DC High Court Rejects Marriage Referendum By 5-4 Vote

The nation's capital's highest court, the D.C. Court of Appeals rejected (by a frighteningly close) 5-4 vote an effort by the National Organization for Marriage and other heterosexual supremacists to force a vote on that jurisdiction's recently enacted marriage law.

Law Dork Chris Geidner has the best coverage:

The D.C. Court of Appeals issued its awaited decision in Bishop Harry Jackson's appeal of the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics's decision that his proposed marriage initiative was an improper subject of an initiative. In a 5-4 decision, the court held that the Human Rights Act limitation in District law, which prohibits initiatives or referendums that would violation the Human Rights Act, is permissible. In light of that ruling, all 9 judges agreed that the proposed marriage initiative would violate the Human Rights Act and is, thus, not permitted.

In the absence of a successful appeal, then, D.C. marriage equality, which went into effect earlier this year, cannot be subject to an iniative.

He also quotes from the decision itself (Jackson v. D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics):

In the most important conclusion to be made by the court, it held:

The Charter amendment that established the right to initiative must be read in conjunction with the Home Rule Act, which, although conferring on the Council broad legislative authority, makes clear that the legislative authority is subject to limits implied by the United States Constitution and to the enumerated limits [set out by Congress.] Since [the section defining the initiative right in the District] obviously could not and did not remove those limits, it cannot be read as expressing the entire scope of restrictions on the initiative right. Rather, [the section] does not purport to address, and is ambiguous as to, whether there are other limitations on the right to initiative (and referendum). The Human Rights Act safeguard[, which prohibits initiatives that would violate the Human Rights Act] is not inconsistent with that ambiguous language.

Id. at 21. Four of the judges of the court disagreed with this conclusion, in an opinion written by Judge John Fisher. He was joined by Chief Judge Eric Washington and Judges Stephen Glickman and Kathryn Oberly.

It should be noted that all 9 judges agreed that the proposed marriage referendum (limiting marriage to between one man and one woman), like Proposition 8, would violate the D.C. Human Rights Act.

Suck it, NOM!