Comments by Shannon Minter on Justice Kennard's vote to deny review

11/25/08 Washington Blade: The Washington Blade reports on statements by Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, during a 11/21/08 conference call. In In re Marriage Cases, Minter successfully argued before the California Supreme Court that same sex couples have the fundamental right to marry.

"Minter said [Justice] Kennard has made it clear in other decisions that she 'really does not like the court to have to decide very important issues on a shortened time frame.'

" 'There’s a very good chance that that was her concern and she would have liked us to file [our petitions] at a lower court,' he said. 'You really cannot draw any conclusion whatsoever about where she’s leaning based on that vote.' "

Minter believes that Prop. 8 presents the California Supreme Court with a "constitutional crisis," because if the Court upholds Prop. 8, that "would be the first time that an initiative has successfully been used to take a right away just from one single group of people."


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