San Francisco, Calif., Jun 16, 2011 / 01:03 am
A homosexual judge who overturned California’s 2008 ballot measure defining marriage as the union between a man and a woman had no obligation to remove himself from the case because of a possible conflict of interest, a federal judge said on June 14.
“The ProtectMarriage.com legal team obviously disagrees with today’s ruling,” said Charles J. Cooper of Cooper & Kirk, lead counsel for Proposition 8 backer ProtectMarriage.com. “Our legal team will appeal this decision and continue our tireless efforts to defend the will of the people of California to preserve marriage as the union of a man and a woman.”
Judge Vaughn R. Walker, a George H.W. Bush appointee, invalidated Prop. 8 in August 2010. He has never said publicly whether he wished to “marry” his partner.
Chief Judge James Ware of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco said it is not reasonable to “presume that a judge is incapable of making an impartial decision about the constitutionality of a law, solely because, as a citizen, the judge could be affected by the proceedings.”