SUPREME COURT PLAZA, Washington, DC – Minutes after the conclusion of oral arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court over California’s Proposition 8, in the case of Hollingsworth v. Perry, Constitutional Accountability Center Vice President Judith E. Schaeffer released the following reaction:

“When pressed by the justices, the lawyer defending Proposition 8 could not come up with any legitimate reason for excluding gay and lesbian couples from the freedom to marry. The Justices, while uncomfortable with Proposition 8, seemed hesitant to rule on the merits, but as Justice Kennedy noted, there was concern about branding the families of nearly 40,000 children in California as second-class.

“One important question Justice Scalia asked former Bush Solicitor General Theodore Olson, who defended marriage equality, was when it became unconstitutional to deny gay and lesbian couples the right to marry. The answer is 1868, when the American people added the Fourteenth Amendment’s universal guarantee of equality to the Constitution.”

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Resources:

“The Constitutional Case for Marriage Equality,” CAC President Doug Kendall and Cato Senior Fellow Ilya Shapiro, February 28, 2013: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/doug-kendall/the-constitutional-case-f_b_2781874.html

Brief of Constitutional Accountability Center/Cato Institute in Hollingsworth v. Perry: https://www.theusconstitution.org/sites/default/files/briefs/CAC-Cato-Perry-Amicus-Brief.pdf

Brief of Constitutional Accountability Center/Cato Institute in U.S. v. Windsor: http://theusconstitution.org/sites/default/files/briefs/CAC-Cato-Windsor-amicus-brief.pdf

“Perfecting the Declaration: The Text and History of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, David Gans,” Text & History Narrative, November 2011: https://www.theusconstitution.org/media/releases/new-study-shows-why-justice-scalia-wrong-%E2%80%93-and-ted-olson-right-%E2%80%93-constitutional

“Celebrating Loving: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Right to Marry,” David Gans, June 2011: http://theusconstitution.org/text-history/2996

“The Meaning of Equal: Conservative originalists are rethinking their narrow reading of the 14th Amendment,” Doug Kendall and David Gans, December 2011: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2011/12/how_conservatives_learned_to_stop_fighting_the_14th_amendment_and_what_it_could_mean_for_gay_marriage.html

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Constitutional Accountability Center (www.theusconstitution.org) is a think tank, public interest law firm, and action center dedicated to fulfilling the progressive promise of the Constitution’s text and history.

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