High court
upholds California's groundbreaking DP laws

The California supreme court on Wednesday refused to review a Sacramento court of appeal decision from earlier this year upholding the state's groundbreaking domestic-partnership laws, effectively ending the challenge by a notoriously antigay Christian group and allowing the laws to stand. In its decision the court turned aside arguments that domestic partnerships are equivalent to marriage and therefore violate the state's voter-approved Proposition 22, which defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

"Tens of thousands of California families feel safer today now that the attack on their rights by the Campaign for California Families has failed," said Geoffrey Kors, executive director of the gay rights group Equality California, which intervened as a defendant in the case. "These families will never be truly safe, however, until full marriage equality is achieved."

The supreme court will let stand the third district court of appeal's ruling that upheld two domestic-partnership statutes, one of which provides hundreds of state-level rights and protections to same-sex couples and their families. "This is another great victory for fairness and equality and the rights of all Californians to protect their families," said Kate Kendell, executive director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights and cocounsel in the case. "Domestic partnership is not marriage, and the court wisely denied review of misguided and underhanded attempts to distort the language of Proposition 22 and strike down validly enacted legislation that protects lesbian and gay people and their families." (The Advocate)