The chief federal judge in San Francisco has ruled that his retired colleague Vaughn Walker was under no legal obligation to step aside from ruling on California's same-sex marriage ban because he is a gay man.
Walker ruled in August that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.
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Legal experts had characterized the attempt to overturn Walker's ruling
on the basis of his sexuality as a Hail Mary pass by foes of marriage
equality. Under such reasoning, a black judge could not rule on civil
rights cases that might benefit African-Americans, or a female judge
could not weigh in on discrimination cases that could help women in the
workplace.
Not only would that set a confounding precedent coloring future cases, it could jeopardize rulings from more than 200
years of U.S. litigation.
While the issues surrounding Vaughn have been settled as far as Chief Judge James Ware
is concerned, Vaughn's decision remains on hold pending a separate
appeal to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which some suspect will
punt a decision on Prop. 8 to the U.S. Supreme Court.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.