Jun

23

Brief Filed on Initiative Procedure in California

Filed Under Court Cases, Gay Marriage, Legal 

(San Francisco, CA) – Three California voters and four organizations dedicated to protecting the civil rights of gay and lesbian people filed a lawsuit in the California Supreme Court on Friday about an initiative that seeks to change the California Constitution to bar gay and lesbian couples from marriage.

That initiative is currently slated to appear on the November ballot. The lawsuit argues that the rules for revising the California Constitution were not properly followed.

“We filed this lawsuit because the sponsors of the initiative haven’t followed the very Constitution they’re trying to change,” said Stephen V. Bomse of Heller Ehrman LLP, a lawyer in the suit. “For good reason, there’s a strict process for making revisions to our Constitution, and it’s more involved than simply collecting petition signatures. That process is in place to safeguard our basic form of government, especially the most basic principle of equal protection of the laws. Therefore we are filing this suit today to ask the California Supreme Court to enforce those rules and to require the proponents to follow the correct procedure if they wish to make this far reaching change to our state Constitution.”

The organizations who filed the lawsuit are: Lambda Legal, The American Civil Liberties Union, Equality California and The National Center for Lesbian Rights.

The lawsuit was filed in the California Supreme Court on Friday, June 20, 2008. It is expected to be heard this summer.

Source: Lambda Legal

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