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High court: Prop. 8 backers lack standing »
The justices ruled 5-4 that the sponsors of Proposition 8, the 2008 California initiative that defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman, could not represent the state or its voters in appealing lower-court rulings that held the initiative unconstitutional. By finding that the sponsors lacked standing to appeal the rulings, the high court reinstated an August 2010 decision by then-Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker of San Francisco that the California measure was an irrational act of discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender. In another 5-4 decision, the court struck down the central provision of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which denies joint tax filing, Social Security survivor payments, immigration sponsorship and more than 1,000 other federal benefits to same-sex couples who are married under state law. According to the Williams Institute at UCLA, there are 114,000 married same-sex couples in the United States, including 18,000 who wed in California in the months before voters approved a ban on same-sex marriage in November 2008. Source Main page (current trends)
More about: california, California initiative, Vaughn Walker