U.S. Supreme Court Hands Gay Marriage Foes a Win

by Michael Jones · 2010-01-13 14:42:00 UTC
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U.S. Supreme CourtThe U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 vote, handed opponents of gay marriage a win in their bid to keep cameras out of prevent the live streaming of the federal court trial Perry v. Schwarzenegger. The trial -- which is challenging California's ban on same-sex marriage, Proposition 8 -- started this past week and is anticipated to be one of the biggest LGBT rights court cases in history.

More legal posturing might be able to get cameras back in the courtroom, but by and large, today's ruling could keep cameras out for good. And that's troubling on a number of levels.

"We instead determine that the broadcast in this case should be stayed because it appears the courts below did not follow the appropriate procedures set forth in federal law before changing their rules to allow such broadcasting," the five Justices wrote.

First, it was the five conservative Supreme Court Justices who handed gay marriage foes a victory. For some reason, Justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Roberts and Kennedy believed that televising the case could cause irreparable harm to opponents of gay marriage. That's kind of funny, given that Proposition 8 itself caused irreparable harm to tens of thousands of gay and lesbian couples who were told on Election Day 2008 that they were second-class citizens.

Conversely, they may just not like the Judge, Vaughn Walker, and decided to give him a bit of a public flog, albeit in a legal way. The opening paragraph of today's ruling takes the Judge to task for trying to allow cameras in the courtroom in a hasty way.

Ah, legal middle fingers. What a missed opportunity to live stream what might be one of the biggest civil rights cases since Brown v. Board of Education. Besides that, what a way to ignore the tens of thousands of letters that poured into the Court begging for television cameras. As the Courage Campaign summed up, 138,248 letters were sent to the court urging a televised trial. Only 32 letters were sent in opposition.

But for the U.S. Supreme Court, it's transparency, schmansparency. Not a good day for transparency in the justice system.

Photo credit: Clearly Ambiguous

Michael Jones is a Change.org Editor. He has worked in the field of human rights communications for a decade, most recently for Harvard Law School.
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