11/7/08 Sacramento Bee Reports Comments By Gerald Uelmen

11/7/08 Sacramento Bee:

"Gerald Uelmen, a law professor at Santa Clara University and a constitutional law expert, called the suit 'a long shot.'

"Only once, Uelmen said, has the state Supreme Court 'struck down any portion of an initiative because it was a constitutional revision.'

"He said the 1991 case involved an initiative – Proposition 115 – that made sweeping changes by requiring the bill of rights in the state constitution to conform with the U.S. Constitution.

"'I don't see this court saying that what (it) did in the marriage case was such a substantial revision of the California Constitution that you can't undo it because it's a revision of the constitution,' Uelmen said."

"But Katherine Darmer, a professor at Chapman University School of Law, believes 'there is some chance that this litigation will succeed.'

"'This court has already found that gays and lesbians have equal protection," she said.
Darmer sees some parallels in the civil rights movement of African Americans, where courts intervened to protect the rights of minorities.

"In the early 1960s, for example, the California Supreme Court overturned a voter initiative that repealed the Rumford Act, the state's fair housing law.*

"Uelmen has a different take on the next step in California for supporters of gay marriage.

"'It'll be on the ballot again because I don't think the court is going to come to the rescue,' he said."

[*Here is the context for Katherine Darmer's reference. In 1964, by a two-to-one margin, voters passed Proposition 14. It amended the state constitution (under article I, section 26) to repeal fair housing laws and to bar the legislature from enacting laws to remedy racial discrimination in housing. The state and U.S. Supreme Courts - in Prendergast v. Snyder, 64 Cal. 2d 877 (1966), and Reitman v. Mulkey, 387 U.S. 369 (1967) - ruled that the amendment was unconstitutional on equal protection grounds under the 14th Amendment. I wish to credit Stan Yogi and Elaine Elinson as my source of this information. They are authors of a forthcoming work on the history of civil liberties in California, and they shared a draft chapter from their book.]

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