Brody's Notes... Prop 8 Backers Ask Court To Void Ruling- Alleging Gay Judge Was Biased

Vaughn R. Walker
Former Official Photo

By Editors LGBTQNation (Chandler, Arizona) APR 26 | Supporters of California’s Proposition 8 — the voter approved ban on gay marriage, that was later declared unconstitutional — are seeking to have the ruling voided because the federal judge that presided over the case is gay and was in a long-term relationship.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

In a court filing, the sponsors of the ban on gay marriage, ProtectMarriage, asked the chief judge of the federal court in San Francisco to nullify last August’s ruling by former U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker, who retired earlier this year.

ProtectMarriage said Walker should have disclosed his involvement with his male partner before presiding over the marriage trial because it constituted a conflict of interest.

“Judge Walker’s 10-year-long same-sex relationship creates the unavoidable impression that he was not the impartial judge the law requires,” ProtectMarriage argued in the legal filing.

On Aug. 4, 2010, Walker struck down the measure as unconstitutional, ruling that “moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and lesbians.”

Earlier this month, Walker — now retired — confirmed for the first time publicly that his is gay, although it was widely known before the trial began.

Walker said he never considered his own homosexuality a reason to recuse himself from the case.

“If you thought a judge’s sexuality, ethnicity, national origin (or) gender would prevent the judge from handling a case, that’s a very slippery slope,” Walker said.

Jon Davidson from Lambda Legal reacts:

"To say that Judge Walker's should have disclosed his ten-year relationship with another man or that it made him unfit to rule on Proposition 8 is like saying that a married heterosexual judge deciding an issue in a divorce proceeding has to disclose if he or she is having marital problems and might someday be affected by legal rulings in the case. Or that any judge who professes any religious faith is unable to rule on any question of religious liberty or, at a minimum, must disclose what his faith teaches. Much like a suggestion that a female judge could not preside over a case involving sexual harassment or an African American judge could not preside over a case involving race discrimination, Proposition 8's supporters improperly are suggesting that a judge will rule in favor of any litigant with whom he shares a personal characteristic."