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Posted: 2/7/12

The 3 Panel court ruled 2 to 1 today (2/7/12) that California's Prop.8 amendment was unconstitutional.  ref Judges Reinhardt and Hawkins affirmed Northern district Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling and Smith dissented.  ref

This ruling will only apply to the state of California and is pending to give the defenders a chance to appeal to the Ninth Circuit as a whole.  The question at this stage is whether the Ninth Circuit en banc will hear an appeal.  This is currently a decision by the Ninth Circuit alone as the ADF has not decided whether to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court directly or to the Ninth Circuit as they review the 128 page opinion rendered by the Ninth Circuit.

There have been countless stories on this decision in the past two days.  Almost all of them seem to favor the "gay marriage" side.  These same articles hint that the case may not even be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, because of the narrow ruling by the Ninth Circuit.  So far all of the stories that I can remember that have predicted success at the ballot box or victory for same sex marriage is a foregone conclusion according to the polls have always been wrong.  My policy is to take a "wait and see what actually happens" approach to the news and avoid wild and erroneous rumors as much as possible.  This is why I started this news page.  ref–mp3

That being said, these are the best articles I have read on the ruling thus far: ref1a, ref1b, ref2a, ref2b

pdf of the opinion.  The opinion starts on page 16.
ref 1 Good analysis of the verdict by ADF and NOM. mp3
ref 2 List of audio commentaries.  The first one is great.
ref 3 audio interview with the David Boies and Ted Olsen.
ref 4, ref 5,
ref 6 audio interview.  discusses the grand perspective in regards to the the same sex marriage fight as well as the specific prop.8 litigation.

See also: Prop.8 Timeline

Last Updated: 6/9/12

TAGS: 9th circuit, california, homosexuality, marriage, pdf, prop.8