U.S. District Judge R. Vaughn Walker in August 2010 struck California’s 2008 voter-approved Proposition 8 — which amended the state constitution to limit marriage to a man and a woman — as violating the due process and equal protections of the U.S. Constitution.
The appeal is now bouncing back and forth between the California Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco.
It’s anyone’s guess how long the legal appeals are going to take and which cases are likely to reach the Supreme Court first.
Some put their money on the DOMA cases, which would offer the court a sort of intermediate step to consider same-sex marriage.
U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro in 2010 ruled unconstitutional the part of DOMA that defined marriage “as a legal union exclusively between one man and one woman.” That decision is on appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit.
And the Obama administration decided earlier this year it would no longer defend the law when couples in Connecticut, Vermont and New Hampshire filed suit.
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