Text and photos by Sarah Phelan
City Attorney Dennis Herrera wants to join the fight to challenge Prop. 8, which eliminates the rights of same-sex couples to wed. Between May and November 2008, couples like Spencer Jones and Tyler Barrick (above) wed legally in California.
City Attorney Dennis Herrera has petitioned a U.S. District Court Judge today to allow San Francisco to intervene as a party plaintiff in a federal constitutional challenge to Proposition 8, the state constitutional amendment which eliminated the fundamental right of marriage for gay and lesbian citizens in California.
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The American Foundation for Equal Rights filed the original federal lawsuit this May on behalf of two California same-sex couples: Kristin Perry and Sandra Stier of Berkeley, and Paul Katami and Jeffrey Zarrillo of Burbank.
Filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on May 22, 2009, the original suit is led by attorneys Theodore Olson and David Boies, who were one-time political foes in the Bush v. Gore US Supreme Court case that decided the outcome of the 2000 presidential election. They argue that Proposition 8 “denies the basic liberties and equal protection under the law that are guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.”
The City’s motion comes in the wake of a federal judge’s order to develop significant factual evidence in the case – something, Herrera says, his office has already done as a lead plaintiff in the landmark Marriage Cases, which the state supreme court decided last year, in May 2008.
“San Francisco is a singularly well-prepared co-plaintiff in this case, both in terms of the wealth of evidence it has already developed, and its unique public sector perspective in having to enforce a discriminatory law,” Herrera said. “We are long overdue to put anti-gay discrimination on trial based on the facts. The San Francisco City Attorney’s Office has the experience and expertise to aggressively assist in doing precisely that.”
On May 15, 2008, the landmark California Supreme Court ruling In re Marriage Cases, in which San Francisco was a lead plaintiff, struck down previous state statutes that defined marriage solely as a union between a man and a woman.
As a result, thousands of same-sex couples wed in California/
But that discriminatory marriage exclusion was later enshrined into the California Constitution with the passage of Prop. 8 on Nov. 5, 2008, and the state high court upheld it on May 26, 2009.
After the state high court upheld Prop. 8, couples like Sharon Papo and Amber Weiss, pictured above when they wed in June 2008, said they were relieved their marriage was not invalidated.
” But this is a hollow victory because there are so many that are not allowed to marry those they love,” Weiss said, while her partner Papo added. “I feel very uncomfortable being in a special class of citizens.”