CA DP Law Challenged

December 21, 2004

SAN FRANCISCO — A day before a San Francisco Superior court is to hear a legal challenge to the state's ban on same-sex marriage, a State Appeals Court Tuesday ruled that a lawsuit against California's landmark domestic partnership law can go ahead.

The Appeals Court, however, rejected a motion to set aside the partnership law until the case is heard.

The domestic partner law was passed by the Legislature last year and signed into law by then-Gov. Gray Davis last year and a legal challenge by a conservative group was denied in September. The group then appealed.

In its Tuesday ruling the court said that the law could go into effect as planned on January 1.

The new law's protections for families headed by same-sex couples include: community property, mutual responsibility for debt, parenting rights including obligations for custody and support, and the ability to claim a partner's body after death. The law does not allow for joint filing for state taxes and certain other protections under state law. It also does not provide access to over 1,000 federal protections that heterosexual married couples enjoy.

We registered as domestic partners and are looking forward to the new law taking full effect in January, so our family will have more of the protections we badly need, said Los Angeles resident Rich Llewellyn. While we hope to marry legally one day, AB 205 will protect us in important ways until we are treated equally under the state's Constitution. Llewellyn and his domestic partner of more than twenty-five years, Chris Caldwell, are raising teenage twins, and are participating in the litigation to help defend the domestic partner law.

Equality California, as well as 12 California couples, who are registered domestic partners and intervened in the lawsuit to defend A.B. 205 are represented by a battery of lawyers from the Law Office of David C. Codell, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU affiliates in Northern California, Southern California and San Diego, the National Center for Lesbian Rights and Lambda Legal.

We're grateful that the law will go fully into effect on January 1, 2005 and tens of thousands of California families will begin to enjoy the protections provided by AB 205, said Geoffrey Kors, Executive Director of Equality California. A.B. 205 is a big step in the right direction, but lesbian and gay Californians will only have true equality once the state allows same-sex couples to marry.

Meanwhile. oral arguments will be heard Tuesday in Superior Court in San Francisco on the constitutionality of the state's ban on gay marriage. Ultimately the state Supreme Court will decide the issue.

Last February San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom began allowing marriage licenses to be issued to same-sex couples. More than 4,000 gay and lesbian couples were married before the California Supreme Court ruled that Newsom had exceeded his power in granting the licenses. But, the court did not take up the issue of gay marriage itself, saying court cases challenging the constitutionality on the state law should work their way through the lower courts first.

It could take at least year before the issue comes before the state Supreme Court.