Here is the conclusion to the ruling just issued by the California Supreme Court:

Therefore, the Ninth Circuit will now rule on the merits of the appeal to the Prop 8 ruling. If you want to read the whole opinion, Jeremy has it.

And here is Matt Baume of AFER explaining what this all means. He explains that, while this might look like a setback, it really isn’t.:

The point is that the more that courts actually have to rule on the quality of the bigots’ arguments, the more they lose.

An interesting case is unfolding in the Ninth Circuit right now, involving a lesbian who was dismissed from a jury for a case involving homosexuality:

Trial lawyers should be barred from dismissing potential jurors because of their sexual orientation, defense attorneys argued Thursday in a case that, if successful, could extend constitutional protection from discrimination to homosexuality along with race, creed and gender.

The arguments made to a panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena arose from a prosecutor’s decision last year to strike a lesbian from the jury weighing assault charges brought against a gay Nigerian inmate at the federal lockup in Los Angeles.

The defense claims that the judge in the original case accepted a “bogus” reason for dismissing the woman as a juror, while the U.S. Attorney on the case claims that it had nothing to do with her sexual orientation in the first place.

This is actually a really interesting case to me, partially because I recently experienced Jury Duty for the first time.  During the voir dire process, attorneys are given fairly free reign to accept or dismiss jurors for pretty much any reason.  They’re not, however, allowed to dismiss jurors solely based on race, sex or religion, and if this case is successful, sexual orientation would be added to the list.  That’s as it should be.  We understand that a gay judge is going to be just as impartial as any other judge, even when ruling on issues that directly affect gay people, just as we understand that to ask an African-American judge to recuse herself on a case involving African-Americans would be the height of bigotry.

What’s funny to me is that this actually did come up when I had Jury Duty, and I barely noticed it at the time.  The case I was called for involved a young man who had been murdered, and we were informed by the defense attorney that the case “involved homosexuality,” and he asked if anyone in the room had a problem with that.  It was left unclear whether we were dealing with a hate crime, a crime of passion, a closet issue, all of the above or something else.  I had not made it into the jury box yet, but having seen a journalist dismissed out of hand, I had a sneaking suspicion that, even if I made it into the jury box, I wouldn’t be called for that sequestered jury.  When the defense attorney mentioned homosexuality, I absolutely knew that I wasn’t going to be called for that jury.  The strange thing was that, though I had been grousing about having jury duty all day long, at that point I was actually kind of interested in serving on that jury, as it looked like it would be a fascinating experience.  So, yes, I was a bit relieved when the jury was put together before they had a chance to question me, but I certainly had a little moment of indignation, realizing that my impartiality would have been called into question, because I’m a gay man who happens to be an opinion writer and reporter.  [Frankly, the latter part might have bothered the lawyers the most.]  Just as the jury was composed of several different races and ethnicities, on this case involving young African-American men, there should have been no reason to strive for an all-straight jury on a case involving gay people.

According to the article linked above, it’s hard to tell where this specific case will go, as the merits of this juror’s dismissal are a bit of an open question, and if the panel decides that it really had nothing to do with her sexual orientation, the broader question of anti-discrimination in jury pools may go unanswered.  But it’s just one more little place where LGBT people end up on the receiving end of discrimination, even if we don’t always realize it.  And little places add up.

More good news.  Though Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has technically been repealed, as we all know, there has been an injunction in place essentially preserving the ban while the military prepares for the policy change.  The Ninth Circuit has put a stop to that, and the Pentagon says they’ll comply with the court order:

Even with Obama’s support for ending the 18-year-old policy, Obama’s justice department asked the appeals court to keep the injunction in place to give the military more time to prepare for admitting gay soldiers.

On Wednesday, a three judge-panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals noted that the process of repealing DADT is now “well under way”.

The government “can no longer satisfy the demanding standard” to keep the injunction on hold, the court ruled.

The Pentagon said it was still studying the ruling, but added it would comply with the court order.

Dave Lapan, a military spokesperson, said the US military was immediately taking “steps to inform the field of this order.

Step by step, the discriminatory institutions are falling away.  It’s always nice when the courts give the administration a little nudge, though.

UPDATE:  Predictably, the self-loathing gay wingnut part of the internet has found a reason to hate this victory, as there is no victory for LGBT rights that they are ever truly happy about.

