SAN FRANCISCO — The California Supreme Court's decision Tuesday to uphold Proposition 8 and existing same-sex marriages left in place all rights for California's gays and lesbians except access to the label "marriage," but it provided little protection from future ballot measures that could cost gays and other minorities more rights, lawyers and scholars said Tuesday.
In a 6-1 ruling, the court said the November ballot measure that restored a ban on same-sex marriage was a limited constitutional amendment, not a wholesale revision that would have required a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to be placed before voters.
The court was unanimous in deciding that an estimated 18,000 same-sex couples who married before the November election would continue to have their marriages recognized by the state.
Proposition 8 merely "carves out a narrow and limited exception" to the state constitutional protection gays and lesbians now receive, Chief Justice Ronald M. George wrote for the majority.
The court majority said same-sex couples would continue to have the right to choose life partners and enter into "committed, officially recognized and protected family relationships" that enjoy all the benefits of marriage under the state's domestic partnership law.
"Like opposite-sex couples, same-sex couples enjoy this protection not as a matter of legislative grace, but of constitutional right," George wrote.
UC Berkeley constitutional law professor Goodwin Liu said the ruling shows "the court continues to be very deferential to the processes of direct democracy in California."
In a separate, concurring opinion, Associate Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar noted some rights married couples have that domestic partners do not, and suggested that the state now has the duty "to eliminate the remaining important differences."
She agreed with the majority that Proposition 8 was not an illegal constitutional revision, but said the ruling's definition of revision was too inflexible.
Describing Proposition 8's "limited effect," the majority said that simply reserving the term "marriage" for opposite-sex couples "does not have a substantial, or, indeed, even a minimal effect on the governmental plan or framework of California that existed prior to the amendment."
In deciding that gay couples who married in California before the November election will remain married, the court said it would be unfair and might even invite chaos to nullify marriages those couples entered into lawfully.
