Proposition 8: What Happens Next?

the narrow focus of the opinion might convince the Supreme Court to pass on this case. “The grounds for the opinion, I think, do make it somewhat less likely that the Supreme Court will take it,” said Boies, because it “just applies to California,” which has a number of characteristics that are different from other states, “including that citizens of California were clearly entitled to marriage equality and then that right was taken away.”

“The Court might not want to try to take this issue on on those facts, and might want to wait for a case on a more general issue that the court here did not have to face,” Boies said. But, he later added, “the reasoning of the case is reasoning that would clearly support a national right to marriage equality.”

Olson agreed that the Court might not be able to resist, especially since parts of the opinion can be more broadly applied. He cited page 77 of the opinion, in which Reinhardt writes that “Proposition 8 operates with no apparent purpose but to impost on gays and lesbians, through the public law, a majority’s private disapproval of them and their relationships, by taking away from them the official designation of ‘marriage,’ with its societally recognized status.”

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