[MsTinkerbelly]

UPDATE 8: Jon Davidson, Legal Director at Lambda Legal, just sent in his reaction:
The opinion is wonderful. It goes right to the dark heart of Proposition 8 — the measure had no purpose other than withdraw from lesbians and gay men the right to designate their committed relationships as marriages in order to deprive us of a societal status that affords dignity to those relationships. That is simply not a government objective the federal Constitution allows. It also brilliantly explains why it matters so much. “We do not celebrate when two people merge their bank accounts; we celebrate when a couple marries. The designation of ‘marriage’ is the status that we recognize. It is the principal manner in which the State attaches respect and dignity to the highest form of a committed relationship and to the individuals who have entered it” and that’s what Prop 8 wrongly tried to take away.
UPDATE 9: At the AFER press conference, attorneys Ted Boutrous and Ted Olson spoke about their ideas of whether or not the U.S. Supreme Court will take the case. Boutrous pointed out that the 9th Circuit’s decision today is deeply founded in previous Supreme Court rulings, particularly Romer v. Evans, and doesn’t raise any thorny issues that conflict with a decision from another circuit, the Supreme Court may be less inclined to take the case for those reasons. On the other hand, Ted Olson argued that part of California’s constitution, the largest state in the country (representing around 1/8 of the total U.S. population), has now been struck down by two courts, so the Supreme Court may wish to weigh in on those grounds. Both arguments are intriguing, and of course we won’t know anything until the case makes its way to the Supreme Court.
UPDATE 10: Also at today’s conference, attorney Ted Olson addressed the stay that is currently prohibiting Judge Walker’s now-upheld ruling from going into place. According to today’s ruling, the previous stay placed on that ruling by the 9th Circuit in August 2010 is in effect until the appeals court’s mandate is final. What this means is that the proponents of Prop 8 now have 14 days to ask for a rehearing by an en banc panel of the 9th Circuit. If they do not, the stay will be lifted. It is likely the proponents will ask for further appellate review, and ask for the 9th Circuit to place an extended stay on its decision pending that review. If the 9th Circuit were to deny that stay, the proponents could then go to the Supreme Court to ask for a stay pending appeal. The following guidelines for an en banc rehearing can be found after Judge Smith’s concurring and dissenting opinion in today’s ruling:
Purpose (Rehearing En Banc)
A party should seek en banc rehearing only if one or more of the following grounds exist:
Consideration by the full Court is necessary to secure or maintain uniformity of the Court’s decisions; or
The proceeding involves a question of exceptional importance; or
The opinion directly conflicts with an existing opinion by another court of appeals or the Supreme Court and substantially affects a rule of national application in which there is an overriding need for national uniformity.
UPDATE 11: Today, at 5 p.m., Courage Campaign’s Rick Jacobs, Chair and Founder, and Adam Bink, Director of Online Programs, will attend a community event at Los Angeles City Hall. L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will be in attendance, as well as AFER board members Rob Reiner and Dustin Lance Black and a broad range of community and advocacy organizations. The event will take place at City Hall, on the 3rd floor of 200 N. Spring St. More information can be found on AFER’s Facebook page.
UPDATE 12: NOM’s reaction, which was itself predictable:
“As sweeping and wrong-headed as this decision is, it nonetheless was as predictable as the outcome of a Harlem Globetrotters exhibition game,” said Brian Brown, NOM’s president. “We have anticipated this outcome since the moment San Francisco Judge Vaughn Walker’s first hearing in the case. Now we have the field cleared to take this issue to the US Supreme Court, where we have every confidence we will prevail.”
UPDATE 13 (Jacob): I got to listen in to AFER’s press call this afternoon about the 9th Circuit decision. Here are some highlights:
Ted Olson spoke in a little more detail about the stay. Essentially, in its decision today the 9th Circuit set it up so that the stay would expire when it issues a mandate affirming Judge Walker’s ruling. The proponents of Prop 8 have 14 days from today to request further appellate hearings. If they don’t, the mandate goes into effect 7 days later, and the stay is lifted (that would happen on Feb. 28). If they do seek a rehearing or Supreme Court review, the mandate cannot be issued until that process is complete, and the stay would remain in place.
AFER’s attorneys were very clear that while the specific decision the 9th Circuit came to today is carefully crafted and applies only to California (following the principle of judicial restraint), the reasoning the judges use to make their decision is much broader and could have major repercussions. In essence, today’s decision says that discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation is unconstitutional. On p. 77 of the decision, Judge Reinhardt writes, “Proposition 8 operates with no apparent purpose but to impose on gays and lesbians, through the public law, a majority’s private disapproval of them and their relationships, by taking away from them the official designation of ‘marriage,’ with its societally recognized status. Proposition 8 therefore violates the Equal Protection Clause.” This kind of reasoning follows that made by AFER’s attorneys in trial, and as AFER President Chad Griffin points out, it could have ramifications in other states with marriage equality, such as New York (and possibly Washington, later this year), in which marriage opponents wish to seek to rescind previously enumerated marriage rights through a popular referendum or by changing the makeup of the legislature.
