David Boies, one half of the legal team
challenging the constitutionality of California's gay marriage ban,
Proposition 8, says U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia could
vote against it.
Boies made his comments on MSNBC's
Hardball with Chris Matthews.
Boies and Ted Olson argued against the
ban during a 13-day trial presided by U.S. District Judge Vaughn R.
Walker in January. Walker
declared Proposition 8 unconstitutional in August.
The legal team returned to court on
Monday, arguing in the appeal of the case before the Ninth U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The
three-judge panel hinted they'll support a narrow ruling against the
gay marriage ban.
On the program, Boies was definitely
feeling confident, telling Matthews that if the case moved up the
next legal rung, Scalia, the Supreme Court's most conservative
justice, could vote against the ban.
“We've always believed from the
beginning this was not a conservative or liberal, Republican or
Democratic issue. This was an issue of constitutional rights,”
Boies said. “And conservatives, at least as much as liberals, want
to keep the government out of people's private lives. So, I think
that this is something that we could win – no one ever likes to
predict you're going to win 9-0 – but we could win every justice on
this.” (The video is embedded in the right panel of this page.)