Federal Judge Tosses Lawsuit Against Prop. 8
Chelsea Schilling
July 20, 2009
A federal judge has thrown out a homosexual couple's challenge to the California constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
"The people of California want marriage to remain as the union between one man and one woman; they made their voice clear last November at the polls," Alliance Defense Fund Senior Counsel Brian Raum said.
In December 2008, two homosexual men filed a lawsuit claiming that the state's marriage amendment, passed decisively by voters in November's election, violates the U.S. Constitution.
The men were able to obtain a California "marriage" license during a short window of time in which licenses for same-sex unions were granted. They wed July 10, 2008 – before California's Proposition 8 was passed.
In the case, Smelt et. al. v. United States of America, Plaintiffs Arthur Bruno Smelt and Christopher David Hammer argued that "'the refusal of all states and jurisdictions' to recognize the validity of their marriage results in the denial to them of numerous rights, benefits and responsibilities bestowed on all other married couples, so long as they are opposite-sex couples."
They claimed that, as a homosexual partners, they are denied "rights" to "Social Security survivor benefits, decision-making authority for funeral arrangements and the disposition of a spouse's body, the right to bereavement leave in the event of a spouse's death, the presumption that both spouses are the parent of a child born during marriage, and the right to certain division of their spouse's separate property and the couple's marital property upon death of a spouse …"
Denial of such rights, they claimed, has caused them to suffer "severe emotional distress, mental anguish, humiliation, loss of liberty and the pursuit of happiness, denial of equal protection of laws, denial of freedom of association, denial of privacy rights, and denial of the right to travel and establish residency anywhere in the United States with the full recognition of the legality of plaintiff's marriage."
Smelt and Hammer targeted their action at the federal Defense of Marriage Act and California's Proposition 8.
In his July 17 order, U.S. District Judge David Carter David Carter ruled that the homosexual couple no longer has standing to pursue the complaint against California and Proposition 8 because the "marriage" was performed before the California amendment passed.
However, the U.S. government will still be listed as a defendant when the case against the Defense of Marriage Act is heard Aug. 3 by the California Supreme Court.
"This is another great day for marriage in California," said Andrew Pugno, chief legal counsel for ProtectMarriage, the official campaign committee for Proposition 8 and for the proponents of the measure. "The twice-expressed will of the people of California for traditional marriage is under assault from many lawsuits, but our recent string of victories in both state and federal courts is very gratifying."