To further prove this point, attorney David Boies pointed to this quotation from p. 60: “There is no rational reason to think that taking away the designation of ‘marriage’ from same-sex couples would advance the goal of encouraging California’s opposite-sex couples to procreate more responsibly.” Again, because of the scope of today’s decision, that sentence technically only applies to California. Nevertheless, that sentence (and its explicit rejection of the ‘responsible procreation’ argument made against marriage equality) can be cited and expanded upon by other courts in the future.
Ted Olson noted that when it decided Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court (in a majority opinion authored by Justice Kennedy) argued that it was not making any decision about the validity of gay relationships, and only ruling about private sexual conduct. In his dissenting opinion, Justice Scalia blasted the majority and argued that Lawrence could some day used in support of marriage equality. He was correct, of course–the Perry decision cites Lawrence and Justice Scalia’s dissent specifically. In Olson’s mind, today’s ruling demonstrates unequivocally that marriage is a centrally important American institution, and that it is unconstitutional to call gay couples’ relationships civil unions or domestic partnerships, because doing so implicitly classifies those relationships as less valid than heterosexual marriages. In his mind, today’s decision lays the framework for further expansion of marriage rights in other courts.
UPDATE 14: Over on Twitter, “Modern Family” stars Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Eric Stonestreet ask a very good question.
UPDATE 15: GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney released this statement regarding the 9th Circuit’s decision:
“Today, unelected judges cast aside the will of the people of California who voted to protect traditional marriage. This decision does not end this fight, and I expect it to go to the Supreme Court. That prospect underscores the vital importance of this election and the movement to preserve our values. I believe marriage is between a man and a woman and, as president, I will protect traditional marriage and appoint judges who interpret the Constitution as it is written and not according to their own politics and prejudices.”
UPDATE 16: When asked about the appellate ruling, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney had no official response from the administration, saying, “I don’t have a comment on litigation in general and in this litigation to which we are not a party. Beyond that, I can say that the President has long opposed, as you know, divisive and discriminatory efforts to deny rights and benefits to same-sex couples.”
UDPATE 17: From the Wall Street Journal’s opinion pages, James Taranto writes:
The Ninth Circuit has a poor batting average in Supreme Court appeals, and this decision was written by Judge Stephen Reinhardt, who is notoriously liberal. Those facts are likely to inspire optimism among conservative commentators who oppose same-sex marriage. They shouldn’t. Reinhardt’s decision was expertly crafted to appeal to his former Ninth Circuit peer Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose view of the matter is all but certain to prove decisive.
In August 2010, this column ventured a prediction: “When the Supreme Court takes up Perry v. Schwarzenegger–perhaps under the name Brown v. Perry or Whitman v. Perry [it will be Perry v. Brown if today's opinion is appealed]–the justices will rule 5-4, in a decision written by Justice Kennedy, that there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.”
Although we still think that is Justice Kennedy’s inclination, we hereby walk back our prediction a bit. The court will not find a constitutional right to same-sex marriage in this case, but it will strike down Proposition 8 and thereby reimpose same-sex marriage in California. Reinhard’s decision lays out a way in which Justice Kennedy can do so–and indeed makes it very difficult for Kennedy to uphold Proposition 8.
The trial judge in the Perry case held that same-sex marriage was itself protected by the U.S. Constitution. But the Ninth Circuit judges set aside this holding and decided the case on “narrow grounds.” They found that Proposition 8 was analogous to Amendment 2, a Colorado ballot measure that the Supreme Court struck down in Romer v. Evans (1996).
Amendment 2 barred state and local government in the Centennial State from official actions “designed to protect the status of persons based on their ‘homosexual, lesbian or bisexual orientation, conduct, practices or relationships.’ ” In a 6-3 ruling, the high court held that the amendment violated equal protection by “imposing a broad and undifferentiated disability on a single named group.” The author of that decision was Anthony Kennedy.
UPDATE 18: Towleroad’s Ari Ezra Waldman has a long, detailed reaction and analysis piece to the 9th Circuit’s ruling. His fundamental argument, though, is crystal clear:
More than any single vote, more than any single veto, more than any single legislative majority, the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Perry v. Brown is the most significant advancement in the fight for marriage equality in American history to date. Consider this: Never before has a federal appellate court affirmed any of the conclusions that the Ninth Circuit did today:
that denying committed gay couples their right to marry cannot encourage opposite sex marriages;
that when a state denies the right to marry while allowing gay couples all the rights and privilges of marriage, it cannot base the marriage ban on any rationale that denigrates gay parents;
that domestic partnerships are unequal to marriage;
that, as a matter of law, marriage rights do not hinge on natural procreative ability;
and, of course,
that a ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional