The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
announced Thursday that it will hear oral arguments for the appeal of
California's gay marriage ban, Proposition 8, on Monday, December 6
at 10AM.
The law's sponsors,
ProtectMarriage.com, are appealing an August ruling that declared the
ban unconstitutional.
Plaintiffs – a gay couple and a
lesbian couple who wish to marry – are being represented by the
American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), a group formed to
support the case.
Both sides have already filed written
arguments.
“Fourteen times the Supreme Court has
stated that marriage is a fundamental right of all individuals,”
plaintiffs' lawyers Theodore B. Olson and David Boies wrote in their
filing. “This case tests the proposition whether the gay and
lesbian Americans among us should be counted as 'persons' under the
Fourteenth Amendment, or whether they constitute a permanent
underclass ineligible for protection under that cornerstone of our
Constitution.”
In urging the court to overturn the
ruling, defendants chided the trial court's judge, Vaughn Walker.
Lawyers said he ignored relevant
information, including “judicial authority, the works of eminent
scholars past and present in all relevant academic fields, extensive
historical and documentary evidence,” in finding the law
unconstitutional and based his opinion “almost exclusively on an
uncritical acceptance the evidence submitted by Plaintiffs' experts.”
He “simply ignored virtually
everything … that ran counter to its conclusions,” lawyers wrote
in their 134-page brief.
Both sides have said they expect the
case to reach the Supreme Court.