two University of Minnesota gay student activists, Richard Baker and James Michael McConnell, applied for a marriage license in Minneapolis. The clerk of the Hennepin County District Court, Gerald Nelson, denied the request on the sole ground that the two were of the same sex. The case was appealed to the Minnesota Supreme Court which, in 1971, ruled that Minnesota's laws prohibited marriages between same-sex partners and did not violate the federal constitution. Then, on October 10, 1972, the United States Supreme Court, declining to hear the case on appeal, issued a one-sentence order that said: "The appeal is dismissed for want of a substantial federal question." On February 20, 2004, Sandoval County become the first county in New Mexico to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. A restraining order was later issued to prohibit the county clerk from issuing licenses to same-sex couples for the rest of her term, which ended on January 1, 2005. On May 15, 2008, the Supreme Court of California issued a decision in which it effectively legalized same-sex marriage in California , holding that California's existing opposite-sex definition of marriage violated the constitutional rights of same-sex couples. [ 63 ] [ 64 ] Same-sex marriage opponents in California placed a state constitutional amendment known as Proposition 8 on the November 2008 ballot for the purpose of restoring an opposite-sex definition of marriage. [ 65 ] (Proposition 8 was somewhat unusual compared to other initiatives connected to same-sex marriage, since California had ratified same-sex marriages