MONDAY, FEB. 13 — Wagner College sociology professor John Esser was part of the team behind the legal battle to overturn California’s Proposition 8, a 2008 state constitution amendment passed by voter referendum denying to same-sex couples the right to marry that had been granted them by a ruling of the California Supreme Court.
Last week, a three-judge panel of the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Prop. 8 violated the equal-protection clause of the U.S. Constitution, saying, “Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples.”
“The Court of Appeals found that a right once given cannot be taken away without good reason,” Esser explained. “They said there is no rational basis to this.”
The Feb. 7 ruling was based on a 1996 U.S. Supreme Court decision against a Colorado state constitutional amendment prohibiting the state from providing equal-rights protection on the basis of sexual orientation, thus taking away rights previously granted by numerous local ordinances in Colorado.
The Prop. 8 ruling has no bearing on the broader question of marriage equality rights throughout the United States, and it will have no direct effect anywhere but in the Ninth Circuit, which covers the western states, Alaska, Hawaii, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.
“But other courts will have to consider it in weighing their own decisions,” Esser said.
“On the one hand, it would be nicer if it [the ruling] was broader,” he added, “but on the other hand, this will be harder to strike down. It might be a more permanent step forward, if you will.”
As a sideline to his work in Wagner College’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology, John Esser works with a consulting firm called Empirical Creative that produces jury research and trial graphics. Empirical Creative was called upon to produce graphics in the original 2010 Ninth Circuit trial against Prop. 8, which was directed by equal rights advocate David Boies and conservative lawyer Ted Olson. Ten years earlier, Olson and Boies had been opposing plaintiffs’ attorneys in the landmark Bush v Gore Supreme Court case, which gave the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000.
“Fortunately for me, I was on sabbatical at the time preparations for this case were underway. That sabbatical gave me the time I needed to work on some of the graphic presentations from Boies and Olson for the judge,” Esser said.
John Esser, Ph.D., is a professor of sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Wagner College.
Wagner sociologist was part of legal team that fought against Prop. 8
February 13, 2012
Text Size