Supreme Court Won't Help NOM Ally Hide Its Supporters

The Supreme Court won't stop the state of Washington from continuing to release the names of those who tried to outlaw domestic partnerships there.

Petitioners had supported adding Referendum 71 to the ballot and succeeded in putting Washington's domestic partnership law up to a vote. The public ended up voting to keep the law.

And ever since, the group Protect Marriage Washington has been trying to keep the petitioners' names out of the public eye, claiming they feared harassment. When a lower court ruled that the names were part of the public record, they began being released. For example, Seattle Weekly had posted approximately 100,000 of them on its website in October.

Protect Marriage Washington had appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the leaks until they could launch an appeal of the lower court's ruling. But the nation's highest court decided to stay out of it, the Seattle Post-Intelligencerreports, and now the state plans to release more of the names.

Protect Marriage Washington is affiliated with the National Organization for Marriage, which has repeatedly claimed to be the victim of harassment in fights over LGBT civil rights. But NOM and its allies have lost a string of cases in several states where they tried to hide supporters, including those who had made donations.