A San Diego county clerk has filed a
lawsuit arguing that California's gay marriage ban, Proposition 8, is
still valid.
Ernest Droneburg's petition, filed
Friday with the California Supreme Court, claims that a state
directive ordering clerks to issue marriage licenses to gay and
lesbian couples does not apply to him.
Proposition 8 tumbled after the Supreme
Court ruled that interveners lacked standing to defend the law,
leaving in place a 2010 circuit court ruling declaring it
unconstitutional.
Within days after the Supreme Court
ruled, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals lifted its stay in the
ruling, allowing same-sex marriages to resume in California. On June
28, Governor Jerry Brown and Attorney General Kamala Harris, both
Democrats, ordered clerks in all 58 counties to resume issuing
marriage licenses to gay couples.
In a lawsuit filed last week, Protect
Marriage, the group that sponsored the 2008 amendment, argues, among
other things, that Brown does not have the authority to end
enforcement of Proposition 8 and that the 2010 ruling only applies to
the two counties where plaintiffs live, not the entire state.
“On the one hand, respondents have
ordered him not to enforce state law and are threatening to punish
him if he does not comply with that order,” Dronenburg's lawyers
wrote in their filing. “On the other hand, petitioner has an
independent statutory obligation to enforce California law defining
marriage as a union of a man and a woman.”
Dronenburg has asked the court to block
the state directive until the lawsuit is settled.