California's Prop. 8 and the Fight for Equality.
Several legal actions have been started in California challenging the legality of Prop. 8, recently enacted by the electorate. The argument is simple, and hard to refute. Can the majority enact law (change the state constitution) to discriminate against a minority group?
I guess the arguments in favor of Prop. 8 is that the majority can enact laws to discriminate, (not a very persuasive argument) or, that Prop. 8 changed the constitution to allow discrimination, so it is valid. I guess that another way to characterize the argument is: does the majority have the right to enact laws (or amend the constitution) to add exceptions to the equal protection clause. The other unpersuasive argument I have heard is that the majority has spoken and therefore the majority rules. You only need to look back in our country's history to see that this is neither a sound legal argument, nor good public policy.
The last argument I can think of is that this is not really discrimination against a minority, because the effected group is not a minority in the same sense as a race based minority. (Not a protected group.)
I am not aware of any case that provides that the electorate can do this, but this is going to be interesting no matter what. Several years ago when a federal judge ruled that including the term "under God" in the pledge of alliance when recited in a public schools was unconstitutional, I received a few e-mails from people asking me to sign a petition to the court asking the court to over rule the decision. (I have no idea why anyone thought I would send a petition to a court.) When I pointed out that any judge that gave any notice to a petition or any input from the electorate in deciding a case does not deserve to be a judge, the requests stopped.
It will be interesting to see how the California courts handle these cases. Eventually the California Supreme Court will have to decide the issues. In the long term I expect that the court or the electorate will overturn Prop. 8. While I have no talent to foresee the future, I think it is a safe bet that Prop. 8 will not be the law in California 5 years from now.