Well, this is too bad:

Filed order (STEPHEN R. REINHARDT, MICHAEL DALY HAWKINS and N. RANDY SMITH) Having considered all of the factors set forth in Nken v. Holder, 129 S. Ct. 1749, 1756 (2009), and all of the facts and circumstances surrounding Plaintiffs’ motion to vacate the stay pending appeal, as well as the standard for vacatur set forth in Southeast Alaska Conservation Council v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 472 F.3d 1097, 1101 (9th Cir. 2006), we deny Plaintiffs’ motion at this time. [7691622] (KKW)

Chad Griffin responds:

“Several weeks ago, we filed a motion with the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit asking the Court to lift its stay and allow California’s gay and lesbian couples to marry. We felt then, as we do now, that it is decidedly unjust and unreasonable to expect California’s gay and lesbian couples to put their lives on hold and suffer daily discrimination as second-class citizens while their US District Court victory comes to its final conclusion.

It is un-American to deprive gay and lesbian couples of their fundamental constitutional right to marry. These are adults in committed, loving relationships who just want to live their lives without government interference.

Last August, the US District Court declared Proposition 8 unconstitutional. We believe that the courts will permanently secure the freedom to marry for all Californians.

AFER is committed to ensuring that all Americans have the freedom to marry.”

Two steps forward, one step back, etc.

I’m starting to get the feeling that the Religious Right is going to be on permanent Code Red Pout-rage alert from now on, because this is how Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink is reacting to yesterday’s news that the 9th Circuit punted the Prop 8 case back to the California Supreme Court for a definitive answer as to whether the appellants have standing:

9th Circuit Undermines Marriage, Religious Freedom

All together now:  get a grip, Focus!

This is, like, wonky and boring news, only interesting to those of us who are obsessed with the case.

Jeremy asks a pertinent question:  how are they going to react when we actually do win?  We saw the theatrics after DADT repeal, so I have a feeling it’s going to pretty epic.

False alarm, y’all.

The Ninth Circuit has just issued an “Order Certifying a Question to the Supreme Court of California,” essentially punting the question of whether or not the Prop 8 appellants even have standing to appeal back to that Court.  Until that question is answered, the appeals court states that they can’t consider the Constitutional question of Prop 8.

If you want to read it, it’s here.

Says Jeremy!

If you have to go use the facilities or something, now would be a good time.

It comes from Lyle Denniston at the SCOTUSblog.  The whole thing is an interesting read, but I wanted to highlight this:

If there was a surprise, it was that the one judge on the three-judge panel known as a conservative, Circuit Judge N. Randy Smith, found a possibly fatal flaw in logic in support of the ban. What is rational, Judge Smith asked, about a state giving gay and lesbian couples complete equality in the legal rights and benefits that married couples have, including the right to raise children, but then to deny them marriage itself. The state’s voters, he said, had just opted to omit a single word, “marriage,” and how is that rational? He seemed skeptical of the response by Charles Cooper, Proposition 8 lawyer, that “it is a word that is essentially the institution; you cannot separate the two.”

But, however Judge Smith might vote on the constitutionality of the ban, if the panel gets to that, it seemed clear that his two colleagues, Circuit Judges Stephen R. Reinhardt and Michael Daly Hawkins would nullify the ban, provided they could do so without having to write a sweeping opinion that established a national constitutional right of gay marriage. At most, they seemed inclined only to rule that California had first allowed a right to same-sex marriage, then took it away by singling out gays and lesbians for the loss of an existing right — a targeted exclusion that could only have resulted from bias.

Read it all.

My personal favorite moment, on a lighter note, was when Ted Olson told the judges that, if the Prop 8 proponents’ argument that gay couples should be denied equality in order to protect children from being exposed to sexuality too early, we would also have to constitutionally ban comic books, television and children having conversations with other children.

[h/t Andrew Sullivan]

I’ve been out this morning, but if you’re not watching, and you want to be watching, here you go:

In case you didn’t hear this when it came out late yesterday:

A federal appeals court Wednesday authorized the televising of a Dec. 6 hearing on whether Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage, should be struck down.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals granted a request by C-SPAN to broadcast the two-hour hearing, which is scheduled to start at 10 a.m. The court said C-SPAN would provide its tape to other broadcast media that receive court permission to televise the hearing.

The 9th Circuit is hearing an appeal of an August ruling by U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker, who presided over a trial that examined such questions as whether homosexuality could be changed and whether same-sex parenting harmed children. Walker wanted to broadcast the trial on the Internet, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 to ban cameras on the grounds that witnesses could be intimidated during testimony.

So that’s cool.