California’s same-sex marriage ban has been declared to be unconstitutional by a federal appeals court.
The ruling puts the bitterly contested, voter-approved law on track for likely consideration by the US supreme court.
A three-judge panel of the 9th US circuit court of appeals ruled 2-1 that a lower court judge correctly interpreted the US Constitution when he declared in 2010 that Proposition 8 was a violation of the civil rights of gays and lesbians.
The passage of the ban followed the most expensive campaign on a social issue in US history.
It was unclear when gay marriages might resume in California.
Lawyers for Proposition 8 sponsors and for the two couples who successfully sued to overturn the ban have said they would consider appealing to a larger panel of the court and then the US supreme court if they did not receive a favourable ruling.
“Although the Constitution permits communities to enact most laws they believe to be desirable, it requires that there be at least a legitimate reason for the passage of a law that treats different classes of people differently. There was no such reason that Proposition 8 could have been enacted,” the ruling states.
The court crafted a narrow decision that applies only to California, even though the court has jurisdiction in nine western states.
“Whether under the Constitution same-sex couples may ever be denied the right to marry, a right that has long been enjoyed by opposite-sex couples, is an important and highly controversial question,” the court said. “We need not and do not answer the broader question in this case.”
The panel also said there was no evidence that former chief US Judge Vaughn Walker was biased and should have disclosed before he issued his lower-court decision that he was gay and in a long-term relationship with another man.
Walker publicly revealed he was gay after he retired.
Proposition 8 backers had asked the 9th Circuit to set aside Judge Walker’s ruling on constitutional grounds and because of the judge’s personal life. It was the first instance of an American jurist’s sexual orientation being cited as grounds for overturning a court decision.
California voters passed Proposition 8 with 52 per cent of the vote in November 2008, five months after the state supreme court legalised same-sex marriage by striking down a pair of laws that had limited marriage to a man and a woman.
The ballot measure inserted the one man-one woman provision into the California Constitution, thereby overruling the court’s decision. It was the first such ban to take away marriage rights from same-sex couples after they had already secured them.
AP