As reported by
The Recorder, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday denied
en banc review in
Perry v. Brown. In the case in February, a 3-judge panel (by a 2-1 vote) struck down Proposition 8 that eliminated the right for same-sex couples to marry. (
See prior posting.) However the court stayed the mandate in the case pending any petition to the Supreme Court for review and until final disposition by the Supreme Court. In denying
en banc review, the 9th Circuit issued an order along with a dissent by 3 judges, plus a response to the dissent by two others. (
Full text.) The dissent, written by Judge O'Scannlain, said in part:
A few weeks ago, subsequent to oral argument in this case, the President of the United States ignited a media firestorm by announcing that he supports same sex marriage as a policy matter. Drawing less attention, however, were his comments that the Constitution left this matter to the States and that “one of the things that [he]’d like to see is–that [the] conversation continue in a respectful way.”
Today our court has silenced any such respectful conversation. Based on a two-judge majority’s gross misapplication of Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996), we have now declared that animus must have been the only conceivable motivation for a sovereign State to have remained committed to a definition of marriage that has existed for millennia.... Even worse, we have overruled the will of seven million California Proposition 8 voters based on a reading of Romer that would be unrecognizable to the Justices who joined it, to those who dissented from it, and to the judges from sister circuits who have since interpreted it.
The response, written by Judge Reinhardt expressed puzzlement over the dissenters' "unusual reliance on the President’s views regarding the Constitution, especially as the President did not discuss the narrow issue that we decided in our opinion."
