 8 case.
Wednesday it will hear arguments in a case dealing with the Defense of Marriage
Act (DOMA), which prevents federal recognition of state marriages between
people of the same sex.
In both cases, the Obama administration and a whole
bevy of civil-rights groups, including many Republicans, want the court to rule
restrictions on same-sex marriage unconstitutional.
Do they have a shot? And what precise legal issues
are at stake? Here’s what you need to know.
The official title of the case is Dennis
Hollingsworth, et al., Petitioners v. Kristin M. Perry, et al. Perry, who is
known to education wonks as the leader of the First Five Years Fund,
is one of four
plaintiffs in the case, along with her partner Sandra Stier
and another couple, Paul Katami and Jeffrey Zarrillo. The two couples were
denied marriage licenses in the state of California following the passage of
Proposition 8, which amended the state constitution to overturn the California
Supreme Court’s decision
legalizing same-sex marriage.
The case was originally named Perry v.
Schwarzenegger, when the latter was governor of California, and renamed Perry
v. Brown when Jerry Brown became governor in 2011. However, both Schwarzenegger
and Brown (as governor and previously as attorney general) declined to defend
Proposition 8′s constitutionality. As a result, ProtectMarriage.com, the
official sponsor of the ballot proposition, stepped
in
to defend the proposition. The case was subsequently renamed after Dennis
Hollingsworth, a former Republican state senate minority leader and a leader of
ProtectMarriage.com.
The plaintiffs, represented by former Solicitor
General Ted Olson and Microsoft prosecutor David Boies (who, coincidentally, took
opposing sides in Bush v. Gore), first argued their
case in front of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of
California. Vaughn Walker, the chief judge of the court, presided.
The plaintiffs called a bevy of witnesses, including
historians Nancy
Cott
and George
Chauncey, who are experts on marriage and the gay and
lesbian community, respectively. Cott emphasized that marriage has never had a
uniform definition, and Chauncey detailed the forms of discrimination gays and
lesbians have faced in the United States historically. Stanford political
scientist Gary Segura testified
that no minority group has been targeted by more ballot initiatives than the
LGBT community.
Psychologists Gregory Herek
and Ilan
Meyer explained how legal discrimination affects the
mental well-being of gay and lesbian people, while Anne
Peplau explained the benefits of marriage to psychological
health and the paucity of evidence suggesting that same-sex unions harm
opposite-sex relationships, and Cambridge’s Michael
Lamb
noted there’s no good evidence that same-sex parents are any worse for children
than opposite-sex parents. Then-San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders, a Republican, explained
how he came to support same-sex marriage due to his lesbian daughter, and the
writer Helen Zia explained
her personal experiences with anti-lesbian prejudice. Finally, Edmund Egan, the
chief economist for the city of San Francisco, testified
that the city would benefit economically due to lower mental health costs for
LGBT residents, among other factors.
The defendants offered only two witnesses. One,
David Blankenhorn, was a left-leaning anti-same-sex marriage activist, who did
his own side some damage by conceding
under cross-examination that the American people would be “more American on the
day we permitted same-sex marriage than we were on the day before.” Walker
would state in his opinion
that Blankenhorn did not qualify as an expert witness and that his testimony
was “unreliable and entitled to essentially no weight.” After the case was
decided, Blankenhorn changed
his mind and now supports same-sex marriage. The other
witness, Kenneth Miller, is a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College.
Miller testified
that the LGBT community has grown in political power in recent years.
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