With the courts, where you stand depends on where you sit.
A federal judge’s forceful opinion Wednesday in favor of same-sex marriage is only the beginning of a process that is likely to go all the way to the United States Supreme Court.
The ultimate outcome of the California case cannot be predicted, but appeals court judges and the justices at the highest court in the land could find themselves boxed in by the careful logic and structure of Judge Vaughn R. Walker’s opinion, legal experts said.
In his ruling, Judge Walker found that California’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage irrationally discriminates against gay men and women.
To opponents of same-sex marriage, the ruling was a travesty that usurped the will of millions of California voters. Brian S. Brown, the executive director of the National Organization for Marriage, called it "a horrendous decision" that "launched the first salvo in a major culture war over same-sex marriage and the proper purview of the courts."
But Andrew Koppelman, a professor at Northwestern Law School, said "if the Supreme Court does not want to uphold same-sex marriage, its job has been made harder by this decision."
The reason, he said, is that while appeals courts often overturn lower-court judges on their findings of law -- such as the proper level of scrutiny to apply to Proposition 8 -- findings of fact are traditionally given greater deference.
“They are supposed to take as true facts found by the district court, unless they are clearly erroneous," he said. "This opinion shows why district courts matter, even though the Supreme Court has the last word."
And to that end, Judge Walker’s 136-page opinion lays a rich factual record, with extensive quotation of expert testimony from the lengthy trial. The 2008 initiative campaign to ban same-sex marriages was suffused, the judge said, with moral comparisons of these unions and heterosexual marriage, with the clear implication that "denial of marriage to same-sex couples protects children" and that "the ideal child-rearing environment" requires marriage between a man and a woman.
Judge Walker wrote, however, that the Supreme Court has stated that government cannot enforce moral or religious beliefs without an accompanying secular purpose. The judge suggested that the defendants shifted their arguments for the courtroom, with a focus on "statistically optimal" child-rearing households and by arguing that they were abiding by the will of California voters.
California’s law, he wrote, demanded discrimination on the basis of sex and sexual orientation. "Proposition 8 places the force of law behind stigmas against gays and lesbians," he wrote, including the notion that "gays and lesbians are not as good as heterosexuals" and "gay and lesbian relationships do not deserve the full recognition of society."
In his ruling, Judge Walker took a conservative approach to his findings of law, said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the University of California, Irvine School of Law. Judge Walker laid the factual groundwork that might have allowed him to invoke the tough "strict scrutiny" test to Proposition 8 -- a test that most laws flunk.
"His decision does not depend on the higher court finding strict scrutiny," he said, a legal finding that a higher court might well overturn. Instead, he subjected the law to a lower standard that many laws can pass, but that this one, in his opinion, does not.
"He finds it doesn’t even meet rational basis review" for the legal distinction between same-sex marriage and heterosexual unions, Professor Chemerinsky said.
Even some of those who applauded the opinion, however, said the path ahead for it is not clear or easy. Associate Professor Doug NeJaime at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles said while Judge Walker’s ruling he found "a great opinion," he was skeptical of the strategy to take a marriage case through the federal courts. Despite Judge Walker’s efforts to set a factual foundation and the traditions of deference, he said, the Supreme Court is not completely constrained by lower court findings of fact.
"We’ve seen time and time again that the Supreme Court can do whatever it wants" with the factual record, and "I don’t see five justices on the Supreme Court taking Judge Walker’s findings of fact to the place that he takes them."
Professor NeJaime suggested the case might turn on the Court’s traditional swing vote, Anthony M. Kennedy, who has shaped decisions that strike down laws that discriminate against gays and lesbians. The rational basis test used by Judge Walker is in line with the standard used by Justice Kennedy in such cases as Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down a state sodomy law. By structuring an opinion that allows the Court to use the lower level of scrutiny, Judge Walker "is speaking to Justice Kennedy," he said.
Professor Jesse H. Choper, a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, said that it is too soon to tell which way Justice Kennedy might come down on the issue of same-sex marriage. "I have no way of predicting how he’d come down on this and I don’t think he does, either, at this point."
Ultimately, Professor NeJaime said, even the four more liberal justices on the Court might shy away from a sweeping decision that could overturn same-sex marriage bans across the country. "The Supreme Court rarely likes to get too far ahead of things," he said.
Reverend Jim Garlow, pastor of Skyline Church in La Mesa, Calif., and a leading supporter of Proposition 8, agreed.
"Given the present makeup of the Supreme Court at this time, ’one woman, one man’ will stand," he said.
And that is why Professor Chemerinsky said "this is a huge victory for the supporters of marriage equality -- but it’s not the last word."
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