Opinion ID: 3065867
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Whether Proposition 8 violates the Equal Pro-

Text: tection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Plaintiff-Intervenor City and County of San Francisco (hereinafter San Francisco) presented the following additional issue for review: 1. Whether Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment adopted after a plebiscite campaign that played on fears and prejudices about lesbians and gay men, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the federal Constitution where its effect is to remove the honored title “marriage” but not the incidents of mar1650 PERRY v. BROWN riage from same-sex couples, and its purpose is to remove the taint that its supporters believed the inclusion of lesbian and gay couples worked on the institution of marriage. The equal protection question raised in this case seems to be distinguishable from the precise issues presented and necessarily decided in Baker, especially when the equal protection issue is framed as San Francisco advocates.1 The equal protection issue decided in Baker rested on whether Minnesota’s “refusal, pursuant to Minnesota marriage statutes, to sanctify appellants’ marriage . . . violates their rights under the equal protection clause . . . .” In re Kandu, 315 B.R. at 137. Here, San Francisco presents the issue of whether Proposition 8’s effect of “remov[ing] the honored title ‘marriage’ but not the incident of marriage from same-sex couples” violates equal protection. This Proposition 8 issue may have “merely lurk[ed] in the record” of Baker. Unlike Minnesota, California granted same-sex couples rights to both the designation and the incidents of marriage, before withdrawing the right of access to the designation through Proposition 8. Therefore, 1 Whether prohibiting marriage by same-sex couples violates due process was an issue presented and decided in Baker v. Nelson. In this case, the district court determined that “plaintiffs seek to exercise their fundamental right to marry under the Due Process Clause,” Perry v. Schwarzenegger, 704 F. Supp. 2d 921, 993 (N.D. Cal. 2010), and that Proposition 8 violated the Due Process Clause, because it denied Plaintiffs this fundamental right and did not withstand strict scrutiny. Id. at 994-95. But in Baker, the Minnesota Supreme Court determined that prohibiting marriage by same-sex couples did not offend the Due Process Clause. 191 N.W.3d at 186-87. Because the United States Supreme Court “branded [that] question as unsubstantial” in its summary dismissal, the due process issue “remains so except when doctrinal developments indicate otherwise.” Hicks v. Miranda, 422 U.S. at 344 (internal quotation marks omitted). The United States Supreme Court cases following Baker do not suggest any such doctrinal developments have occurred. See, e.g., Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558, 578 (2003) (“[This case] does not involve whether the government must give formal recognition to any relationship that homosexual persons seek to enter.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). PERRY v. BROWN 1651 the constitutionality of withdrawing from same-sex couples the right of access to the designation of marriage does not seem to be among the “specific challenges” raised in Baker. If so, though the precedential effect of Baker v. Nelson is not challenged by this decision, such precedent is distinguishable from the decision of the district court here.