California Attorney General Jerry Brown States Prop 8 Should Be Overturned

On Friday, December 19 in an unexpected move, Attorney General and former Governor of California Jerry Brown filed a legal brief claiming the marriage ban, which revised the California Constitution to include discrimination against gay and lesbian couples, "is itself unconstitutional because it deprives a minority group of a fundamental right."

In a lengthy filing, he argued that the constitutional amendment was "inconsistent with the guarantees of individual liberty" in California's governing charter. "Proposition 8 must be invalidated because the amendment process cannot be used to extinguish fundamental constitutional rights," Brown said.

In a separate filing, supporters of Proposition 8 asked the Court to nullify the marriages of the estimated 18,000 same-sex couples who exchanged vows before November 4. They also named Kenneth W. Starr, the former Whitewater prosecutor and U.S. Solicitor General, to represent them before the Court.

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